“The Return of my Grandfather Napoleon”: Ancestor worship, impiety, and collective possession in North Honduras
Anthropology of Consciousness January 12, 2025 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1111/anoc.12245 via Semantic Scholar
Summary
Collective spirit possession in North Honduras acts as a creative internal mechanism that safeguards and revitalizes ancestor worship. Rather than eroding possession rituals, entropic forces like resistance, modernity, and impiety reinforce the foundations of this religion. Possession idioms—including contagion, abduction, dramatization, illness, and death—highlight the resilience of a self-sustaining total social system rooted in tradition yet shaped by historical, cultural, and personal experiences. Spirit possession is multifaceted and ambiguous, operating as a social theater where critique, irony, impiety, historical consciousness, and the carnivalesque intersect.
Study at a glance
| Design | ethnography |
|---|---|
| Population | practitioners of ancestor worship in North Honduras |
| Key finding | Entropic forces such as resistance, modernity, and impiety reinforce rather than erode the foundations of ancestor worship in North Honduras. |
Abstract
This paper analyzes Dolores's case of collective spirit possession as a paroxysmic form of possession idiom, serving as a powerful and creative internal mechanism that both safeguards and revitalizes the core structure of ancestor worship. Drawing on my ethnographic research in North Honduras since 2009, my study reveals that rather than leading to the erosion of possession rituals, entropic forces, such as resistance, modernity, and impiety serve as vital resources, reinforcing the foundations of ancestor worship. This paper explores possession idioms and striking events, such as contagion, abduction, dramatization, illness, and death to highlight the resilience of a possession‐based religion as a self‐sustaining total social system rooted in “tradition,” yet shaped by a dynamic interplay of historical, cultural, and personal experiences. While traditional interpretations of spirit possession have viewed possession cults as forms of protest against hegemonic power—“a weapon of the weak” used to gain respect and process trauma—I suggest that spirit possession is multifaceted, ambiguous and underdetermined, operating within a social theater where critique, social irony, impiety, historical consciousness, and the carnivalesque intersect.