On Being Present to History: Historicity and Brigand Spirits in Madagascar

Michael Lambek is professor of anthropology and Canada Research Chair emeritus at the University of Toronto. He is the author of four monographs on the western Indian Ocean— Human Spirits (Cambridge University Press, 1981), Knowledge and Practice in Mayotte (University of Toronto Press, 1993), The Weight of the Past (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), and Island in the Stream (University of Toronto, 2018)—and is the editor of several collections, including Illness and Irony (with Paul Antze, Berghahn, 2003), Ordinary Ethics (Fordham University Press, 2010), and A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion (with Janice Boddy, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013). Recent works include The Ethical Condition: Essays on Action, Person, and Value (University of Chicago Press, 2015), Four Lectures on Ethics (with Veena Das, Didier Fassin, and Webb Keane, Hau Books, 2015), Concepts and Persons (Tanner Lecture, University of Toronto Press, 2021), and Behind the Glass (University of Toronto Press, 2022).