Review: [untitled]
Author(s): Mary M. Cameron
Reviewed work(s):
Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas by Robert
Desjarlais
Source: Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Mar., 1996), pp. 98-100
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/648586
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98
presentduringlabor.The midwife or friend
talkedto the laboringwoman,heldherhand,
rubbed her back, or did other small kindnesses one woman mightdo for another.In
those cases fetal deaths,stillbirths,neonatal
deaths,use of foreceps,andcesareansurgery
ratesdropped,comparedwith controlgroups
of women who experiencedstandardhospital procedures.This is a process thatcannot
be measured as simple mechanism, yet
highly significantdifferencesoccurred.People bound by the orthodoxAmericanmedical paradigmare not likely to change until
more and more people read books like this
one, turnto alternatives,andtherebythreaten the profitsof orthodoxpractitioners.
I have used this fourthedition in undergraduateteaching,andit is very effective in
engaging boththe intellectandthe emotions
thatdrive intellectualcuriosity.It also offers
new insightto the anthropologicalspecialist.
It is located in the real world where all
women, even if theydo notbecomemothers,
think about childbirth.The description is
vivid and the conceptsarethose of a mature
scholar. One only wishes than an index,
absent in the previouseditions, might have
been addedto this one.
MEDICAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
QUARTERLY
Helambu region of east Nepal. To explore
culturalshaping of the tactile and visceral,
Desjarlaisapprenticedhimself to a shaman,
a practitionerof the body who curesthrough
ritual imaging that transformsthe bodily
experiences of his patients from suffering
anddistressto strengthandcomfort.Desjarlais's narrativetechnique conveys Yolmo
knowledge of body andemotionthroughan
"argumentof images" rather than words,
emphasizing sensory experience (p. 30).
This matchesthe way Yolma portrayillness
as grippingimages of fear and pain, attacks
and anxiety. Desjarlaiswishes "to advance
a way of writing ethnographythat includes
the reader'sbody as muchas the author'sin
the conversationat hand"(p. 19).
The book is organized into two parts,
"Loss" and "Healing," each with five
chapters containing figures, tables, and
photographs.Chapter1,"Imaginarygardens
with real toads," is a sensitive and strong
appeal to anthropologistsand others interested in the relationshipbetweencultureand
illness and healing to returnto the spaces of
the body and refocus on the emotions. Of
chief concern for Desjarlais is "the 'aesthetic'natureof everydaylife"(p. 19)etched
on and throughthe body, a culturallybased
preobjective condition read by others, including shamans. Desjarlais's focus on
Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Ill- embodied knowledge is
sharpenedby his
ness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas. own trance
experiencesin which images are
RobertDesjarlais. Philadelphia:University
"crystallizedembodiedformsof knowledge.
of PennsylvaniaPress, 1992 (cloth and paMeaning,patternedwithinthe body, [takes]
per). xii + 300 pp.
form through images, which [are] then
absorbedanew by the body"(p. 26).
MARY M. CAMERON
Chapter 2, "Body, speech, mind," exDepartmentof Sociology,Anthropology,
the meaning and experienceof pain,
plores
and Social Work
and
body,
gender. An interactionbetween
AuburnUniversity
Meme the healer, an ill woman named
Robert Desjarlais's Body and Emotion: Pasang, and Desjarlais demonstrates"how
TheAestheticsof Illness and Healing in the culturalcategories shape the form, tenor,or
Nepal Himalayas is an engagingly descrip- meaning of bodily experience"(p. 37) in a
tive focus on the body as it experiences rudimentaryway. The spaces of the Yolmo
emotions associated with many aspects of body are a cultural house that reflect and
Yolmo Sherpa life, a Tibetan Buddhist become filled with the imageryof religion,
people who live in the mountainous society, domesticity, politics, conflict, and
BOOK REVIEWS
other cultural geographies. The shaman's
challenge is to treatboth the innerandouter
sanctumsof this corporealhome.
Chapter3, "An aestheticsof experience,"
focuses on MingmaLama,aneldermanwho
has lost several of his life forces to ghosts.
Desjarlaisarguesthatthe sufferingandpain
of illness is experiencedthrougha culturally
constitutedlens of aesthetic sensibilities (p.
68). Chapter4, "Pain clings to the body,"
describesthe power of funeralrites and the
deceased family's chants to dissolve the
"relational self' (p. 93). A village song
describes pain as clinging to the body,
makingit weary,thirsty,andheavy.The pain
of isolation,melancholy,anddepressiveness
resultingfromthe loss of a loved one is acute
and tactile. Against this stirring backdrop
Desjarlaiscritiquespostmoder approaches
to the anthropologicalstudy of emotion that
structure the unbounded emotional into
frameworksof disembodied"discourse"(p.
100). In chapter 5, "Soul loss," Desjarlais
combines semanticanalysis with phenomenology, the languageof illness as partof its
experience. He examines how loss of spirit
(bla) resultsin physicalsymptomsas well as
the inabilityto make decisions and function
in everyday life.
Part 2 addresses the body's healing
throughimagerystimulatedby the shaman's
trances. The shaman's divinatory knowledge gleaned through dreams, a close
relationshipwith a divine guru, and pulse
reading awakens and rejuvenatesthe spiritual/lifefortitudeof the patient,describedin
chapter6. Desjarlaischartsstagesof divinatory healing and interpretsthe words revealed by the shaman's deity according to
Yolmo symbols of pain, space, kinship,and
emotions, so that"social conflicts are given
a tangible,objective form"(p. 179).
In chapter7, "Metamorphoses,"suffering
is alleviated through direct and imagistic
interaction between the patient and the
shamanwho protectsthe patient's body by
manipulatingforces in space andkinesthetically transferringsuffering into other enti-
99
ties and spaces. In "A calling of souls,"
chapter8, vital life forces of the weakened
body are retrieved through chants that
compel patient and listener participationin
the healing. In chapter9, "Departures,"the
shamanasks the helping deities to returnto
theirdomains.The immediacyof experience
andhow it escapes ethnographicdescription
is compassionatelytold in a final story of
sorrowin chapter10, "Afterwords."
Body and Emotion contributestheoretically, methodologically, and substantively
to the anthropologyof experience and of
medicine.Desjarlaisexpandstheboundaries
of the analyticalconcept of the "person"to
include the body as invested with cultural
meaning and locales of knowledge in its
perceiving, experiencing and expressing
capacities. Methodologically, the anthropologist's cultural knowledge can be a
constraint, but can also illuminate ethnographic insight. Direct questioning of the
Yolmo was often met with vagueness,
on a "lowrequiringparticipant-observation
key level in everydaylife" (p. 24). Desjarlais
participatedin the embodied knowledge of
the Yolmo by a kind of culturalkinesthetic
relativismin which his body became sensitive to, and mimetic of, the people around
him. By having his body (and not just his
mind) participate and observe, Desjarlais
accessed Yolmo domainsof knowledge and
gained access to the shaman's world of
trance,empathy, suggestion, exorcism, and
healing.
The book is also an experiment in
ethnographicwriting.Refreshingly,Desjarlais does not rationalize his efforts in the
all-too-familiarpostmoder critique of anthropologicalrepresentation;rather,his effortsbringthe reader,and the reader'sbody,
in touchwith the Yolmo-wa, to let the reader
"know"in the Yolmo way of knowing.This
he achievesby usingexperiencinglanguage,
languageof the senses, and languageof the
emotions, what he calls an "argumentof
images"(p. 30). He describeswhat happens
to the body during healing such that it
100
"knows" it is healed, and in doing so,
Desjarlais goes beyond the symbolic efficacy of healing to underscorethe role of the
kinesthetic(p. 195).
The numerous interpretationsof Yolmo
cultural symbols throughoutthe book, althoughnecessaryfor definingthe spacesand
graces of the body, undermineDesjarlais's
own critique of symbolic theories of ritual
healing. But he breathessuch life into the
body that his critiqueof postmodem "discourses of healing" remains sound and
intact.
One weakness in the book is thatDesjarlais neglects discussing his apprenticeship
with Meme. Other writers on spiritual
healing in the Himalayashave pointed out
that these relationshipsare relatively longterm, arduous,and requiremultiple trance
experiences. Did Meme view him as an
apprentice?Also, the narrativeemphasison
body and experience tends to silence the
people whose emotions we hear relatively
little about directly. Indeed, the experiencing body becomes diffusely reified as it
shifts from named individuals,to practitioners, to social categories ("women"), to
spaces of illness and knowledge and things
in motion, to a culturalbody. Nonetheless,
the book makes a significantcontributionto
cultural theories of the body and medical
anthropologyand can be used for teaching
in upper-levelundergraduateand graduatelevel courses.
MEDICAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
QUARTERLY
Peru's northerncoast is famous as a center
of curanderismo,a folk healing system that
blendspopularCatholicismwith indigenous
symbolism.In midnightceremoniesheld at
backyardaltarsnear cities like Trujilloand
Chiclayo,mestizoshamansingestmescaline
brews of San Pedro cactus and perform
songs, prayers, and ritual cleansings. The
settingwill be familiarwith anyonewho has
seen Sharon's classic film, Eduardo the
Healer (1978), about charismaticEduardo
Calder6n,who is one of 12 curersexamined
in this book.
Sorcery and Shamanism looks at how
shamansand theirclients use the discourses
of sorceryandcuringto cope witheconomic
chaos and gender politics in contemporary
Peru. Curanderos work by manipulating
complementary forces of good and evil,
right and left, up and down. Joralemonand
Sharonstructuredtheirtext arounda similar
dynamic of examining curanderismofrom
two distinct vantagepoints, reflected in the
book's two-partorganization.Part1, written
mostly by Sharon,with contributionsfrom
JoralemonandDonaldSkillman,focuses on
shamans and the symbolism, metaphysics,
and historicalroots of theirhealing art.Part
2, written by Joralemon,looks at clients'
experiences and the social impactof curanderismo from the viewpoint of critical
medical anthropology.
This is collaborativeresearchat its best.
The textbuildson multipleshiftsin perspective, moving between shamans and their
patients,cosmology and political economy,
shamanismas belief system andshamanism
Sorcery and Shamanism: Curanderos as business. The result is one of the most
and Clients in Northern Peru. Donald
comprehensive, richly nuanced studies in
Joralemon and Douglas Sharon. Salt Lake the ethnomedicalliterature.
City:Universityof UtahPress, 1993 (cloth).
Part 1 begins with short chapterson 12
x + 306 pp.
curanderos' life histories and ritual practices. This broad scope is a welcome
BETH A. CONKLIN
to tendencies that have
counterweight
Departmentof Anthropology
shamanism
studies since Eliade's
plagued
VanderbiltUniversity
search for shamanicarchetypes.Joralemon
This remarkableethnographyexplores a and Sharon explicitly reject reductionist
thriving tradition of urban shamanism. approachesthatrepresentethnomedicalbe-