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Personhood and political subjectivity through ritual enactment in Isan (northeast Thailand)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2018

Visisya Pinthongvijayakul
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Abstract

This article examines the relationship between an important local spirit cult and the construction of Isan political identity in Chaiyaphum province, northeast Thailand. Isan subjectivity has largely been studied through social or political-economic lenses. This study looks, however, at the spiritual experiences and ritual performances that crucially manufacture a local version of personhood. The spectacular annual performance of social memory and historical commemoration of Phaya Lae is constitutive of political identity for the people of Chaiyaphum province. I argue that the rituals surrounding the Phaya Lae cult enable the people of Chaiyaphum to perceive their subjectivity as Thais via the integration of the deity into the historical imagination of the state. I argue further that such local performances of spirit cults sustain Thailand as a ‘ritual state’ in which power and prestige are maintained by ritual enactments both in everyday life and ceremonial events. Through mediumship, the periphery draws charisma from the central Thai state and in turn ritually sustains the potency of the centre.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 63 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 2018 

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Chandrakasem Rajabhat University and The Australian National University's Thai Alumni Scholarship for sponsoring my doctoral research. My field research (2012–13) was supported by a Field Research Grant, Department of Anthropology, ANU, and the 2011 Thai Studies Field Research Grants from the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne. This article draws on my dissertation. I would like to thank the members of my supervisory panel, Philip Taylor, Peter Jackson, Jane Ferguson, and Andrew Walker, for their comments and help in thinking through the project. I would also like to thank the two anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions. Finally, Cameron McLachlan deserves credit for his attentive work in editing and refining the ideas presented in this article. All the photographs in this article are mine.

References

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33 Ong is a title and classifier for sacred and royal beings.

34 The majority of northeasterners are culturally and linguistically close to the people of Laos, a country that is considered backward in the central Thai imagination. Moreover, Isan is politically contested in Thai nationalist discourse, and has had a long history of conflict with the central power of Bangkok.

35 See also the cult of Ya Mo in Khorat, in Keyes, ‘National heroine or local spirit?’.