Trance Mediums and New Media by Anja Dreschke Martin Zillinger Heike Behrend

Author:Anja Dreschke, Martin Zillinger, Heike Behrend [Anja Dreschke, Martin Zillinger, Heike Behrend]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780823253807
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 2014-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

Visual Mediations of Divine Presence

In addition to the integration of the aural and the tactile in a “touching voice,” touch itself plays a central role in the ways these acolytes appropriate and harness their leader’s charisma. In the dress practices of Ansar Dine women, they engage in another kind of multisensory appropriation of their leader’s charisma, an appropriation that rests on the integration of the tactile and the visual. Many garments worn by Ansar Dine women are made of specially imprinted fabric that bears the Ansar Dine group logo, as well as portraits of Sharif Haidara and, occasionally, of his mother and wives. Women’s decision to don such a garment can be seen as both a way of embodying their attachment to their spiritual leader and of “endressing,” that is, of rendering manifest, their leader’s spiritual presence. Wearing garments with Haidara’s portrait forms part of a range of bodily techniques by which Haidara’s female followers seek to transform their daily lives and give them a new significance. Yet we can also interpret the dress practices by Ansar Dine women as a form of transmission, that is, of receiving, “processing,” and of passing on the special spiritual powers their leader holds as part of the blessings God granted him.

As an illustration, let us take a closer look at a practice I observed repeatedly during informal socializing events by female followers of Haidara in San.22 Members of the group who felt they were close friends often visited each other in the afternoon to listen jointly to one of Haidara’s audio-recorded sermons. During these listening sessions, the women would sometimes pass around particular dress items, such as a prayer shawl, from which Haidara looked at them with a calm, confidence-inspiring air. Some of the prayer shawls, I realized while observing the women’s reverential gestures, had been exposed to Haidara’s presence and divine blessings. To circulate these shawls thus resembled the function ascribed to the robe that, as I reported earlier here, had elicited enthusiastic responses by Ansar Dine women because of its impregnation with Haidara’s special powers.

Women whom I asked about their experiences when covering themselves with a “charged” prayer shawl described it as another moment at which their minds came to a complete standstill. Rather than keeping the prayer shawl to themselves, their willingness to pass it on to other group members signaled their spirit of “solidarity” and empathy with fellow believers. After all, as one proud owner of a charged prayer shawl put it, by passing around this item, she enabled other women to partake in the special spiritual blessings contained in the scarf. Through the practice of circulating the prayer shawl, women established a circuit and flow of spiritual power. The process these women described was one by which Haidara’s spiritual blessings were passed on as a form of “trickle-down charisma” (Schulz 2011, ch. 7). This ritual thus implicates women and dress items in a chain of media that, ultimately, allow them to experience the workings of God’s powers in this world.

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