"Moveable feast of signs": Gender in zar in central Sudan

Material Religion

Volumn 3, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 62-75

  Kenyon, Susan M ^a  

^a BUTLER UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Gender; Material objects; Ritual; Sudan; Zar spirit possession

Indexed keywords

EID: 61049278146     PISSN: 17432200     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2752/174322007780095672     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. Research on which this paper is based was carried out in Sudan between 1979 and 1985, 1988, 2000, 2001, and 2004. While the bulk of my fieldwork has been in Sennar, I have also visited houses of zar in Nyala, Khartoum and Omdurman, Singa and Umm Benein, and interviewed zar adepts from a wide range of backgrounds. Here I particularly credit Sittena Fudlalla, Rabha Muhammad, Fatima Abdel Aziz, Soad al Khoda (all sadly deceased); Najat Abbas, Naema Hassan, Sittona Mohamad, and Fatima Kandi. See Kenyon (1991a; 1991b; 1995; 2001) for general discussions of zar.
2. See Boddy (1994), for a summary of the literature. Burei particularly is discussed by Boddy (1989), Cloudsley (1983), Constantinides (1972; 1991), el-Nagar (1975; 1987), and Kenyon (1991b; 1995; 1999; 2004). Tombura is described in Makris and al-Safi (1991), Makris (2000), Kenyon (1991b; 2004), Seligman (1914), and Zenkovsky (1950).
3. Boddy, J. 1989. Wombs and Alien Spirits. Madison, Wl: University of Wisconsin Press
4. - , 1994. Spirit Possession Revisited: Beyond Instrumentality. Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 407-34.
5. Cloudsley, A. 1983. Women of Omdurman. Life, Love and the Cult of Virginity. London: Ethnographica.
6. Constantinides, P. 1972. Sickness and the Spirits: A Study of the Zaar Spirit Possession Cult in the Northern Sudan. Ph. D. dissertation. University of London.
7. - . 1991. The History of Zar in the Sudan: Theories of Origin, Recorded Observation and Oral Tradition. In Women's Medicine: the Zar-Bori Cult in Africa and Beyond. I. M. Lewis, Ahmed Al-Safi, and Sayyid Hurreiz, eds. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 83-99.
8. Hemingway, E. 1971. A Moveable Feast. Detroit, Ml: Thomson Gale.
9. Kenyon, S. M. 1991a. Five Women of Sennar. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
10. - . 1991 b. The Story of a Tin Box. In Women's Medicine: The Zar-Boh Cult in Africa and Beyond. I. M. Lewis, Ahmed Al-Safi, and Sayyid Hurreiz, eds. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 99-117.
11. - . 1995. Zar as Modernization in Contemporary Sudan. Anthropological Quarterly 68 (2): 107-20.
12. - . 1999. The Case of the Butcher's Wife: Illness, Possession and Power in Central Sudan. In Spirit Possession: Modernity and Power in Africa. H. Behrend and U. Luig, eds. Madison, Ml: University of Wisconsin Press, 89-108.
13. - . 2001. Zar. In Encyclopedia of African and African-American Religions. Stephen D. Glazier, ed. New York and London: Routledge.
14. - . 2004. Five Women of Sennar, 2nd edition. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.
15. Makris, G. P. 2000. Changing Masters: Spirit Possession and Identity Construction among Slave Descendents and Other Subordinates in the Sudan. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
16. - and Ahmed al-Safi. 1991. The Tumbura Spirit Possession Cult of the Sudan. In Women's Medicine: The Zar-Bori Cult in Africa and Beyond. I. M. Lewis, Ahmed Al-Safi, and Sayyid Hurreiz, eds. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 118-37.
17. el-Nagar, Samia el-Hadi. 1975. Spirit Possession and Social Change in Omdurman. M. Sc. thesis, University of Khartoum.
18. - . 1987. Women and Spirit Possession in Omdurman. In The Sudanese Woman. Susan Kenyon, ed. London: Ithaca Press, 92-115.
19. Rosenthal, J. 1998. Possession, Ecstasy and Law in Ewe Voodoo. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.
20. Seligman, B. S. 1914. On the Origin of Egyptian Zar. Folklore 25: 300-25.
21. Zenkovsky, S. 1950. Zar and Tambura [sic] as Practiced by the Women of Omdurman. Sudan Notes and Records, 31: 65-81.