This article was downloaded by: [2.226.200.

111]
On: 28 November 2014, At: 08:09
Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Anthropology & Medicine

Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/canm20

Healing words: becoming a spirit-host

in Madagascar
a
John Mack
a
University of East Anglia , Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
Published online: 03 Aug 2011.

To cite this article: John Mack (2011) Healing words: becoming a spirit-host in Madagascar,
Anthropology & Medicine, 18:2, 231-243, DOI: 10.1080/13648470.2011.591199

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13648470.2011.591199

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or
howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising
out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-
and-conditions
 Anthropology & Medicine
Vol. 18, No. 2, August 2011, 231–243

Healing words: becoming a spirit-host in Madagascar

John Mack*

University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK

(Received 1 June 2010; final version received 1 January 2011)

In discussion of healing processes in sub-Saharan Africa, emphasis

is characteristically placed on the role of performance. Yet in spirit
mediumship, speech is also an important element in therapeutic
Downloaded by [2.226.200.111] at 08:09 28 November 2014

practices. In Madagascar, the spirits (tromba) are often of exotic origins

(frequently in time as well as space) and the language used is likewise exotic.
A complex of techniques of enchantment is employed: amongst them,
music, changes of dress, the burning of perfumes and incense, rum, putting
matches in the mouth, or the use of herbal medicines. Sometimes artefacts,
such as – in the case discussed – a large model ship, are employed.
Although the setting is shrine-like, the techniques are at once both dynamic
and eclectic, collapsing time and space into a single embodied moment
when the spirit speaks through the vehicle of the medium. Such ‘spirit-
speech’ is itself empowered and empowering, cathartic and curative.
Keywords: spirit possession; speech; therapeutics; Madagascar

Introduction
Shrines are conventionally defined as places of religious veneration; they are also
places attributed healing properties. The two go together, suggesting that there is no
sustainable categorical distinction between religion and healing – and none will be
advanced here. In Christian practice specifically, shrines derive their efficacy both
from the saintly relics or other sacred substances preserved at such sites, often
in boxes or caskets specially constructed for the purpose, and from the miracles that
are recounted as occurring there (Brown 1981). Penitential visits, including formal
pilgrimage, take advantage of these curative properties and represent explicit ways of
confronting infirmity whether physical, psychological – or, more probably, the two
in combination. This raises the question of the nature of the interaction people have
with such contained sites and of the behaviours that occur there. The character of
these person-to-object, person-to-site relationships underlies the discussion here and,
in particular, the role they have in relation to the healing of the infirm body as the
locus of these interactions.
The familiar way to configure this relationship between person and object or site
is in terms of a kind of reversal. In this, the object takes on a specific character and is
often attributed an individuality, though in the case of the bodily relics of a known
saint such individuation is already achieved. The ill person in turn becomes the
supplicant in relation to the individuated object. In short, the object is personified

*Email: John.mack@uea.ac.uk

ISSN 1364–8470 print/ISSN 1469–2910 online

ß 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13648470.2011.591199
http://www.informaworld.com
 232 J. Mack

and in the process the person becomes objectified; or to put it another way,
in relation to the personified object, the person becomes the client – or, in directly
medical vocabulary, the ‘patient’. The objects involved are not merely instruments
for effecting change in individual physicality and circumstances, for all that they
have a critical dynamic aspect and act upon the world to effect transformations in
both individual and community affairs. Like the fragmentary remains in a Christian
reliquary they have their own identity, their own specialisms and realms of expertise.
They may be ‘fed’ through ‘medicines’ being applied to them as readily as they are
to the bodies of their clients; and many are individually named in the same way as
are people.
In an African context, the use of the magico-medicinal compositions, known as
nkisi in Kikongo, the language of the people who live along the Atlantic seaboard of
equatorial Africa and in its immediate interior, is probably the most completely
documented example, although something similar characterises much divinatory
Downloaded by [2.226.200.111] at 08:09 28 November 2014

practice in the Bantu world in particular (MacGaffey 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993;
Thompson 1984; Thompson and Cornet 1981). In brief, individual nkisi are owned
by specialist operators and each object has an individual name, a known area of
expertise and often an appropriate reputation for the success of its interventions.
Nkisi come in a variety of forms and types but each is conceived as containing
an inherent power deriving from the medicines applied to it. Whether their cause is
medical, some other personal matter or the swearing of an oath, the method of
making supplication to the nkisi is for the client to attach some element of their
personhood to the object. This may be a small piece of cloth from their clothing or
spittle or sweat often rubbed onto a nail, which is driven into the object. The switch
is thereby effected and, in mechanical terms, the supplicant is rendered submissive
to the insights and diagnoses of the object and its operator (nganga).
Similar processes of dynamic characterisation have informed ritual practice on
the island of Madagascar, which is the scene for the phenomena to be discussed
below. Up until the mid nineteenth century, when the Queen of the Merina kingdom
in the central highlands was baptised into the Christian faith, ‘idols’ (sampy) were
used to secure health and well-being on behalf of individuals and communities
(Domenichini 1971). Each was operated by guardians and royalty dispensed favours
to gain access to their powers. We have a description of one known as ‘Ingahibe’
(‘The Old Gentleman’). It consisted of seven pieces of wood covered with various
colours of cloth and ‘anointed’ with castor oil and a gum used in burning incense.
The spaces between each section of wood had beads of coral and silver such that it
resembled ‘a bird having wings and head, the body glittering’. Their use, on behalf of
communities, as of the state itself, is summed up in a native account from the mid
nineteenth century: they are said to have been ‘that which causes to live and causes to
die, and are supposed to see the future, the past, and the present, and to be able to
cast down thunderbolts, pour down the hail, to remove disease and inflict curses, and
to assemble the snake tribe against all who calumniate them’ (Rainivelo 1875, 113;
Mack 1986, 53). Sampy shared the same fate as nkisi did in the Kongo area.
Conversion implied giving up long-established indigenous ‘idolatrous’ practice. The
sampy were consigned to the flames. Each of those thus dispatched had its own name
and its own renown, although the most famous of all, Kelimalaza, was said to have
risen above the fires and survived. In fact, later historians have since suggested that it
was restored rather than rising, phoenix-like, from the ashes (Ellis 1985, 48). In any
 Anthropology & Medicine 233

case, the important point is that sampy, like nkisi had their own biographies, which
in addition to being burnt like medieval heretics (which no doubt is how the
missionaries in Madagascar and Congo partly regarded them), included, in the
Malagasy case, being appropriated for state purposes from local contexts with
the potential of being re-appropriated back again.
Amongst the Sakalava on the north-west coast of Madagascar relics are known
as dady, a term that also translates as ‘grandparents’. A seventeenth-century source
reports: ‘. . .they address their prayers and make offerings to the souls of their dead
relatives, who are the idols and from whom they conserve preciously, like so many
relics, the nails, hair clothes etc. They invoke the dead on every occasion, especially
in difficult moments’ (as quoted in Feeley-Harnik 1991, 73). Yet it is only royal
remains that were preserved in this way and some are still kept and periodically
washed, an event of large public significance to the present day. One such ceremony
involves the annual washing of named relics in a salt water estuary. It is also
Downloaded by [2.226.200.111] at 08:09 28 November 2014

associated with possession by royal spirits (Rabedimy 1979, 177). Another class
of charm, generically known as ody, functions on behalf of individuals and is widely
used amongst the different ethnic groups of the island. Their composition and range
of application and protection varies considerably.
However, whilst ody, dady and sampy may have different usage, users or
clienteles, they serve to introduce the broad question of how this person-to-object/
object-to-person model applies to another transformational ceremony, that of spirit
possession. The example described below is of the possession of a commoner in an
urban setting in south-west Madagascar. The focus is less the ethnographic detail as
the model and its applicability. As we shall see, objects are involved. But, on the face
of it, in possession states the person is not so much objectified as displaced. He/she
becomes not a client of an object but a vehicle for a possessing spirit. Yet the context
remains in a general sense one of healing, and the restoration of well-being is one
of the outcomes of possession ceremonies.

Tromba
There are two broad emphases that might be identified in discussions of healing
practices in sub-Saharan Africa. One focuses on the creation of the right
circumstances for the ritual event – what might be called the ‘aesthetics’ of ritual
behaviour: the place and time at which events take place, the physical characteristics
of the site, clothing, music, sound and whatever transforming substances (or
‘medicines’) might be either ingested by participants or applied to the body or to the
site itself. The other concerns the performative aspects: what happens, how it
happens, in what sequence, to what effect.
The events to be discussed are of a kind widely reported along the west coast
of Madagascar. The focus here is on a filmed sequence with which the author was
involved in the early 1990s since the whole sensory context of possession is entirely
retrievable in that documentary format. The location was on the outskirts of the
southern port town of Toliara (Tulear) and concerned a married man who was then
in his early 30s, and identified within the film as Cyprian. He was from a cattle-
keeping background but had moved to the town looking for work, and this
eventually led to him being employed in a technical capacity at the local university
museum where the curator was himself both a published ethnographer and a
 234 J. Mack

practised diviner. Cyprian’s symptoms included physiological discomfort, which had

proved unresponsive to conventional medicines, psychological distress and troubling
dreams. Cyprian also had relatives who had spirits and the possibility that he too
might be susceptible to possession was amongst the probable causes that were
canvassed in explanation of his illness. He was also entirely familiar with the
methods employed in cajoling the spirit to rise to his head, as the process of going
into trance is widely conceptualised. This knowledge of procedures was evident
throughout the period of preparation during which Cyprian personally assembled all
the elements that went into the creation of the shrine-like context in which the
ceremony took place. This in itself is unusual as it is normally someone other than
the spirit-host who identifies the spirit’s requirements and often makes the necessary
preparations. Cyprian, however, selected the cow to be sacrificed at the end of the
procedure and arranged for the accordion player who performed throughout much
of the event, supported by participants who fell in with the rhythm and pace of the
Downloaded by [2.226.200.111] at 08:09 28 November 2014

sound with rattles, drums and especially clapping. Two female relatives and a
professional spirit medium, all experienced in the world of spirits, supervised the
process; but during the ceremony itself Cyprian also took the lead role in
coordinating activities up until the point when he moved into trance, when it was
understood the actions were those of the spirit not of Cyprian. He did not seem to
regard himself as in any disabling sense a submissive victim of the spirit. Indeed the
presence of a foreign film crew, the attention paid to him and the fact that he had
been selected as a vehicle of a particular spirit conspired to give him a heightened
sense of self-esteem, despite the illness that occasioned the ceremony in the first
place.
The commentary that accompanies the documentary talks of the spirits as
‘ancestral’. That, however, somewhat misrepresents the situation. Certainly, it is
notable that in the Sakalava kingdom one class of possession is by local spirits
(Feeley-Harnik 1982). Even then, it is the spirits of royalty who inhabit commoners
so there is a strong social distinction between the possessing spirits and their human
hosts. Those thus possessed subsequently move to the royal burial ground on a small
island off the coast, Nosy Faly (literally ‘tabooed island’), where they become
guardians of the dynastic tombs. The term tromba is now in common use throughout
Madagascar to refer to possessing spirits but in practice it is from this form of royal
possession in the Bemazava kingdom of the Sakalava that the term ultimately
derives. Nowadays this endogamous form of ‘ancestral’ possession has been eclipsed
by more popular forms of possession (Estrade 1978). In the multi-ethnic modern
town of Ambanja, described by Leslie Sharp, many of the spirits that possess people
are of more exotic (in several senses) origins – either from outside the region itself,
figures from the fringes of conventional society or from other social classes:
playboys, cowboys, prostitutes, boxers (Sharp 1993, 1995). On the nearby island of
Mayotte, spirits may be native (patros) and live under water off the shore or they
may come from Madagascar itself (trumba) (Lambek 1981, 35–40; see also chapter
10). Similar practices of spirit possession in nearby Zanzibar are reflective of the wide
cosmopolitan mix of spirit identities traversing the western Indian Ocean region.
Larsen records spirits (masheitani) identified in Zanzibar as Muslims from Arabia
and Somalia, Christians from Madagascar, and others from Ethiopia, pagan spirits
from the island of Pemba (part of the Zanzibari archipelago and also identified as
Swahili), Maasai and other mainland pastoralists, and spirits of Nubian and Shirazi
 Anthropology & Medicine 235
Downloaded by [2.226.200.111] at 08:09 28 November 2014

Figure 1. Cyprian, seated in front the model ship with his two female helpers. Photograph
taken during the filming of ‘The Nature of Music’ series. 1992. Courtesy of Jeremy Marre.

(or Persian) origin (Larsen 2008, chapter 4). Indeed, although spirits from rural parts
of the main island are identified as present in Zanzibar town, no spirits that
are unequivocally from the town itself inhabit urban Zanzibari. It is exclusively
‘the other’ who possesses those who are susceptible to receiving them.
In Cyprian’s case, the spirit was identified as clearly from overseas – that of a
foreign sailor. This in itself is not an exceptional case. Clothing initially identifies the
spirit. Thus, in the ceremony itself, Cyprian is dressed in a white sailor’s uniform;
and to make the connection yet more explicit it takes place facing a large model of a
merchant ship that he has commissioned, furnished with a series of decks, a bridge
and winches (Figure 1). Other purchases include alcohol and, as in possession
ceremonies more generally in eastern Africa, perfume and incense, which is burnt in
copious amounts on the table in front of the possessed person and liberally inhaled.
A standard Malagasy composition of water poured into a white dish in which coins
are placed is another essential element. The combination derives from practices
associated with the dispersal of royal blessings. The liquid is drunk with a spoon
throughout the ceremony. The creation of the right ambience is critical to the success
of the event. The material elements assembled at the site are not just appropriate to
the identity of the spirit but demanded by it and critical to a successful encounter
with the spirit world. The aesthetics of the ceremony are, thus, spirit-oriented.
This is especially critical on the first occasions that someone admits a spirit.
Michael Lambek describes a two-stage process on the island of Mayotte off the
north-west coast of Madagascar. The first ceremony is a curtailed event, taking only
a few hours and the second an all-night process that is more intense and culminates
in the spirit announcing its ‘name’. The sequence follows a pattern of increasing
clarity and coherence as the spirit’s identity and public persona are asserted (Lambek
1981, chapter 6). In south-western Madagascar the same structure is found –
although in this case the two ceremonies took place within a week of each other
 236 J. Mack

rather than with a lapse of time which, on Mayotte, may run to several years. For the
first part of the process people from the immediate vicinity, mostly Cyprian’s kin,
gathered in the late afternoon. There is energetic clapping and their enthusiastic
involvement is instrumental in bringing on the first signs of the spirit taking hold
of Cyprian. As the spirit rises, so Cyprian’s identity begins to be replaced by that of
his spirit. Yet this introductory, semi-private, ceremony ends with no definitive
outcome. On the second occasion a large crowd assembles. As the night wears on the
spirit that has taken hold of Cyprian starts to groan extravagantly and discordantly
with the music, which itself rises to a crescendo and falls back again, changing tempo
and engaging the excitement of participants. At successive grunts, a jolt goes through
the body now possessed by the spirit such that it is catapulted into an upright
position before falling back again onto a chair. The staccato gestures and the
inability to communicate articulately in words or song are consistent with a general
lack of fluency. Where the participants are in tune with the rhythm of the events, it is
Downloaded by [2.226.200.111] at 08:09 28 November 2014

increasingly clear that the possessing spirit is yet to accept its host. The differences
between the spirit’s demeanour and engagement with the music and song and that
of others present reflect the different existential conditions that are starting to
register within the confines of what was otherwise Cyprian’s body.
With dawn breaking, the possessing-spirit gestures to have the table set up
outdoors and the ship placed on it. The spirit hobbles rapidly outside supported by
Cyprian’s female relatives and a male medium who begins to take on a larger role in
the events. At this propitious time of the day for Malagasy – facing the sun rising
in the north-east, the most auspicious direction – the cow tethered to the north-east
of the ship is sacrificed. The spirit drinks the blood and chews part of the ear muscle.
Gradually the words begin to flow, an urgent babble of speech, which sounds like
language but not one that is readily understood. There seem to be intonations of
French and Swahili in addition to Malagasy, a literal multi-vocality that defies easy
interpretation. A female helper strains to understand. She asks questions intent on
comprehending what is being said, and a gabble of words comes back in response.
It is not Cyprian who is speaking. The spirit has risen successfully to his head and is
itself acting and speaking, ‘riding’ its host in a common metaphor (or as we might
gloss it, ‘over-riding’ its host). Later, Cyprian is able to describe parts of the events
and his sensations up until this moment. As is common in reports of spirit
possession, he is aware to an extent of what is happening but is quite unable to act
independently. With the spirit residing in his body he is displaced, absent at the very
moment of apotheosis.

The sensory context

The pattern of events described here are similar to those described by a number of
ethnographers (e.g. Sharp 1993). There are, however, two ways in which Cyprian’s
experience diverges from most other accounts. The first is that whilst men do get
possessed it is increasingly the case that it is women who host spirits, even if the
spirits themselves are identified as male. The second difference is more significant for
present purposes; for what is usually described – and is the subject of, for instance,
Jacques Lombard’s ‘Prince Charming’ film about Sakalava spirit possession – is the
practice of persons already recognised as experienced in entering possession states.
Cyprian, by contrast, was being initiated into the world of spirits for the first time.
 Anthropology & Medicine 237

For that reason the process of looking for the signs of the spirit’s embodied presence
in movements and gestures was that much more intense and anxious; and the
moment when the spirit finally rose to his head and spoke in transformed speech that
much more cathartic. Lambek describes spirits shaking hands with the participants
at ceremonies on Mayotte and talks of himself sitting as an anthropologist with
spirits engaging in direct conversation with them (Lambek 1981: xiii ff). Such fluency
is only won as the spirit becomes habituated to its host and accepts the material
ambience which is established on its behalf, the gifts of perfume and alcohol,
the incense, the clothing. Cyprian, as a spirit-host, had yet to earn that degree of
acceptance.
The study of the performative aspect of ritual activity is nothing new
(for instance, see Turner 1986). However, it has been given more theoretical rigour
in recent years by an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of sensory experience,
such as in the essays assembled by David Howes in Empire of the senses (2005).
Downloaded by [2.226.200.111] at 08:09 28 November 2014

In Madagascar, as in the western Indian Ocean more widely, experienced spirit

mediums talk explicitly of becoming aware of spirits through ‘sensing’ their arrival.
Often they are possessed by multiple spirits and each is sensed differently. They also
talk of being able to identify when a spirit has passed through other participants in
ceremonies from their demeanour – through noticing characteristic ways of moving
and gesturing they can readily say which spirit it is. In some simpler tromba
ceremonies, the summoning of the spirit is quite perfunctory and may amount to
little more than putting on appropriate headgear and an energetic rhythmic clapping
starting up. In Cyprian’s case, however, the process of being initiated into acceptance
by a spirit is particularly prolonged and the emphasis on the kinaesthetic aspects of
the performance similarly enhanced. Indeed, in this first experience of being
inhabited by an external entity the spirit comes not through suggestive invitation but
through overload. There is nothing subtle about the process. What is created is what
Fiona Sheales refers to as a ‘hyper-environment’, an aesthetic context in which all the
senses are completely engaged to the extent that intellectual awareness is suspended
and superseded (Sheales, forthcoming). Spirit possession in this instance occurs in a
situation of sensory saturation.
The focus of the filmed sequence was on music and its role in creating the
circumstances in which such altered states of consciousness – or supplanting of
consciousness – occur. It is a plausible theme. The place of music in possession
and healing ceremonies in adjacent parts of eastern Africa and beyond is widely
acknowledged. Indeed, talking of Ndembu practice in Zambia, Victor Turner
originally characterised possession ritual under the term the ‘drums of affliction’,
a phrase that has since been widely adopted in discussing such practices elsewhere
(Turner 1981). His emphasis is on the rhythm of the performance, the auditory and
sensory aspects of the event and its instrumentality in the act of healing. John Janzen
has drawn attention to the centrality of drumming in many healing rituals
throughout the Bantu-speaking parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, along the
Tanzanian coast the term ngoma refers at once to dance, music and celebration in
both healing and entertainment contexts – it is expressive of the wider performative
context in which such rituals take place. Yet the term ngoma in Bantu dialects across
Africa translates simply as ‘drum’. Drumming, Janzen remarks, ‘is considered to be
the voice or influence of the ancestral shades or other spirits that visit the sufferer
and offer the treatment’ (Janzen 1992, 1). The drum as artefact – the rhythm as its
 238 J. Mack

active voice – is central to possession rituals or cults of affliction across a great

swathe of the African continent. Ngoma has come to be the name for a veritable
trans-continental cult of affliction, and its resolution. However, if the drum is in that
sense an instrument of therapeutic healing, what then of the spirit otherwise
embodied in the afflicted individual? Wherein lies the significance of spirit-utterance
compared to that of the drum?

The oral outcome

A comparison with the island of Mayotte is revealing. There, the emphasis in these
first experiences of possession is all on the spirit speaking its ‘name’. Lambek makes
the important point that the spirit is not revealing its name but investing itself with
a name. That is, the spirit is acknowledging its presence and its participation in
triggering its host’s illness through announcing its name and thereby affirming its
Downloaded by [2.226.200.111] at 08:09 28 November 2014

identity. This is the crucial moment in the individual’s career as a spirit-host

(Lambek 1981, 144–7). In the case of Cyprian’s possession, the whole auditory
complex comprised of drumming, accordion music and clapping was juxtaposed
with grunting, an inchoate attempt at communication. The possessing spirit drinks
the blood of the cow and gnaws on the ear muscle. The emphasis is on the acts
of speaking and listening. The cathartic moment when the spirit announces its
presence definitively is that when it speaks in what seems to be language. What is
heard is a transformation of language itself, the voice of a spirit whose exotic origins
are matched by exotic speech. People recognise it as language even when it requires
expertise to engage with it. Indeed, the discovery of such significance as it contains is
itself regarded as important and urgent. There is no hesitation in recognising that the
sound is not arbitrary but that there is a potentially recoverable relationship
between sound and speech. The language itself is meaningful, even if it can only be
understood by someone expert in it; and it is as a result regarded as empowered.
That language should be attributed this agency is not without precedent in an
African context. The Yoruba concept of ase is perhaps the best known example of
this. This is the vitality that is conceived of as being present in all living things and in
particular is a power associated with bringing things into actuality. It is a quality
associated with blood and with words. Shedding blood in sacrifice unleashes ase just
as the spoken word releases vital forces to the benefit of the devotees of particular
cults (Drewal and Drewal 1983, 6). Henry Drewal has also referred elsewhere to
Yoruba ideas of a capacity he calls ‘voiced power’, which is found prominently
in divinatory verses, praise poems, and hunters’ songs (Drewel 1974). He notes that
for Yoruba the very act of pronunciation is, in appropriate circumstances, a
dramatic transformative experience in and of itself. There are similarities also to the
Hausa experience of bori. It, too, is a form of possession with a power to effect
transformations in health, and it lays a similar emphasis on the mastery of speech
forms as an aspect of effectiveness (Hunter 1996, 189).
The idea of speech being empowered is also found elsewhere in Malagasy
tradition. Madagascar has a wider variety of ethnic groupings and of local practice
than is often assumed, and many of the features thought to be characteristic of the
island as a whole are in fact of only restricted distribution, such as second-burial
(famadihana) authoritatively described by Bloch (1971) for the Merina.
However, one feature that is common across the island is the importance attached
 Anthropology & Medicine 239

to speech-making (kabary) on any formal, and even relatively informal, occasion.

This may be a simple matter of welcoming passing visitors but is most characteristic
of ritual and extends to many more extensive public events. It is mildly surprising in
villages where the headman may not have any particular oratorical skills to have to
strain to hear the obligatory kabary uttered in a quiet voice when everyone around
simply carries on talking amongst themselves. But it is uttered nonetheless. On larger
occasions, acknowledged experts in the arts of oratory (mpikabary) are sometimes
employed to weave a speech that is full of clever allusion, subtle humour and moral
purpose. Much of this requires a knowledge of the local context: of proverbial
references, of oral and narrative cycles (such as the Ibonia of the Merina discussed
and translated in Haring 1994; Paulhan 1913, 1938) and of local events and issues.
An ability to ‘work’ a particular audience is an admired quality. Points successfully
and colourfully made may be acknowledged by people coming up and putting money
into the speaker’s pocket (as illustrated in Mack 1986, 63). In Imerina in the
Downloaded by [2.226.200.111] at 08:09 28 November 2014

nineteenth century, royal proclamations formed the subject of kabary and large
crowds gathered to listen to the speeches on the steep hills around the royal palace
(rova) in the capital Antananarivo, so large indeed that lacking any available means
of voice projection it would have been impossible for all but those in the closest
proximity to the speaker to hear first-hand what was being said. For the rest,
repetition down-the-line was the only way of hearing the relevant edicts. But, it can
be argued, it was less their contents as the very pronunciation of the proclamations
that brought them into being.
Kabary has a power to change things, and it may be no exaggeration to suggest
that a good illustration of this lies in the immense success of the Christian mission
in Madagascar, where the practice of communal prayer, and in particular the
richness of the sermon, was an important part of introduced practice. The first
missionaries in central Madagascar were Welsh Nonconformists, brought up in a
tradition where the ability of the minister to deliver an effective sermon is an
important asset. Shrines and religious veneration were distinctly antithetical to
Nonconformist tastes. The emphasis was on the power of words, of biblical authority
and of the expositions of the significance of biblical text. The most successful
sermons are those in which the minister gets carried away with his speech, deviating
from any pre-prepared notes as his thoughts run on, drawing the congregation into
his flow (an ability known as the hwyl in Welsh).
The elaboration of allusion and invention in formal discourse develops the
creative forms otherwise admired in conversational talk. Yet there is also a difference
between the speech forms of everyday language, kabary or sermonising, and those of
spirit-speech. In the first instances, the listener hears a set of references in words
whose definitions and relationships to each other they potentially understand.
In such speech, even when full of allusion and subtlety, the listener is challenged to
find meaning; but they have potentially the means to do so. A successful speech,
indeed, is one that is out of the ordinary, where the orator gets carried away with the
passion of their speech performance; but it remains for all that comprehensible.
Words are signs, grammar is structure – language is signifying. Spirit-speech, such
as that discussed here, is, by contrast, communication in an esoteric language where
meaning is not accessible to those not already versed in its forms. Language has
become symbolising. In Cyprian’s case, a female relative familiar with spirits seeks
to uncover meaning. Here, it is argued, that it is not a matter of translation, of
 240 J. Mack

representing meaning through rendering of one form of codification in terms of

another. A joke explained is no longer a joke; similarly, a spontaneous experience of
possession arousal leading to spirit-speech requires no other form of representation.
In being represented it is no longer what it was. It is in the saying rather than the
translating that speech has its force and its vitality.
Spirit-speech, then, is empowered; and it is not the language of information. It is
a language of doing, not of telling; it exceeds any instrumental role of communi-
cating facts or opinions, of exchanging information as a prelude to action or a
commentary on things happening or which have happened. It is, in itself, in the
active voice. The Christian social philosopher Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy remarked
that ‘grammar is the self-consciousness of language, just as logic is the self-
consciousness of thinking’ (as quoted in Stahmer 1987, 316). He is suggesting that
articulated speech gives direction and orientation in time and space. Ordinary
grammatical language sustains our social and temporal axes. ‘Society lives by speech,
Downloaded by [2.226.200.111] at 08:09 28 November 2014

dies without speech’ (as quoted in Stahmer 1987, 315). By contrast, the whole
experience of possession and the speech in which it eventuates is of another order. Its
urgency and its intensity defy representation or narration in other terms. Others may
reflect on its course objectively, but for those who experience it such possession is not
self-willed. It takes place in an interwoven tableau where language and sensory
stimulation collapse time and space into one urgent moment at one particular site.
And that, perhaps, is why the experience of tromba might be accounted at once
cathartic and therapeutic for those who experience it for the first time. It is an entry
into a world without familiar grammar, without the coordinates of time and space. It
has its own finality. It is only as the spirit becomes habituated to its host at successive
ceremonies that its patterns of language may become more fluent, that it becomes, in
Lambek’s (1981, 102) term, more completely ‘socialised’.

Conclusion
In terms of the model with which we began it would not seem that Cyprian himself
has become objectified as a result of the process of submitting to possession by spirit.
As host, he is neither a patient nor a client in relation to spirit and the creation of an
appropriate sensory environment including objects, substances of various kinds,
incense, music, dance and singing is not for his benefit but for that of the spirit.
Where, in the cases of nkisi or sampy, the object itself is named and invested with a
distinctive personality, in this instance it is the spirit that has been identified and
invested with a particular character. Such material elements as the choice of objects
to display, the mode of dress, gesture, alcohol and perfume are selected because they
evoke the proclivities of the possessing spirit. Yet the objects themselves are not
conceived of as empowered but rather as ‘empowering’, in the sense that they create
the appropriate sensory environment in which spirit-presence might be induced.
They have an important but more peripheral agency than nkisi or sampy. No reversal
occurs of the kind we suggested at the start to be characteristic of the relationship
between persons and magico-medical objects, such that the object is personified as
the person is objectified. Rather – to the extent that the idea of reversal is useful – the
reversal is that between the insubstantial character of spirit and the embodied
condition of people. The aesthetic mission of the ship (in this case), the dolls, hats,
perfumes, cigarettes, and bottles that proliferate is as techniques of enchantment,
 Anthropology & Medicine 241

intended to please and to attract the spirit, for spirits are held to have different
characters just as humans do and are capable of being fickle or conciliatory in equal
measure.
Once in trance, Cyprian is not himself. ‘He’ has, in that moment, been put into
suspension. His sense of self has evaporated. He has become what Boddy, referring
to northern Sudanese possession, terms a ‘non-self’ (Boddy 1989; on this point see
also Larsen 2008, 53). It is not that he has merged in any existential sense with a
spirit but rather that his body has been taken over by a spirit. For spirits to achieve
personhood, the host must in tandem become a non-person. Speech is one of the
leading mechanisms by which this transference is signalled; indeed, in the case
of Cyprian, the whole lengthy process of the possession ceremony is constructed
around the achievement of that shift from grunting to speech. When the words are
finally uttered it is not in Cyprian’s voice or vocabulary; it is spirit-speech,
an affirmation of the presence of spirit, the start of its career with a new host – and
Downloaded by [2.226.200.111] at 08:09 28 November 2014

of Cyprian’s potential restoration to health.

In one tromba ceremony where the spirit-medium was a teenage girl, this author
noticed that she had left her French homework by her side. She had written in her
exercise book the heading, ‘A toi de parler’.

Acknowledgements
The case study that suggested the theme of this paper was recorded in 1992 as part of a survey
of tromba in southern Madagascar for a Channel 4 TV series made by Harcourt Films, which
was compliant with the ethical standards of documentary film-making and the copyright
aspects of recording of music. This was subsequent to detailed fieldwork by the author on
Malagasy material culture, and especially funerary arts, between 1984 and 1986 under a
research agreement between the British Museum and the Musée d’Art et d’Archèologie,
Antananarivo, Madagascar. The British Museum funded the research and approved its ethical
aspects. No conflicts of interest arose then or since, and none in the writing of this paper.
In particular, the author acknowledges the participation in research of an excellent Malagasy
colleague, Ramilisonina, in the fieldwork phase. The author thanks Tim Insoll whose own
work in northern Ghana on shrines and materiality has proved a very suggestive starting point
for this paper. The author is also grateful for the attentive reading of the anonymous reviewers
who have helped sharpen and improve the final version of this essay and provided helpful
additional references, even if limitations of space has prevented following up all their
suggestions as fully as would have been desirable.

Notes on contributor
John Mack is Head of World Art and Museology at the University of East Anglia, UK.
Previously he was Keeper of the Museum of Mankind at the British Museum. His most recent
publication is The Art of Small Things (British Museum, 2007) and he has a book entitled The
Sea – A Cultural History coming out in 2011, which starts with a discussion of the east African
coast and the western Indian Ocean.

References

Bloch, Maurice. 1971. Placing the dead: Tombs, ancestral villages and kinship organisation in
Madagascar. London: Seminar Press.
Boddy, Janice. 1989. Wombs and alien spirits: Women, men and the Zar cult in northern Sudan.
Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
 242 J. Mack

Brown, Peter. 1981. The cult of saints: Its rise and function in Latin Christianity. London:
SCM Press.
Domenichini, Jean-Pierre. 1971. Histoires des Palladium d’Imerina. Antananarivo: Musée
d’Art et d’Archéologie, Travaux et Documents, VII.
Drewal, H.J. 1974. Efe: Voiced power and pageantry. African Arts 7, no. 2: 26–9; 58–66.
Drewal, Henry John, and Margaret Thompson Drewal. 1983. Gelede: Art and female power
among the Yoruba. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Ellis, Stephen. 1985. The rising of the red shawls: A revolt in Madagascar 1895–1899.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Estrade, Jean-Marie. 1978. Un culte de possession à Madagascar. Paris: Anthropos.
Feeley-Harnik, Gillian. 1982. The king’s men in Madagascar: Slavery, citizenship and the
Sakalava monarchy. Africa 52, no. 2: 31–50.
Feeley-Harnik, Gillian. 1991. A green estate: Restoring independence in Madagascar.
Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Haring, Lee (trans. and introduction). 1994. Ibonia: Epic of Madagascar. Cranbury, NJ:
Associated University Presses.
Downloaded by [2.226.200.111] at 08:09 28 November 2014

Howes, David, ed. 2005. Empire of the senses: The sensual culture reader. Oxford: Berg.
Hunter, L. 1996. Transformation in African verbal art: Voice, speech, language. Journal of
American Folklore 109, no. 432: 178–92.
Janzen, John, M. 1992. Ngoma: Discourses of healing in Central and Southern Africa. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Lambek, Michael 1981. Human spirits: A cultural account of trance in Mayotte. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Larsen, Kjersti. 2008. Where humans and spirits meet: The politics of rituals and identified
spirits in Zanzibar. Oxford: Berghahn books.
MacGaffey, W. 1988. Complexity, astonishment and power: The visual vocabulary of
Kongo Minkisi. Journal of Southern African Studies 14, no. 2: 188–203.
MacGaffey, W. 1990. The personhood of ritual objects: Kongo Minkisi. Etnofoor 3, no. 1:
45–61.
MacGaffey, Wyatt. 1991. Art and healing of the Bakongo commented by themselves: Minkisi
from the Laman collection. Stockholm: Folkens Museum-ethnografiska.
MacGaffey, Wyatt. 1993. The eyes of understanding. In Astonishment and power, eds.
W. MacGaffey and M.D. Harris, 21–106. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press.
Mack, John. 1986. Madagascar: Island of the ancestors. London: British Museum.
Paulhan, Jean. 1938. Les Hain-teny. Paris: Gallimard.
Paulhan, Jean (trans.), (1913) 1991. Hain-teny Merina: Poesies Populaires Malgaches.
Antanarivo: Société Malgache d’Édition.
Rabedimy, Jean-François. 1979. Essai sur l’idéologie de la mort à Madagascar.
In Les Hommes et la mort: Rituels fune´raire à travers le monde, ed. J. Guiart, 171–9.
Paris: Le Sycomore-Objets et Mondes.
Rainivelo 1875. The burning of the idol Ramahavaly. Antananarivo Annual I: 112–4.
Sharp, Leslie. 1993. The possessed and the dispossessed: Spirits, identity, and power in a
Madagascar migrant town. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Sharp, Leslie. 1995. Playboy princely spirits of Madagascar: Possession as youthful
commentary and social critique. Anthropological Quarterly 68, no. 2: 75–88.
Sheales, Fiona. Forthcoming. Sights/sites of diplomacy: Anglo/Asante appropriations
of conventions, imagery and material culture during the 1817 mission to Kumase.
PhD diss., University of East Anglia.
Stahmer, H.M. 1987. Speech is the body of the spirit: The oral hermeneutic in the writings
of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888–1973). Oral Tradition 2, no. 1: 301–22.
Thompson, Robert Farris. 1984. Flash of spirit: African and Afro-American art and philosophy.
New York: Vintage Books.
 Anthropology & Medicine 243

Thompson, Robert Farris, and Joseph Cornet. 1981. The four moments of the sun.
Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art.
Turner, Victor. 1981. The drums of affliction: A study of religious processes among the Ndembu
of Zambia. London: International African Institute.
Turner, Victor. 1986. The anthropology of performance. New York: PAJ Publications.
Downloaded by [2.226.200.111] at 08:09 28 November 2014