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Dreaming
June-September 2004 (Vol. 14, Nos. 2-3)
Special Issue: Anthropological Approaches to Dreaming
Guest Editor: Charles Stewart
CONTENTS
Introduction: Dreaming as an Object of Anthropological Analysis
Charles Stewart
Page 75
Dream Sharing as Social Practice
Murray L. Wax
Page 83
From Elsewhere: Prophetic Visions and Dreams Among the People of the Earth
Roland Littlewood
Page 94
"That Which I Dream Is True": Dream Narratives in an Amazonian Community
Daniela M. Peluso
Page 107
Dressing in the Stuff of Dreams: Sacred Dress and Religious Authority in
Southwestern Nigeria
Elisha P. Renne
Page 120
Forest
Smells and Spider Webs: Ritualized Dream Interpretation Among Andaman
Islanders
Vishvajit Pandya
Page 136
Toward a Holographic
Theory of Dreaming
Jeannette Marie Mageo
Page 151
The Anthropology of
Dreaming: Selfscape Dreams
Douglas Hollan
Page 170
The Poetics and Spirituality of Dreaming: A Native American Enactive Theory
Barbara Tedlock
Page 183
ABSTRACTS
Introduction: Dreaming as an Object of Anthropological Analysis
Charles Stewart
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 14(2-3)
75-82, June-September 2004.
This article introduces a special issue on anthropological approaches to
dreaming. A running history of dreams in the field of anthropology serves as a
device for contextualizing the articles. The narrative identifies perennial
areas of interest such as the question of why some societies value dreams while
others do not. Anthropological approaches have varied from Victorian
evolutionism to contemporary psychoanalysis and reflexivity. Each new
theoretical paradigm has pushed the study of dreams in different directions, led
to the study of new aspects of dreaming, and, sometimes, guided the exploration
of new dimensions of social life. The presentation of ethnographic case studies
of dreaming in specific cultural contexts constitutes one of anthropology's
strongest contributions to the study of dreaming.
KEY WORDS: dreams; history of anthropology; rationality; relativism; experience;
reflexivity
Dream Sharing as Social
Practice
Murray L. Wax
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 14(2-3)
83-93, June-September 2004.
Among the small communities of hunter–gatherers, dream sharing is widespread.
The entities within their world (animals, plants, etc.) were regarded as
sentient, responsive beings, with whom discourse could be established via
dreams, visions, and trances, together with song, dance, and ritual. Their
temporal orientation was mythic/paradigmatic (kairotic) rather than chronologic,
so that creation could continually be recurring. In critical contrast, high
Western intellectual thought—post-Reformation and post-Enlightenment—has been
increasingly disenchanted, materialistic, reductionist, and routinized (Max
Weber) and has approached dreams as the product of "the brain" of an
individuated actor. In opposition to such formalized intellectualistic
approaches, oppositional groups have revived the reverence for dreams and the
practice of dream sharing. The evanescent character of dreams, and their
creative aesthetic qualities, reveal their origin in the psyche of social beings
and their tension with the self-system.
KEY WORDS: dream sharing; hunter-gatherer communities; self-system; kairos
(paradigmatic time)
From Elsewhere: Prophetic Visions and Dreams Among the People of the Earth
Roland Littlewood
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol
14(2-3), 94-106, June-September 2004.
Anthropological ethnographies sometimes postulate that new religious ideas
may originate in individual dreams, visions, or madness. An illustration is
given of the foundation of the Earth People of Trinidad, for whom dreams may
still contain prophetic insight or knowledge. Their oneiric understandings have
to be placed against their cultural baseline of village dream theory and the
dreamlike visions of the Shouter Baptists. It is argued that the physical
conditions of the community's daily life are perhaps conducive to visionary
perceptions in a half-waking, half-sleeping state. KEY WORDS: pathomimesis;
psychosis; creativity; dreams; Trinidad
"That Which I Dream Is True": Dream Narratives in an Amazonian Community
Daniela M. Peluso
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol
14(2-3), 107-119, June-September 2004.
In an Ese Eja community in the Peruvian Amazon, people dream the names of
their children. Apart from a neo-Freudian perspective, naming dreams reflect,
more importantly, multiple overlapping realities of time and space. As such,
notions of agency, multiplicity, and transformation need to be examined for a
proper analysis of dreaming. Drawing on multinatural perspectivism, the author
examines eshawa, an Ese Eja concept of personhood that connects the self not
only with the body but also with all species and an expansive sprit world. The
author suggests that naming dreams are reminders of the still possible
transformation between multiple worlds. Such an interpretation of dreams, as
sources of knowledge and channels to cross realities, emphasizes the overlay
between subjective dream worlds and public objective waking worlds rather than
their "opposition."
KEY WORDS: Amazonia; dream interpretation; naming; myths; gender; multinatural
perspectivism
Dressing in the Stuff of Dreams: Sacred Dress and Religious Authority in
Southwestern Nigeria
Elisha P. Renne
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 14(2-3)
120-135, June-September 2004.
Founders of the Cherubim & Seraphim Church, an independent African church in
southwestern Nigeria, frequently recounted dreams or visions of angels or other
heavenly beings, evidence to themselves and others of their special spiritual
status. At times, these beings appeared in garments, images of which were later
transformed by tailors into clothing worn by Cherubim & Seraphim church leaders.
Whereas church members as a group wore prayer gowns of plain white cloth
referring to depictions of angels in the Bible, church leaders materially
emphasized their individual otherworldly connections and spiritual gifts through
their distinctive garments inspired by dreams and visions. Some robes also came
to be associated with the special healing powers of particular prophets who wore
them. The author examines how the making and wearing of garments originating in
dreams and visions have contributed to a creative process whereby religious
authority has been constituted in southwestern Nigeria.
KEY WORDS: dreams; dress; spirituality; religious authority; Nigeria; African
independent churches
Forest Smells and Spider Webs: Ritualized Dream Interpretation Among Andaman
Islanders
Vishvajit Pandya
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 14(2-3)
136-150, June-September 2004.
This article examines the significant role of dreams among the Andamanese and the changes in sleep and dreaming that have taken place as modern settlements replace traditional campsites. As Andamanese hunters and gatherers go to sleep at a campsite, they discuss what they did throughout the day and especially what they have seen in dreams. In the morning, it is proscribed to wake a person up so that dreaming is not disturbed. A shared consensus on the group's dreams guides the members' waking actions. The sleeping arrangements in modern Andamanese settlements have changed: Andamanese believe that these afford less dream recall or understanding and attribute their declining hunting success to this diminished dreaming.
KEY WORDS: dreams; Andaman Islanders; smells; rituals; Radcliffe-Brown
Toward a Holographic
Theory of Dreaming
Jeannette Marie Mageo
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams.. Vol
14(2-3) 151-169, June-September 2004.
Contemporary psychologists hold that dreams sort memories. These memories can be seen as shared memories symbolizing key contradictions in culture. These contradictions originate in psychologically unresolved historical problems that rupture shared meaning systems. Dreams evoke these contradictions holograpically by deploying images circulating in the public sphere that constitute meaning fragments. Dream images are often dramatically fragmentary, which compels dreamers to elaborate them. These elaborations constitute cultural work: Through a figurative mode of thought, dreamers connect a fragmentary image to personal emotions and to other significances in a culture's symbolic–psychological world, thereby making new meanings. Dreams and interpretative work on them, therefore, are usefully understood as instrumental to cultural change and as instances of cultural practice rather than solely as private and individual. The article develops this holographic theory of dreams through the analysis of 2 Samoan dreams from the 1980s and 1 American dream from the 1960s.
KEY WORDS: dreams; holographs; meanings; cultural memories
The Anthropology
of Dreaming: Selfscape Dreams
Douglas Hollan
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 14(2-3)
170-182, June-September 2004.
The author discusses the concept of "selfscape" dreams, dreams that are emotionally and perceptually vivid and that reflect back to the dreamer how his or her current organization of self relates various parts of itself to itself, its body, and other people and objects in the world. The author provides examples of selfscape dreams from Indonesia, New Guinea, and the United States and demonstrates how the mapping of the self in selfscape dreams goes inward to the body as well as outward to people and objects in the world. Throughout, he emphasizes how the manifest contents of dreams can help reveal aspects of self-organization rather than disguise them.
KEY WORDS: anthropology; dreaming; selfscape dreams; manifest content; Toraja;
Indonesia
The Poetics and Spirituality of Dreaming: A Native American Enactive Theory
Barbara Tedlock
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 14(2-3)
183-189, June-September 2004.
In Native North American cultures, dreams provide a valuable source of information about, and a compassionate understanding of, spiritual phenomena. Dreams that begin as personal entities shift during dream telling or performing to provide a cosmic doorway into another dimension of reality. Such power dreams in Native American cultures resemble Tibetan Buddhist Dream Yoga much more than they do Euro-American forms of lucid dreaming.
KEY WORDS: Native American dreaming; vision quests; incubation; power dreams;
lucidity
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