Domestic Demons and the Intimate Uncanny

This book explores local cultural discourses and practices relating to manifestations and experiences of the demonic, the spectral and the uncanny, probing into their effects on people’s domestic and intimate spheres of life. The chapters examine the uncanny in a cross-cultural manner, involving empirically rich case studies from sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Europe. They use an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to show how people are affected by their intimate interactions with spiritual beings. While several chapters focus on the tensions between public and private spheres that emerge in the context of spiritual encounters, others explore what kind of relationships between humans and demonic entities are imagined to exist and in what ways these imaginations can be interpreted as a commentary on people’s concerns and social realities. Offering a critical look at a form of spiritual experience that often lacks academic examination, this book will be of great use to scholars of Religious Studies who are interested in the occult and paranormal, as well as academics working in Anthropology, Sociology, African Studies, Latin American Studies, Gender Studies and Transcultural Psychology.

Thomas G. Kirsch is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

Kirsten Mahlke is Professor of Cultural Theory at the Department of Literature at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

Rijk van Dijk is Professor of Religion in Contemporary Africa and its Diaspora at the African Studies Centre Leiden, Leiden University, the Netherlands.