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Arguing Sainthood- Modernity, Psychoanalysis, and Islam. By KATHERINE PRATT EWING. Durham, N.C. and London: Duke University Press, 1997. xiv, 312 pp. $17-95 (paper).
This ambitious book is a study of Sufi thought and practice in Pakistan which seeks to blur many boundaries, among them those that too easily posit differences between modern and premodern consciousness; between Western and non-Western theories of the self-, and, ultimately, between Muslims and everyone else.
Ewing, an anthropologist trained in psychoanalysis, explores these issues on the basis of fieldwork among middle-class Pakistanis and the often-controversial pirs or saints who inhabit the neighborhoods of Lahore. Ewing demonstrates the value of the psychoanalytic approach, typically ignored in ethnographies, analyzing in particular the way characteristics of the ethnographer or other interlocutor shape the content of interviews. She also draws on her psychoanalytic training to use her own experience as a tool for understanding the experience of those she is studying. She contributes to the field of cultural studies by distinguishing between hegemonic discourses, which dominate public discursive space, and consciousness, which, she argues, stands at a nexus of discourses, of which the hegemonic is only one. Finally, she...