A Poetics and Politics of Repression

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A Poetics and Politics of Possession:

Taiwanese Spirit-Medium Cults and Autonomous Popular Cultural Space

Peter Nickerson

My intent in this essay is to discuss cults of spirit possession and healing

in Taiwan, to consider the potential for this form of popular culture to

create autonomous spaces, and to evaluate the larger social and politicalconsequences of such autonomy. However, before turning to discussion of

Taiwan, it would be useful to examine briefly another recent study of posses-

sion cults in a perhaps not entirely dissimilar environment, namely, Michael

Taussigs barely fictionalized Venezuela. (Taiwan is also a former colony

with a well-developed modern economic sector.) In his Magic of the State,

Taussig describes a kind of symbiosis between the state and popular reli-

gion, in which the same force that animates the bodies of the possessed is the

history, and the historical figures and stereotypes, on which the state relies

for its legitimation: a sixteenth century cacique, an early nineteenth cen-

tury barefoot black cowboy freedom fighter, . . . the Liberator [Simon Bol-

var] himself, coughing blood. And in thus physically manifesting, making

positions9:1 2001 by Duke University Press


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positions9:1 Spring 2001 188

palpably real, the normally merely metaphorical figurations on which the

nation-state depends for its own legitimating appropriation of history, pop-

ular religionthe bodies of the urban poorsuppl[ies] stately discourse

with its concrete referents. At the same time, participants in the possession

cults themselves become in some way empoweredable to make magic

from the magic of the state.1

All of this might be applied to contemporary Taiwanese popular religion,

except the magic involved is that of a state that went out of existence in 1911.

Most discussions blithely skip over this issue, referring to the bureaucracy

of the other world as an obviously more or less accurate reflection of this-

worldly administration, all the while failing to note that the Jade Emperorsearthly counterpart can no longer be found.2 So that, perhaps, is one way of

stating the question this essay seeks to address: What possibilities open up

when the state chooses (as I shall discuss in more detail below) to rely on

other, secular sources for its legitimacy?

Taussigs analysis, which I by no means would wish to dispute, fits rather

nicely with many currently accepted notions of what constitutes popular

culture. As is well known, most debates on this topic have oscillated between

two poles. On one end of the spectrum is the gloomy view of the Frankfurt

school, according to which the public at large is subject to the hegemony of

a culture industry. Ordinary people, while presented with the illusion of

choice, consume culture the same way they consume any other industrialproduct, and thus are placed under the same restraints to which their bour-

geois overlords subject them in the more purely economic spheres of labor

and the consumption of material goods.3 On the other end of this spectrum,

those who have sought elements of resistance within popular culture have

done so by claiming that the dominated might make usein a subversive

mannerof what is given to them by the dominant classes. Such resistant

uses themselves then become a praxis that is not only consumption but also

the production of new meanings or readings. One might mention Michel

de Certeaus metaphor of the rented apartment, not owned but decorated to

the renters taste.4 But, ultimately, only limited gains can be made. Consider

John Fiskes comparison of popular uses of the products of the dominated

to guerrilla warfare. The guerrillas may resist, and indeed may win con-

cessions from the established authorities, but ultimately, like so many Viet


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Nickerson A Poetics and Politics of Possession 189

Cong, they need to melt into the general village population again, once more

indistinguishable from the rest of the compliant masses.5

Taussigs stance is quite consistent with this latter view: the people use

what is given to them by the statethe history with which the State of the

Whole constructs itselfwhile the state appropriates the magic through

which those very symbols are made real. What appears to be a most outr

form of religio-magical practice turns out to be a process of mutual appro-

priation between dominated and dominators, making the nation safe for

state fetishism.

In any event, the possibility of a genuinely autonomous culture, made not

for but by the people,seems scarcely possible. This point has been clearly andauthoritativelymadebyPierreBourdieu:Thosewhobelieveintheexistence

of a popular culture . . . must expect to find . . . only the scattered remnants

of an old erudite culture (such as folk medicine) . . . and not the counter-

culture they call for, a culture truly raised in opposition to the dominant

culture and consciously claimed as a symbol of status or a declaration of

separate existence.6

So now to Taiwans spirit-medium cults and an attemptwhich, in light

of the above discussion must appear radical (and/or romanticist)to stake

outarathermoreextremeposition.Somemonthsoffieldresearchonpopular

religion in the city of Tainan in southwestern Taiwan have convinced me

that the question of popular cultural autonomy needs to be rethought. Insome cases at least, popular culture can be theorized, not between the poles

of hegemony and subversion, but outside them. We need to go back to

Bakhtin, as it were, and to reconsider the possibilities for certain types of

collective practices to create autonomous, popular cultural spaces, spaces

that are more than simply poached upon by the people, but that genuinely

belong to them. That is, neither the Frankfurt schools notion of popular

culture as imposed fromabove and passively accepted by the dominated, nor

the populist contention that such acceptance is far from passive and involves

creative processes of rereading and subversion, allows for the possibility that

the dominated might make something of their own. Owing to their roots

in a particular discourse of possession trance, such autonomy (a reasonable

word and, I think, at least more euphonious than auto-production or the

like) is intrinsic to the popular religious groups I have studied.


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Autonomy of this sort has its consequences. Precisely because the truths

generated by the activities of the medium cults are empowered by cultural

resources that lie outside the mainstreampossession trances that embody

the magic of a no longer existent statethey cannot directly challenge those

produced by the dominant culture. When the devotees of the spirit-altars

confront mainstream discourses on religion, they can do so only by referring

to a set of notions that is in many ways alien to the poetics of possession

itself;these notions are instead largely consistent withthe very conceptions of

religion that marginalize the possession cults. Religion is unscientific; proper

religion can be opposed, according to several criteria, to improper supersti-

tion. These ideas are broadly shared in Taiwanese society. As I shall try toshow, by accepting these notions and employing them in their own expla-

nations of and justifications for their activities, the cults adherents, rather

than subverting the dominant order, assist in perpetuating it. Paradoxically,

whatever potential for resistance popular culture might possess according to

de Certeau and others, in the Taiwanese case cultural autonomy blunts such

potential rather than enhancing it.

After first describing the procedures generally followed in spirit-medium

sances, I will turn to the poetics of spirit possession, the characteristics

of trance behavior that make autonomy possible. Further sections, based

largely on work at one temple and a case study of one womans experiences

there, will then provide a basis for a discussion of the larger issue of pop-ular religious discourses and the more authoritative ones with which they

interact. The generation of authoritative discourses in response to popular

religion is particularly visible in print media accounts written in the wake

of religious scandals. I will examine one such case, the Song Qili affair of

1996. Finally, I will assess the discursive and social consequences ofand

the limitations onthe kind of popular cultural autonomy I have found to

characterize the medium cults.

Spirit-Medium Sances in Tainan

The following describes events that took place on the evening of 13 July

1997:7


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The spirit-medium, a slight manin his late fifties with a somewhat drawn

face, walks to the altar and sits downsilently, hands clasped and head slightly

bowed. Soon (inabout ten minutes) he will be the vehicle for the Living Bud-

dha Jigong, a drunkard, vagabond monk who is said to have lived during

the thirteenth century, and who later became the subject of both vernacular

literature and religious worship (a not uncommon pattern). Devotees mill

around, some chatting quietly with one another, others registering for con-

sultations with the deity and making the appropriate preliminary offerings

of incense before the temples images. The temple, or spirit-altar (shentan),

is called San Qing Gong (Palace of the Three Pure Ones) and is located in

Tainans eastern district. Public altars (gong tan), when the altar is opened(kai tan) for consultations with the god, are held here three times during ev-

ery ten-day period. Anyone maycome in and consult Jigong, and the sances

are normally attended by around twenty or thirty people.

An assistant (and longtime devotee) approaches the altar and repeatedly

strikes a large wooden fish and a metal bell, signaling the incipient arrival

of the god and the formal beginning of the sance. The mediums hands

and head begin to tremble, and he belches intermittently. He gestures for

the assistant to help him put on Jigongs patched robe. The medium himself

places a rosary around his neck and, on his head, Jigongs usual hat, which

is tall and rather comical, with the characterfo(Buddha) written on it. He

takes up his fan in his right hand and a container of rice wine in his left.His increasingly vigorous, rhythmic trembling and shaking motions cause

him to tap more and more loudly on the altar with the fans handle. Then,

after a smile and an exclamation of amusementha ha ha ha ha ha ha

hahe begins singing, largely wordless tunes that, he had once explained,

were from the opera of Nanjing (near the original Jigongs home region).

The singing continues (oscillating oddly owing to the continued rhythmic

trembling), interspersed with various ha-ha-has and heh-heh-hehs (in

the same rhythm) as well as occasional swigs on the wine, until he is fully in

possession trance.

Jigong gets up from the altar, still singing, and staggers about for a bit,

making dramatic gestures with his fan. The assistant gives him a long

draught of smoke from an incense burner. Then Jigong processes to a chair,

which has many nails protruding, points up, from seat and back, and sits for


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a minute or two while still singing, fanning himself, and bouncing up and

down slightly. He gets up (the nails make faint musical noises as, one by one,

they gradually release his clothing), walks to the altar to set down his wine,

and walks back to the center of the floor to speak with his first questioners.

A man and his wife want to ask about the husbands career and the health

of their middle daughter; they both greet him with hands pressed together

in a gesture of reverence.

On any night of the week, all over Taiwan, scenes like the one just de-

scribed take place. People go to shrines and temples to consult a variety of

deities of the popular Chinese pantheon. The gods and goddesses are repre-

sented by their spirit-mediums (jitong, or tang-kiin Taiwanese), who enterpossession trances and then answer questions on a variety of topics (both

female and male tang-kiare common). Some smaller spirit-altars convene

only when one or more people need to consult the deity, while the relatively

larger ones (which may operate out of anything from a storefront shrine to

a multistory public temple) usually have regular schedules that allow for

public consultations once or twice a week.

While I have attempted no overall numerical assessment of Tainans

medium shrines, a recent survey of the cult to a single deity in Taiwan,

the Reverent Lord of Broad Compassion (Guang ze zun wang), lists nine

spirit-altars dedicated to that god in Tainan city alone, and another six in

Tainan county. The majority hold at least weekly consultations with theReverent Lord,8 and the Reverent Lord is of course only one of the many

deities embodied by mediums in Tainan. These include popular deities as-

sociated with all three of Chinas textualized religious traditionsTaoism,

Buddhism, and Confucianismsuch as Lord Guan, Guandi, the deified

hero Guan Yu of the third-century Three Kingdoms era; Mazu, or Tian

Hou, the Empress of Heaven; Guan Yin, Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva

Hearer of the Worlds Sounds; the various plague gods known collectively as

Wangye or Lords; and even Bodhidharma, the first Chinese patriarch of

Chan/Zen Buddhism, to name just a few. The large number of active spirit-

altars staffed by mediums indicates their continued centrality to Taiwanese

popular religion and popular culture generally.

As for the usual procedures at the spirit-altars, sances begin with the

medium entering the trance-possession state. An assistant then reads the


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name of the questioner, usually giving other personal details, such as address

and age. Then the questioner may present his or her inquiry. The majority

of inquiries concern health, and people often come to seek the help of the

goddesses and gods when standard medical treatment has failed to bring

a cure or the usual diagnostic techniques fail to find anything wrong. The

other main category of questions concerns matters of luck and fate. People

ask about the future in general, about business activities, or about transi-

tional events such as marriage or moving a household and their timing. If

reasons are attributed for medical or other misfortunes, they are usually

of several often overlapping types: horoscopic (bad astrological conjunctions

havecausedanindividualtocollidewithoneormoremalignastraldeities),familial (a deceased family member is unhappy and causing the misfortune

so that attention will be paid to his or her problem), or geomantic (i.e., in-

volving bad fengshui, the arrangement of domestic or other spaces). The

gods responses almost always include the writing of talismans, orfu, myste-

rious, often entirely illegible characters written with brush and ink. These

represent a concretization of the healing power of the god, and the paper

talismans most frequently are burnt and the ashes mixed with water and

ingested.

A Poetics of Possession

An examination of the discourses generated by the medium cults must begin

with the speech of the medium. Possessed speech is often unremarkable in

terms of what it merely superficially says; what distinguishes it is, of course,

that it emanates from a person whose body has been occupied by a deity.

That process of enthusiasm, of engodment, is acted out publicly at the

beginning of every sance. Mediums never arrive at the temples altar in

a possessed state. They sit before or beside the altar and undergo, for all

present to see, the process of possession. The witnessing of the mediums

entrancement is an indispensable part of trance discourse.

The procedure through which mediums become possessed, though inar-

ticulate and superficially incoherent, is fraught with meaning. This meaning

is best approached by means one might loosely call semiotic. Since, as I will

claim, theprocessof entrancement, rather than the content of the utterances


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of the possessed oracle, is most essential to trance discourse, it is insuffi-

cient merely to analyze the pronouncements of the deities once they have

completely entered the bodies and begun speaking through their mediums.

Rhythm is dominant in the first stages of most Taiwanese trance perfor-

mances, where it is almost always as much or more bodily than vocal. While

mediums all enter trance differently, the majority during at least one stage

tremble,twitch,shake,orrock,usinghands,arms,legs,head,neck,ortheen-

tire body. The movements become more violent as the trance deepens, then

they subside to some degree when identification with the deity is complete.

All the bodily motions seem to be regulated by a master rhythm, usually

the twitch of hand or arm, with which other motions or vocalizations arethen harmonized. Rhythmic trembling and shaking is more often than not

the principal marker of entry into trance, climaxed by larger bodily motions

and postures and punctuated with (usually unintelligible) speech and other

sounds.

Glossolaliaspeaking in tongues, as it wereis also highly relevant. The

vocal performances of one female medium in Tainan county were especially

striking.(SheiscustomarilypossessedbyaminorfemaledeitycalledImmor-

tal Maid Shi [Shi Xiangu] but sometimes also serves as the vehicle for the

Bodhisattva Guan Yin.) As she nears the possession state, she alternates

very loud, low-pitched, and rather masculine exclamations, somewhere

between belches and yellsHWAAAAHP! or YAIYAIYAH!withrapid,higher-pitched noises, such as huaa-sohoor yai-saha. Into this mix

are then added gradually longer and longer, entirely unintelligible (both to

myself and to other bystanders) declarations in a very high pitched, rapid,

lilting voice. Her vocal range is truly striking (those who have listened to au-

diotapes have sometimes assumed that more than one person was speaking),

and her unearthly utterances are haunting, even disturbing, despiteor

perhaps in part because oftheir incomprehensibility.

The necessity of entrancement behavior to the semiotic effectiveness of

the sance is further confirmed by the mediums frequent reference back to

that initial procedure. After settling into their trances to conduct divination

or other rites, most Taiwanese mediums continually cite the entrance-

ment process by means of small but continuous tremblings or occasional

more noticeable shakes and twitches, belches or yawns, outbursts of gods


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language, or the like. It is as if the audience has to be periodically reminded

of the source of the mediums utterances.

There are certain convergences between Taiwanese trance performances

andotherformsofbehaviorthathavebeenmorethoroughlyanalyzedbyEu-

ropean writers that help to shed some light on the former. Trance discourse

closely resembles other texts and performances that have been variously

labeled poetic, disruptive, spectacular, and (therefore) popular.

Poetry and possession are not as distant as one might think; one need only

consider the ancient Greek conceptionof poetic composition as possession by

the Muse.9 Poetic and ecstatic forms of expression share similarities of both

form and content. Poetry highlights aspects of words that are unconnectedto denoted meaning but central to thesoundof poetry, such as rhyme, alliter-

ation, and above all, rhythm. Julia Kristeva has similarly highlighted other

characteristics of poetic language that also are central to trance discourse,

in particular glossolalia and related vocalizations, which she finds audible

in both the first echolalias of infants and the rhythms, intonations, [and]

glossolalias in psychotic discourse. Indeed, poetic speech always borders

on psychosis. Poetic language is thus the expressive aspect of the physicality

of speech and is rooted in the body and in unconscious drives. 10

I would not like to place too much weight on the links Kristeva makes

between poetic and either infantile or psychotic speech.In Taiwanese society

itself, communities and their religious leaders often require some time todecide whether an individuals trance behavior is evidence of a divine calling,

demonic possession, or simplymentalillness,as Marjorie Wolf hasdetailed.11

Part of what I have just called glossolalias (the rapid, high-pitched speech)

were explained to me by the spirit-altars adherents as gods language (shen

yu), intelligible to the divinities present, but not to humans. Whether such

speech is culturalized as divine or psychotic is not the central issue.

Instead, beyond the formal resemblances, I would like to point out the

similarities of social effect that can be attributed to poetry and possession. As

for poetic language, it is by nature subversive. According to Kristeva, Poetic

language, in its most disruptive form (unreadable for meaning, dangerous

for thesubject) shows theconstraints of a civilizationdominatedby transcen-

dental rationality. Consequently it is a means of overriding this constraint.

Thus there is an intrinsic connection between literature and the breaking


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up of social concord, and between poetic language and the disruptive forces

of Bakhtinian carnival.12

It is, of course, that same potential for resistance, for creating truths in

opposition to those of the dominant culturefor making space for popular

culture that doesnotultimately have to be given back, guerrilla-like, to the

powerblocthatIwouldliketoattributetothespirit-altarsofthemediums.

Like Kristevas poetry, the mediums performance begins as unreadable for

meaning, as well as dangerous for the subject in its continual suggestion

of the threat of loss of mental stability (or of the mediums very personal-

ity, or soul). But the sance then continues as oracular pronouncement, as

advice and instruction made clearly intelligible either by the medium aloneor with the assistance of an interpreter. The poet, too, must compromise, of

course, by enunciat[ing] rhythm, . . . socializ[ing] it, . . . channel[ing] it into

linguistic structure, in order to create the writers universe.13 The sance

establishes its universe through a true cosmogony: thecreation of the ordered

oracle from the chaos of entrancement.

Also notable are the rather odd convergences between the Freudian and

Lacanian Kristeva and the authors ofAnti-Oedipus, Gilles Deleuze and Flix

Guattari. The Taiwanese spirit-medium is rather like Deleuze and Guat-

taris schizo. The medium/schizo retreats into the body without organs,

which in order to resist using words composed of articulated phonetic

units . . . utters only gasps and cries that are sheer unarticulated blocks ofsound (compare Kristevas glossolalias). The energy that passes through

that organless body is divine, and the first things to be distributed on

[the schizos] body without organs are races, cultures, and their gods. For

Deleuze and Guattari, and Kristeva as well, in psychosis/possession the

unconsciousthe undifferentiated otherbreaks out to break down the

established order.

Finally, the schizophrenic, or the spirit-medium, I would claim, is the

universal producer.14 Who produces the mediums trance? Not the culture

industry. In this instance the means of production, as it were, belong to the

medium cults themselves, establishing territory that can be held, not yielded

to the dominant classes. The cultural space created at the spirit-altar via the

mediums trance provides more than the metaphorical rented apartment;

instead, it is a place of their own.


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Meiling

PeopleinTainangotospirit-altarsmoreoftentomakeinquiriesaboutillness

and healing than for any other reason. The tensions between the ethos of the

medium cults and modernist, scientistic notions is nowhere clearer than in

the arena of medicine. A young womans case history will provide a basis for

an account of how this conflict is frequently understood and played out.

In April 1997 a twenty-seven-year-old woman resident of Tainan city,

whom I will call Chen Meiling, wasdue to have a minoreye operation. Prior

to the operation, however, she had a fight with her husband, whom I will call

Mr. Li. The husband took both his personal effects and their two childrenback to his parents home in Tainan county. Meiling later telephoned him,

but he refused to speak to her. She then took eight tranquilizers, drank

some alcohol, and telephoned her elder sister. (All of this information was

reported by the sister.) Worried, the sister went to Meilings home in Tainan

city. Meiling failed to answer the door, and the sister called the police and

had them break in.

Meilingwastakentoahospitalemergencyroom,wherethedoctorclaimed

that she had no serious problem: Mei shenme. However, the sister felt that

Meilingsmannerhadchanged,thatshewasinsomewaynotherformerself,

andsobroughthertoconsultLordGuan(Guandijun)atthePrefectureofthe

Southern Heaven (Nantianfu), a large public temple in the eastern district of

Tainan where I did my most intensive workon the medium sances. Meilingwould attend sances about once a week from April until early July, when

her treatment reached a climax. She began by participating in the regular

Wednesday night sessions, for both diagnosis and treatment of her problem,

which was described to me simply as a mental problem or nervous disorder

(jingshen wenti or shenjing wenti). Meiling frequently received treatment

in the form of talismans written by the possessed medium. These were

used for general purposes and at other times for more specific symptoms,

such as nightmares. On other occasions Meiling would stand before the

gods palanquin, or divination chair, while it shook up and down several

times, then walk beneath it, a common apotropaic, healing and purifying

procedure.15


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Most of Lord Guans energies, however, were devoted to diagnosis

specifically, identifying the spirits responsible for Meilings maladyand to

serving as an intermediary in order to reach an accommodation with those

forces. Many of Meilings symptoms were acted out, and interpreted by the

god and by Meilings family and the rest of the sance community, as spirit-

possession. Both at home and at the temple she especially frequently spoke as

a three-year-old child. Over the course of successive temple sances as well as

two house callssances at Meilings home in the city and at the home of

her husbands family in Tainan countyLord Guan developed an elaborate

diagnosis involving the histories of both the agnates and the affines.

On the husbands side the problems were several. Meilings father-in-lawsuncle (shu gong) had disrupted the usual pattern of agnatic succession (dao

fang). By dying unmarried he lacked heirs who could make offerings to him

as an ancestor. During a sance at the Li family house, Lord Guan declared

that this initial problem, combined with certain geomantic issuesthe mis-

placement of an electric pole and the presence of a brick wall surrounding

the familys front yardhad invited the entrance into the family compound

ofahostofKillersoftheYin-realm( yin sha), or wandering, non-kin, malefic

spirits. In turn, this engendered the possession by one of these spirits, a three-

year-old child. During a sance at Meilings parents apartment, responses

to Lord Guans inquiries determined that her mother had carried a female

fetus that had died through miscarriage. As is usual, the girl continuedto mature as a ghost in the other world. All of these spiritsthe heirless Li

agnate, the outsider ghosts (especially the three-year-old), and the girl ghost

in Meilings familywere unhappy, no doubt because of insufficient ritual

attention from the living and consequent sufferings in the afterworld. Thus

they had fastened on Meiling, causing her maladies in order to make people

pay attention to their plights.

The ultimate solution to these problems took the form not of violently

exorcising the problematic ghosts but of helping and propitiating them.

After a one-month cooling-off period prescribed by Lord Guan, during

which Meiling continued to come on Wednesdays for checkups but little

else was done, a Taoist priest was engaged. He performed a salvation ritual

called an Attack on the Fortress (da cheng) in Tainans Palace of the Eastern

Peak (Dong yue dian), a temple with a special relationship to the underworld


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and the administration of the shades. The ritual was held for the benefit of

the heirless uncle and the three-year-old, on the husbands side, and the girl

ghost in Meilings family. The priest liberated the troubled souls from the

Fortress of Those Who Have Died Unjustly (wang si cheng) in purgatory

and conducted them to the Western Paradise. Later on the same day, the

medium, the divination chair crew, and other temple personnel returned to

the husbands home in the countryside, where an altar and a long table with

numerous food and wine offerings were set up and a massive pile of paper

spirit money was burned to requite and send off the nonfamilial wandering

ghosts.

There are many observations that could be made about this case, and thepsycho-physiological factors that both providemeans for the afflictedopenly

to express repressed thoughts and feelings (especially for women)16 and that

oftenmakethehealingeffortsofshamansandmediumseffective17 havebeen

discussed elsewhere. It is not difficult to see how the treatment provided

by Nantianfu worked in analogous ways. Meiling got a way to articulate

her needs and desires, through identification with possessing spirits whose

problems were like her own (abandonment, outsiderhood), and she got her

family circle to acknowledgethose needs and take specificmeasures to satisfy

them.

Instead, I would like to focus on a different, and for my purposes more

pertinent, question: What does cooperation in the treatment of Meiling andothers like her mean for the larger temple community? Participation in

medium sances not only can help assist the directly afflicted; it also can

support the creation, if not of on-the-ground autonomous communities,

then of autonomous discoursesforms of knowledge that might oppose

those of the dominant, secular, modernist culture and are available to all

participants.

A Sociology of the Sance

Not only the poetics but also the sociology of the medium sance ensures

the production of intelligible, and even didactic, discourse. The medium is

joined by the spirit-altars core of regular participants, its inner circle, in the

labor to create comprehensible statements that will solve the questioners


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problems (or provide moral and spiritual guidance for the group at large).

At many spirit-altars the work of the interpreter, or table-head (zhuotou),

is essential, as the speech of the medium can be difficult or impossible for

inexperienced bystanders to understand, or simply too laconic to apply con-

cretely without the interpreters elaborations. Similarly, the Chinese charac-

ters traced on the table by the divination chair are entirely indecipherable for

those who have not been specially trained and do not have unusual talent.

The process of divination is often assisted by a rather large crew. In ad-

dition to the table-head, there is normally a separate individual designated

as secretary, who records questioners names, personal particulars, inquiries,

and the gods dicta. The most elaborate setup with which I am familiar wasemployed at Nantianfu. Frequently Nantianfu used two interpreters and al-

ways two secretaries, one who keptthe aforementionedrecords and one who

assisted with the paperwork connected with the creation of Lord Guans tal-

ismans. The use at each sance of the four-man divination chair, in addition

to (or sometimes in substitution for) the medium, demanded the presence of

numerous members of the palanquin crew, since it was necessary to alternate

duty to prevent the labor from becoming too tiring for any one man (and to

give more men the chance to serve and have contact with Guandi). Others

in the inner circle, especially women, who could not carry the palanquin,

helped to create the celestial prescriptions (tian fang) of incense ash and

paper spirit money that were a specialty of the temple; still others renderedtalismans into drinkable potions of ash and water. Additional members of

the core group often simply clustered around the table at whichthe medium

was stationed and were free to offer opinions and advice. (Outsiders or or-

dinary questioners were seated on the other side of the room and were often

shooed away if a crowd of them inadvertently gathered.)

Thus, any given sance at Nantianfu normally involved altogether a group

of fifteen to twenty or more individuals who assisted with the session. The

speech of the medium begins from stationary silence, commences activity in

rhythmic shaking, and climaxes in often cryptic oracular speech (and, one

could add, in illegible writing in the form of talismans). The socialization of

possessed speechits rendering into usable formis accomplished by the

cooperation of the collective of temple regulars: divination by committee, as

it were. Moreover, at public temples like Nantianfu, the management and


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operation of the temple is in the hands of the faithful themselves, who elect

a management committee, its chairman, and other officers. At Nantianfu,

at least, the crew that regularly assisted with sances was largely identical to

the core management organization.

Bourdieu notes the transformation that takes place when formerly sup-

pressed individual experience is reflected and thereby legitimated in the

public discourse of the heretical group: Private experiences undergo

nothing less than a change of state when they recognize themselves in the

public objectivityof an already constituted discourse, the objective sign of

recognition of their right to be spoken and to be spoken publicly. Objec-

tivecrisis,ofwhichthemediumstranceiscertainlyavariety,iswhatbringsthe undiscussed into discussion, the unformulated into formulation, [and] in

breaking the immediate fit between the subjective structures and the objec-

tive structures, destroys self-evidence practically.18 Possession trance opens

up a space for the generation of a new discursive field that involves all three

of the parties to the sance: the medium, the patient, and the spirit-altars

community.

What Science Cant Explain

The most obvious and immediate use of the discourses generated by the

medium sances concerns medicine. To be treated by a deity through his orhermediumis to remain independent of themainstream, Western-style,and

state-supported medical establishment and the cultural nexus of power that

legitimates and is legitimated by it. This is emphatically not to say, however,

that those who seek out spiritual remedies to medical problems have entirely

rejectedWestern-stylemedicineorthevariousscientificandotherdiscourses

with which it is connected. Nowadays, and judging from other studies,19 for

at least a few decades, those who go to the gods for diagnosis and treatment

normally have tried and failed with conventional therapies or are receiving

both forms of treatment simultaneously.

In fact, both for clarity of exposition and, perhaps, for the sake of drama

(or antidrama), I have refrained from mentioning that while Meiling was

regularly attending sances at Nantianfu, she was also regularly visiting


16/31


a psychiatrist; one diagnosis had been depression (youyu zheng). Inter-

estingly, Lord Guans talking cure seems more to resemble traditional

psychoanalysis than what Meiling was getting from Tainans municipal

hospital. Her sister described the treatment as eating medicine and get-

ting injections (chi yao da zhen). Her doctor had also recommended elec-

trotherapy and suggested that she be admitted to a hospital as an inpa-

tient. I would speculate that Lord Guans ministrations at least provided

a counterweight that enabled her family to resist long-term hospitaliza-

tion.

Meilings sister told me that she felt it was unwise to rely solely on Lord

Guans help, that it was better to employ both religious and modern medicalforms of healing. This is typical of a variety of formulations people use

to explain how dealing with problems by consulting a medium or other

religious practitioner might come into play after or along with the pursuit

of secular methods. For example, it is quite common in Tainan for couples

having difficulty conceiving a child to go to a spirit-medium or diviner for

a diagnosis of their problem. That specialist will then often make a further

referral, sending the couple to a ritual-master (fashi) who can perform a

ritual to correct the situation in the temple of the Lady by the Riverside (Lin

shui furen miao), who deals particularly with the problems of women and

children, as well as those connected with conception. This rite is only carried

out, however (and several ritual-masters have confirmed this), if the couplehasconsulteda medical doctor to confirmthat there are no organic disorders,

of either partner, preventing conception. Only when the doctor is unable to

detect anything is the problem then ritually treatable as one connected with

the womans celestial flower bed, where a plant bearing white and red

flowers represents her fertility and the male and female children she will

bear.

This reflects an essential distinction in the etiology of disease and other

maladies, the difference between that which has form (you xing) and

the formless (wu xing). Doctors deal with the former, and when causes

in the visible world cannot be identified or when treatment that assumes

visible causes is not successful, only then does the search for origins in the

invisible world begin. If, as in Meilings case, people are uncertain as to

the nature of the cause, or if maladies are deemed to have both visible and


17/31


invisible sources, then both types of therapies may be employed simultane-

ously.

Sance participants and temple regulars often referred to the paranormal

in their justifications of their activities. There are things that science simply

cant explain was a constantly recurring theme in such discussions. What

science could not explain was the formless, the realm of gods, ghosts, and

other supernatural forces, those things in which Chinese ritual practitioners

have been specialists for millennia. Noting the limitations of science was

inevitably a preface to one or more anecdotes of miraculous events and

puzzling evidence.The storiesof theunusual supernaturalexperiencesof the

individuals themselves, coreligionists, friends, and so forth were sometimesjoined with accounts such as that of the successful predictions of Ronald

Reagans astrologer, culled presumably from popular periodicals, or from

the burgeoning genre of television programs devoted to such topics. It seems

likely that this fascination with the paranormal, as well as its expression in

the lowbrow popular media, represents a new transnational phenomenon

of global religion and popular culture. Large-format magazines with names

that include not only conventional evocations of the supernatural,like Spirit-

Marvels [Lingyi], but also imported notions, like Sixth Sense [Di-liu gan],

recall less the traditional Chinese literature of the strange (e.g.,zhi guai

and chuan qi) than they do the National Enquirer, and they include both

locally produced materials and reports clearly culled from their foreigncounterparts.

A Politics of Popular Religion

I will return to the issue of science and popular religion below, but first I

would like to address the role of the Taiwanese state in the production of

discourses concerning religion. However, my concern is not with the direct

confrontation of the state with popular religion/civil society, but with the

state as one actor among others, in particular by means of its judiciary. After

the Nationalists retook Taiwan from the Japanese in the wake of World

War II, occasional, feeble attempts were made to keep popular religion in

check, to limit popular enthusiasm and in particular to limit the expendi-

ture of wealth on popular religious activities. These measures were almost


18/31


completely ineffectual and were entirely abandoned by the 1980s.20 The

Taiwanese government, by giving up on direct, overarching regulation of

popular religionand by not attempting in a thoroughgoing manner to

impose its own meanings on religious objects and practices, as had the im-

perial statehas allowed far greater latitude for other segments in society

to appropriate religious institutions and practices for their own purposes.

Nonetheless, the activities of the Taiwanese state continue to influence

popular religion significantly, not through attempts at overt control over

religious activities or interpretations but, rather, through the prosecution of

religious institutions and figures. Allegations of financial malfeasance allow

the state to bring in judicial mechanisms and carry out such suppression onits own terms. The question ceases to be a religious one; it becomes a secular,

legalissue of fraud. What I am interested in, though, is not the simple matter

of state suppression of the relatively few popular religious practitioners who

have been indicted. Court cases involving popular religion have an influence

far beyond the persons directly involved. Trials that attract public notice and

media attention spawn the production of all kinds of discussions of religion

in the media and among people at large. Thus, in order to convey a sense of

the larger discursive field within which the adherents of the spirit-medium

cults struggle, I will examine below one of the most important cases of

purported religious fraud yet to reach the courts.

Song Qili

The Song Qili scandal broke during the fall of 1996, when Song was forty-

seven and some nine years after he had become active as a religious figure.

Song himself claimed publicly to possess no supernatural powers but only to

reveal the innate power of the original body (benti) every individual had.

Realization of ones true nature did, however, allow one to manifest that

body throughout the universe. Song produced numerous photographs (ulti-

mately admitted by the photographer to have been doctored) that allegedly

documented this ability to divide ones form (fen xing), often showing a

larger-than-life image of Song hovering over his physical body. Daily view-

ingwas claimedto bring enlightenment. According to one source,the photos

were sold for about US$3,700 apiece. Audiences with Song are said to have


19/31


required $74,000 to arrange, at whichtime onewould be expected further to

makedonations of $370,000.21 Other members of the Song Qili Image Mani-

festation Association ascribed to Song abilities ranging fromhealing the sick

to saving the dead. When Songs bubble ultimately burst, Xie Changting, a

well-known politician, and other prominent political figures were seriously

compromised and politically damaged by their intimate and supportive rela-

tionships with Song. Song himself was indicted for fraud, and others among

his associates were jailed as well. On 30 October 1997 Song was sentenced

to the maximum of seven years imprisonment, while his photographer re-

ceived two years.

The Song Qili affair was one of the biggest news items of the year andsparked a plethora of press accounts. The most interesting, for my purpose,

are those marked out in some way as authoritativeas editorials that rep-

resent the viewpoints of major newspapers; as statements or opinion pieces

by government officials or, especially, scholars; or as other representations

of educated strata (authors may, for instance, exhibit their knowledge of

Chinese and/or Western intellectual traditions). Such accounts more often

than not take the case at hand as a springboard for broader commentary,

in particular concerning the role of religion in society and the distinction

between (good) religion and (bad) superstition.

Consider, for instance, an article that appeared in the China Times (Zhong-

guo shibao) almost immediately after the SongQili scandal broke. It reportedthe remarks of Qu Haiyuan, head of the Preparatory Officeof the SocialSci-

ences Research Institute of Academia Sinica. Qu remarked,

Already in Taiwanese society there is an enormous number of adherents

of popular beliefs, so that it is difficult for the government to regulate

[popular religion] with laws. Recently the social and political situation has

been unstable, and with the addition of the individual psychology of pray-

ing for blessings and seeking wealth, the trend toward popular belief has

increasingly attracted a great number of the masses. . . . Most regrettable

is that more and more of the media play up supernatural matters, giv-

ing assistance to this atmosphere of superstition in society. Moreover, that

politicians take the lead is another important factor encouraging religiousdegeneration.22


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Thus it is not criminality with which Qu is concerned but simply the wide

diffusion of popular belief (minjian xinyang). Popular belief is clearly

equated with superstition (mixin) and, if not with religion itself, with

religious degeneration (zongjiao bianzhi).

Another theme that runs throughout the press accounts of the Song Qili

affair extends Qus dislike of mixing religion and politics to more general

notions of what religion in a modern nation should concern. An editorial

titled Seeking Personal Advantage and Superstitiously Believing in Mir-

acles Disorders Ones Mind and Harms Oneself raised Xie Changtings

unfortunate example. It then continued,

But, nowadays, not a few people in politics and commerceenjoy the trend

of seeking help from the gods and divination. This is enough to show that

the Song Qili case is merely the tip of the iceberg as far as this problem

is concerned. What deserves reflection is that while everyoneincluding

publicfiguresofcoursehasfreedomofbelief,andsomecanclearlydraw

the boundary between spiritual life and practical life, still the activities of

many public figures . . . do not go beyond the level of personal benefit:

asking about their official careers and trying to get promotions. . . .

When people in the world seek the Way, they often do not stop at culti-

vating the mind but also look for miraculous confirmations. Going along

in this way, bedazzlement by miracles finally surpasses the cultivation of

the mind.

Again expressing the idea that politicians should be exemplars in this

regard, the editorial concludes with the same notion that it is the failure of so

many political figures to separate religion from practical life that encourages

the deluded fascination with the supernatural that made the Song Qili affair

possible.23 Religion, this piece implies very clearly, is perfectly good if, first,

it concerns only individual moral self-improvement and, second, if it is kept

well insulated from the world of daily affairs in general and politics in

particular.

The lastsource I wouldliketo consider isa lengthy reflectionon the nature

of religion published as one of several articles in a major newsmagazines

report on Songs case. Its author, Nanfang Shuo, refers to a number of West-

ern intellectuals, from Goethe to Max Weber to Walter Burkert. Nanfang


21/31


Shuo also does not shy from broad generalizations. The piece begins, Hu-

mansareinsecureanimalswhoaretossedaboutbetweensecularizationand

sacralization. Thus we have religion. The author then introduces Webers

notion of the rationalization of social life and the ensuing disenchantment of

theworld,whileatthesametimenotingthattheappearanceofnewreligious

groups and the revival of existing ones seem to indicate a re-enchantment.

Religion, the article holds, should partake of the rationalization that has

dominated the political and socioeconomic realms of modern life: In the

sphereofbelief,religion,underpressurefromsecularization,castoffitsorig-

inal mystery and increasingly tended toward religious individualization. It

became a kind of spiritual belief.By bucking this trend, Taiwanese religion remains mired in an atavism

of the worst kind, votive religion (xuyuanshi zongjiao): Too many people

see belief as a kind of medium of exchange, using offerings in exchange

for protection. Thoughts of self-benefit overcome those of benefiting

others. . . . The divine and the transcendent value represented by the divine

lose their meaning.

As one might by now expect, Nanfang Shuo then turns from religious

degeneration to political decadence. Politicians similarly just see politics as

a matter of winning elections and gaining power. Taiwanese politics lacks

any transcendent public values or sense of responsibility, and Taiwans

religious degradation is just like that of our government. . . . The Song Qiliphenomenon is not a bit worth marveling at. He is nothing more than a

skilled black magician putting on an extremely postmodern farce in our

society, where the values system of votive religion flourishes.24 Thus the

Song Qili affair gives this articles author a chance to indict what he takes to

be the widely shared values of an entire society, as expressed particularly in

religion.

That Songs activities were perceived, in accounts like those cited above,

as little different from those of other forms of popular Taiwanese religion

is also plain from other sources. Just one example comes from the com-

ments of a prosecutor made when one of Songs immediate disciples, while

under examination, offered to demonstrate the art of making an object im-

movable by mental concentration alone. The prosecutor refused to allow

him to do so, saying that that was merely the skill of spirit-mediums.


22/31


The photo of this man accompanying the same article identified him as

Song Qilis table-head, the term commonly used for a spirit-mediums

interpreter.25

Thus the Song Qili affair shows how the state can continue to play a role

in the production of discourses on religion without actively attempting to

regulate religious activity in general. Once a religious figure or organization

can be prosecuted in the courts, ensuing media accounts ensure that religion

will become a matter of public discussion. Moreover, as we have seen, such

reports and accompanying opinion piecesmarked in various ways with

the aura of authoratativenessgo well beyond reporting the facts of the

case and devote much space to discussing what religion should and shouldnot be.

The most important observationthatneeds to be made about the notion of

proper religion expressed in the above statements concerns the relationship

between religion and daily life. Religion that involves praying for bless-

ings and seeking wealth is superstition. Spiritual life and practical life

shouldbe clearly distinguished; the contamination of the spiritual by the ma-

terial is reflected in the pursuit of miracles, tangible confirmations of what is,

purportedly, entirely intangiblea kind of spiritual belief. Chinese pop-

ular religion is perhaps above all based on the establishment of relationships

of exchange with deities, using offerings of incense, food, and other material

substances both to request and to requite supernatural help in connectionwith practical problems. (In the medium cults as well, one cannot simply

ask ones question but must first offer, at least, incense to the various deities

represented in the shrine.) To deprecate the same as votive religion is not

only to strike at the basis for popular practice; it is also to insist on a radical,

and indeed modernist, distinction between otherworldly and this-worldly

concerns.

Popular Responses

In the wake of the Song Qili scandal, spirit-mediums and other practi-

tioners interviewed in my field research were especially adamant that they

not be tarred with the brush of superstition. Here we only have the gods

true pneumas (zheng qi); people may bring their superstitions, but we dont


23/31


encourage them, the medium at Nantianfu told me. Discussions of su-

perstition at the spirit-altars clearly reflected concern about the most basic

form of the mixing of the spiritual and the material: monetary gains for

the provision of religious services, which had provided the basis for Songs

prosecution. The legitimacy of a particular spirit-medium altarits free-

dom from superstitious activitiesis often asserted in relation to money:

accepting only voluntary donations (as at Nantianfu), charging only a rel-

atively small amount for each consultation (e.g., as little as about US$4 or

perhaps as much as about $11), or the absence or rarity of recommending

further (and more expensive) curative rituals. The notion that bad religion

(or superstition) is in part defined by its venality and exploitativeness isshared by both sides.

More significantly, in seeking to explain what they do by invoking the

distinction between form and the formless, as discussed above, spirit-altar

adherentsreplicate the same dualism expressed by criticsof popular religion.

The realm of religion is that of the intangible; practical affairs lie outside

that realm. At least some devotees of the medium cults in fact superscribe

to borrow Prasenjit Duaras termmeanings on their own activities that

are highly consistent with the views of elites.26 Despite the fact that he fre-

quently carried the divination chair at Nantianfu, one man stated that if

one is healthy, one is numinous (ling), and if unhealthy, then not numi-

nous; events depended on ones actions; only the ignorant believe in divina-tion. Another man, who frequently acted as interpreter during Nantianfus

sances, claimed that the use in sances of the palanquin for apotropaic pur-

poses is merely a kind of skillful means (fangbian). Exorcism is not the

issue; it is simply that pressure on the minds of questioners is reduced, and

they can be encouraged to perform good acts. What happens to someone,

he said, depends on his or her mind. Those who suggest interpretations

like this reinscribe the same spirit/matter binarism that is inherent in the

critiques of Song Qili I discussed above. The whole procedure of medium-

istic divination and cure becomes nothing but an empty show for those of

lesser understanding; religion again is made out to be something entirely

spiritual.

Acceptance by the medium cults adherents of the distinction between

the scientific and the nonscientific leads to similar consequences. Following


24/31


the apparent assertion of a realm of knowledge independent of scientistic

culture, sance participants often appeared to express a contrary desire for

acceptance within that same culture. Things that science cant explain

yielded to things that science will one day be able to explain, by means of

ling xue, the study of the numinous (that is, scientific or other academic

research into the supernatural). In order to be true, or at least to be more

true, the supernatural ultimately must be validated by science. The formless

exists, at best, in the epistemic penumbra of form.

In their justifications of their own practices, spirit-altar devotees accept

the same basic distinctions as their critics: between the scientific and the

nonscientific and between proper religion and superstition. The distinctionbetween the formless and that-which-has-form entirely parallels more au-

thoritative discourses; it involves a virtually identical dualism between the

spiritual and the material and assigns the correct concerns of religion to the

former.

In accepting this binarism, devotees of the spirit-altars do more than share

a certain notion of religion; they become complicit in a larger discourse

about the legitimacy of educational capital as a determinant for social status.

It is in this light that one may understand a thread that runs constantly

throughnewsaccountsof SongQilis downfall: surprise at theinvolvement of

intellectualsand politicians in his association. Not only can Song Qili attract

a large number of believers, but among them there is no lack of people ofuniversity lecturer rank or high-level public officials, remarked theChina

Times.27 A newsmagazine headed one section of an article The Highly

Educated Also Believe in Song Qili.28 Another newspaper article, titled

Religious Belief and Superstition, stated, Among Song Qilis followers

there was no lack of those with higher educational degrees. . . . Although

their beliefs are different, compared to the previous impression that only

old ladies (lao ama) would burn incense and worship, certainly more and

more so-called high class intellectuals are taking refuge in religion. Citing

events ranging from imports of New Zealand beef to instability in the stock

market, the article went on to attribute this change to an increased feeling

of insecurity that had led to values systems starting to get mixed up. 29

The involvement of intellectuals in popular religion is always portrayed as

anomalous, deserving mention precisely because it is unexpected. Such a


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fact, if portrayed as an anomaly, actually reinforces the basic correlation

between increased education and decreased interest in (especially popular)

religionreligion in which the formless is always intimately engaged with

that-which-has-form: the healing of bodily illness and the amelioration of

all manner of everyday problems.

In Taiwanese society today, religion functionsmuch like artand other mat-

ters of taste did in Bourdieus France of the 1960s. Bourdieu writes that what

he calls the aesthetic disposition is characterized by the suspension and

removal of economic necessity and by objective and subjective distance from

practical urgencies, which is the basis of objective and subjective distance

from groups subjected to those determinisms.30 The clearest example of adisposition parallel to the Bourdieu aesthetic in Taiwanese religion was cited

above in connection with the denunciation of so-called votive religion, the

use of religion to gain help with practical necessities. Another writer warned

against seeking personal advantage through religion. These texts contin-

ually deplore the mixing of the temporal and the spiritual. They criticize

the same lack of distancing (characteristic of the lower classes) Bourdieu

refers to in the case of aesthetics.

It would be a mistake to correlate educational capital directly with other

determinants of social level in Taiwan. The constituency for the forms of

urbanpopularreligion I studied consists notonly of factory and other work-

ers but also small business entrepreneurs and even a few factory ownersand other bourgeois. However, my surveys of those who attend medium

sances, as well as other fieldwork data, indicate that even the best-off tend

to be at most only moderately educated. While economic capital may differ,

relatively low educational capital is a constant among those involved in the

medium cults. Furthermore, the emergence and increasing predominance

in Taiwan of a high-technological economy that rewards educational attain-

ments, in combination with long-standing cultural values, can only mean

that people like those who attend medium sances are hardly the beneficia-

ries of an ideology that privileges formal education. By interpreting their

own practices in light of elite notions of religion, they contribute to the

marginalization of those practices and to their own sociopolitical marginal-

ization.


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Autonomy Reconsidered

We would appear to have come some distance from previous sections of this

essay, which portrayed possessions poetics as empowering the medium cults

to challenge the social regime and to establish truths in opposition to domi-

nant ideologies. However, I would claim that this apparent contradiction

betweencapacity for resistance in principle and complicityin factexists not

in spite of but because of the particular form of autonomy that characterizes

the medium cults.

AsIhavenoted,involvementinboththeformlessandthematerialrealms,

orthelackofasharpdivisionbetweenthem,isintrinsictoTaiwanesepopularreligion. That same lack is even morestriking in the caseof spirit-possession,

the embodiment of a deity by a flesh-and-blood human being. In possession,

the presence of the divine is apparent not through subtle, spiritual signs but,

rather, through the more than obvious spectacle of twitching limbs and un-

earthly speech. Such trance discourse is, as I have argued, the basis for the

more elaborated truths produced by the spirit-altars communities: divina-

tory utterances, prescriptions for healing, remedies for all manner of lifes

difficultiesthe solution of practical problems through means that are en-

tirelydistinctfromprevailingmedicalorothermoderntechnologies.Having

examined the discourses of more dominant groups concerning religion, one

would have to agree that these popular truths are enunciated through means

that are independent of thedominant culture. The mediumcults are not pas-sive receptors for cultural materials produced elsewhere, nor do they take

exogenously produced culture and turn it to their own uses. In this respect

they are culturally autonomous.

When in the face of opposition, why, then, do the devotees of the cults

respond in ways that do not challenge that opposition but, instead, accede to

it? This is due precisely to the very same autonomy. The discursive world

of the medium cultsthe universe created through the poetic language of

possessionstands apart from dominant understandings of religion. The

spirit-altars cannot subvert the dominant order from within, because they

operate outside it. They generate truths that cannot be recognizedas such by

the wider discursive community owing to their source;inherent in the fusionof form and the formless through spirit-possession is a cosmology entirely


27/31


alien to the modernist version in which form and formless belong to distinct

realms, with religion pertaining only to the latter. Thus, when attempting

to respond to their critics, spirit-altar devotees use the language of their

opponents and, in so doing, abandon the origins of the power of possession

and add weight to the very discourses that would dismiss the medium cults

as the products of mere delusion.

In complete contrast to the populists metaphor of guerrilla warfare, the

medium cults indeed establish territory that is their own. The enclaves that

are the spirit-altars take nothing from the dominant order and thus, when

under pressure, need not yield anything back. But of course they do seem

to give something back: Is not the relegation of religion to the sphere ofthe purely spiritual and the acceptance of the explanatory superiority of

science a complete capitulation? A distinction needs to be made between

the medium sances, while in operation, and the subjectivities of those who

attend them. The sance creates, as I have argued, a world of its own. And,

pace Bourdieu, such a world represents far more than the remnants of a

bygone erudite culture, retained now only among folk remnants. There is

nothing more vital than a spirit-altar in session, nothing more riveting than

the spectacle of possession.

But that is not to say that those who attend the sance can remain in that

world. In order, for instance, to participate in larger debates on religion,

people cross over into the discursive sphere of the dominant, with the con-sequences I have noted. Again as opposed to guerrilla-held territory, the

spaces created by the medium cults remain autonomous, but those who in-

habit them must be migratory; they cannot remain there. That those who

might oppose the social order often end up participating in their own subjec-

tion is of course far from new. What I have tried to show in this essay is that

such subjection does not depend on the use by the dominated of the cultural

products of the dominators. It can also come about when the dominated

themselves participate in producing their own culture.

Despite the fact that the carnival (or the sance) must end, time spent

there might still be more profitable than time spent watching television. At

least I would like to think so; perhaps my conception of mass culture is still

unreconstructably Adornist. In any event, I began work on this topic with

directions that in many ways were set by the historical study of medium


28/31


cults in imperial China, in times and places where the cults were firmly

based in on-the-ground local communities and were clearly used to buttress

local forces against the outsideto serve the interests of local autonomy.

Nowadays, worshipers in Tainan do not associate the spirit-altars with spe-

cific,boundedlocalities,suchasurbanneighborhoods.Spirit-altarattendees,

when asked whether most who come to inquire of the deity are from the

neighborhood, normally answer along these lines: People come here from

all over. Its not a matter of where youlive, but of having karmic links (yuan)

with the god. Whatever the actual composition of the worshiping group,

people do notrepresenttheir group as a local one. Still, after attending many

hours of sances, I could not help but be struck by how, even when thespirit-altars community was deterritorialized and despatialized, the sances

created their own worlds. In these spaces exorcisms were carried out, heal-

ing took place, and people entrusted their life problems to a deity resident

in a shaking, twitching human, a person whose presence dominated, even

created, this space that wasso differentfrom thequotidian. Hence autonomy.

Subsequent examination of both the devotees own understandings of the

cults in which they participated and the religious discourses that disparage

them necessitated reconsideration. The former and the latter are in many

ways remarkably consistent. Thus this essay is rather more nuanced than

initially planned. The medium cults are autonomous, but their adherents

cannot escape dominant conceptions of religion; possession implies the con-vergence of the spiritual and the material, but sance participants restrict the

mediums powers to the sphere of the formless. I am fully aware that it is

now acceptable in academic writing to leave contradictions unresolved, at

least sometimes. Still, it seems to me that further research should begin with

the sance attendees but outside the space of the spirit-altar, when people

have a choice about attending a sance or watching television. What do they

retain when they leave the spirit-altar and return to the world outside it?

How do they integrate these two very different modes of experience? As

far as these questions are concerned, more remains to be done. If there is

mediation between the medium cults and the dominant order, it is likely

that much of that mediation is accomplished by the devotees of the spirit-

altars themselves, those who are most directly and personally involved in

migrating between one sphere and the other.


29/31


Notes

I would like to thank the many friendly and helpful people at the various temples around

Tainan where I carried out my work, in particular those at Nantianfu and San qing gong.

Many thanksaredue aswell tothe ChiangChing-kuoFoundationfor International Scholarly

Exchange, which generously provided the funding for much of my research in Tainan, as

well as to Wang Shan Shan, Chung Tin Yi, Huang Chien Ming, and Lu Pei Pei for their

diligent and able assistance.

1 Michael Taussig,The Magic of the State(New York: Routledge, 1997), esp. 184188.

2 Onenotableexceptionis P. StevenSangren,Historyand MagicalPower in a Chinese Community

(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987), 130131 and chap. 8.

3 Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment As Mass

Deception, in Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Herder and

Herder, 1972), 120167.

4 Michel de Certeau,The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley and Los

Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), xxi.

5 John Fiske,Understanding Popular Culture(London: Routledge, 1989).

6 Pierre Bourdieu,Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), 395.

7 This study is based on fieldwork in Tainan carried out in the summer of 1996, the first half

of 1997, and again in the summers of 1998 and 1999. Altogether, in addition to the various

written sources cited, the data for this study were gathered during attendance at over fifty

medium sances (as well as related interviews and more casual conversations), principally

at six spirit-altars, during these periods. While I was generally able to converse with people

in Mandarin Chinese, I frequently relied on assistants to make transcripts or summaries(in Chinese, either on the spot and/or from tape recordings) of events that were most often

conducted in Taiwanese.

8 Chen Meiqing, Taiwan de Guangze zunwang xinyang [Beliefs concerning the Reverent

LordofBroadCompassioninTaiwan],2vols.(unpublishedmanuscriptinauthorspossession,

1997).

9 See Gilbert Rouget,Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations between Music and Possession,

trans. Brunhilde Biebuyck (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), chap. 5.

10 Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1980), 2832, 125, 133134.

11 Marjorie Wolf,A Thrice-Told Tale: Feminism, Postmodernism, and Ethnographic Responsibility

(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992).

12 Kristeva,Desire in Language, 65, 137140.

13 Ibid., 29, 134135.


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14 Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari,Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia(Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 1983), esp. 116, 85.

15 For a discussion of the divination chair, as David Jordan has called it, see hisGods, Ghosts,

and Ancestors: Folk Religion in a Taiwanese Town(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of

Californa Press, 1972), 6467.

16 Carmen Blacker,The Catalpa Bow(London: Allen and Unwin, 1975); I. M. Lewis, Ecstatic

Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit-Possession, 2d ed. (London: Routledge, 1989); Ned

Davis, Society and the Supernatural in Sung China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,

forthcoming).

17 Claude Lvi-Strauss, The Sorcerer and His Magic and The Effectiveness of Symbols, in

Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobsen and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf (New York:

BasicBooks, 1963), 167185,186205; Arthur Kleinman,Patients and Healers in the Context ofCulture(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980); Zhang Xun,Jibing

yu wenhua[Illness and culture] (Taibei: Daoxiang, 1989).

18 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans.Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1977), 168170; emphases in original.

19 See, e.g., Jordan,Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors, 139.

20 Robert P. Weller, Matricidal Magistrates and Gambling Gods: Weak States and Strong

Spirits in China, inUnruly Gods: Divinity and Society in China, ed. Meir Shahar and Robert

P. Weller (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996), 250268, esp. 263.

21 Qiu Minghui, Song Qili miren de yuyan li you wuge moshu yaosu [InSongQilis language

of bewitchment there are five essential black-magical elements],Xin xinwen [The journalist],

2026 October 1996, 4041.

22 Xuezhe yu zhengtan renshi wu daitou zhuzhang waifeng [Scholar calls for politicians not

to take the lead in promoting unhealthy trends], Zhongguo shibao, 13 October 1996.23 Zhuiqiu sili mixin shenji luanle benxin haile ziji [Seeking personal advantage and super-

stitiously believing in miracles disorders ones mind and harms oneself],Zhongguo shibao, 14

October 1996.

24 Nanfang Shuo, Gaoming de mofa shi wanle yi-chang houxiandai de huangdanxiu [A

skilled black magician puts on a postmodern farce], Xin xinwen, 2026 October 1996, 5256.

25 Zuofa dingshen wan ru jitong: Song Qili da dizi Zheng Zhendong shouya jinjian [Per-

forming the technique of immobilizing bodies like a spirit-medium, Song Qilis greatdisciple

Zheng Zhendong is detained and interrogated],Zhongguo shibao, 14 October 1996.

26 Prasenjit Duara, Superscribing Symbols: The Myth of Guandi, Chinese God of War,

Journal of Asian Studies47, no. 4 (November 1988), 778795.

27 Benzun poxiang: jiekai Songqili shenmi miansha [The original venerable makes a fool of

himself: Unveiling Song Qilis mystery],Zhongguo shibao, 13 October 1996.

28 Du Shengcong et al., Zhexie ren shuo: Weishenme yao yapo women de xinyang? [These

peoplesay: Why doyou want tooppress ourfaith?],Xin xinwen,2026October1996,3839.


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29 Zongjiao xinyang yu mixin [Religious belief and superstition], Lianhe bao [United daily

news], 4 January 1998.

30 Bourdieu,Distinction, 54.

A Poetics and Politics of Repression

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