Who Let the Gods Out? Possession, Cohabitation, and the Anthropology of Religion
When and Where
Speakers
Description
Public lecture presented by the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Hong Kong (HKT 20:00-21:30), featuring guest speaker DSR alumnus Austin Somoes-Gomes
Abstract
Where are the deities in the study of religion? Drawing on ethnographic research with possessed Newar Buddhist women ritual specialists (dyal)marp) in the Kathmandu Valley, this talk argues that possession is best as a form of cohabitation: an ongoing, cultivated relation in which deities live with, act through, and make demands upon human lives. By treating possession as cohabitation, I explore what these relations reveal about human subjectivity itself. Among the dya}:imarp, subjectivity takes shape within relational fields that include devotees, ritual objects, domestic spaces, and deities. This perspective challenges the assumption that the human is the primary author and endpoint of religious action. The talk also asks what it means to take deities seriously as ethnographic subjects. I attend to how they become knowable, however incompletely, through ritual labour, embodied practice, affective intensities, and the material forms through which they act. Decentering the human, however, need not mean abandoning ethnography. On the contrary, I suggest that ethnography is precisely what allows us to follow these relations and to ask what religious life looks like when humans and deities are understood as cohabitants in a shared world.
About the speaker
Austin Simoes-Gomes (PhD University of Toronto, 2026) works on Newar religion in the Kathmandu Valley, with a particular focus on possession, divination, and healing among Newar Buddhist women known as dyalJmarp . His work foregrounds women's ritual expertise and femalecentered religious practices in N ewar religious life. Across his research, he addresses questions of cohabitation between deities and humans, the agency of deities, and the ritual roles of women. He is currently a Research Affiliate at the Rangjung Yeshe Institute and an External Collaborator for the ERC funded project MANTRAMS at the University of Tiibingen.