Cohabiting with Spirits

“In Cohabiting with Spirits, Michael Lambek offers a philosophically rich, beautifully written account of what he calls ‘the art of living with spirits.’ Based on decades of fieldwork on the island of Mayotte, Lambek explores the ongoing role of the spirits in the long and fruitful marriage of his old friends, Mohedja and Tumbu. The spirits, he writes, were fully involved in ‘the earthly everydayness of things.’ With exquisite attention to the voices of humans and spirits, Lambek traces the pathways of desire and fear, agency and submission, in sprit-human relationships in order to understand the lives they made together. He accomplishes this, moreover, without ever folding their experience into his categories. Cohabiting with Spirits is a major contribution to a more-than-human anthropology beyond the constraints of the normative modern.” -- Robert A. Orsi, Professor of Religious Studies, Northwestern University
“This deeply moving book is the work of a long period of attentive listening. Recounted through a series of episodes in the lives of a married couple on the island of Mayotte, Michael Lambek explores their lifelong ‘cohabitation’ with spirits. In this telling, the spirits both shape and are shaped by their ‘hosts’; their presence is both ordinary and uncanny, performative and viscerally real. Analysing ‘cohabitation’ with the spirits as an art of living leads Lambek to reflect on questions of intersubjectivity, agency, and what it means to be human.” -- Megan Vaughan, Professor Emerita of African History and Health, University College London
“Readers familiar with Michael Lambek’s past work may recall the married couple – Tumbu and Mohedja – from whom he learned so much about spirit possession in Mayotte. Cohabiting with Spirits tells their compelling story in rich detail, thoughtfully revealing the profound ordinariness of possession among those for whom being possessed by spirits only ever punctuates their living with them.” -- Andrew Walsh, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Western Ontario
“Cohabiting with Spirits is an extraordinary book that weaves together a lifetime of ethnography and scholarly deliberation. With remarkable sensitivity and acuity, Michael Lambek documents the intimate conversations between a married couple and their spirits, offering unparalleled insight into the complexities of marriage, kinship, and living with others. The book forces us to rethink possession beyond the constrained paradigms of dissociation and pathology.” -- Adeline Masquelier, Professor of Anthropology, Tulane University