Gananath Obeyesekere, an anthropologist of religion and ‘intellectual giant,’ dies at 95
Gananath “Obey” Obeyesekere, professor of anthropology, emeritus, died at his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on March 25. He was 95.
An ethnographer of religion whose scholarship bridged the disciplines of anthropology and psychoanalysis, Obeyesekere was esteemed as a scholar for his expansive analyses of cultures and civilizations. His 1992 book, “The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific,” found a popular audience as well.
Obeyesekere’s research interests included religion, social theory, psychological anthropology, hermeneutics and South Asian studies, particularly in Sri Lanka and South India, where he conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork throughout his career.
“An intellectual giant, Gananath Obeyesekere loved all things ethnographic and was a champion of the cross-pollination of East-West and South-North intellectual traditions. In book after book, he reshaped the foundations of anthropology, psychoanalysis, and the social study of religion,” said João Biehl, the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Anthropology and department chair. “In his fierce critique of coloniality, he refused to allow history to remain the property of its victors and articulated a creative ground where diverse cultural perspectives could meet and open up to the unknown.”
Obeyesekere joined Princeton’s faculty in 1980 and transferred to emeritus status in 2000. He chaired the anthropology department from 1983 to 1988.
“Obeyesekere is a vital part of our department's DNA, and his legacy inspires us to continue to strive, as he always did, to pursue the good, the just, the unexpected, and the transcendent to the best of our ability,” Biehl said. “A person of big ideas and an even bigger humanistic imagination, Obeyesekere was a gentle and thoughtful truth-teller and a quintessential free man. He remains a shining light to generations of colleagues and students at Princeton and beyond.”
“Erudition, wisdom, generosity and grace”
“It was an honor and a joy to work alongside Gananath for more than two decades, whether he was my chair, I was his, or as workaday colleagues in an exciting and demanding department,” said James Boon, professor of anthropology, emeritus.
Obeyesekere’s wife, Lecturer of Anthropology, Emerita, Ranjini Obeyesekere, is a scholar and translator who taught courses on South Asian literature and culture at Princeton from 1987 to 2003.
“Gananath and Ranjini's erudition, wisdom, generosity and grace endowed anthropology at Princeton with remarkable humanity, scholarship and wit,” Boon said. “To be with the Obeyesekeres at any academic or social occasion was to learn and laugh together.”
Rena Lederman, professor of anthropology, emeritus, said Obeyesekere was one of the senior faculty who hired her when she joined the University in 1981.
“Obey was a magnetic, charismatic presence among our students, graduate and undergraduate. During my first few years in the department, I was assigned to take over the introductory ‘Social Anthropology’ lecture course that Obey had been teaching. In a meeting with our prospective students, Obey characterized anthropological understanding as ‘liberatory,’” said Lederman.
“The word captivated me and remains with me still,” she said. “Our courses encompassed a variegated humanity, our pasts and presents, our works and words. That humanity’s partially interconnected realities, experienced and imagined, are our challenging future. Obey was inspiring: he invited us — students and colleagues — to step with him into that vast space, minds open.”
Obeyesekere was born in 1930 in Meegama, a rural village in the Western Province of Sri Lanka, formerly known as British Ceylon.
He earned his bachelor’s in English with first-class honors at the University of Ceylon, now the University of Peradeniya, in 1955 and went to the United States afterward for graduate studies. He received his master’s in 1958 and his Ph.D. in 1964, both in anthropology, at the University of Washington.
Obeyesekere began his academic career in the department of English at the University of Peradeniya and shortly thereafter moved to the department of sociology, where he served as professor and chairman. During this period, he also taught on invitation at several universities in the U.S.
Before he was appointed a professor at Princeton, Obeyesekere had taught at the University of California-San Diego for a decade. After 20 years, Obeyesekere retired in 2000 to Sri Lanka, where he and Ranjini continued to research, publish and mentor rising scholars.
In addition to pioneering the field of psychoanalytic anthropology by incorporating Freudian and Jungian theory, his research focused on the ways that cultures around the world interpret and express beliefs, specifically through personal symbolism and religious mysticism, in varying traditions but with the same humanistic core. Obeyesekere’s background in English literature deeply informed his comparative analysis of cultures and civilizations, such as illustrating parallels between Buddhist and Hindu characters through the lens of Freud’s Oedipus complex.
Obeyesekere published more than 70 articles and reviews in publications including American Anthropologist, The Journal of Asian Studies, Transcultural Psychiatric Research Review, American Ethnologist, Comparative Studies in Society and History, and the International Journal of Psychology.
“The Apotheosis of Captain Cook,” his best-known book, won the 1993-94 Louis Gottschalk Prize from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and the 1992 PROSE Award in psychology from the Professional and Scholarly Publishing division of the Association of American Publishers.
His other books include “Medusa’s Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience” (1981), which was later translated into Japanese; “The Work of Culture: Symbolic Transformation in Psychoanalysis and Anthropology” (1990); “Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth” (2002) and “Cannibal Talk: The Man-Eating Myth and Human Sacrifice in the South Seas” (2005). He is a co-author of “Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka” (1988), a social and religious examination of modern Buddhism with Indologist Richard Gombrich.
Obeyesekere’s most recent book, “The Creation of the Hunter: The Vädda Presence in the Kandyan Kingdom: A Re-Examination” (2022), builds on his previous fieldwork to analyze the history of the Indigenous Väddas community of Sri Lanka.
Exploring unexpected angles that “completely change the conversation”
At Princeton, Obeyesekere taught a range of courses during his 20-year tenure at the University, including “Psychoanalysis and Anthropology,” “Buddhism and Society,” “Reading Freud and Anthropology” and “Ritual, Myth and World View,” as well as the graduate seminars “Discourses on the Other” and “Anthropology of Memory.”
Both colleagues and former students recalled how their initial observations of Obeyesekere's classroom demeanor, where he sometimes appeared to be sleeping, belied the true depth of his active listening and intellectual engagement.
Jeffrey Himpele, director of Princeton’s VizE Lab for Ethnographic Data Visualization and a lecturer in the anthropology department, earned his Ph.D. at the University in 1996 and said he fondly remembers the intimacy of sitting at a seminar table with his peers, all eager to study under Obeyesekere.
“Everyone wanted to learn from Obey, so he created a graduate seminar where we’d read contemporary ethnographies chosen by students who would lead the discussions,” Himpele said. “During the sessions, Obey would lean back in his chair, almost reclining, with his head back and looking up toward the ceiling.
“More than once, as graduate students were talking and trying to sound smart for a while, Obey would sit up and look around the table and then give an amazing, short, and powerful comment in about two sentences. He would be coming from some unexpected angle and completely change the conversation,” Himpele continued. “In addition to giving us new ways to think differently within our discipline, from Obey, we learned the power of listening carefully.”
Ruth Behar, now the James W. Fernandez Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, earned her Ph.D. at Princeton in 1983 and recalled Obeyesekere’s “gracious and kind” personality, along with the grand sweep of his scholarship.
“He left a major mark on our department, giving us a unique perspective on how to rethink the practice of anthropology in more capacious ways,” Behar said.
Obeyesekere’s many honors include Guggenheim, National Humanities Center and National Library of Australia fellowships, as well as a visiting researcher position in Sri Lanka as a Fulbright Scholar, among others. From 2008 to 2009, he was the Rajni Kothari Chair in Democracy at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, India. He received the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Huxley Memorial Medal in 2003 and the Society for Psychological Anthropology’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.
Obeyesekere served on the editorial boards of academic journals including the Encyclopedia of Indian Religion, Numen, and Anthropology and Medicine. Elected to the Royal Anthropological Institute and the American Anthropological Association, he was also a member of the Association of Asian Studies and served on the advisory council of the Wenner-Gren Foundation from 1979 to 1983.
Obeyesekere is survived by his wife, Ranjini, sons Indrajit and Asita, and daughter, Nalinika.
Memorial contributions in Obeyesekere’s honor may be made to the University of Peradeniya’s Peradeniya Art Gallery and Museum Trust, a fundraising project established to house the pristine collection of 20th century Sri Lankan art donated by friends Ian and Roslin Goonetileke, the former of whom was the late distinguished librarian of the University of Peradeniya. Interested donors may contact the collection’s board of trustees.
View or share comments on a memorial page intended to honor Obeyesekere’s life and legacy.