Ordinary Possession: Kinship, Alterity, and the Perils of Selfhood in Pakistan

In this article we theorize ordinary possession as a form of self-estrangement through which tension, kinship pressure, and dissociative states are negotiated in everyday life in Pakistan. Rather than treating jinns as episodic intrusions, we show how their presence is apprehended as part of a relational field in which the boundaries of the self are routinely unsettled. We show how possession makes visible crises of authority and belonging within joint households. Ordinary possession thus names a psycho-ethical process in which the self becomes unfamiliar to itself in ways that allow suffering or resentment to be voiced without direct accusation.