Mimesis and Alterity: Michel Leiris's Ethnography and Poetics of Spirit Possession
Freie UniversitätBerlin
The title of Leiris's diary L'Afrique fantôme has mostly been understood as a critique of European Africanist discourse. However, Leiris does a lot more than just denounce (his own) exoticism. This article argues that the title of his diary has to be read with reference to the French Surrealist and ethnographer's experience during his stay in Gondar while studying the zar, a popular cult of spirit possession. These ecstatic cults have been described as performing a mimetic relation to alterity (Taussig) or as an ‘interpretation of the Other by mimesis’ (Kramer). Re-enacting the Other leads to a liberation from its power by means of imitation. It is shown that this corresponds to Leiris's own retrospective studies of the zar cult as a cathartic externalization of alterity and as a theatre of alterity. In his failed search for a truly sacral, authentically primitive or salutary ritual, Leiris above all discovered one particular ritual: writing, ‘poésie’. This refers to what now appears as a European form of spirit possession developing its own rituals — rituals of conjuring ‘phantoms’ as well as ones of defence and exorcism. In Leiris, the conjuring (as well as the therapy) becomes a literary domain, whereas the banishment of the phantom is the domain of theory or research. Talking as one who is possessed and talking about possession, inseparably linked in the diary, are associated with discourses of autobiographical self-description and ethnographic description of otherness, of ‘expérience poétique’ and ‘étude ethnologique’.