Agenda

SEMINAR | I is Somebody Else Inspiration, Affective Creativity, and the Remaking of Selves in Contemporary Okinawan (Shamanic) Possession

Andrea de Antoni
Program-Specific Associate Professor
Socio-Cultural Anthropology Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University

Discussant:
Matteo Benussi, 
Department of Humanities

Aula B, Ca' Bottacin
6 March 2026,14:00 

This lecture presents a new project on the relationships between art, spirituality, and well-being, focusing on shamanic spirit possession in contemporary Okinawa. Drawing on fieldwork with Okinawan healers and people who have experienced possession, it examines the affective and imaginative dimensions of possession to rethink dominant ideas about creativity, agency, and inspiration. Rather than understanding inspiration as an internal or psychological event, the lecture shows how Okinawan practices frame it as a cultivated, collaborative process that blurs boundaries between inside and outside, human and non-human, and art and spirituality. Spirit possession is approached as a practice that trains attention, feeling, and creative attunement to the environment, offering an alternative theory of creativity grounded in embodied, improvisational encounters with forces beyond the autonomous self.

>> Zoom Link:
https://unive.zoom.us/j/86486911163