Embodied epistemologies of healing. Introduction

This Introduction, written by the three editors of the volume, argues for a phenomenologically participative stance on the part of the anthropologist of spirit possession and mediation. We begin with a critique of homogeneous notions of both “person” and “spirit” in possession studies, asking how an immersive participative observation method on the part of scholars can both contribute to an understanding and raise questions about the anthropological enterprise itself. We argue that we need to think and feel through alterity with embodied understandings or imagery or metaphors that open up, rather close, or resolve inquiry. The idea of “extraordinary experiences” itself needs to be rethought, perhaps into one that recognizes that scholars, too, are intrinsic to the incipient and temporal movement of all social forms. We then argue that transformative engagements with the field can signal ways that personal scholarly experience of the “unknown” shapes the concepts by which we craft out analysis. We reflect, in particular, upon a concept of 'epistemological embodiment', or, on how these experiences may impact our conceptions of knowing and of how this knowing is produced. In particular, we formulate a framework that points to how our own conceptual and epistemological understandings of the field are embedded within our own bodily experiences, arrangements, trajectories, and serendipities.