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Eating the Food of the Gods: Interpretive Dilemmas in Anthropological Analysis
Author(s) -
Toulson Ruth E.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
anthropology and humanism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1548-1409
pISSN - 1559-9167
DOI - 10.1111/anhu.12053
Subject(s) - dehumanization , psyche , categorization , sociology , personalism , opposition (politics) , epistemology , resistance (ecology) , psychoanalysis , psychology , aesthetics , social psychology , philosophy , anthropology , politics , law , political science , ecology , biology
Summary In critical opposition to the pathologizing processes of psychiatric diagnosis, anthropologists have interpreted the actions of individuals in psychological pain as forms of resistance. However, I suggest that such analyses often presume rather than trace the connection between the unsettled psyche and social life, in a manner that mirrors the dehumanization of biomedical categorization. In this article I examine events at a temple in S ingapore where, in an act others regarded as deeply concerning, a woman climbed over the altar and ate the food left for the gods. My initial analytic strategy was to interpret her actions as a form of taciturn rebellion, as a commentary on the realities of life within a patriarchal family and under an authoritarian state. However, an experience from my own life prompted me to reconsider this reading and to interrogate the ways in which her experience was elided by my original analysis.