ABSTRACT
This chapter showcases some possible contributions of the thinking of the German philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels to theory and analysis in cultural anthropology. Taking spirit possession in Morocco, illustrated by the individual case of Mustafa, as example, the article demonstrates the necessity of a non-dichotomic mode of thinking for understanding possession phenomena. It argues that experiences and practices of Moroccan spirit possession elude the distinction between suffering and agency, and that Waldenfels’ phenomenology provides a unique way to overcome this and other dualisms. Experience is conceptualized in terms of a responsivity to demands originating in a sphere outside the experiential order, a sphere of alienness in this sense. The article applies this conceptualization to issues of ethnographic interpretation, like the ambiguous relation between spirits and saints in Morocco, but also to general problems of the discipline, like the relationship between “science” and “religion”, or that between anthropology and “the Other”.
