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In this paper, I analyze a Chilean mining geoanalyst's narrative about large unrecognized geoglyphs he has charted in the Atacama Desert. The turns of this narrative take us through the Ancient Aliens hypothesis, but also an alterative pre-Inca migration route between the Atlantic and the Pacific thousands of years old, and in contravention to normative Andean archaeology. I argue that we need to look at alternative forms of history making that are not based on ontologically realist premises. Using Kleinberǵs notion of 'past possibles', based on Derrida's theory of historical deconstruction, I defend that in the mining expert´s narrative coexist a multiplicity of possible pasts, in oscillation between latent and manifest. I also look at the Desert itself, and its extractive industries, as well as a notion of 'extreme' in relation to temporal thinking, arguing that it is not enough to see the narrative on aliens as a result of neoliberal capitalist exploitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I explore two approaches to what lies 'unearthed' in Chile's recent violent histories. In the first instance, I explore the effort towards the obfuscation or intertitialization of knowledge by the Chilean state, regarding the Pinochet dictatorship years. The argument in the first half of the paper underlines the need to understand recent Chilean history in relation to explicit efforts at 'disappearing' history – at the purposeful obfuscation of deathly experiences and the limbo these generate. In the second half, I explore the idea that in the 'negative' space afforded by the circumstantial and historical possibilities of locales of political interest, where traumatic history is only partially understood, or not recognized, paranormal investigators expand, rather than contract, possibilities within this negative. I use negative theology, a medieval counter-orthodox current of writing about the unspeakable, to explore how, in contrast to the Chilean state from 1973 to 1990, which receded into the darkness of negation, paranormal investigators take impetus from this darkness and transform it into a version of history proper, ontologizing the negative as they proceed. Their endeavours thus become quasi-cosmogonic, in theological terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores perceived changes in patterns of consciousness in relation to possession phenomena among a sector of urban practitioners of the Brazilian religion of Umbanda, and argues that these perceptions have been accompanied by the emergence of a more individualist approach to religious selfhood which aims to lay claim to a particular vision of Umbanda. These Umbandists understand their spirit universe in ontologically plastic terms, relativizing spirit identities much like Umbanda’s founders. The increasing emphasis given to conscious forms of possession tallies with a relatively new attention to the self and its awareness of tradition, thought to be lacking in previous generations. This article also defends that we can produce an anthropological understanding of possession as having cosmogonic rather than just expressive effects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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