Pembroke Center

Luke Forrester is a psychological anthropologist of the francophone world. His research interests include race, sexuality, religion, mental health, transcultural psychiatry, and spirit possession. Luke is currently working on three research projects that are summarized below.

Luke has a BA in Anthropology from Yale University and a PhD in Anthropology and the Humanities from Princeton University. His work is forthcoming in Current Anthropology and differences and has appeared in symplokē and SubStance. His research has been supported by the Georges Lurcy Charitable and Educational Trust.

1. Racial Desire in Mainland France, Martinique, and Benin

   This project focuses on white French people who exclusively or predominantly date Black people. I ask: how do white French people develop unique sexual preferences for Black people? How do the anti-Black legacies of French colonialism and chattel slavery suffuse everyday intimacies across the French imperial world? How is whiteness in France changing as French people are increasingly adopting and contesting transnational anti-racist discourses?  

2. Dance Therapy and Secular Spirit Healing in Mainland France 

   This project focuses on white practitioners and patients of a French dance therapy method called “Dance Rhythm Therapy.” Modeled after the healing rituals of so-called “primitive” spirit possession cults, DRT uses rhythmic dance and vocalization to heal symptoms that cannot be easily diagnosed and treated by western biomedicine. Its practitioners aim to reconstruct ritual healing methods that they see as having been suppressed by Cartesian dualism, Enlightenment thought, Protestant Christianity, and the capitalist nation-state. In this project, I ask how French people navigate experiences of suffering and healing that cannot be described in the language of western biomedicine. I also ask how racial and colonial legacies shape their quests for health and spiritual fulfillment.  

3. Spirit Possession and Transcultural Psychiatry on Réunion Island 

   Réunion Island is a French département about 400 miles east of Madagascar. There, the descendants of Malagasy and East African slaves, as well as the descendants of South Indian indentured servants, often become possessed by ancestors and divine beings. When unaccompanied by the proper ritual resources for managing trance episodes, Réunionnais spirit possession manifests as extreme suffering. Between the wide array of magico-religious traditions available on the island and the quickening development of out-patient psychiatry, Réunionnais often find themselves caught between divergent idioms of, and approaches to managing, suffering and healing. I work with possessed people, Hindu and Malagasy healers, transcultural psychiatrists, functionaries, and NGO professionals to understand the complex ecology of illness and health in Réunion. How are people and spirits integrating psychiatric knowledge and practices into ancestral ritual complexes? How are professionals in the psy-disciplines integrating spirits and magico-religious knowledge into their attempts to develop a robust mental health infrastructure?