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A Time of Lost Gods
Mediumship, Madness, and the Ghost after Mao
Sprache:
Englisch
Veröffentlicht/Copyright:
2020
Über dieses Buch
Traversing visible and invisible realms, A Time of Lost Gods attends to profound rereadings of politics, religion, and madness in the cosmic accounts of spirit mediumship. Drawing on research across a temple, a psychiatric unit, and the home altars of spirit mediums in a rural county of China’s Central Plain, it asks: What ghostly forms emerge after the death of Mao and the so-called end of history?
The story of religion in China since the market reforms of the late 1970s is often told through its destruction under Mao and relative flourishing thereafter. Here, those who engage in mediumship offer a different history of the present. They approach Mao’s reign not simply as an earthly secular rule, but an exceptional interval of divine sovereignty, after which the cosmos collapsed into chaos. Caught between a fading era and an ever-receding horizon, those “left behind” by labor outmigration refigure the evacuated hometown as an ethical-spiritual center to come, amidst a proliferation of madness-inducing spirits. Following pronouncements of China’s rise, and in the wake of what Chinese intellectuals termed semicolonialism, the stories here tell of spirit mediums, patients, and psychiatrists caught in a shared dilemma, in a time when gods have lost their way.
The story of religion in China since the market reforms of the late 1970s is often told through its destruction under Mao and relative flourishing thereafter. Here, those who engage in mediumship offer a different history of the present. They approach Mao’s reign not simply as an earthly secular rule, but an exceptional interval of divine sovereignty, after which the cosmos collapsed into chaos. Caught between a fading era and an ever-receding horizon, those “left behind” by labor outmigration refigure the evacuated hometown as an ethical-spiritual center to come, amidst a proliferation of madness-inducing spirits. Following pronouncements of China’s rise, and in the wake of what Chinese intellectuals termed semicolonialism, the stories here tell of spirit mediums, patients, and psychiatrists caught in a shared dilemma, in a time when gods have lost their way.
Information zu Autoren / Herausgebern
Contributor: Emily Ng
Emily Ng is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam.
Fachgebiete
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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Prologue: We Never Should Have Met
ix -
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Introduction: The China of China
1 -
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1. After the Storm
35 -
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2. Ten Thousand Years
56 -
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3. Spectral Collision
80 -
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4. A Soul Adrift
101 -
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5. Vertiginous Abbreviation
126 -
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Coda: Those Who Remain
145 -
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Acknowledgments
155 -
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Notes
159 -
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References
169 -
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Index
187
Informationen zur Veröffentlichung
Seiten und Bilder/Illustrationen im Buch
eBook veröffentlicht am:
18. Mai 2020
eBook ISBN:
9780520972636
Seiten und Bilder/Illustrationen im Buch
Inhalt:
224
eBook ISBN:
9780520972636
Schlagwörter für dieses Buch
politics; spirit world; psychic; temple; spirituality; home altar; central plain; chinese religion; mao; mental health; psychology; semi colonialism; rural; spectres; country; folklore; folk religion; insanity; hallucinations; henan; ghosts; peasants; chinese history; cultural history; cultural revolution; china; anthropology; madness; divine sovereignty; spirit; mediums; history; religion
