the Middle East History and Theory (MEHAT) Workshop and the Anthropology of Europe Workshop are pleased to present a co-sponsored workshop:
Three lights on Queen’s face:
Ethnography of mêlée
Larisa Jasarevic
Senior Lecturer, International Studies Program, University of Chicago
Time: Friday, April 1, 4:00–5:30pm
Location: Pick 218, 5828 S University Ave
Discussant: Noha Forster, NELC
ABSTRACT
This text is about therapeutic encounters at the singularly powerful and popular healing practice of Nerka in contemporary Bosnia, which has seen an explosion of magical and medical market since the 1990s war and peace. While sorcery and Koranic healing appeal to people in Bosnia irrespective of their religious backgrounds, Nerka’s inventive, irreverent, and inconsistent rituals simultaneously enact and displace the ethno-national and religious differences and passions that are conventionally wedded to the three dominant Bosnian peoples: Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Eastern Orthodox Serbs, and Bosnian Catholic Croats. This essay begins with Jean-Luc Nancy’s reserved handling of identity and ethnicity in his “Eulogy for Mêlée,” written in 1993 for Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital, under siege but shifts attention to the ritual spaces where the practice and idea of mixing is far more frenzied but perhaps no less critical or effective. Nerka, whom patients’ have lovingly titled the Queen of Health, offers no easy model of multicultural citizenship but the uncertainty that reigns in her office, gathers followers around the impossibility of belonging.
Keywords: mixing, magic and medicine, Koranic healing, ethnicity, identity, Bosnia
Papers are not pre-circulated, but you may obtain a copy by emailing us at mehat2011@gmail.com. Light refreshments will be served. Persons with a disability who believe they need assistance can contact us at mehat2011@gmail.com. We look forward to seeing you there!
