28.01.2025: Vortrag im Ethnologischen Kolloquium von Martin Zillinger

23. Januar 2025, von Christina Fastner

Martin Zillinger (Universität zu Köln)  zum Thema:

Memories in the Wild. Mourning and the ritual mediation of absence in the Moroccan Gharb 

This paper is concerned with rituals of trance as they have been cultivated by religious confraternities in the Gharb, the lowland plains in North-Western Morocco. In elaborated trance choreographies the ‘Isāwa of the Gharb turn the landscapes of the plains into spaces of transition – between the living and the dead, humans and spirits, memory and forgetting. The rituals invoke spirits and other external powers in the body movements of the entranced and relate the visible to the invisible realm. Long sequences of mourning make the dead and persons lost to migration, violence and social cleavages present. While collective mediumship stages various forms of alienation and forgetting, it also functions as an archive of memory that conveys a sense of belonging in landscapes of domination and violence. In my presentation I am interested in the ways in which memory and forgetting are distributed – stored, invoked and accomplished in practices of trance that elude any individual accessibility. 

If you want to read one or two of Martin Zillinger’s publications regarding the topic of his talk, you can find them attached to this mail. Martin Zillinger plans to resume research on this topic from a different angle and would like to present his thoughts on this with you.   

Dreschke, A. & M. Zillinger (2016). Blurred Spirits. VHS aesthetics and nostalgic expectations in the trading zone of trance, in: Oliver Tappe (ed.), The Modernity of Ghosts. Voices from Around the World, 2/2016. 

Zillinger, M. (2010). Passionate Choreographies Mediatized. On Camels, Lions, and their Domestication among the ‘Isāwa in Morocco. Animism, 1: 215-226.
 

Wir freuen uns sehr auf die Veranstaltung, zu der wir alle interessierten Personen herzlich einladen.

Das Kolloquium findet immer dienstags im großen Seminarraum des Instituts statt:

Institut für Ethnologie
Seminarraum 222, 2. OG
Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Westflügel
20146 Hamburg

Den aktuellen Plan des Kolloquiums finden Sie hier.