Crumpled Paper Boat: Experiments in Ethnographic Writing
Anand Pandian teaches anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. His books include
Stuart McLean teaches anthropology at the University of Minnesota. His books include
Anand Pandian teaches anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. His books include
Stuart McLean teaches anthropology at the University of Minnesota. His books include
This essay focuses on a forty-one-year-old Moroccan man called Ilyas, who, during episodes of mental illness, covers the walls of his apartment with elaborate murals. Produced in a psychopathological state in which the biographical and the mythical meet, these images simultaneously evoke and transform motifs drawn from Islamic tradition, including those relating to the torments of the soul after death. As such, they allow Ilyas to achieve an otherwise impossible proximity to his own madness and thus, at least temporarily, to reorder his existence and resume his life in the world.
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