The document discusses possession rituals in the Stambali tradition of Tunisia. It describes how possession allows for a temporary liberation from social roles through symbolic identification with spirits. The body becomes a vessel where different identities can merge regardless of gender or social status. During rituals, the body transcends social roles and engages in a process of becoming through sensory experiences and imaginative reconstruction of personal narratives. Possession heightens social sensitivity and allows for strengthening of communal bonds.

1. Dancing the Possessed Body into
Freedom
Displacement, Dance and Possession in the Rituals of the
Stambali

2. Key Terms
• Stambali: a word that refers to the rituals of the
descendants of sub saharan slaves in Tunis. its
origin can be "sambeli", a sub sahran word for spirit
possession, or istanbuli, (of Istanbul), because of the
favours these groups received under the reign of the
Husaynid Dynasty.
• Possession: the displacement of a person’s natural
personality and its replacement by the personality of
an outside intelligence such as the demon or
divinity, sometimes obliterating the subject’s
memory of the experience (USD online annotated
dictionary of psychology)
• Trance: A state in which consciousness is fragile or
missing, voluntary action is poor or absent and
normal bodily functions are reduced (Penguin
Dictionary of Psychology) or a 'physiological state of
mental dissociation or altered consciousness,
characterised by detachment from physical
surroundings, such as occurs in hypnosis or
religious ecstasy (USD online annotated dictionary
of psychology)

3. Background
• Transaharan slave trade can be traced
back as far as 1000 BC. TSST in the
Islamic world started in the tenth century.
Since it started and Until the abolition of
slavery, 100.000 entered Tunisia,
especially under the rule of the Husaynid
dynasty in the 19th century.
• Stambali first appeared among "slave
houses", places which played the role of
social integration of groups of the same
kin and where they could practice their
rituals; it formed on the onset a kind of
"support system" (Montana) to newly
arrived slaves.
• In the Maghreb where belonging was
regulated by religion and ethnolinguistic
belonging, situating the stambeli has
been slightly confusing; yet it tended to
be defined an an alien tradition.

4. From Tribe to Civilisation: a Story of the
Body
• Early religius experiences appeared in the
form of animistic beliefs, with no strict
hierarchy, no written scriptutres, no
clergy. They diverged from beliefs that
appeared later in their heavy reliance on
'trance' and 'possession' during the ritual.
Hence, the body represents the core
channel for experiencing the divine.
• The advance into more civilised forms of
social order led to the suppression of the
"individual" forms of religious worship, as a
result of the requirement of more social
coformity.
• The collision between these two forms led
often either to the suppression of the
ecstatic forms of religous worship based on
trance, or to the search of a common ground
( in the case of the Stambali, the commong
ground is sometimes identified as Sufi
orders.)

5. The Ritual, the Woman and the Slave
• The appearance of patirarchy as a
system that encouraged warship,
and violence, was contingent with
the apprance of the instutution of
slavery; women had served as as
the first slaves in history, mainly in
the aftermath of battles and wars
(Lerner and Werholf)
• These new systems needed
hirarchical arrangements, which
explains the repression of ecstatic
forms of religious worship, and
hence, the demonisation of the
body. (Campbell and Wade)
• The bodies and the efforts of
women and slave had been the first
to endure subjugation and
demonisation.

6. • Early religious ceremonies
developped hand in hand
with warship; the
glorification of the rituals of
the group came with the
demonisation of the ritual of
the other, and hence, the
apperance of rituals of
primary importance, and
others of secondary
importance whenever two
religious groups
intermingle. (Georges

7. Stambali as a Refugee Cult
• Regarding the circumstances that
fathered the Stambali, it can be defined
as 'refugee cult', and not simply a static
ritual that had orignated in Sub-saharan
Africa without undergoing any change.
(Montana)
• Accordingly, Stambali does not only
reflect its origins, but it also reflects the
transformations it has undergone within
its rituals, especially those which
underscore the dislocation of the group,
and re-captures the trans-generational
trauma that it had witnessed. The
slaves seek a reunification with their
history but conversely, he/she also
seeks a place in the new society, hence
its adoption of a syncretic process of
adaptation.

8. Slavery and the Decline of the Political
Role of Women
• In places where more than one
religious group co-existed, the
political and religious status had
mostly been assigned hand in hand
to those who have hegemonic power
.
• Women are often allowed a less
important type of religious authority;
whenever slaves cults existed,
women’s rituals derived from the
animistic roots of sub-Saharan
religions.
• In Tunis, in the ladder of saint
orders, Stambali is forms a
subsidiary form or religious practice,
occupied by women and marginal
men.

9. Possession: a Feminine Ritual?
• Saint orders in Tunisia can be divided
into orders dominated by men, (Sufi
orders) and others dominated by
women.
• Whenver the cult of the saint relied on
possession, women's presence is
notably more important that that ofmen.
• Although this association has been
given divergent justifications, it has one
static rule: during possession, women's
perception of their bodies manifests
differently than men's perception in Sufi
orders.
• Whereas the dance in sufi orders is
unified rolicking dance, possession
requires a diffferent, diversified
movements.
• During the dance, a dynamic interaction
of sensory processing helps to build the
overall experience, as opposed to the

10. The Body Trance-forming Itself and
Trance-ending Bondage
• The Body as a Catalyst for
Transgression:
• Through the body, the identity of the
female adept often forges with the
identitiy of the possessing spirit, offering
women a temporary liberation from their
given social roles, and even a certain
degree of leadership. (Jankoswky and
Schmidt).
• female seers occupy an important place
in the pantheon of stambeli, the symbolic
role of the female body and its fertility is
restored.
• the body in this sense, transforms its
identity through a process of symbolic
identification and metaphorical language.

11. • The Body as Vessel:
The body becomes a container where
different identities merge and forge
regardless of social background or
gender, . Although different Stambali
orders acknowledge hierarchy of spirits
(according to colour, social status and
gender), this hierarchy diminishes or
disapears during the ritual.
• the body transcends its given roles, and
indulges in a process of becoming that
imitates the journey of the slave, back
and forth.
• throughout the process of becoming, the
adept becomes the hero in his/her own
journey, reconstructs the personal
narrative, forges his own history through
the imaginative process.
• the Guembri: A musical instrument that
many descendants of the Sub Saharan
populations identify as an imitation of
the slave ships.

12. • The body as Intensifier of the Collective
Experience:
• anthropolgical studies on women and
possession often attribute women's
suscebtibility to possession to role of
women in the collective belonging; as
women's biolgocial roles of childbearing
and childbirth heightens their social
sensitivity. (The trance involves a deep
sensory experience involvment.)
• possession advocates adorcism (instead
of exorcism), acknoledges that the body is
part of a larger realm where human and
non which human entities interact
• this rises the body's sensitivity to the outer
world, and extends the perimiters of the
personal identity to include others

13. • This sensitivity to the outer world allowed
women healers to be able to engage
different senses in the process of teaching
and the passing of the knowledge to the
next generation.
• Healers of the stambali, mostly female
pristesses, have historically undertaken the
roles of chiefdom in the houses of slaves,
which necessitated the guardianship and
the passing on of the knowlegde through
word, but through the body as well.
• It allows them the forging of the social fabric
of the group, a sensitivity toward the other,
and toward emotional bonding.
• Transcendance in Stambali is not vertical
like that in Sufi orders, but rather
transversal, cutting across the sensory
experiences, and the members of the
ceremony
The Social Role of the Healer