Research in Sociology

LINK TO FILM: https://boap.uib.no/index.php/jaf/article/view/1316/1234

 

We watched ‘The possibility of spirits’ (TPOS) as part of two anthropology courses at the University of Glasgow: the Masters course ‘Religion in Society’, and the Honours course ‘Cosmology, Ritual and Belief’, both taught by Diego Maria Malara. We all found the film endlessly fascinating, but, because it sparked particularly lively debates in our classes, we felt the need to further explore some of its complexities with the director, Mattijs van de Port. The following questions stem from these class debates, but, in their current form, have been shaped by Alex Gibb (student on Cosmology Culture and Belief), Leonie Colmar, Martha Gardiner (students on Religion in Society), and Diego Maria Malara.

 

Part I - Possibilities, Reflexivity and Gender

 

Mattijs, first of all, thank you so much for your time as well as for having made such a thought-provoking film. One of the reasons why we liked ‘The possibility of spirits’ (TPOS) so much is the heterogeneity of its themes, questions, and images. How would you describe the topic of your film? 

 

Well thank you all for taking the time to engage with TPOS! Much appreciated! As for this first question: it is true that there are different layers present in the film. The main issue is articulated in the film as the question ‘what on earth is a spirit?’, which signals a certain desperation in asking that question, as well as hints to the fact that we can only encounter spirits in one or the other ‘earthly’ manifestation. Then there is the question of what it means to study a phenomenon like spirits when I’ve been socialized to dismiss their presence as unreal. On another level, the film is a questioning of the medium of film itself, and its promise to provide viewers access to the worlds presented on the screen.   

 

We were fascinated by how suffused TPOS is with a certain skepticism about, and a resistance to received notions of what spirits are. What exactly does it mean to conceive of spirits as ‘possibilities’? And how does this translate in visual terms?

 

I’ve always felt deeply uncomfortable with the assumption that as an anthropologist I ought to ‘explain’ other people’s belief, as in knocking on their doors, saying ‘Hey, I’ve come to study your beliefs, and since they concern spirits – which we know do not exist – my job is to find out what is really going on here, what your beliefs are really all about.’ Now, if I put it this way, this may sound exaggerated. And yet, taking spirits seriously, or even considering their presence a ‘possibility’, is not really an option within academia. I think I owe it to the people I work with to take the reality of spirits seriously. For one, it is simply a matter of being polite. And, anthropologically speaking, I feel I can only learn by opening myself up to the way my interlocutors understand the world. But I also learned that embracing the possibility of spirits is not an easy thing to do. It is not like putting on a new coat – ‘as of today, I believe in spirits!’. No, that is not how it works. I ran into deep seated resistances that come with reconsidering one’s worldview, opening it up to the possibility of spirits – much of what my interlocutors call the presence of a spirit is called madness in my culture. That makes it a scary path to take.      

 

While we are intrigued about approaching spirits as possibilities, we were also wondering if your interlocutors would agree with this framing of beings so essential to their practices and lives. Would their disagreement matter? 

 

My interlocutors take the existence of spirits for granted. They are an ontological given, so to say. However, every single manifestation of their presence is very much discussed in terms of a ‘possibility’. I was really struck how many of my interlocutors constantly questioned instances of spirit possession or spiritual agency. I think that many people in the film articulate this quite well. The question whether their disagreement would matter is an interesting one. I think all anthropology questions that which is taken for granted, and that questioning may be unsettling, for the anthropologist, as well as for the people who are being studied.

 

There’s a lot about you in TPOS — from your calm voice guiding the viewer through the images to images of your own body and skin. These choices are very effective in showing how the film is the dialogic product of encounters between researcher and interlocutors, both reflecting and speaking from different experiential backgrounds and culturally-situated points of view. We were wondering, though, if you have ever been worried that your voice and presence was too prominent in the documentary, and how you went about balancing that.

 

Oh yes, I have been worrying about that all the time! I have always felt that self-reflexivity ought to be part and parcel of the encounters that anthropologists initiate and study; but I’m very much aware that one has to perform a balancing act, or else accusations of ‘navel-gazing’ and ‘self-indulgence’ will soon be heard. For me, it is important to keep in mind that self-reflexivity ought to be in the service of a larger issue.

 

Footage and discourse of women’s domestic and religious activities feature prominently in TPOS. But despite this engaging prominence, all accounts come from the mouth of men. How do you explain that? We are left intrigued. Do you think that female voices would have produced different ideas about Candomblé and the possibility of spirits? 

 

Good point. Yes, I think women would definitely narrate their religion differently. The main reason you see these men is basically because most of them are good friends, who trust me enough to be willing to share their intimate experiences with me. And being gay, I tend to hang out with men in Bahia. 

 

You have been studying Candomblé for many years. What made you want to make a film about it?

 

There are many reasons to want to make a film about Candomblé, many of which are already covered in my answers as to why anthropology as a whole might want to explore the potentialities of film [see Part II of the interview]. Yet, there are also 'Candomblé-specific' motives to want to work with film. Candomblé has much in common with what scholars call 'mysticism'. It embraces the mysteries of life, urges people to give themselves to these mysteries, instead of trying to break them in explanatory procedures. In Candomblé, asking questions about the mysteries, talking about them, or writing about them is not only considered to be bad manners (one is endlessly instructed to 'respect the secrets'), but also thought of as an endeavor that is bound to fail. Language is a human instrument, and as such it can only produce second order truths. Film allows me to 'shut myself up', and keep this insistence on the importance of the unspeakable center stage. 

 

You can read the second part of the interview here.

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First published: 17 November 2020