Espirito Santo Spiritist boundary work and the morality of materiality in Afro Cuban religion (original) (raw)
This article explores the significance of notions of materiality in the practice of Cuban espiritismo and in the Afro-Cuban religious cults of santería and palo monte. In particular, it pursues an understanding of the kinds of relations that are seen to emerge between the practitioners of these cults and the spirits of the dead – relations produced through their varying interpretations and uses of 'matter', in which corresponding moral implications obtain. The author further examines the importance of 'things' and their absence through an ethnographic analysis of the radically diverging discourses on the nature of spirit mediumship among competing spiritist groups in Havana. At one end of the spectrum lies the highly syncretic practice of espiritismo cruzado (crossed spiritism), characterized by its cosmological and ritual inclusivity, while at the other end is the doctrine-based espiritismo cientifico, where a popular concept of science places stricter limits on what can be understood as legitimately 'spiritual'.
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Journal of Material Culture
This article explores the significance of notions of materiality in the practice of Cuban espiritismo and in the Afro-Cuban religious cults of santería and palo monte. In particular, it pursues an understanding of the kinds of relations that are seen to emerge between the practitioners of these cults and the spirits of the dead -relations produced through their varying interpretations and uses of 'matter', in which corresponding moral implications obtain. The author further examines the importance of 'things' and their absence through an ethnographic analysis of the radically diverging discourses on the nature of spirit mediumship among competing spiritist groups in Havana. At one end of the spectrum lies the highly syncretic practice of espiritismo cruzado (crossed spiritism), characterized by its cosmological and ritual inclusivity, while at the other end is the doctrine-based espiritismo cientifico, where a popular concept of science places stricter limits on what can be understood as legitimately 'spiritual'.
This article brings together three distinct, yet articulating, ethnographic perspectives on the effects and affordances of material things, in particular human substances, in the Afro-Cuban religious practice of Palo Monte, a complex of Bantu-Congo inspired traditions. The authors argue that Palo Monte engenders ontological forms that are irreducible to either ‘matter’ or ‘spirit’, thing or idea, but instead predicate their agency on a hybridity that necessarily encompasses objects, human bodies, and spirits of the dead, as well their bones. Palo both takes a notion of embodiment to the extreme – objects become bodies, bodies become spirits, and spirits become objects – and questions its limitations, since for practitioners spirits are unconfined to their materialization, but may appear in dreams, for example. Furthermore, Palo experts deal inherently with processes of physical, social and spiritual disassembly (as well as assembly), asking of us to rethink essentialist concepts of agency, intention, and personhood.
Ritual kinship and its material mediations: A case-study of Cuban santería- 2013
Afro-Cuban santería is a religious and healing practice based on several initiatory degrees. Its social organization relies on relationships of ritual kinship which are established during the main individual initiation and which structures the ritual and social construction of neophytes as well as the local initiatory groups. The paper intends to focus on the internal ritual logics which sustain the creation of this kind of kinship. Based on empirical data on santería initiation ritual techniques, it interrogates the role played in this process by the production of a specific category of artefacts-personalized 'objects-gods' which are produced together with the neophyte during initiation. It further considers the significance of these artefacts in the differentiated forms taken by ritual kinship in this particular context (primary descent, secondary descent and sibling relationships). More broadly, by examining ritual kinship in its materiality, the paper suggests that Cuban santería offers an interesting ethnographic case to reassess and refine some classical anthropological assertions relative to the ways in which this kind of kinship is produced.
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