Domestic demons and the intimate uncanny /
edited by Thomas G. Kirsch, Kirsten Mahlke and Rijk van Dijk.
- First edition.
- London : Routledge, 2023.
- 1 online resource (x, 210 pages).
- Routledge Studies in Religion .
1 Introduction: Hedging in Demons and the UncannyThomas G. Kirsch, Kirsten Mahlke, and Rijk van Dijk2 The Familiar Spirit in Tales of Violent Labor Relationships: From Early Modern France to Agro-Industrial ArgentinaKirsten Mahlke 3 Collective Intimacy in Pentecostal ChristianityThomas G. Kirsch 4 Science, Fantasy, and Desecration: Gorilla Demons in Colonial GabonFlorence Bernault5 From Witchcraft to Satanism: Changing Imaginations and New Experiences in the South African LowveldIsak Niehaus 6 Is Digital Memory Our New Demon? Notes on Surveillance and VulnerabilitySilvana Mandolessi 7 Marriage and the Ambiguities of 'Seeds': An Exploration of Intentions and Transparency in Relations in BotswanaRijk van Dijk and Senzokuhle Doreen Setume8 Zombies in the House: Thinking through the Spaces of Undead Transatlantic HistoryGudrun Rath9 Hedging in the Demonic: Living with the Dead in the United StatesEhler Voss 10 Afterword: Uncanny Modernities, Early and LateJean Comaroff
This book explores local cultural discourses and practices relating to manifestations and experiences of the demonic, the spectral and the uncanny, probing into their effects on people's domestic and intimate spheres of life. The chapters examine the uncanny in a cross-cultural manner, involving empirically rich case studies from sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Europe. They use an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to show how people are affected by their intimate interactions with spiritual beings. While several chapters focus on the tensions between public and private spheres that emerge in the context of spiritual encounters, others explore what kind of relationships between humans and demonic entities are imagined to exist and in what ways these imaginations can be interpreted as a commentary on people's concerns and social realities. Offering a critical look at a form of spiritual experience that often lacks academic examination, this book will be of great use to scholars of Religious Studies who are interested in the occult and paranormal, as well as academics working in Anthropology, Sociology, African Studies, Latin American Studies, Gender Studies and Transcultural Psychology.