Kiyang-yang,a West-African Postwar Idiom of Distress |
| |
Authors: | Joop T de Jong Ria Reis |
| |
Institution: | (1) Department of Cultural and International Psychiatry, VU University Medical Center, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands;(2) Department of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA;(3) Amsterdam Master’s in Medical Anthropology, Amsterdam School of Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;(4) Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands |
| |
Abstract: | In 1984, a healing cult for young barren women in southern Guinea Bissau developed into a movement, Kiyang-yang, that shook
society to its foundations and had national repercussions. “Idiom of distress” is used here as a heuristic tool to understand
how Kiyang-yang was able to link war and post-war-related traumatic stress and suffering on both individual and group levels.
An individual experience born from a traumatic origin may be generalized into an idiom that diverse sectors of society could
embrace for a range of related reasons. We argue that, for an idiom to be understood and appropriated by others, there has
to be resonance at the level of symbolic language and shared experiences as well as at the level of the culturally mediated
contingent emotions it communicates. We also argue that through its symbolic references to structural causes of suffering,
an idiom of distress entails a danger for those in power. It can continue to exist only if its etiology is not exposed or
the social suffering it articulates is not eliminated. We finally argue that idioms of distress are not to be understood as
discrete diagnostic categories or as monodimensional expressions of “trauma” that can be addressed. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|