Introduction: “Speaking with Spirits: Indeterminate Multisensory Ritual efficacy”

Abstract: In this introduction, I discuss the theoretical genealogies that underlie the contributions of this groundbreaking collection. It offers a comparative, ethnographic, textual, and online investigation of overt and covert forms of poetic, verbal and multisensorial dramatic exchanges between ontologically distinct beings such as nature deities, learned spirits, religious figures, ancestors or the recently deceased, each occupying a different realm of being or “spirit ecology." The common thread of this collection is the argument that such multisensory and dramatic forms of communication are characterized by an initial opacity and indeterminacy that paradoxically enhances their ritual efficacy. In contrast to the commonly assumed sequential, orderly, and repetitive nature of rituals, the divinations, healings, and exorcisms explored here tend to proceed in an indeterminate manner, i.e. without a known script, even if some parts are expected to occur at a particular time, albeit with the constant risk of failing altogether. This indeterminacy is explored at different sensory and dramatic levels of ritual events, how they affect human and non-human participants and visible and invisible audiences. While the dramatic effects of multisensory synergies and synesthesia increase the possibilities of sensing the presence of spirits, they can also defer even for a flash the inherent skepticism that is always present among participants: Were these spirits present in the here and now? Were these really the messages and voices of the unseen world?