Dancing at the Thresholds

Dancing at the Thresholds tells the story of a racialized community in Algeria that literally trance dances at the thresholds of consciousness. It also tells the story about how these communities negotiate and "dance" at thresholds of the sacred and profane, at the perceived clashes of Islam and animism or of sub-Saharan versus North African lifeworlds.

Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork alongside archival sources, oral histories, and ritual analysis, author Tamara Dee Turner considers these dances through an affective, embodied lens to challenge mainstream assumptions of affect theory. The dance embodies centuries of traumatic histories haunting these communities: their ritual, dīwān, coalesced over three centuries of the trans-Saharan slave trade. Embodying these tumultuous pasts, dīwān rituals move painful feelings through the trancing body to the point of affective "ignition" and release. However, to accomplish this, ritual actors must cultivate specific atmospheres conducive to trance and transformation via a particular Algerian understanding of atmosphere called "hāl."

A much-needed ethnographic approach to the living family lineages, practices, and intimate epistemologies of diwan, Dancing at the Thresholds is a story about the nature of healing and how wellness depends on the respect of wider, affective ecologies beyond both the individual and the human.

Dr. Tamara D. Turner is a psychological anthropologist and ethnomusicologist who specializes in the connections between music, consciousness, and mental health, particularly in Sufi and ritual communities of North and West Africa. Since 2008, she has conducted international field research on the ways that music and dance function in healing across cultures. She has held academic posts and fellowships in the US, UK, Algeria, and Germany, publishing award-winning, international research spanning the fields of psychology, cultural theory, African Studies, and music studies.