This article considers an uncanny feeling experienced during fieldwork in Malta, and examines indigenous explanations of this and other similar feelings. In Malta, explanations of such strange or uncanny experiences vary, but religious explanations present themselves as particularly convincing. The religious indoctrination process involves the creation of powerful feelings, which are sedimented as memories in the body of the believer and serve as a reference point for subsequent strange experiences. I therefore argue that feelings are both produced by, and give meaning, to religious belief. It has become de rigeur to criticize the 'logocentrism' of anthropology and to favour an anthropology of the body. I suggest that such an approach should also incorporate the anthropology of feelings, but that this need not entail a shift in ethnographic writing.
History
Publication status
Published
Journal
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (Incorporating Man)
ISSN
0025-1496
Publisher
Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland