Chaosmology: Shamanism and personhood among the Bugkalot

TY - JOUR

T1 - Chaosmology

T2 - Shamanism and personhood among the Bugkalot

AU - Mikkelsen, Henrik Hvenegaard

PY - 2016

Y1 - 2016

N2 - This article examines personhood as contracted from a field of chaos. By analyzing the discourses on shamanism, spirits, and the wilderness among the Bugkalot of Northern Philippines, I seek to formulate a hypothesis about the properties of personhood in relation to the Bugkalot cosmology at large. This approach to cosmology is not one that asserts a coherent system of knowledge but rather portrays the Bugkalot cosmology as contingent, fragmentary, perpetually assuming a coherence and stability that swiftly dissolves. In order to lay out how this cosmology in motion—or “chaosmology”—is temporarily stabilized the article explores the role of shamanism among the Bugkalot.

AB - This article examines personhood as contracted from a field of chaos. By analyzing the discourses on shamanism, spirits, and the wilderness among the Bugkalot of Northern Philippines, I seek to formulate a hypothesis about the properties of personhood in relation to the Bugkalot cosmology at large. This approach to cosmology is not one that asserts a coherent system of knowledge but rather portrays the Bugkalot cosmology as contingent, fragmentary, perpetually assuming a coherence and stability that swiftly dissolves. In order to lay out how this cosmology in motion—or “chaosmology”—is temporarily stabilized the article explores the role of shamanism among the Bugkalot.

U2 - 10.14318/hau6.1.013

DO - 10.14318/hau6.1.013

M3 - Journal article

SN - 2049-1115

VL - 6

SP - 189

EP - 205

JO - HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

JF - HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

IS - 1

ER -