Unspeakable Dreams and Self-alteration : A Case of a Nomadic Community in India(<Special Theme>Toward an Anthropology of Metamorphosis)

<p>Previous anthropological studies of dreams have focused on the analysis of dreams as texts that are regarded as collective representations of the societies concerned. Also, dreams have been considered as important occasions to reconfigure the self in a crisis, by narrating and restructuring it according to a newly gained world-view or time structure. In other words, previous dream studies rarely challenged the narrative framework shared in a society and the possible change of the self, arising from the differences between what was dreamed and what was remembered and narrated. This article tries to approach the continuity and the change of the self, by paying attention to the fact that dreams change each time they are narrated to different individuals on different occasions. The change of the narratives shows that there are dream portions that deviate from the normative narrative framework and interpretation. This article deals with various examples of remembered and narrated dreams of the Vaghri, a nomadic community in south India. The Vaghri are commercial nomads who have lived separately from the local Tamil people. The Vaghri regard dreams as a space to meet their lineage goddesses. In 2000, more than 70% of the Vaghri in different areas reported that they had dreamed of their goddesses. The lineage goddesses are said to appear in the form of women, outsiders, or animals in their dreams. But the Vaghri interpret the actors in the dreams as their goddesses according to the actors' actions. Motion images are important when they interpret their dreams. It is said that once they meet a goddess in a dream, they must perform a ritual. That discourse gives the Vaghri the opportunity to remember and narrate their dreams, especially during ritual occasions. It leads the members of the society to reproduce rituals and social order centered on lineages. However, the examples in this article show that the Vaghri dream narratives do not steadily produce the faithful self to lineage goddesses. Instead, they show how dream narratives fluctuate, as they reflect changing circumstances without the narrators' noticing. In other words, dreams are always reshaped according to the circumstances in which the individual is put. Also, changes in the dream narratives are caused by the change and retention of dream images. It becomes clear that the motion image of going back and forth between the inside and outside appears repeatedly in the dreams of the Vaghri. That image is always the key to interpreting each dream. It enables the dreamer to remember the dreams and gives the feeling of continuity of the self, although the shape of the dreams is refigured each time the dream is remembered. The motion image in dreams also enables the audience of the dream narrative to come up with dreams of similar images. Shared dream images demonstrate the value that is given to the bodily expressions by the society. During the process of telling one's dreams repeatedly, certain perspectives are inserted in the narratives. That can bring about changes in the "body-self" that retains motion images as a cardinal point of action into the cognitive self that tries to give meaning to the images. For example, in the case of the dream narrative of a Vaghri woman, tactile images were taken over by visual representations after two weeks. Her "self" was unstable as far as the extension of tactile images was concerned, but inserted visual representations gave her a new perspective, in which the Vaghri's lineage goddesses and the local Tamil deity coexisted and strengthened each other. In another example, when the details of the dream were not narrated, some of the dream images were not interpreted fully by the audience. Such images remained latent in the self as compatible with other possible representations, and led the dreamer to follow a new religious practice. Various dream</p><p>(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)</p>