Spirits of Palestine: Gender, Society, and Stories of the Jinn (review)

In this study, Rothenberg draws our attention to how jinn stories in a Palestinian village work as a powerful resource to be engaged by Palestinians grappling with the complexities of contemporary life. Facing up to a brutal occupation, ineffective leaders, and the realities of their global diasporas, while simultaneously renegotiating mores in the intertwined realms of sexuality, family and communal relations, education, and economics, Palestinian individuals and groups over the last several decades have revealed an astonishing cultural richness and grace under pressure. But, as Rothenberg illustrates, and as Fanon and others laid out for the French occupation of Algeria, life under occupation demands multilayered culturally appropriate supports to keep even a semblance of balance. For many, not the least of these is a relationship with the supernatural, including, for some, a relationship, often unsought, with jinn.

Rothenberg focuses on the ways in which jinn, differently conceived of and attended to by Palestinians, make their presence known in times of trouble and break down barriers between home and diaspora, public and private, prison and occupation, respectability and disgrace, family and community, or, alternatively, safely reveal what has been concealed, or shore up a potential breach among family members. Her study is richly nuanced, "fine-tuning" earlier ethnographies of the Mashriq that privilege a dominant discourse of the hamula (extended family), make implicit assumptions about the workings of social geography, foreground honor and shame stereotypes, or base their studies on the facile dichotomy of the "great" and the "little" traditions, discourses that have been largely discredited in academia in their coarser formats, but which are unfortunately still often relied upon in the popular press.

Rothenberg also critiques "deprivation theory," which has also been largely discredited over the last 30 years, although its defects bear reiterating in her book. The fact that people, not just women, turn to religion in difficult times need not imply, as Rothenberg underscores, that they are trying to "work the system" or are "lying" about their relationship with or possession by jinn, or that belief in jinn is a result of social, economic, psychological, or other deprivation. The young man in solitary confinement in an Israeli prison, comforted by a jinn bringing news of his family, was certainly less deprived as a result, and although, as Rothenberg movingly tells it, the jinn's visit helped him make it through, his belief in jinn clearly predated his captivity.

As Rothenberg illustrates, visits from jinn and even possession are both culturally recognizable and, depending on the context, acceptable and comforting. These experiences become communal stories that can open up important cultural conversations around shared issues. Rothenberg's story of the young Palestinian woman Zahia's possession by a Jewish jinn as a consequence of her anguish at being separated, due to Israeli blockades between Jordan and Palestine, from her family and living with strangers (diasporic relations) all through the early days of her marriage and pregnancy, is another instance. Issues of occupation, family separation, arranged and cousin marriage, and the needs of the group versus those of the individual are all expressed through the story of Zahia's possession, and thus her anguish and the possession itself become communally relevant.

This is an example of the "articulatory potential," described by both Janice Boddy in her well-known Wombs and Alien Spirits (1989) and by Rothenberg, which creates "a potential space for comment, criticism, and even debate" (Rothenberg 132). The latter goes further, however, demonstrating how jinn possession narratives may be responded to by another form of powerful expressive culture—whether by the artistry of the fortune teller, by the beauty of Qur'anic verses, or even, in the case of the narrative fashioned around Zahia's experience of possession, by Rothenberg herself. To my knowledge, this form of discursive, aesthetic "conversation" has nowhere else been so effectively demonstrated. The lack of this aesthetic dimension in conventional Western therapy may explain why Rothenberg's informants did not resort to such psychiatric cures—which are positioned...