The Power of the Between: An Anthropological Odyssey

215 Pages·2008·1.1 MB·English

by  Paul Stoller

The Power of the Between
ALSO BY PAUL STOLLER
In Sorcery’s Shadow [with Cheryl Olkes]
Fusion of the Worlds
The Taste of Ethnographic Things
The Cinematic Griot: The Ethnography of Jean Rouch
Embodying Colonial Memories
Sensuous Scholarship
Jaguar: A Story of Africans in America
Money Has No Smell
Stranger in the Village of the Sick
Gallery Bundu
The Power of
the Between
An Anthropological Odyssey
PAUL STOLLER
The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London
PAUL STOLLER is professor of anthropology at West Chester
University and the author of ten books.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2009 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2009
Printed in the United States of America
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-77534-0 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-77535-7 (paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-77534-8 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 0-226-77535-6 (paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stoller, Paul.
The power of the between : an anthropological odyssey / Paul Stoller.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-77534-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-77535-7 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-77534-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-77535-6 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Stoller, Paul.
2. Anthropologists—Niger—Biography. 3. Anthropologists—New York
(State)—New York—Biography. 4. Songhai (African people)—Niger—
Religion. 5. Songhai (African people)—Niger—Social life and customs.
6. West Africans—New York (State)—New York—Social life and customs.
7. Harlem (New York, N.Y.)—Social life and customs. I. Title.
GN21.S79A3 2009
301.092—dc22
[B] 2008032886
∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
We concluded that there is no single, inevitably correct procedure. It is as if in
our travels a party of us came upon the remains of a camp fi re. Some of us might
simply wish to examine it minutely, to discover what manner of people had
used it—where they came from, where they were going and when. Others, on
observing that some of the ashes were still warm, might be more inclined—and
might even have requisite know-how—to stir through the embers in order to
kindle the fl ame which would form the basis for another campfi re, which was no
longer “theirs, then,” but “ours, now.”
FROM THE TRANSLATOR’S FORWARD OF A GLOSSARY OF SUFI TECHNICAL TERMS
(ISTILAHAT AL-SUFIYA), COMPILED BY QASHANI AT THE BEGINNING OF THE
FOURTEENTH CENTURY

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Prologue: The Power of the Between 1
1 Seeking Truth 12
2 Alternative Truths 19
3 Embodiments 25
4 Knowledge 36
5 Sorcery 42
6 New York City 52
7 Complexities 61
8 Family 68
9 Sensuousness 74
10 Embodied Memories 79
11 Wood 89
12 New World Circuits 95
13 Art 98
14 Intersections 104
15 Weaving the World 116
16 Immunology and the Village of the Healthy 120
17 Entering the Village of the Sick 127
18 Sorcery in the World 135
19 Remission 145
20 Reconfi guration 151
21 Ethnography 154
22 Memoir 160
23 Imagination 165
24 Stories 171
Epilogue: Flying on the Wings of the Wind 174
Notes 179 References 191 Index 199
Acknowledgments
The narratives in this book are based upon more than thirty
years of living anthropology in the Republic of Niger and in
New York City, as well as in the U.S. medical system. I am
grateful to the many institutions, both public and private,
that have over the years have granted me funds to conduct
ethnographic research. These include the National Science
Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities,
the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the
Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research,
the American Philosophical Society, the School of Advanced
R esearch on the Human Experience, and West Chester Uni-
versity. In many instances, the chapters in this book are
reconfi gured from bits and pieces of previously published
essays. Parts of the prologue and epilogue appeared in “The
Work Must Go On,” which was published in American An-
thropologist 107, no. 1 (2004): 123–26, in Rouge 3 (2004),
and will be published as “Jean Rouch and the Power of the
Between,” in Three Documentary Filmmakers, edited by Wil-
liam Rothman (Albany: State University of New York Press,
forthcoming). Portions of chapters 16–20 have previously
appeared in my book Stranger in the Village of the Sick: A Mem-
oir of Cancer, Sorcery and Healing (copyright © 2004 by Paul
Stoller; reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston).
I thank my friends at Beacon Press for their willingness to
publish a memoir on the anthropology of health and ill-
ness. Portions of other chapters have been adapted from
“Embodying Knowledge: Finding a Path in the Village of the
Sick,” which I presented at a symposium, “Ways of Know-
ing,” held at St. Andrews University in January 2005 and
ix