2017 Volume 18 Issue 1 Pages 143-157
Spirit possession has witnessed a renewed scholarly interest, driven by new approaches. Research in cognitive science focused on the cross-cultural features of these phenomena, while anthropological studies provided accounts of experiences with spirits as emerging through interactions between the lived body moving in the world and the environment. Yet, a focus on how spirits gradually emerge through bodily perceptions, affects and interactions, is missing. In this article I focus on experiences during a Roman Catholic exorcism in contemporary Italy. I argue that: 1) Possession is not a self-standing phenomenon, but a “meshwork”(Ingold 2011) of lines of movements and attunements of humans and non-humans, which include specific affects, emerging through practice. 2) Spirits—in this case the devil—and their reality emerge “in-between,” among actors, as captures of a complex series of correspondences. 3) In this process, “somatic modes of attention” (Csordas 1993), bodily perceptions and “affective correspondences,” play a major role.
