“Trust no one!” Stuart Strange’s Surinamese interlocutors warned him (5). However, as Strange ably demonstrates in his fascinating monograph, to suspect others is to suspect oneself. This book examines the roles of doubt, mistrust, insecurity, and suspicion in processes of identity construction and social formation in contemporary Suriname. Suspicion and doubt among those consulting Shakti Hindu and Afro-Surinamese Maroon mediums can take a variety of forms, including doubts about oneself, doubts about others, and doubts about the very spirit mediums with whom one is consulting. These feelings of mistrust and suspicion are what Strange calls “epistemic affects,” bodily intensities related to possibilities of knowing used by spirit mediums to challenge consulting clients’ knowledge of the self as constituted of/by spirit being(s) (5–6). Examining such epistemic affects, Strange presents a deft comparative analysis of ritual productions of self-knowledge through spirit embodiment practices among Shakti Hindus and Ndyuka Maroons. The book is...

You do not currently have access to this content.