postmodernismIn India, it is possible to find something similar with a distinction between
two Sanskrit terms āveśa (entrance into) and praveśa (to enter toward).
The former is a friendly, benign, and self-motivated form of possession
that is voluntary, while the latter representing possession from outside is
involuntary and executed by a malevolent being.
For the insider or person possessed, it is an ontological reality that is
self-validating and thus cannot be doubted. Possession is also grasped as
a modification of one’s personality that is a traumatic experience and a
state of tension. The possessed person manifests a liminal state of mind
because the individual’s social status recedes into liminality, an ambigu-
ous status, when a person is possessed.
Possession, a form of social control and political power, is self-con-
tained in the sense that it is limited by the boundary of the body.
Possession also acts like a ritual by representing a structure of resistance
implying a disruption of the psychological, social, and political fabric of
society. It is also performative in the sense that it is a public event that
can be openly verified by anyone observing the behavior of the possessed
person. Within the context of a disjunctive and disjointed world linked to
transvestism, sexual conflict, powerlessness, sexual abuse, or illness,
possession can heal a person. From a psychoanalytic perspective, Karkar
interprets possession as a self-induced mechanism for psychic release or
a mental healing.
Because in many religious cultures more women than men become
possessed, some observers have commented on the gendered nature of
possession. Oppressed and marginal women perform their possession,
which empowers them and gives them authority and status within the
context of a male-dominated patriarchal society. This scenario is not the
threat to the established order that one might assume because possessed
women tend to maintain the cultural power structure.
Further reading: Caldwell (1999); Kakar (1982); Lewis (1971); Smith (2006)POSTMODERNISM
This is a difficult concept to define with complete accuracy because it
means different things to the writers who consider themselves postmod-
ern. The roots of postmodernism are equally imprecise, but can be traced
to changes in architectural design, philosophical attitudes expressed in
the thought of Nietzsche, advocating a reign of frivolity with its return to
the artistic, the erotic, and the playful, and to the German philosopher