Part of Singh's intriguing analysis of shamanism rests on a set of claims about how shamans violate norms of humanness to convince people of their special powers. To do so, he argues, they “ostensibly transform into entities distinct from normal humans” (sect. 3.3, para. 1). That artifice persuades others that they have supernatural abilities to observe and manipulate unseen causal forces that go beyond those of ordinary people.
Singh suggests that shamans may “defy … notions of humanness in patterned ways” (3.3.2, para. 4), but he leaves the nature of those patterns unspecified. Indeed, his speculations on the subject verge on contradictory. One the one hand, he cites Ojamaa (Reference Ojamaa1997) to argue that shamans often present themselves as animal-like. On the other, he implies that shamans lack animalistic properties when he proposes that the supernaturalness they cultivate is associated with “possessing human-unique capabilities, like thought or self-control, while lacking those shared with animals, like hunger or pain” (ibid).
These two diametrical accounts each plausibly capture some of the shaman's special capacities, such as the ability to endure suffering and privation, and the capacity to apprehend things beyond normal human perception. The animalistic account can accommodate tolerance of pain or hunger as brute insensitivity or bestial strength. It can also understand heightened perceptual abilities as animal acuity; non-human animals often are seen as superior to humans in perception, although inferior in cognition (Haslam et al. Reference Haslam, Kashima, Loughnan, Shi and Suitner2008). (This pairing of animalistic strengths and deficiencies arguably accounts for the findings of Waytz et al. [Reference Waytz, Hoffman and Trawalter2015] on the simultaneous dehumanization and superhumanization of black Americans.) The uniquely human account can frame shamanic endurance as exceptional self-control rather than insensitivity, and shamanic acuity as occult cognition rather than aquiline perception.
One problem with these two accounts of shamanic deviations from humanness, aside from being in opposition, is that they both place the human-animal distinction front and center. The research evidence, however, indicates that beliefs about the attributes of supernatural beings are orthogonal to that distinction. In the mind perception model of Gray et al. (Reference Gray, Gray and Wegner2007), the mind of God differs from that of humans on a dimension of Experience independent of the Agency dimensions that distinguishes humans from other animals. God shares our capacity for higher cognition and self-control, which animals lack, but God lacks the affective and conative attributes (e.g., hunger, pain, desire, pleasure) that humans and animals possess. Similarly, Haslam et al. (Reference Haslam, Kashima, Loughnan, Shi and Suitner2008) suggest that the mental states believed to differentiate humans from supernatural beings are distinct from those seen as differentiating humans from animals. Animals are viewed as outperforming humans on perception, but supernatural entities are not; supernatural beings are viewed as outperforming us on disembodied cognition, whereas animals are seen primarily as lacking human emotional refinement.
In short, it is not clear how the human-animal distinction can make sense of the ascription of superhuman abilities to shamans, either on the view that shamans present themselves as animal-like or on the view that they project themselves as having uniquely human abilities to unusual degrees. Although Singh's ethnographic evidence shows that shamans often use an animalistic idiom to express their strangeness, how that idiom leads others to ascribe supernatural powers to them remains obscure.
One possible alternative explanation is that shamans, in fact, do not defy notions of humanness in a patterned way. Rather than departing in a systematic fashion from a particular notion of humanness – for example, humanness understood as those attributes that distinguish people from other animals – shamans simply may violate behavioral norms in any way that conveys strangeness in their cultural context. This view of humanness violations as unpatterned and opportunistic is sometimes implied in Singh's work, where humanness is employed not as an idea with specific content, but as a content-less prototype of normality. The concept of humanness simply refers to the norm of familiarity in contrast to which the shaman's behavior demonstrates strangeness, foreignness, and non-normality. That this concept of humanness adds to the more basic concept of familiar or normative is not clear.
Singh writes that “trance is a drama of strangeness.” The shaman may simply be an improvisational actor who is adept at performing strangeness, but does not specialize in any particular dramatic genre. Clarifying how shamanic behaviour relates to ideas of humanness requires a thorough analysis of the content of shamanic performance and whether it coheres around a particular concept of “human.” Singh's work helps define the nature and importance of that task.
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Part of Singh's intriguing analysis of shamanism rests on a set of claims about how shamans violate norms of humanness to convince people of their special powers. To do so, he argues, they “ostensibly transform into entities distinct from normal humans” (sect. 3.3, para. 1). That artifice persuades others that they have supernatural abilities to observe and manipulate unseen causal forces that go beyond those of ordinary people.
Singh suggests that shamans may “defy … notions of humanness in patterned ways” (3.3.2, para. 4), but he leaves the nature of those patterns unspecified. Indeed, his speculations on the subject verge on contradictory. One the one hand, he cites Ojamaa (Reference Ojamaa1997) to argue that shamans often present themselves as animal-like. On the other, he implies that shamans lack animalistic properties when he proposes that the supernaturalness they cultivate is associated with “possessing human-unique capabilities, like thought or self-control, while lacking those shared with animals, like hunger or pain” (ibid).
These two diametrical accounts each plausibly capture some of the shaman's special capacities, such as the ability to endure suffering and privation, and the capacity to apprehend things beyond normal human perception. The animalistic account can accommodate tolerance of pain or hunger as brute insensitivity or bestial strength. It can also understand heightened perceptual abilities as animal acuity; non-human animals often are seen as superior to humans in perception, although inferior in cognition (Haslam et al. Reference Haslam, Kashima, Loughnan, Shi and Suitner2008). (This pairing of animalistic strengths and deficiencies arguably accounts for the findings of Waytz et al. [Reference Waytz, Hoffman and Trawalter2015] on the simultaneous dehumanization and superhumanization of black Americans.) The uniquely human account can frame shamanic endurance as exceptional self-control rather than insensitivity, and shamanic acuity as occult cognition rather than aquiline perception.
One problem with these two accounts of shamanic deviations from humanness, aside from being in opposition, is that they both place the human-animal distinction front and center. The research evidence, however, indicates that beliefs about the attributes of supernatural beings are orthogonal to that distinction. In the mind perception model of Gray et al. (Reference Gray, Gray and Wegner2007), the mind of God differs from that of humans on a dimension of Experience independent of the Agency dimensions that distinguishes humans from other animals. God shares our capacity for higher cognition and self-control, which animals lack, but God lacks the affective and conative attributes (e.g., hunger, pain, desire, pleasure) that humans and animals possess. Similarly, Haslam et al. (Reference Haslam, Kashima, Loughnan, Shi and Suitner2008) suggest that the mental states believed to differentiate humans from supernatural beings are distinct from those seen as differentiating humans from animals. Animals are viewed as outperforming humans on perception, but supernatural entities are not; supernatural beings are viewed as outperforming us on disembodied cognition, whereas animals are seen primarily as lacking human emotional refinement.
In short, it is not clear how the human-animal distinction can make sense of the ascription of superhuman abilities to shamans, either on the view that shamans present themselves as animal-like or on the view that they project themselves as having uniquely human abilities to unusual degrees. Although Singh's ethnographic evidence shows that shamans often use an animalistic idiom to express their strangeness, how that idiom leads others to ascribe supernatural powers to them remains obscure.
One possible alternative explanation is that shamans, in fact, do not defy notions of humanness in a patterned way. Rather than departing in a systematic fashion from a particular notion of humanness – for example, humanness understood as those attributes that distinguish people from other animals – shamans simply may violate behavioral norms in any way that conveys strangeness in their cultural context. This view of humanness violations as unpatterned and opportunistic is sometimes implied in Singh's work, where humanness is employed not as an idea with specific content, but as a content-less prototype of normality. The concept of humanness simply refers to the norm of familiarity in contrast to which the shaman's behavior demonstrates strangeness, foreignness, and non-normality. That this concept of humanness adds to the more basic concept of familiar or normative is not clear.
Singh writes that “trance is a drama of strangeness.” The shaman may simply be an improvisational actor who is adept at performing strangeness, but does not specialize in any particular dramatic genre. Clarifying how shamanic behaviour relates to ideas of humanness requires a thorough analysis of the content of shamanic performance and whether it coheres around a particular concept of “human.” Singh's work helps define the nature and importance of that task.