An interdisciplinary conference organized by The Mind and the Other Research Project and by The Finnish Anthropological Society.
Helsinki, Finland (The House of Science and Letters), September 20-22, 2016
I shall be speaking at this conference on the topic of Spirit Release Therapy Methods of Discernment.
Uncanny experiences, the search for the inexplicable, or the belief in supernatural beings or universal energies trigger disputes about at least ontology, rationality, sanity, and the limits of the mind. Modern Western society is for the most part characterized by principles such as rationality and efficiency. Quoting Max Weber, these ideas comprise the leading forces of modern society and science. However, what several scholars in religious studies currently call post-secularism has given rise to new spiritual tendencies and movements in society. These post-secular tendencies have brought about something that several authors term ‘re-enchantment’: new spirituality and uncanny experiences are perhaps more than ever a part of Western everyday life. Some scholars define the situation as a crisis of rationality, whereas others again accentuate the recurrent nature of historical phenomena, pointing to recurring waves of thought stretching from the Ancient past to the present. Still others claim that in practice the rational and the uncanny are intertwined in a new mode. In historical and ethnographic explorations the uncanny can be understood, not as a boundary between rational and its “outside”, but as an element of connection and compromise between them practiced by ordinary people and practices of institutions, such as modern medicine and science.
