Making Spirits: Materiality and Transcendence in Contemporary Religions 9780755625758, 9780857722621

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Diana Espirito Santo is currently a research fellow in social anthropology based at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (CRIA, FCSH-UNL). She works between Cuba and Brazil on themes of learning and cognition, personhood, materiality and cosmology in spirit mediumship practices. Nico Tassi is a research associate of the Programa de Investigación Estratégica en Bolivia (PIEB) and visiting scholar at University College London. He has dedicated most of his academic work to the study of Bolivia’s indigenous highlanders, focusing on religion and political economy, materiality and transcendence, trade and informality.

Making Spirits Materiality and Transcendence in Contemporary Religions Edited by DIANA ESPIRITO SANTO and NICO TASSI

Published in 2013 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright Editorial selection and Introduction © 2013 Diana Espirito Santo and Nico Tassi Copyright Individual Chapters © 2013 Ludovic Coupaye, Andrew Dawson, Diana Espirito Santo, Arnaud Halloy, Susanna Rostas, Roger Sansi, Philip Swift, Nico Tassi and Joe Trapido The right of Diana Espirito Santo and Nico Tassi to be identified as editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Library of Modern Religion 20 ISBN 978 1 84885 796 4 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress catalog card: available Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Camera-ready copy edited and supplied by the editors

Contents

Contributors vii Acknowledgements x 1 Introduction

Diana Espirito Santo and Nico Tassi

1

Part I

Spirits in the Making 2 Materiality, Cosmogony and Presence among Cuban Spirits and Mediums

33

3 Conchas, Candles and Flowers in the Creation of the Concheros’ Religiosity

57

4 ‘We Worship Nature’: The Given and the Made in Brazilian Candomblé

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Diana Espirito Santo

Susanna Rostas

Roger Sansi

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Part II

Transformations   5 Knowing What Has Been Done: The Techniques of Ritual ‘Objects’ among the Abelam (East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea) Ludovic Coupaye

105

  6 Objects, Bodies and Gods: A Cognitive Ethnography of an Ontological Dynamic in the Xangô Cult (Recife-Brazil) 133 Arnaud Halloy

  7 Divinity and Experiment: Conversion in a Japanese Jam Jar Philip Swift

159

Part III

Matter and Spiritual Power   8 Things We Grow With: Spirits, Matter and Bodies in La Paz, Bolivia

179

  9 Forms of Fetishism in Kinshasa: Historical Insights and Contemporary Practices

205

Nico Tassi

Joe Trapido

10 Making Matter Matter: The Santo Daime Ritual of Feitio 229 Andrew Dawson

Index 253

Contributors

Ludovic Coupaye is Lecturer at the Department of Anthropology of University College London (UCL), and a member of the Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur l’Océanie (CREDO, CNRS), Marseille. He has conducted fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, in the Maprik area of the East Sepik Province, and teaches anthropology of art at the Ecole du Louvre, Paris. His publications and research have focused on the anthropology of art, material culture and techniques, as well as museum studies. Andrew Dawson is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University, UK. Trained in religious studies and social science, he researches and publishes on the interface of religion and society. Andrew is co-editor of the academic journal Fieldwork in Religion and his recent publications include New Era, New Religions: Religious Transformation in Contemporary Brazil (Ashgate, 2007) and, as editor, Summoning the Spirits: Possession and Invocation in Contemporary Religion (I.B.Tauris, 2010). Diana Espirito Santo studied philosophy, psychology and anthropology at the London School of Economics, before completing her PhD in social anthropology at UCL in 2009. In her doctoral dissertation, based on extensive fieldwork in Havana, she focused on processes of learning among Cuban spirit mediums. Her current postdoctoral research work, based at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, examines notions of personhood in the Afro-Brazilian practice of Umbanda. Her academic interests include the anthropology of knowledge and divination, cognition, relations of materiality and morality, dreams and dreaming, and ontologies of self.

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Arnaud Halloy is Assistant Professor at the University of Nice SophiaAntipolis (France). He graduated in anthropology at the University of Brussels and he received his PhD in December 2005 from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris-France). After studying an Afro-Brazilian cult in Belgium, he travelled to Brazil where he conducted extensive fieldwork in the Xangô cult of Recife, in the north-east region of Brazil. Arnaud Halloy’s main interests centre on the socio-cognitive aspects of religious transmission, and on exploring the links between cognition, emotion and cultural environments. He is author of several articles in journals and edited books. Susanna Rostas is currently Senior Research Associate in the Department of Social Anthropology, Cambridge University. Her fieldwork has been predominantly in Mexico, in Chiapas for her PhD and more recently in Mexico City. Her monograph Carrying the Word: the Concheros Dance in Mexico City was published by Colorado University Press in 2009. She co-edited with André Droogers The Popular Use of Popular Religion in Latin America (CEDLA, 1993) and is the author of various articles in journals and edited volumes. Roger Sansi (PhD University of Chicago 2003) is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Ramon y Cajal Research Fellow at the University of Barcelona, Spain. He has worked on Afro-Brazilian religion and culture and contemporary art. His recent publications include Fetishes and Monuments. AfroBrazilian Art and Culture in the 20th Century (Berghahn Books, 2007) and Sorcery in the Black Atlantic, co-edited with Lluis Nicolau (University of Chicago Press, 2011). Philip Swift taught in both the history and anthropology departments at UCL for five years. He has carried out fieldwork with the members of a Japanese religious group. An article based on this research (‘Touching Conversion: Tangible Transformations in a Japanese New Religion’) was awarded the Curl Essay Prize for 2009 from the Royal Anthropological Institute. His interests include Japanese religion and questions of ritual and cosmology more generally. Nico Tassi is Research Associate at the Programa de Investigación Estratégica en Bolivia (PIEB, La Paz Bolivia) and visiting scholar at UCL, where he obtained a PhD in anthropology in 2008. He has dedicated most of his academic work to the study of Bolivia’s indigenous highlanders specialising in religion and political economy, materiality and transcendence,

Contributors

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trade and informality. He is author of several articles and two monographs on urban Aymara of Bolivia’s capital city. Joe Trapido received his PhD in social anthropology in 2010 at UCL’s Department of Anthropology entitled: ‘Love, Music and Exchange: Patronage and Political Economy between Paris and Kinshasa’. His academic interests include the relationships between aesthetics and political economy, especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Acknowledgements

This volume was conceived prior to, but eventually originated with, a panel held at the Association of Social Anthropologists’ (ASA) annual conference in Bristol in April 2009, called ‘Thinking, acting and knowing through religious “things”: artefacts in the making of cosmology’. Our thanks go first to all participants in the conference including Sergio González Varela, Anastassios Panagiotopoulos and Andrew Needham. While most of the ideas expressed in the book were inspired by our respective fieldsites, inspiration for our theoretical framework was also drawn from the animated discussions of the ‘Cosmology research group’ in the Department of Anthropology at UCL. On the whole, the vibrant debates on artefacts and materiality together with a revamped discussion about religion and cosmology made the UCL department a stimulating intellectual environment in which to grow over the last few years, one that encouraged us to challenge and reformulate established ideas about religion, creation, objects and anthropology more generally. We are particularly indebted, for their support and critiques, to Martin Holbraad, Allen Abramson, Nanneke Redclift, and Danny Miller. In different ways they have been an inspiration to us, both personally and intellectually. We also thank Ruy Blanes for commenting on our Introduction, and Ramon Sarró for his support when we needed it. Diana Espirito Santo would like to thank the Instituto de Ciências Sociais (ICS) and the Centre for Research in Anthropology (CRIA) in Lisbon for hosting her research since 2009, and both editors are also indebted to Portugal’s Fundação para Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) for its financial aid on some of the editorial process. Finally, we would like to sincerely acknowledge the role of Rasna Dillon and Liza Thompson at I.B.Tauris, as well as the work of Peter Barnes and Kim McSweeney, in helping us make this book take formal shape and direction.

Chapter 1

Introduction Diana Espirito Santo and Nico Tassi

Matter, spirit, creation

In the Symbolism of Evil (1967) Paul Ricoeur singles out the biblical story of the Fall from Heaven as the anthropological myth par excellence. The original sin, an act of disobedience from, if not betrayal of, God’s will, resulted in the banishment of humans from the direct presence of God, opening a gulf between the omnipotence of the creator and the impotence of the created. At once, the distinction between the immutability and ethereality of God’s truth and perfection, and the human and material propensity to deceive and become deceived, became apparent: Adam and Eve were shamed. Humans were destined to a life of corporeal finitude and material scarcity, of work and suffering, deception and impermanence, before their immaterial soul could be rejoined with a creator they could not know directly. The absolute difference (ibid), or epistemological separation (Keane 2006), exemplified by the Fall, produced throughout Christian history a sense of anxiety (Weber 2002; Keane 2007) as well as a paradoxical ‘problem of presence’ (Engelke 2007), since any kind of spiritual contact, however abstract and conceptual, required at the same time a worldly/material instantiation, thus rendering the theoretically immaterialisable, material. Such a tension has been played out and de-emphasised at different stages of the history of Christianity. However, it is with the advent of narratives of modernity – characterised by the progressive withdrawal of religion from the stage of rational public action and the consequent harnessing of religion to uphold modernist enlightened ideas (Weber 1958; Orsi 2005)  – that a radical attempt to redefine the material and the spiritual is laid out.

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Supported by the coordinated action of religious, civic and educational institutions a discourse about progress and ‘faith development’ unfolded. It would promote a rationalisation of the belief in God, while it was thought that progress and democracy would bring about a secular and more lucid attitude towards God that would guarantee a separation between religion and politics (Meyer 2006). These transformations can be seen under the general process of transforming Christianity from what was seen as its immature superstitious stage to a modern morality; from the early polytheistic pagan cults to a Christ-centred faith; from religious practices largely based on bodies and things to more intellectual and introspective forms of belief (Orsi 2005: 9). Certainly modernity produced its own forms of magic (Meyer and Pels 2003; Comaroff and Comaroff 2001) and its resulting combinations of practices of revelation and concealment, faith and scepticism (Taussig 2003). However, the conforming of religion to the ideology of development and its alliance with modernity, as well as its tendency to abstract from the material – considered an impediment to intellectual dexterity – meant that, for many, a different conception of the sacred was in order, namely, one that would uproot the power of presence from things and bodies. In fact, both modern Western Christianity and scientific materialism were built upon the denial of the spirit in things as well as – despite the latter’s tendency to associate the material with the concreteness of ‘facts’ – a common understanding of materiality as ultimately defined by a sociohistorical process of abstraction of the spiritual from the material (Pels 2008: 266). Firstly, the material world was to become not just unworthy, but illusory: matter was to become inert, the epistemological deceiver, the mere illusion behind which lies the really ‘real’ (Miller 2005: 5). Curiously, the assumptions behind these views do not simply continue to dominate anthropological studies of religious forms, but as we will note further ahead, have been constitutive of the anthropological project itself (Cannell 2006). The ‘real’ now takes an assortment of shapes – from tangible socio-economic and political conditions, pathologies and repressed psyches, to inherited evolutionary dispositions manifest through cognitive mechanisms. Matter (including the body) has remained somewhat of a ‘mask’ to hide or at best clothe other, more essential, features of our existence as material beings. In the social sciences, religion has always tended, and continues, to be about ‘something’ else, and thus needs to be ‘believed’ in. Secondly, the modern attempt to purify signs from things, objective from subjective domains, transcendent from material, religious from earthly matters, produced a particular characterisation of the material world.

Introduction

3

Given its supposed separation from ideology and morality, the material was to become a self-regulated sphere, a domain of public (and economic) action governed by values and principles generally alien to the spiritual world. Once religion was eliminated from the mundane, this earthly world would become an absolute capable of producing its own morality, which would be defined according to the degree of correspondence it obtained with the concrete actions and material, measurable successes of human beings (Dumont 1977: 124). Indeed, while Christianity increasingly lost its anchorage in nature and in an infinite, divine kind of ‘human’ rationality, material life and worldly and economic deeds became the new producers of morality, even humanity. The gap that was opened between the ‘here’ and the ‘beyond’ in Western societies has an undeniably entrenched and complex history, one characterised by the development of both a scientific materialism and a particular kind of humanism which came to exclude the agency of matter by its very ontological spin (see Taylor 1992, 2007). Charles Taylor argues that from an ‘enchanted world’ where ‘the line between personal agency and impersonal force was not all clearly drawn’ (2007: 32), and where ‘charged things can impose meanings, and bring about physical outcomes proportionate to their meanings’ (ibid: 35), we have moved into a secular modernity that is closed in upon itself, an ‘immanent frame’ where God is no longer necessary. This has not simply been a move of disenchantment, or of subtraction, but one of ‘buffering’ a self that is no longer permeable or porous, but defined precisely by its capacity to disengage with the world. God was thus banished from the secular domain, appearing only in the consciousness of this interiority, seen by some as a moral failure to apprehend the true ‘facts’ of the natural world. Arguably, the appearance of ‘scientific’-inspired new religious movements such as mesmerism, theosophy and spiritualism (Sharp 2006; Washington 2003; Wilson 1990), particularly in the nineteenth century, signalled a resistance to the forcefulness of this separation between the natural and the religious, a resistance that still resonates today. The important point in all of this is that the separation between the spiritual and the material, some aspects of which we have attempted to describe above, led to an exclusion of the possibility of reciprocal interaction and transformation between these domains, fostering an idea of the world as pre-ordained and self-contained rather than incipient, ‘on the verge of the actual’ (Ingold 2006: 12). Once created, matter was to become autonomous from, and even immune to, divine interference: humans were to become arbiters of their own fate, legislating themselves in the absence

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of a punishing superior deity. This meant that ‘communication’ between realms, in whatever shape it was to take (but especially through matter), was to lack a fundamental, ontologically creative dimension. It was no wonder that ‘animist’ cultures were to pose such a conundrum for early anthropological analyses, and still do for those produced now (see Pietz 1985, for a discussion on the fetish; also see Sansi and Trapido, this volume). This book is not about Christianity, Christian history, or even religious modernity. But it does inevitably address some of the corollaries of Christian thought – which are anthropology’s too – through its focus on questions of materiality and transcendence in diverse ethnographic contexts; questions which reverberate with both traditional Christian concerns and the language of a modernity which has reproduced as normative certain matter-spirit configurations. Christian conceptualisations of divinity and humanity, and of religious objects, were often taken as universal blueprints for anthropological inquiry. This is true to the extent that often an examination of other religious cosmologies, and of the ‘other’ more generally, was effectuated through prisms that not only elicited a series of stereotypes and misunderstandings about the religious practices under study, but also tended to reproduce and consolidate certain Western understandings of the world. Anthropology has doubtlessly moved on a great deal from its primordial ethnocentrisms, but more attention needs to be drawn to the study of religious objects in this regard. The ethnographic case studies in this book offer us the possibility of experimenting with religious notions of materiality that challenge some of the taken-for-granted ideas described above as constitutive of the modern project; but this does not mean they bear no relation to them. The religious concepts and practices that we will deal with here are generated not so much in opposition to or in isolation from mainstream religious modernity, but rather in relation and reaction to it. Anthropology and religion It is not simply in passing that Cannell notes that ‘Christianity has functioned in some ways as “the repressed” of anthropology’ (2006: 4). She argues that: Social science takes some of its earliest and most important steps toward a separate disciplinary identity by means of a unilateral declaration of independence from metaphysics, including Christian theology – a declaration, which, however, it has proved easier to make than to fulfil’ (ibid: 14).

Introduction

5

Cannell is struck by the continued resistance in anthropology to the religious experiences of others – they may be described in detail, she says, ‘but must be explained on the basis that they have no foundation in reality’ (ibid: 3). The point here is that anthropology is at once symptomatic and generative of a certain sort of subjectivity, an understanding of the subject as constituted via an individualised and interior moral consciousness, one demonstrably not shared by all people everywhere – and one that assumes an almost total divorce between subject and object. In the social sciences this assumption has been manifest more generally through the idea that the material world is a sort of substratum onto which meaning and human categories are projected. A well-known instance of this paradigm is Émile Durkheim’s postulation of ‘collective representations’ (1912), which emphasised the constructed and collective character of meaning. Durkheim envisaged the material and natural world as rendered meaningful by systems of representations that mapped onto it, and significantly, systems that transcended the individual. Divinity, for him, was the reification of society itself. This perspective did not deny the existence of a material world, but proposed that it was a particular language system that conveyed meaning, and that rendered the material world intelligible, not matter itself (see Swift, this volume, for a similar discussion on hermeneutics). Consequentially, knowledge was acquired by abstracting from the materiality of the world the intellectual generalities that make sense of it or the physical and metaphysical forms that animate it. It is unsurprising that the need arose to produce in anthropology a universal and trans-historical definition of religion, namely as an ‘underlying common essence which could be abstracted from concrete but divergent practices’ (Keane 2008: 116). Such universalising conceptions of religion have tended to emphasise ‘belief’ as a cognitive and ultimately subjective phenomenon, whose function is social organisation and cohesion. If throughout most Christian history religious physical discipline had aimed to tune external behaviour with the inner self (Asad 1993: 64), religious rituals came to be seen as structuring symbolic forces capable of overpowering selfish, individualistic instincts and activating noble ideals (Durkheim 1995). This would further separate a more sensual dimension of veneration (through bodies) from the duties of the soul, shifting the ‘religious’ from action-oriented to idea-centred. Asad defends the idea that a definition of religion as an autonomous transcultural phenomenon can be traced to the liberal agenda – typical of the development of secular modernity – of separating politics, law and science from religion; it is a ‘product of a unique post-Reformation history’ (1993: 28) that created a spatial

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distinction between the domains, one which at once suited the interests of those who wished to confine it and defend it. The idea that religious belief is distinct from ordinary historical or cultural knowledge, that it comprises a system of symbolic meanings that map onto, or say something about, the nature of a general order, and that it exists beyond observed practice, is thus specific to a very particular history, that of Christianity (ibid: 42). In this volume we have asked our contributors to maintain a dialogue between ­– on the one hand – a concern with ontological diversity in an analysis of religious objects and practices, and – on the other – a recognition of the material and phenomenal character of religious experience. If in the first instance what is inside and out, what is real and imaginary, what is matter and what is spirit, are distinctions that hinder more than help anthropological accounts, in the second we are forced to come to terms with aspects of human religious experience which radically challenge a hegemonic narrative of dematerialisation, as well as dualistic interpretations of matter and spirit. While we are moved to search for the relations that make people and things and entities into what they are (Henare et al 2007), and not local interpretations of what we know is already there, we also feel called upon to take seriously the material properties of people, things and entities – the ‘thingness’ of things. A focus on ontology can, in our view, alert us to the circularity and even arrogance of assuming that we live in a single world, a reality, understood or misunderstood in different ways by our ‘informants’. By blurring or sidelining the dichotomies of immanent and transcendent, matter and spirit, object and subject, as analytical categories, the papers in this volume deny anthropological discourse any epistemological advantage over the native’s, and aim to allow for religious artefacts to transgress their status as mere ‘objects’ (Henare et al 2007), actively participating in the creation of cosmology. In so doing, they critique the attitude, common in the study of religions, of according privilege to words and symbols for their ‘immateriality’ – that is, over religious practices, spiritual sensorium and material objects – and as such, their supposedly unique capacity to determine ‘moods and motivations’ (Geertz 1983). This necessarily implies drawing out the consequences and effects that ‘native’ categories may have on our own. Religious artefacts and the making of spiritual worlds In their Introduction to Thinking Through Things, which is essentially a methodological treatise, Henare, Holbraad and Wastell (2007) ask us to think about of what a an anthropology of objects would look like if it were not about material culture; this is, of what a ‘thing’ is in the first

Introduction

7

place, regardless of whether and how it is embedded in larger networks of actors and agencies. Can a ‘thing’ also be a concept, an idea, a meaning? In so doing, they question the divides that religious and political ideologies have established between things and people and between things and ideas, many of which are implicitly upheld by contemporary theorists. This may require us to think more closely about the object proper, and about the need to begin with a certain analytical ‘naivety’, as Henare and her colleagues propose. The novelty of their method lies in its suggestion that what is and is not a ‘thing’ is an ethnographic question, and their ability in this way to avoid the most damaging consequences of a dualistic ontology that is arguably embedded in our discipline’s own definition. Taking ‘thing-as-heuristic’ rather than ‘thing-as-analytic’ as a starting point, ensures minimal theoretical baggage, unlike loaded terms such as ‘artefacts’, ‘objects’, ‘materiality’ (2007: 5), and even ‘social’. According to the authors, ‘the difference between an analytic and a heuristic use of the term ‘thing’ is that while the former implies a classificatory repertoire intended for refinement and expansion, the latter serves to carve out things […] as the field from which such repertoires might emerge’ (ibid). For example, in his chapter in their book, Martin Holbraad argues that when the Cuban diviners of the cult of Ifá say that the powder that they divine with on their board is power, they do not mean this metaphorically, or constructively: they mean it literally, forcing the anthropologist to ‘transform his assumptions’ so that he can conceptually overcome this apparent contradiction (ibid: 190). In this case, Holbraad must show how powder also is power, so that the distinction between ‘thing’ and ‘idea’ is no longer tenable. We start with the ordinary (representationist/epistemological) assumption that concepts are the site of difference. Then we argue that in order for difference to be taken seriously (as ‘alterity’), the assumption that concepts are ontologically distinct from the things to which they are ordinarily said to ‘refer’ must be discarded. From this it follows that alterity can quite properly be thought of as a property of things – things, that is, which are concepts as much as they appear to us as ‘material’ or ‘physical’ entities. Hence the first answer to the incredulous question of where ‘different worlds’ might be, is here, in front of us, in the things themselves (2007: 13). Henare et al’s call to ‘think though things’ was one of the inspirations in the conception of this book, and is echoed both in the editors’

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respective chapters, and in the more general framework of anthropological inquiry that binds all the other texts in this volume. But here we also attempt to ask a different (perhaps more specific) set of questions about religious objects and their relations with humans and spirits. Religious objects have been alternately seen as ‘persons’ occupying multiple subject positions and identities. Or, to make up for their assumed impotence, they have been invited by the anthropologist to speak, as in the tradition of subaltern studies. But, paraphrasing Mitchell (1996), the question here might well be: ‘What do objects really want?’ – shifting the question from language to desire, from meaning to action, from objectification to transformation. What we aim to do in this volume is to undermine the general assumption that objects are detrimental to the healthy functioning of social – and divine – relations. We feel that this requires us to be attentive to the often very simple ways in which an object manifests its will to create or co-create in its environment. The ethnographic data presented here lead us to reconsider the consequences of material movement, or the movement of materials ­– inasmuch as this movement generates relations of all kinds – particularly in how an active engagement with and employment of ‘things’, as well as their mere presence, may have consequences beyond epistemological ones: that is, how objects may be complicit in the making of spiritual worlds. This allows us to counter a frustration felt by the contributors to this volume regarding the excessive attention accorded to opposite processes – that is, to processes whereby matter mirrors or instantiates ontology, but is impotent to participate in or transform it – and allows us also to highlight ethnographic instances where material things are generative and creative not merely of social environments, but of cosmology proper. In the end, we feel it is not enough to grant the object ‘subjectivity’ or voice, but rather it may be necessary to see it as intrinsic to and even constitutive of religious ontologies. In this way, we also follow Henare, Holbraad, and Wastell’s interest in what things ‘do’ – that is, ontological effects. In the following sections, we explore what we understand to be some of the key ideas at stake in a consideration of religious materiality. While this Introduction is by no means intended as state-of-the-art, our aim is to lead the reader through some of the ways in which objects/matter have been understood in the past, and to point to what we perceive as the more fruitful approaches to religious ‘things’. The idea is to suggest that greater attention be paid to the kinds of practices regulating contact between the spiritual and the material, the techniques that allow for transformation to occur on either end, as well as the conceptualisations that underpin them.

Introduction

‘Representation’ and its critique

9

The modern era has often been associated with a sense of estrangement. Philosophers and social scientists have coined different terms in the attempt to illustrate this feeling of rupture and separation that modernity has brought about. For Marx (1990), the gap in modern societies between the real and ideal dimension, between thought and reality, was supposed to be at the origin of modern malaises such as the alienation of humans from the product of their activities, their abstraction from that which is concrete and, simultaneously, the fetishism of commodities. Other terms such as ‘disembedding’ (Polanyi 1959), ‘purification’ (Latour 1993), ‘objectification’ (Miller 2005) and ‘representation’ (Mitchell 1988) came to connote this sense of estrangement. Modernity was often perceived as producing a distinction between concepts and things, representation and reality, epistemology and ontology, between the several objects it is made of and the separate, external dimension where subjects stand. Material objects are therefore downplayed, reduced to immaterial signs of their value and meaning (Keane 2005, 2006, 2008). Regardless of its arguable complicity in the modernist project of purification, anthropology has also been instrumental in outlining alternative proposals and understandings of modernity. Africa, in particular, has provided the raw material for countless accounts of how local societies have appropriated and domesticated the principles and practices of modernity (Geschiere and Rowland 1996; Meyer and Pels 2003), therefore highlighting the need for understanding modernity in the plural, rather than in the absolute. If the dream and spectacle of modernity have had a pervasive impact on local imaginations, practices and hopes, modernity has also reproduced enchantment (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992; cf. Benjamin 1999) and activated and elaborated new forms of religious fetishism (see Trapido, this volume). A linear modernist discourse has often opposed and deemed as irreconcilable the tension between foreign modernity and local tradition. However, this tension can not only be extremely creative, but also it is in the intersection of modernist and local ideologies that some of the most challenging conceptual religious proposals have been produced. The idea of ‘representation’ appears to be the consequence of specifically Western histories and cosmologies. The division between subject and object was a necessary requirement for the development of an objective science that escaped the shackles of politics and ideology, passions and emotions (Latour 1993; Keane 2002). The emancipation from the political constituted a modern shift of paradigm from an ancient teleological order, within which were defined and produced economic and

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individual actions, to an ‘original individual’, freed of traditional hierarchies and powers and now defining morality and society for himself (Dumont 1977). In the field of religion, this modern process of ‘representation’ became identified with an increasing detachment of religious forces from the objects and bodies which initially constituted them (Durkheim 1984). The nature of divinity became more general and abstract, as it was now perceived to be defined more by ideas than sensations (Asad 1993; Durkheim 1984; Geertz 1973; Muir 1997). This coincided with the attribution of epistemological priority to the symbolised over the vehicle of symbolisation and over mundane reality (Crapanzano 1992: 219–28; Eliade 1959). That which is symbolised – the signified – was identified with the transcendent, the sacred, with mythic time (cf. Plato 1939). The symbol’s link with its referent became shakier, the symbol being understood as referring to what is other than itself, an ontological separation that resonated with Protestant ideas (Engelke 2006; Keane 2007), and with the reformist drive against false fetishes, oppressive traditions and exaggerated forms of ritualism. Such a semiotic stance (Saussure 1974) led to the envisioning of religion as a ‘mental construction’, seen to contribute to an inscription of the cultural order onto the physical world (Durkheim 1984; Geertz 1980). In this view, human beings and societies were understood to be engaged in the process of spinning ‘webs of significance’ (Geertz 1973: 5) to be laid over the physical substratum. Representations were fixed to a set of predictable and independent phenomena (inert matter) in order to make them meaningful. This has arguably engendered a general tendency of contemplation and interpretation, namely, of the world’s objects and practices, which is ultimately and paradoxically based on transcending the ‘object’ of contemplation, requiring a search for underlying meanings (see Swift, this volume). One of the purposes of this book is to produce alternative perspectives to the understanding of the process of representation through which modernity has been described. If the distancing of humans from the world and the separation of the signified and signifier – very similar to the separation between the spiritual and the material – have, according to rhetoric, made humans capable of mastering and controlling the world, at the same time this distance has shielded them from the consequences of any possible interaction with and involvement in the transformation of the material. It is by analysing the various techniques – in the mundane and the ritual, where the material and the conceptual intersect elucidatively – that we attempt to redress this process of separation.

Introduction

11

While social analysts have often treated representations as illustrations of something else, a number of significant studies of ritual, particularly through the lens of performance (Bateson 1958; Turner 1974, 1982, 1985; Schieffelin 1976, 1985; Kapferer 1991; and see also Bloch 1974, 1986), reveal that a focus on the performative aspects of human endeavour might be a fruitful way of examining the relationship between agency and social structures, as well as between practices and meaning. Ritual, in Turner’s term, completes the conceptual world of a culture by allowing man to experience physically what thought cannot frame (Turner 1982). This emphasis on the ‘performative’, and on aesthetic and physical properties, restores the material texture to representation, beyond the symbolic processes entailed, what Turner himself defined as the ‘materialisation of experience’. Post-structuralism and hermeneutics (Derrida 1977; Said 1979; Spivak 1987) reemphasised once again the gap between the material and the conceptual, language and nature, idea and object. Take the example of Said, who suggests that the efficacy, strength and apparent veracity of a representation of the Orient relies very little, and cannot instrumentally depend, on the Orient as such. On the contrary, representation is made present to the onlooker by virtue of its having excluded, displaced, made supererogatory any such real thing as ‘the Orient’ (Said 1979: 21). However, a simultaneous counter-shift of paradigm in the understanding of representation has also taken place, with Taussig being an example. In his scholarship on mimesis and representation Taussig (1993) argues that such practices deserve more respect and should not be too easily addressed as ‘constructions’ or ‘copies’, which imply an intrinsic falseness or propensity to deceive. According to Taussig, mimetic practices have too easily been name-called out of existence, thus neglecting the powerful, obscure and even magical aspects embedded in the notion of the mimetic (1993: 21). He argues instead that the ‘copy’ shares in or acquires the properties, the character and the power of the original. For him, representation here implies a ‘contamination’ of sorts, a corporeal contact between things and beings, culture and nature, gods and humans. The gap created by science between the object and the subject is bridged by a mimetic ability to merge the object of perception with the body of the perceiver. In similar terms, Bruno Latour attempts to redefine and counter a modernist ideological tendency to disentangle the conceptual from the material, nature and language (1999: 74). For him, matter and meaning are not distinct ontological domains and their relationship is effectively described by neither a correspondence nor a gap. A different phenomenon is occurring, which he describes as ‘circulating reference’ and ‘chain of transformation’

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Making Spirits

(1999: 24). Representation for Latour is a necessary form of orientation, of remembrance and of communication, ultimately defined by an ongoing and recurrent relation and exchange between the conceptual and the material worlds. Alfred Gell’s anthropology of art (1998) is another potent challenge to Saussurean linguistics, and to the tenuous link between signified and signifier (on this point see also Csordas 1990). Gell reconceptualises objects as ‘social agents’, in themselves capable of producing and affecting social relations, as well as relations between humans and gods. In his theory, objects are neither representations nor vehicles for symbols; rather, they carry the agency and intentions of the author and produce effects – they act upon other people and they stimulate them to act and respond.1 Gell understands art objects no longer as inert matter but as articulating a system of action intended to change the world, rather than one encoding symbolic propositions about it (1998: 6). Similarly, religious objects, words and texts – but also food, money, stones and pieces of iron – are often referred to in this volume not so much as containers of symbols, concepts and meanings but rather as energised elements and matter capable of producing transformations. The semiotic tradition has tended to treat things as signs, as if things were simply the ‘garb of meaning’ (Keane 2005), thus dematerialising objects and privileging meaning over actions, consequences and possibilities. In the following chapters, our contributors will discuss practices and embodied forms of representation, iconic signifiers and religious objects that presuppose an overlap and encompassment of matter and meaning. In some case studies, the corporeal and synaesthetic qualities of objects, music and performances appear to have a transformative impact on human, natural and supernatural elements (see Halloy and Rostas, this volume). This is to suggest that the transcendent and the material – rather than being separate and opposite – may overlap in the construction or constitution of the same entity, or might be connected by a shared matrix of animated substance (see Coupaye and Tassi, this volume), as well as regulated by physiological processes or by a ‘circulating reference’. Such distributed understandings of mind and matter (cf. Strathern 1988), lead to understandings of knowledge as implying a constant relation or exchange with the external environment, and in some cases as emerging from the indistinguishability (or collapsibility) of inside and outside (matter and ideal). Rather than basing itself on introspective and contemplative practices, knowledge takes place through the overcoming of individual and objective spaces, articulated by an ongoing flow that blurs the boundaries between outside and inside.

Introduction

13

Some recent ethnographic work, particularly in the fields of religion and cosmology, has proposed a different solution to the practical and ideological problems engendered by a modernist ideology – that is, one that foments a separation between the material and the conceptual, and which conceives of cultures as webs of meaning laid on an inert material substratum. Probably the most original and forceful ethnographic alternative we have to the modern idea of representation comes from the work of Amerindianists (such as Lima 2005), particularly that of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (1992, 1998, 2004), whose idea of ‘multinaturalism’ has turned Western conceptions on representation and culture, meaning and matter, on their head. Essentially, Viveiros de Castro explores the implications of the constitutive difference between Amerindian – that he calls ‘multinaturalist’ – and modern ‘multiculturalist’ ontologies. While Western ontologies are founded on the notion of the unity of nature and a multiplicity of cultures – premised on the idea of the objective universality of material substance and bodies, and the subjective specificity of spirit and meaning (Viveiros de Castro 2004: 465) – the Amerindian societies which he and others have studied are defined by a unity of spirit extendible to all forms and beings, on the one hand, and by a corporeal diversity, on the other, as the surface. Material objectivity is no longer the substratum onto which meaning is projected but the mutable form which wraps the mind, the culture and the soul (cf. Gell 1998, 1993; Strathern 1979). It is from these alternative ethnographic perspectives on representation that we can move to experiment with more fertile understandings of the religious object.

Matter and mediation

What do we mean by religious materiality? What counts as a ‘thing’ in religious or spiritual contexts? Can an object, an artefact or an icon, for example, be simultaneously material and immaterial? Can objects be ideas and ideas objects? Can words be material? What is signalled through the absence of things? How can we understand the importance of things in religion through perspectives other than those that see the object as a ‘carrier’ of meanings or ideas, or as representative of wrongly attributed forms of agency? At stake in engaging with these questions seems to be not only a whole set of assumptions regarding the nature of the ideal and the concrete, the subjective and the objective, but also the manner in which the relationship between persons and things is conceived in religious settings. Hornborg, for instance, suggests that ‘one reason animism continues to intrigue us may that this is precisely what animism does’: it proposes that knowledge ‘is a relation that shapes both the knower and the

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Making Spirits

known’ (2006: 28). By confounding our expectations of subjectivity and agency, the same can be said of the so-called ‘fetish’, which, as Keane has observed (following Pietz 1985), ‘whether religious, Marxist, or Freudian – arises in the encounter between an observer and some sort of Other’ (1997: 677). What this suggests is that if ours (in the West) has typically been an ontology of ‘one ontology’ (Viveiros de Castro 1998: 91), then it is unsurprising that all appeals to the agency of matter itself have been redundant – the object cannot be more than a mere ‘vehicle’. In this ontology objects can ‘carry’ meanings, but cannot conceivably be these meanings, or have effects beyond those which we observe as epistemological (i.e. in the minds of the ‘natives’ we study, effects deriving from beliefs and their enactment). Cross-cutting these themes is the notion of ‘mediation’, which too must be given some thought, namely, because it is so central to the Christian assumptions that we have inherited in anthropology. In recent years, the work of Birgit Meyer (2006, 2008) has revived the debate on religion and mediation, and has shed new light on the role of religious objects through which practitioners experience the presence and power of the transcendent. According to Meyer, in positing a distance between human beings and the transcendent, religions have been forced to supply devotees with a series of authorised practices of mediation which enable a bridging of that distance, the experience and even production of the transcendent. The tendency to define religion as mediation, or mediatory, has allowed the divine to be conceptualised not necessarily as a ‘selfrevealing entity’ but in such a way that ‘it is always “affected” or “formed” by mediation processes, while resisting reduction to mere human-made products (Meyer 2008: 127). Meyer’s concern here is with grasping how experiences of the transcendent are allowed and invoked, in the here and now, through particular material forms. As she states: ‘my approach to the transcendent is resolutely “down to earth”’ (Meyer 2006: 6), in the sense that she is not preoccupied with abstracting symbolically from the religious object but rather with the practical techniques that bring about human encounters with the transcendent. In so doing Meyer brings back to our attention not just collective rituals but also material religious objects such as images, books and buildings – in her words ‘sensational forms’ – which by means of specific feelings and sensory regimes, as well as social structures, are constituted into authorised modes of invoking and organising access to the supernatural. Meyer provides us with a valuable framework to understand religious phenomena by shifting the focus of the researcher to the function of mediatory objects and to the sensational forms and techniques which instantiate

Introduction

15

a relation to, or even forms of contact between the practitioner and, the ‘supernatural’. In this volume we intend to build on Meyer’s ideas, namely, on her understanding of the relational and mutual character of how the so-called supernatural, and its entities are shaped. However, we also remain open to the possibility of exploring different ontological relations between the ‘transcendent’ and the ‘material’, different local theorisations of matter and spirit which may unavoidably lead to unexpected understandings of mediation, or even make the concept superfluous. What the authors whom we discuss in this section suggest is that an anthropology which seeks to unwind the kinds of ontological premises implied in the religious phenomena it studies – rather than simply to reproduce its own premises – needs to be thoroughly relational, that is, to understand people, things and entities as emerging from their relationship with one another. This is so that such an anthropology can allow for religious materiality to be thoroughly relative, to be unconfined to its ‘materiality’, and further, to have recursive effects on itself. When we speak of religious objects, it is difficult not to evoke the idea of mediation. The concept is key to Christianity, and thus has been predictably relevant to the anthropology of religion more generally. In the simplest way, in Christianity mediation to Christ’s grace is achieved through sacraments such as baptism and the Eucharist, although many others are recognised by world Christians, such as confirmation. These ‘mysteries’, as they are also called, were at once symbolic of and transmitters of the divine, whose mediation was further mediated by consecrated individuals. But if Christ would be, for many, the ultimate mediator, an intercessor for humanity, the objects of mediation would become many and varied, often ambiguous and contested. Multiple understandings of ‘things’ would themselves generate multiple ontologies of mediation. As Cannell says, ‘the struggle over the mediation of divine power is one of the aspects of local Christianities that has been best documented in ethnographic writing’ (2006: 17). The mediation of the power of a God who has withdrawn from the world of men is a central theme in the anthropology of Christianity, and also in studies of ascetic practices (ibid: 18), where ‘spirit may be perceived as “beyond” and “better than” flesh, since spirit is that of which God is made’ (ibid). But as the chapters in Cannell’s (and also this) volume attest, such a concept of mediation is rarely straightforward, even among Christian communities. In Cecilia Busby’s account of the understanding of the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in a South Kerala village, for instance, the potency of ‘matter’ is difficult to understand without reference to India’s predominant

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Making Spirits

Hindu cosmology. Busby explains that it is common for Marianad villagers to possess such an object, ‘the efficacy of which is regularly “renewed” by the local priest in a ceremony that reinvests religious power in the family shrine’ (2006: 78). In this sense, the Sacred Heart of Jesus cannot be seen in any straightforward manner as a mediating object, but should be considered in the light of notions of the fluidity and transactability of substance and its importance in the constitution of the person and her relations. In contrast to Christian conceptions of ‘essence’ or ‘spirit’ as that which lies beyond matter, in Busby’s ethnography these supposedly commonsense understandings of mediation are subverted, even if they betray a concern with substance in another form: Religious power in this community is very commonly metaphorized through an idiom of substance, which is seen as capable of being exchanged and passed on, and which is pragmatically materialized in objects. The term for religious power is shakti, the word also used in Hinduism, and this form of power, as we have seen, is paradigmatically understood as immanent: an active capacity operating in this world to material effect (ibid: 87). The anthropology of religion is replete with examples of the unpredictable ways in which spiritual and other forms of power link up with materiality, and of the ambiguity, and often uncontainability, of this relation. In highlighting this point here, we also wish to draw attention to the idea that the sociality and potency of objects may transcend the intentions of the persons that create or use them. Appadurai (1986) and Kopytoff (1986), as well as anthropologists such as Alfred Gell (1998), as we have already mentioned, have alerted us in important ways to the sociality of ‘things’, and to the usefulness of expanding concepts of agency beyond those signalling mere human intentionality. Objects can have biographical trajectories, according to these authors, trace paths, forge relations, enthral, and engender effects of all kinds that are often not reducible to the actions and expectations of people. They are not simply mediators, or projections, of social and cosmological relations, but can indeed produce these via their motion, circulation, aesthetic properties and mutability, and their embeddedness in social life. This shift in perspective requires a new sort of understanding of materiality, one that acknowledges its relativity and its ability to constitute persons, as well as to be constituted by them. While Appadurai’s and Kopytoff’s arguments relate more explicitly to commodities, and to the different phases of

Introduction

17

personification and alienation that these may go through, their analyses point to the importance of methodologically tracing the ‘lives’ of things themselves, ‘for their meanings are inscribed in their forms, their uses, their trajectories’ (Appadurai 1986: 5). As Appadurai argues, ‘in many historical societies, things have not been so divorced from the capacity of persons to act and the power of words to communicate’ (ibid: 4). The object as an instrument of self-mediation, so to speak, is clearly drawn out in the work of Danny Miller, who has helped develop some of these ideas, crucially in the field of material culture studies. For him, the work of ethnography lies in revealing the myriad ways in which the practices and relationships that people engage in ‘create the appearance of subjects and objects through the dialectics of objectification’ (2005: 38). His questions are about what makes people, rather than simply about what people make, and to him humanity is made via its materiality, and not via its opposition to it. One of Miller’s main points on religious materiality is precisely that the ‘immaterial’ always requires material expression. He compares a notion of the transcendent in religion to contemporary Western conceptions of art: The more we come to believe that art is actually transcendent, the more its material form is worth in dollars. Similarly, in the field of religion, the more we feel the deity is beyond our comprehension and representation, the more valuable the medium of our objectification, whether sacrifice or prayer (ibid: 28). While this volume aims to show that this ‘medium of objectification’ is not merely a medium or a means of expression, but as Miller also argues, participates intrinsically and unpredictably in the creation of persons – and in our case, spirits or deities – we take his point that the process of materially ‘producing’ the immaterial is for many societies a sensitive question, and as such, an ethnographic one. The ambiguities and dangers operative in the materialisation of the ‘immaterial’ are elegantly explored by Matthew Engelke in his ethnography of Masowe Friday Apostolics in Zimbabwe (2005, 2007), for whom guardedness towards substances, such as honey, which are inherently ambiguous (being both potentially holy and material substance), betrays the difficulties of achieving an immaterial sort of ‘materiality’ in worship. The weChishanu believe in a ‘live and direct’ faith in which mediatory objects are not simply superfluous, such as the Bible – since God’s grace is better conveyed through speech – but sometimes regarded

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Making Spirits

as actual impediments to this grace, signs of the shortcomings of faith. The absence of ‘stuff’, including church buildings, signals their commitment to a project of ‘immateriality’, complicating the manner in which certain kinds of ‘stuff’ are understood and dealt with. While ‘material culture in its various forms constitutes the single most important obstacle in developing a relationship with God,’ Engelke argues, ‘the commitment to immateriality makes what things the Masowe do use in religious life all the more important’ (2005: 119). And some things are more material than others. Engelke’s ethnographic observations here highlight the challenges that people themselves (and not just anthropologists) face when dealing with what is and is not material – hence, ‘the problem of presence’. Engelke also suggests that materiality is often a rather political affair, serving to delineate the legitimacy of religious groups and leaders and to reinforce cohesion. In this sense, it is not just cosmology that is at stake, but rather more tangible questions of social and even economic organisation, as this volume also shows (see Tassi’s chapter). Rowlands, in a chapter in Miller’s Materiality volume, also touches upon these themes in relation to historical and contemporary examples from West Cameroon. He argues that questions of power should be engaged with not in the abstract, necessarily, but also in the intrinsic (2005: 73), where ‘some people and things are perceived to be more material than others’, with particular consequences (ibid). Rowlands refers here not just to colonialism’s power of objectification through the materialisation of persons, via censuses, etc., but also to local Cameroon Grasslands cosmologies, where the lineage head is thought to be the ‘principal recipient of ancestral substances’ (ibid: 79), and thus, somehow more dense in his bodily materiality, which he distributes. Both of these examples – Engelke’s and Rowlands’ – warn us to be attentive to taking the concept of ‘matter’, bodies and objects included, for granted, alerting us also to the important link that often exists between materiality and personhood. In contexts where materiality is relative, and persons are constituted via their materialisation, the ‘self ’ becomes a relative thing too. A similar case is presented in this book (Espirito Santo’s chapter), where the relativity of presence, dependent on ‘things’, is relevant to both people and spiritual entities. That words too, can be ‘things’, or at the very least have tangible effects like ‘things’, is demonstrated by anthropologists such as Coleman (2006) and Keane (1994, 1997) in their rich ethnographies of Christianity in Sweden and ritual and religious practices in Indonesia, respectively. In both cases, ‘a full account of the interrelations between words and things is not

Introduction

19

merely a matter of discovering a semantics of objects analogous to that of words. It requires looking at the multifunctionality of both speech performances and objects’ (Keane 1994: 608). Among the Word of Life Christian group that Coleman describes, words have a ‘thinglike’ force (2006: 165), inasmuch as sacred or inspired language can ‘recreate or extend one’s persona in the act of giving an aspect of the self to others’ (ibid). Words have effects not just via their comprehension by the recipient, but because they transmit something divine which can become located in the spirit of those who listen to them, and in the best of scenarios, may be born-again through them, while at the same time retaining ‘an objectified element of the charismatic identity of the speaker’ (ibid: 174). As Coleman argues, the receiver need not even respond. The ‘broadcasting’ of cosmology in this way, so to speak, has in it the implication that souls are also saved via such attempts at constituting the spiritual personas of others (ibid: 175). Gifts, such as money, are equally efficacious, the logic being that as an externalisation of the self, these ‘things’, like words, must be put into circulation in order to have effect. As such, they are removed from the person, but remain only semi-autonomous, due to the fact that they are part of the giver’s constitution. Coleman argues that in these ways ‘faith doctrine denies the possibility of creating an unbridgeable split between spheres of existence’, such as economic and spiritual; ‘all are united by being under the thrall of and therefore reflective of divine power’ (ibid: 181). For the purposes of this volume, the ideas in this last paragraph are relevant in at least two ways: in the proposition, first, that words can be ‘thing-like’, and thus that objects/artefacts and speech need not belong to separate ontological domains (Coupaye; Dawson; Halloy; and Rostas, this volume), and secondly, that prosperity or money may be constitutive of religious cosmologies, rather than being simply a function of the secular market logic which penetrates them (Tassi; Trapido, this volume). Martin Holbraad has convincingly demonstrated this latter point in relation to the role of money in the Cuban Ifá cult (2005). Webb Keane, on the other hand, has thoroughly explored the first point in his various ethnographic accounts of Sumbanese exchange, ritual and language. In Anakalang (eastern Indonesia), he says: ‘The forcefulness of exchange objects is intimately bound up with their sign-like qualities, with which they are endowed in part by the object-like qualities of ritual words’ (1994: 605). In Anakalangese ritual exchange, ‘words transmitted without objects lack basic communicative and pragmatic efficacy’ (ibid: 607), as one of his informants explains, with reference to a rite performed with a Christian influence:

20

Making Spirits … the spirits don’t know how to respond to the language of the living … there’s nothing for them to receive, am I right? Just words for them to hear. But as for the prayer that says: ‘Eat the rice, drink the water, receive this!’ … Now that’s the ancestral path that was passed down for us to follow. But this here talk is all we give them, all they hear – there’s no material for them to listen with, for them to receive with … (ibid: 607).

Keane’s analysis also shows the reverse – the inability of objects alone (without speech) to form relationships. Elsewhere (1997), Keane has explored the debates on the agency of language and objects through an analysis of the Dutch Calvinist missionaries’ encounter with Sumbanese ritual experts. What his work seems to question is the primacy of belief in an understanding of religious processes; rather, he raises the question of how the anthropology of religious materiality might develop if it were not about beliefs, or other hidden states (2009: 105). This last question is one of the important ones this volume seeks to address, namely, through the ethnographic explorations of each of its chapters. One of the requirements, it seems, of understanding objects in their own terms is a suspension of an inquiry into the mental states of the devotee under whose beliefs ‘things’ are expected exclusively to take shape and behave. A brief overview of ethnographies such as those above show us that the ‘thing-ness’ of matter is relative, but also that the properties and effects of objects, like those of language, are not confined to their symbolic meaning-conveying characteristics, and thus cannot be exclusively defined in terms of objectification. And more importantly, that the ‘mediator’, the religious artefact, often participates in what is ‘mediated’, so that the two become indistinguishable, eliding dualistic categorisations of mediation. What interests us more specifically in this volume are the communicative dimensions of this mediation process, which, we argue here, are often not mediatory processes at all, but essentially creative and interactive, and further, are processes that bring forth unpredictable relationships and results. By focusing on such processes of communication and exchange in religious domains, our aim in the chapters that follow is to understand the very material dimensions of cosmogony – of making, living and transforming cosmologies, not just instantiating them.

On communication and exchange

The anthropological endeavour is mainly defined by the study and understanding of relations. In the anthropology of religion, these relations

Introduction

21

necessarily encompass more than the ‘social’; or rather, all such relations should be defined socially. However, the idea of a transcendent God and of the gap between creator and created, which has one in form or another acted as an undercurrent in social-scientific thought, has tended to induce in anthropologists a rather static view of religious cosmologies and ontologies, and even of the immutability of religious belief. This has been clearly refuted ethnographically by analyses not just of processes of ‘creolisation’ (Shaw and Stewart 1994), and the remaking of religious symbolism and cosmologies in pluralistic religious environments (Aijmer 1995), but by studies that show that a devotee’s cognitive investment in a particular god or saint is itself subject to variable intensities and should by no means be taken for granted (cf. Glazier 2008). The idea of the divine as absolute and pre-defined has had particular dividends for a conceptualisation of the relation between devotee and the recipient(s) or object of devotion, one of which is the preconception that the devotee’s actions have only limited capacity to impact and transform spiritual/godly forces and plans. Another misconception is the understanding that exchange and contact take place through immaterial forms and devices, precluding the possible centrality of reciprocal physical and material interaction. As has been shown by Cannell (2006), this is simply not the case even for those many communities who define themselves as traditionally Christian. Not only is the transcendent logic inapplicable as a general rule, for ‘if transcendence is not necessarily exclusively Christian, then it is even more clearly true to say that Christianity is not exclusively a religion of transcendence’ (ibid: 41), but neither is the idea that the experience of spiritual proximity/presence or divine contact is devoid of material ‘substance’, or indeed causally separate from things themselves (see Dawson; Halloy; Sansi; and Espirito Santo, this volume, for example). Ethnography has shown the very opposite. Anthropologists and historians (Asad 1993, 2003; Schmidt 2000) show that modern secular society generates a series of practices and ideas that make the separation of matter and divinity effective. Bodies and somatic sensitivities are re-educated and re-trained to exclude as knowledge those sensations and feelings that pose a danger to clear thought and rationality, namely according to a scientific ‘regime of truth’ (Foucault 1984). Such a re-education of the senses in modernity suggests the curtailing of the possibility of a communion with the divine. While there are many notable exceptions to this observation (cf. Csordas’s account of Charismatic Christians in the United States, 1994), physical religious practices have tended to be downplayed by modern doctrines, with bodily receptivity limited in order to avoid types of spiritual and emotional experiences that

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Making Spirits

might be detrimental to a direct and unmediated relation with God. This significantly contrasts with recent trends in New Age spiritual movements in the West, for instance, whose prerogative has been the cultivation of the spiritual or godly through the orientation and education of bodily techniques and self (Heelas 1996). Such modern spins on older forms of spiritual tradition have arguably called attention to the question of a physical self as crucial to an analysis of the experience of an immanent divine and the processes of achieving this communion. In anthropology this trend has manifested itself recently in an enthusiasm for the notion of ‘embodiment’ (cf. Lock 1993), in medical anthropology and beyond. But if in European and North American societies such forms of communing are relatively marginal, in others they take on a constitutive role in an understanding of the formation of both the spirit and the human worlds, and in their knowledge of each other. By drawing attention to the idea of communication as central to understanding the ontological effects of ‘things’, we at once wish to expand this concept to include the sensuous, intimate aspects of communication, aspects which deal with bodily techniques as much as with more abstract relations possible through speech. Spirit mediumship is a prime example of how the body itself is constitutive of such communicative processes, and can thus become the locus of spiritual transformation. A consideration of these aspects is telling for understanding materiality as separate from the intangible, which is largely untenable ethnographically. For example, one recent exploration of the immanent dimensions of communication and transformation is Todd Ramón Ochoa’s article on the Afro-Cuban religious practice of Palo Monte, where the dead are clearly immanent to the living: ‘immanent, as in saturating, as in suffusing’ (2007: 482), even visceral. Palo is too unexpected in its basic assumptions about the status of matter, the dead, and the living, to be seamlessly assimilated into prevailing ethnographic modes of analysis as these are defined, above all, by their adherence to regimes of knowing organized under the signs of negation, identity, and being (ibid: 479). Writing about it requires disrupting habits of thought rooted deep in Western philosophical traditions (ibid). Palo is materialist through and through, Ochoa says, not just because it ‘resolves’ material problems of the everyday sort but because this visceral ‘immanence’ of the dead is the very definition of spiritual proximity, ‘the body becoming a form of the

Introduction

23

dead, and the dead becoming material in momentary coagulations we recognize as bodies and objects’ (ibid: 484). Such an ethnographic case may point disquietingly to the possible gaps in a dialectical approach to religious materiality and in its conceptualisation of the processes of objectification. Indeed, if for Ochoa the dead are best seen as an ‘uncontainable spreading, each unstable version becoming yet another, which stands not in opposition to its serial self-others, but alongside them, sliding along the surface on the way to and from the limitless becoming’ (ibid: 489), the value of a logic of ‘dialectical process’ in which objects, subjects, persons and spirits are made may vanish altogether. Ochoa visualises the process using instead the metaphor of waves in the ocean, coming and going, rising and falling, becoming more or less immanent. In Palo, as in other Cuban forms of spirit mediumship, the viscerality of sensation is not just a marker of spiritual existence – it actively contributes to it. It is at once communication and creation. Ochoa significantly alerts us to the often-striking inadequacy of our academic language in describing instances of spirit mediation. The phenomenology of spirit possession has been given considerable attention recently (for example, Csordas 1990, 1994a, 1994b; Danforth 1989). The literature on spirit possession is simply too vast to consider here. Considerably less attention, however, has been accorded to the notion that such forms of experience may be indissociable from processes of material devotion, or from ‘things’ more broadly, and indeed may depend on them. The idea that spirit mediation is ‘thing-free’ is clearly unsupported by existing ethnography, from the Afro-Caribbean to China and Taiwan. In some circumstances, spirit-person relations are dominated and determined by purely economic factors, as well as generative of prosperity, as Raquel Romberg’s original work (2003, 2009) on the Puerto Rican medium as ‘spiritual entrepreneur’ shows. In her engrossing ethnography of espiritistas and brujas Romberg proposes that the spiritist’s healing should be seen as commensurate with, rather than contradictory to, a capitalist economic structure, in which Puerto Rican brujería has become an invisible yet active partner of consumerism and welfare, speaking in their idiom as well as engaging with them. In response to interlacing global flows of ideas and commodities and by way of strategic and unorthodox elaborations, brujos articulate capitalist and welfare values with the ethos of the world of spirits in order to promote their clients’ prosperity (2003: 11).

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Making Spirits

Rather than contesting it, spiritists and their spirits reproduce the social order, where material successes are seen also as spiritual ones, markers of God’s blessings and good spirit interventions. As in many other Afro-Caribbean religious practices (Santería in Cuba, Vodoun in Haiti, Umbanda in Brazil), offerings are not simply mediatory – they are part and parcel of the fluid circulation of blessings and effects between the worlds of the living and the entities with whom are established distinct kinds of relations, relations which shape ‘entities’ – more broadly – on both sides. This alerts us to attend more closely to the cosmological role of exchange in religious settings, which may have been insufficiently addressed. Reciprocality and exchange have been subjects of much anthropological study. The work of Jonathan Parry (1986), for example, has dealt with the relation between the devotee and the divine within the context of a particular realm of exchange. Drawing from Mauss’s The Gift and from the Hindu concept of ‘religious gift’ – damadharma – Parry identifies a realm of exchange which does not imply a direct reciprocity, and where the gift may return to the donor but is deferred to another existence. Parry associates this kind of exchange with a relational, disinterested dynamic that is both sublimated and superior to the material, worldly forms of exchange. Such a realm of exchange is characterised by non-reciprocal transactions where offerings, prayers and gifts are passed from the mundane to the spiritual domain. Gift-giving in this realm of exchange is not expected to be reciprocated in any kind of direct form. What the devotee may hope to gain from practising this kind of supposedly altruistic type of gift-giving is salvation in the next life. Interestingly enough, salvation might be achieved through the act of transforming and diverting ‘gifts’ from the worldly to the spiritual economy while the devotee is still on Earth. According to Parry, salvation and world religions tend to place great emphasis on the merits of gifts and alms, ideally given in secrecy and without any expectation of worldly returns. It is this boundary that ‘world religions’ have created between a contingent earthly domain and the state of salvation from which suffering has been eliminated, which has led modern societies to define exchange as self-interested and as standing in opposition to gifts which do not demand reciprocation. The implication here is that this kind of spiritual gift-giving seems to hold few possibilities of physically and ontologically transforming the recipient. If any kind of transformation takes place here, it is generally only the giver that is likely to be affected. In traditional societies reciprocal exchange is the source of productiveness, well-being and fecundity (Sahlins 1972);

Introduction

25

the gift is considered to be fertile and to promote prosperity. The gap created by modernity, by the Reformation and by salvationism between the material and the transcendent, not only curtailed the possibility of a reciprocal exchange between these domains but caused the ‘religious gift’ to lose its ‘spirit’ (cf. Mauss 1954). One of the intentions of the case studies presented in this volume is to show how the movement and exchange of matter, religious gifts and offerings may be able to produce ontological effects and eliminate the gap with the spiritual, wherever relevant. This enables us to arrive at different concepts of exchange and even relations between the worldly and the divine, some regulated and defined by corporeal and physiological processes, others articulated by constant practices of reciprocal appropriation between spiritual forces and material entities, generating a concomitance of distinct desires, powers and values in spirits, humans and objects. Our point, born from these ethnographic observations, is that people often do the work of collapsing the immanent and the transcendent (thing, concept) themselves, via their active engagement with the world and with things, and our title – Making Spirits – alludes precisely to the importance we attribute to this ‘work’ of creating proximity from distance (thus, ‘making’) spirit from matter, cosmology from objects, and so forth, processes to which we wish to call attention. These are technical, sensual, experiential processes, as well as conceptual ones. The principal idea of this volume, in line also with Henare et al’s agenda, is to propose that ‘things’ (objects, bodies, or other physical entities) can have cosmological, and even ontological, effects, in ways mostly impossible to envisage before the work of ethnography. This approach may enable us to elaborate further on Lévi-Strauss’s idea of ‘bricolage’ (1996). As we know, Lévi-Strauss posited a distinction between two kinds of ‘scientific thought’, one adapted to perception and imagination and one at a remove from it. While the latter was characteristic of abstract, scientific thought, the former was so of the ‘bricoleur’ – ‘mythical thought’ – specialised in the kinds of logics borne from the use of the properties of ‘things’ and their classification. This would be a halfway state between percepts and concepts, he proposed. The kind of science practiced by these former peoples he called ‘science of the concrete’, where the scientist was the ‘bricoleur’, the one who collects and recombines pre-existing elements of a given cosmos, making do with whatever is at hand (1996: 17). According to Lévi-Strauss, the bricoleur ‘derives his poetry from the fact that he does not confine himself to accomplishment and execution: he ‘speaks’ not only with things […], but also through things’ (1996: 21).

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Importantly, where the scientist creates events (thus, changing the world) by means of structures, the bricoleur creates structures by means of events (ibid: 22). The curious thing here is that while we may be tempted to see the ethnographic subjects on which the following chapters are based as bricoleurs, recombining and thus reconstituting their (finite, pre-ordained) worlds through their use of ‘things’, the point is the exact opposite. The religious persons we will talk about speak through the medium of things, and with things. But they also do more: they create new ‘events’, just as the abstract scientist in Lévi-Strauss’s account, via these manipulations, which also change the world – that is, ontology. Notes 1 In Peircean linguistics (Peirce 1986), the link between object and ‘symbol’ is defined arbitrarily by a convention, while an ‘index’ refers to an object which is physically and directly affecting it (i.e. a weathervane) and an ‘icon’ holds a resemblance in form to the thing it denotes. For Gell the art object refers to a prototype (such as a historical person, or a deity), either by representing it ‘iconically’ or by an ‘indexical’ association – but not symbolically.

Bibliography

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Coleman, Simon (2006). ‘Materializing the self: words and gifts in the construction of evangelical identity’. In F. Cannell (ed.), The Anthropology of Christianity (Durham, NC, & London: Duke University Press), pp. 163–84. Comaroff, Jean and John Comaroff (1992). Ethnography and Historical Imagination (Boulder, CO: Westview). —— (eds.) (2001). Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press). Crapanzano, Vincent (1992). Hermes’ Dilemma and Hamlet’s Desire (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press). Csordas, Thomas (1990). ‘Embodiment as a paradigm for anthropology’, Ethos, 18/1, pp. 5–47. —— (1994a). The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). —— (ed.) (1994b). Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Danforth, Loring (1989). Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Derrida, Jacques (1997). Of Grammatology, trans. G. C. Spivak (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press). Dumont, Louis (1977). From Mandeville to Marx: The Genesis and Triumph of Economic Ideology (Chicago, IL, and London: University of Chicago Press). —— (1986). Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective (Chicago, IL, and London: University of Chicago Press). Durkheim, Émile (1984). The Division of Labour in Society (Basingstoke: Macmillan). —— (1995). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York and London: Free Press). Eliade, Mircea (1959). The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. W. Trask (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World). Engelke, Matthew (2005). ‘Sticky subjects, sticky objects: the substance of African Christian healing’. In D. Miller (ed.), Materiality (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press), pp. 118–139. —— (2007). A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church (Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, CA, and London: University of California Press). Geertz, Clifford (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books). —— (1980). Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Gell, Alfred (1993). Wrapping in Images: Tattooing in Polynesia (Oxford: Clarendon). ——  (1998). Art and Agency:  Towards an Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon). Geschiere, Peter and Michael Rowlands (1996). ‘The domestication of modernity: different trajectories’, Africa, 66/4, pp. 552–4. Glazier, Stephen (2008). ‘Demanding spirits and reluctant devotees: belief and unbelief in the Trinidadian Orisa movement’, Social Analysis, 52/1, pp. 19–38. Hall, Stuart (1997). Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London, Thousand Oaks, CA, and New Delhi: Sage, in association with The Open University).

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Heelas, Paul (1996). The New Age Movement (London: Blackwell). Henare, Amiria, Martin Holbraad and Sari Wastell (eds.) (2007). Thinking Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically (Abingdon: Routledge). Holbraad, Martin (2005). ‘Expending multiplicity: money in Cuban Ifá cults’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 11/2, pp. 231–54. —— (2007). ‘The power of powder: multiplicity and motion in the divinatory cosmology of Cuban Ifá’. In A. Henare et al (eds.), Thinking Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically (Abingdon: Routledge), pp. 189–219. Hornborg, Alf (2006). ‘Animism, fetish, and objectivism as strategies for knowing (or not knowing) the world’, Ethnos, 71/1, pp. 21–32. Hutchins, Edwin (1995). Cognition in the Wild (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Ingold, Tim (2006). ‘Rethink the animate, re-animating thought’, Ethnos, 71/1, pp. 9–20. Kapferer, Bruce (1991). A Celebration of Demons (Oxford and Washington, DC: Berg Press and Smithsonian Institution Press). Keane, Webb (1994). ‘The value of words and the meaning of things in Eastern Indonesian exchange’, Man (now Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute), NS, 29/3, pp. 605–29. ——  (1997). Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society (Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, CA, and London: University of California Press). —— (2002). ‘Sincerity, “modernity” and the Protestants’, Cultural Anthropology, 17/1, pp. 65–92. —— (2005). ‘Signs are not the garb of meaning: on the social analysis of material things’. In D. Miller (ed.), Materiality (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press), pp. 182–205. —— (2006). ‘Anxious transcendence’. In F. Cannell (ed.), The Anthropology of Christianity (Durham, NC, & London: Duke University Press), pp. 308–23. ——  (2007). Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter (Berkeley, CA, and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press). —— (2008). ‘The evidence of the senses and the materiality of religion’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14, pp. 110–27. Kopytoff, Igor (1986). ‘The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process’. In A. Appadurai (ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 64–94. Latour, Bruno (1993). We Have Never Been Modern (Harlow: Pearson Education). —— (1999). Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press). ——  (2005). Resassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Leach, James (2007). ‘Differentiation and encompassment: a critique of Alfred Gell’s theory of the abduction of creativity’. In A. Henare et al (eds.), Thinking Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically (Abingdon: Routledge), pp. 167–219. Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1996). The Savage Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Lienhardt, Godfrey (1954). ‘Modes of thought’. In E. E. Evans-Pritchard et al (eds.), The Institutions of Primitive Society (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 95–107. Lima, Tania Stolze (2005). Um Peixe Olhou Para Mim: O Povo Yudjá e a perspectiva (São Paulo, Brasil: Editora UNESP).

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Rowlands, Michael (2005). ‘A materialist approach to materiality’. In D. Miller (ed.), Materiality (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press), pp. 72–87. Sahlins, Marshall (1972). Stone Age Economics (London and New York: Routledge). Said, Edward (1979). Orientalism (New York: Vintage). de Saussure, Ferdinand (1916/1974). Course in General Linguistics, C. Bally and A. Sechehaye (eds.), trans. Wade Baskin (London: Owen). Schieffelin, Edward (1976). The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers (New York: St Martin’s). ——  (1985). ‘Performance and the cultural construction of reality’, American Ethnologist, 12/4, pp. 707–24. Schmidt, Leigh E. (2000). Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion and the American Enlightenment (Cambridge MA; Harvard University Press). Sharp, Lynn (2006). Secular Spirituality: Reincarnation and Spiritism in NineteenthCentury France (Lanham, MD, and Plymouth: Lexington Books). Spivak, Gayatri C. (1987). In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (New York and London: Methuen). Stewart, Charles and Rosalind Shaw (eds.) (1994). Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: the Politics of Religious Syncretism (London: Routledge). Strathern, Marilyn (1979). ‘The self in self-decoration’, Oceania, 49, pp. 241–57. —— (1988). The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Taussig, Michael (1993). Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (New York and London: Routledge). —— (2003). ‘Viscerality, faith and skepticism: another theory of magic’. In B. Meyer and P. Pels (eds.), Magic and Modernity, pp. 273–306. Taylor, Charles (1992). The Sources of the Self: the Making of the Modern Identity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) —— (2007). A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Turner, Victor (1974). Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press). —— (1982). From Ritual to Theatre: the Human Seriousness of Play (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications). —— (1985). ‘The anthropology of performance’. In E. Turner (ed.), On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press), pp. 177–204. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo (1992). From the Enemy’s Point of View: Humanity and Divinity in an Amazonian Society (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). —— (1998). ‘Cosmological deixis and Amerindian perspectivism’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, NS, 4/3, pp. 469–88. —— (2004). ‘Exchanging perspectives: the transformation of objects into subjects in Amerindian ontologies’, Common Knowledge, 10/3, pp. 463–84. Washington, Peter (1993/2003). Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon: A History of the Mystics, Mediums, and Misfits Who Brought Spiritualism to America (New York: Schocken Books). Weber, Max (1904/2002). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Oxford: Blackwell). Wilson, Bryan (1990). The Social Dimensions of Sectarianism, Sects and New Religious Movements in Contemporary Society (Oxford: Clarendon).

Part I Spirits in the Making

Chapter 2

Materiality, Cosmogony and Presence among Cuban Spirits and Mediums Diana Espirito Santo

Matter’s dialogue with spirit in Cuba

This chapter is about the ontological significance of material things in the practice of Cuban spiritism, a popular mediumship cult embedded in and fundamental to the wider Afro-Cuban religious cosmos, and thus known as ‘syncretic’ or ‘crossed’ spiritism (Mederos and Hodge Limonta, 1991). Espiritistas are gifted individuals adept at materialising the presence of the dead in their own lives and in those of their clients, namely, through specific forms of homage and representation, designed both to bring out their ‘muertos’ in the likeness of themselves, and to provide them with the means by which to effect good deeds on a material level. It is thought that each person, regardless of their beliefs, is accompanied by a unique set of protective entities, whose personalities and characteristics are ascertained through the course of ritual engagement, but whose appearance is also subject to the manner with which they are engaged. These spirits typically embody the images of Cuba’s ethnic, racial and religious diversity, as well as its trauma and conflict. Their cultivation and worship implies a constant investment in the expansion of a particular ‘self’, at once one conceptualised in terms of its multiplicity, and consolidated by virtue of its material indexes. This is done both individually and in the context of larger ritual gatherings, called misas espirituales (spiritual masses). While spiritist moral discourses tend to place it as the less ‘material’ of Afro-Creole religious practices, espiritismo arguably equips this realm with the clearest

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technology for establishing mutually transformative ontological relations, with equally clear implications for the development of personhood. In Cuba one often hears the term ‘materialisation’, mostly with reference to ritual artefacts, magical objects, spirit representations such as dolls and icons, and importantly, animal blood, all of which are thought both to empower (by housing, representing, feeding) and to make visible (by exteriorising and giving form to) the world of the dead and its deities. Indeed, the place of ‘matter’ is so prominent in the religious cosmos that Jorge and Isabel Castellanos are among several scholars to suggest in recent years not just the instrumentality of contemporary Afro-Cuban religion, but the ‘animistic’ nature of its relationship to ‘things’. In all reglas (branches of Afro-Cuban religion), they argue, there are several important commonalities, among which is the ‘belief in a mysterious and active power of supernatural nature that can infuse natural objects (mineral, vegetable, animal or human) with a dynamism, an energy or power that they would otherwise not possess’ (1992: 16, my translation). An example of this is the Regla de Ocha’s (also known as Santería) concept of aché, which, like the Polynesian notion of mana (cf. Holbraad 2007 for a comparison), is associated with an extra-human lifeforce – emanating from and distributed by gods to objects and persons – as well as with good fortune, authority, virtue and power; thus its human embodiment. Another closely related theme, say the Castellanos, is the belief in the idea that ‘objects and natural phenomena may be inhabited by souls or other spiritual powers’ (ibid). An example here would be magical objects of the Reglas de Palo (or Palo Monte, associated with traditions from the Congo basin), especially the nganga, a recipient filled with natural substances, bones and sticks, to which is tied the spirit of a deceased person, its ‘slave’ (perro). In both these cases, matter is imbued with something that is extra to it and in which it participates only insofar as it becomes its object. In the light of these postulates, it is unsurprising that the Castellanos understand the Afro-Cuban religious cosmos as one premised on a logic of quantative ritual accumulation. On the one hand, their argument seems to refer to a historical process of syncretic ritual and cosmological bricolage, so to speak, where popular versions of Catholicism have added to a basis of West African deity-worship, in turn enriched via the magical practices associated with the dead in Bantu-speaking cultures, in turn articulated within the ontological parameters of European-derived forms of spiritism brought to Cuba in the nineteenth century, and so on. On the other hand, it points also to what is quite a widespread assumption in Cuba: that followers of the various modes of Afro-Cuban religion will tend

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to be faithful neither to single religious identities nor to particular groups or temple affiliations, moving instead to where circumstance and efficacy takes them (cf. Argyriadis 2005). According to the Castellanos, a shared ‘implicit or underlying monotheism’ (ibid) supporting more polytheistic forms, as well as the absence of a single religious hierarchy or authority system, may be what allows for such mixing and matching to occur without much cognitive friction. The visible accumulation of ritual ‘things’, accompanying an increasing number of spiritual commitments and/or protections as an individual’s religious career progresses, would then simply be the corollary of this. How does matter multiply, then? Digitally, would be the answer here, for it is an index of something else – power, aché, spirit, and so on – where this ‘something else’ is a substance of an autonomous a priori sort, with quantifiable results precisely through the inert ‘things’ it animates. But while the clearly pragmatic character of Afro-Cuban religion cannot be denied – religion resolves, people say (cf. Hagedorn 2001) – the notion of ‘materiality’ implied in the above observations raises a few problems, not least of which is that it arguably does not start from an indigenous understanding of what ‘matter’ is, does or can do. Consider the example of Daniel, a young practitioner of Afro-Cuban religion, whose main spirit guide (an African sorcerer) increasingly appears to him in his dreams to direct and warn him. Daniel’s understanding of his relationship with his spirit’s ‘things’ (as well as his relationship with his spirit through ‘things’) – especially the role of spirit representations – substantially unsettles some of the above precepts. He says: It was when I finally represented him [in the shape of a doll], and I dressed him with his clothes, that I remember seeing him, in a dream, in a room where I was living then. I remember that he took off the old pair of shorts that he had been wearing until that moment, and he put on the new ones that I had offered him in the representation. I also remember that he placed a plate of food for me on the ground. It was as if he was telling me that I should eat what he was offering, but at the same time, that I should offer him food, real food. So I did. After that, every time I began to stand close to that representation, I would feel all the hairs on my body stand on end; I would feel his presence. In this citation, Daniel alludes to the fact that his material actions (the placing of clothes on a spirit representation) resulted in spiritual changes

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(the spirit putting on new shorts), which in turn solicited somatic and thus material responses on his part (hairs standing on end), where the opposite is also the case (the spiritual/virtual food beckons forth the physical food, which in turn transforms into spiritual ‘food’). In what could be seen metaphorically – in the style of the artist Escher (I take this image from a book by a popular writer on quantum physics, Fred Alan Wolf 2001) – as a hand (matter) that draws another hand (spirit) drawing another hand (matter) and so on and so forth, the image provided here draws us deeply into a reconsideration of the nature of ‘things’ in the experience and articulation of cosmology; or rather, it draws us to the need to relate experience with articulation in this context. There is nothing in Daniel’s account to suggest that a normal concept of ‘infusing’ or ‘imbuing’ of artefacts is at play. Rather, we are looking at a much more complicated ontological dialogue which undercuts any simplistic view of religious ‘matter’. In a chapter dedicated to pursuing the theoretical implications of understandings of ‘power’ and ‘powder’ among the Afro-Cuban diviners of the cult of Ifá (2007), Martin Holbraad sharply demonstrates the untenability of the idea that objects are always mere ‘recipients’ of immaterial ‘stuff’. Rather, he shows, things, such as the sacred powder (curiously also called aché), with which the divination priests – babalawos – make their oracle god immanent (Orula) in each consultation, are also qualities such as power, or even divinities. If we are to take ‘native’ thought seriously, then, a ‘thing’ is not always distinct from an idea, or a spirit, or vice-versa. At times, it may be both, allowing it to become something which is categorically and ontologically transgressive. This is coherent with the argument advanced by Holbraad and his colleagues Henare and Wastell (2007) in which they call for an anthropology of artefacts that suspends epistemological inquiry (why people believe objects have power, for example) in favour of an analysis of its ontological return (what our ontological premises must look like in order to allow for the existence of powerful objects). I also agree that to render an account of religious objects viable in the Cuban context it is necessary to collapse heuristically any distinction that may prevail between what the analyst takes as ‘matter’ and its various possible opposites – spirits, selfhoods, aché or magical substances – so that ‘thing-ness’ may be seen not simply as a precondition for but as a crystallisation of human and spiritual interactions. This is clearly not the same as a view of objects as ‘condominiums’ of meaning, for instance, as ‘qualisigns’ that may evoke different responses in distinct semiotic regimes (cf. Manning and Meneley 2008: 287–8). Rather, what I will propose is that matter directly affects the ontological spectrum (rather than just

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representing it in its manifold registers) by providing the spirit world with the tools with which to generate and manifest difference, materially. Matter and spirit seem to work with each other as alternate figure-ground perspectives, where perspective shifts (spirit, person) in this ontological spectrum – namely, through actions on both levels – are what allow for cosmological relations to occur in the first place. In respect of Cuba it would not be incorrect to state that spirits exist as virtualities, or potentials; that is, potentials for action or even for war; potential sources of knowledge or vision; potentialities of one’s own character, or facets of oneself in a state of becoming; in sum, presences in potential which call for consolidation through the human manipulation of certain material ‘things’. To make such a statement is in no way to discredit the reality of spirits, or their tangibility for some, or to locate them in states of mind or beliefs. It is simply to recognise what most practitioners of Afro-Cuban religion and spiritism do: that, independently of the fact of existence, there is a strong sense in which spirits and deities must also be ‘made’ and accomplished on earth, not simply worshipped as transcendent members of a given cosmos. Indeed, matter is the almost inevitable bedfellow of spirit. In Afro-Cuban religious circles one is simply not understood without the other, for it is somehow in their conversation that ‘presence’ can be generated and experienced, even sensorially or viscerally. The question is: what is the nature of this conversation? In this chapter I will show that as the ultimate ground for manifestation and often the manifestation itself, ‘things’ – artefacts, dolls, food – can be seen as intimately creative of cosmology, not just reflective of it. But this is simultaneously because ‘things’ may not, after all, be mere ‘matter’ – that is, defined in Kantian/Cartesian mode as containers for meaning. They also project symbols (or a virtual version of themselves) that take on life in a spirit world where they are transformed into a spiritual potential that may in turn become materialised. This is made especially apparent in the local practices of spirit mediumship, known as espiritismo, where we are alerted to the peculiarly cosmogonic quality of this interaction. I will argue here that forms of recognising spiritual existence through matter can paradoxically not just give form to, but actually dynamically create multiple and unpredictable aspects of that which already exists. In spiritism we are not faced simply with the agency of spirit acting on matter (object as ‘vessel’ for meaning); we must also deal conceptually with the agency of matter acting on spirit and enabling its potential to act back (spirit as ‘vessel’ for matter). The question then becomes: what is ‘materialising’ what?

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Michael Lambek argues – in relation to his own ethnography of Mayotte religion but also with respect to studies of spirit possession generally – that there should be no sharp distinctions drawn between the anthropologist’s descriptive material and its analysis or interpretation; in many cases, the order of exposition itself determines interpretation (1981: 11). With this in mind, in what follows I do several things, some simultaneously, which include: tracing the various meanings and functions of materiality and materialisation in Cuban spiritist practices, particularly those relating to the prevalent spirit representation; arguing that a double-ended theory of materiality calls for a review of traditional definitions of ‘materialisation’, since both ‘things’ and ‘spirits’ here may be carriers of ‘matter’; and proposing that the developed spirit medium be regarded as an expert in the cosmogony – rather than simply expression – of a universe of spirits and their agency, in as much as he/she intimately partakes of the continuous creation and recreation of his/her muertos (spirits of the dead). In this particular ethnography, neither is matter dead (or lifeless) nor is the spirit entirely animate. Rather, the person seems to be a privileged activator of both, directing and orchestrating ontological forms through the manipulation of images and objects, with corresponding results for knowledge, perception, and self.

Materiality: dolls, clothes and gifts for spirits

‘What is so important about spirit representations?’ I once asked Eduardo, one of my close friends and informants in Havana, and an experienced spiritist and practitioner of Afro-Cuban religion. Eduardo’s and his wife Olga’s apartment was testament to the spiritist commitment to homaging the dead through objects of representation. Like most other religious houses in Havana, their flat was replete with statuettes of indigenous or Arab spirits, barbie or rag dolls dressed like gypsies or African princesses or warriors, and images that represented one or another entity, ancestor or saint, laden with attributes such as miniature machetes, bows and arrows, trinkets, bracelets, cards and fans, as well as gifts of money, candles, perfume, tobacco, coffee and rum. Propped up on small tables or dollsized wooden chairs, or on cupboard shelves and other furniture, these presences stare out from their respective corners and demand the spectator’s gaze, for they are also somehow sentient, growing things. If the spirit world depends on material recognition from its living counterpart, then Cuban living rooms offer no shortage of appetising forms of acknowledgement. But these varied figures mark more than mere hypothetical agencies in a given religious cosmology; they are instruments and mediators for the

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performance of various sorts of ontological operations – that is, they have effects beyond those of a ‘representational’ sort. Eduardo made this clear enough. ‘The point of representations is to materialise [the spirit], to bring him closer. The representation is an icon, a reference that serves as an intermediary between your conscious attention and the spiritual world,’ he said, in answer to my question. The spirit may also be drawn to it, enabling the gap between ‘us’ and ‘them’ to be bridged, Eduardo added. But, he goes further: Each material object has a corresponding symbol in the spirit world. Take this plate of food, for example. There is a symbol there that transmutes from the material to the spiritual through the icon that is the doll. In the spiritual world the vitality of the food is absorbed. The same can be said for other objects: When you place a bell, a necklace, or a dress with certain characteristics, you are typifying images which give the spirit power – even jurisdiction – to act on, produce change, modify, add to, remove or benefit from the basis of what is transmitting through this image, usually to help the person. This is reminiscent of how devotees of the Afro-Cuban deity Ochún, associated with the Virgin of Caridad del Cobre, offer her ‘sweet’ things, such as fruit and cakes, in order to ‘sweeten’ their love lives. Or, more morbidly, how people’s names may be written on pieces of paper that are then ‘weighed down’ by a stone or other heavy object, so as to incapacitate or immobilise the person named. The efficacy of matter can work on sympathetic principles, then. But far from being simply material manifestations of something that transcends them, what Eduardo is also suggesting is that matter’s symbolic properties are neither as material nor as symbolic as we might think; instead, the object serves precisely as a kind of convertor of material symbols (and intentions) to spiritual ‘materials’. Furthermore, artefacts and consumables may not be simply gifts: they are literally a mode of permission (and ammunition) for the spirits to carry out their duties and bestow their favours. A very brief online-dictionary search of the meaning of the word ‘materialisation’ produces some of the following typical definitions: ‘to come into being’, ‘to become reality’, ‘to appear’, ‘to cause to appear in bodily

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form’, ‘to come into perceptible existence’, ‘to become actual or real’ and ‘to become corporeal’. As a verb, ‘to materialise’ produces ‘to give material form to’, ‘to invest with material attributes’ and ‘to make physically perceptible’. It is also ‘to emerge’ or ‘to rise’. ‘Materialisation’ in our common vocabulary, then, is impossible without the existence of something to be materialised. What is materialised? Good ideas, predictions, plans, projects, illnesses, artistic visions, thoughts and ghosts. Implied in all these definitions is a direction – a transition to be made from the ideal to the concrete, from the imaginary to the palpable. But Afro-Cuban religious (and particularly spiritist) practices resist a unidirectional understanding of ‘materialisation’, especially one that takes as the starting point of this process some ‘thing’ whose integrity is independent of the process itself. As I have mentioned above, Cuban spirits expect to be ‘made’. By this I mean not just that a person’s relation to a spiritual entity must be discerned and achieved – temporally, materially, phenomenologically – but also that this relation is in some way constitutive of the entity itself, which paradoxically both pre-exists its relationship to people and depends on it for continuous efficacy, presence, and importantly, substance. To ‘make’ is not just to materialise: it is to make possible entirely new entities and spiritual forms, with shifting qualities, like Eduardo alludes to above. This means that ‘making’ is simply not equivalent to ‘representing’ or to ‘making corporeal’; it can be said to be fundamental to the ‘substance’ of that which it ‘makes’ in the first place. In a now-classic article, Karin Barber proposes a similar argument. ‘The orisa [‘gods’] are, according to Yoruba traditional thought, maintained and kept in existence by the attention of humans. Without the collaboration of their devotees, the orisa would be betrayed, exposed, and reduced to nothing’ (1981: 724). Worship here is instrumental through and through, inasmuch as the strength of the orisa’s blessings depend in turn on the devotees’ commitment to its existence. The resemblance between such data and the Cuban case is not coincidental, of course: contemporary Afro-Cuban religious forms draw significantly on West African notions of cosmos and self, such as the so-called lucumi traditions (a word used in Cuba to describe the Yoruba-speaking peoples). In Santería, arguably Cuba’s best-known Afro-Cuban religious practice, the orichas, known simply as santos after the Catholic saints with whom they are associated historically, are whimsical and capricious, demanding of their ‘children’ a sustained project of faith through materiality – the consecration of certain recipients and stones, the offering of gifts, food and especially the blood of sacrifice, thought to contain aché, the life force essential to their continued

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immanence in earthly affairs. Devotion here is thus an actively material endeavour (cf. Brown 2003), where things are directly implicated in the health of a cosmology that cannot be said fully to exist without such relations of reciprocity. Further, having been once human beings themselves, deified precisely through such sustained devotional loops over centuries, the orichas provide ipso facto evidence of the efficacy of matter: not just in mediating between the imaginal and the actual in a symbolic sense, but in producing, in an ontological sense, one via the other and back again. As a worldwide movement ‘spiritism’ made and continues to make claims to scientific-derived thought, particularly European positivist definitions of spirituality that exclude ritualism or iconophilia (Allan Kardec (1804–69) was the father of modern spiritism; a Frenchman, he claimed that spiritism was not religion but science, morality and philosophy). Cuban spiritist practices, however, undeniably inherit an Afro-Cuban consciousness of the potency of ‘things’. In contrast to countries such as Puerto Rico (Núñez Molina 1987) and Brazil (Hess 1991), where spiritist groups and federations have largely generated an ideological if not institutional autonomy from co-existing Afro-Latin religious forms (while nevertheless influencing these cults), in Cuba spiritist mediums by and large emerge from the dynamics of a wider Afro-oriented religious environment. Spiritist mediums perform the vital function of allowing the souls of the protective and ancestral dead their rightful place in all the reglas, in a natural yet ritually separate manner (Brandon 1997; Palmié 2002). And because there is no formal ritual criterion or threshold constraining practice, anyone who properly develops his/her faculties, and who proves them, can be known as a medium. There is only one term used to designate a spiritist medium – espiritista – and most Afro-Cuban religious adepts recognise that it describes a quality in an individual, a talent, rather than an initiatory stature. This fact, combined with the importance of spiritism as a technology for accessing the dead in the Afro-Cuban religious field, means that many followers and experts of Santería and Palo Monte, for instance, will also be experienced spirit mediums in their own right (cf. Feraudy 1999; Garoutte and Wambaugh 2007). Along with other religious objects, such as the ceramic or clay containers in which Santería’s ‘santos’ are placed or Palo Monte’s nganga, these religious devotees must set out a small altar in a private place in their homes – usually a small table, covered with a white cloth and set with several glasses of water, next to which they pray for and plead with their dead. The materiality of these altars – called bóvedas espirituales – is indissociable from the experience of spiritual presence. As I will show in the next section, as matter grows and expands in

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a spiritist’s domain, so does the presence of their muertos, and vice-versa, allowing mediums to fulfil their mission of giving voice to the needs and advice of the dead. In fact, espiritismo’s consciousness of the cosmological dimensions of matter seems to be so embedded that it becomes obvious only in confrontation with more doctrinal forms of spiritism, such as that practised by the espiritismo científico (scientific spiritism) groups, of which there are a handful in Havana. To these latter spiritists, a spiritism that deals in altars, spirit representations and offerings is an espiritismo cruzado (lit. ‘crossed’ spiritism): negatively syncretic, contaminated by less ‘modern’ systems of belief and ritual, such as those of African origin (cf. Wirtz 2009). Scholars at the beginning of the last century, such as Roger Bastide, would have similarly characterised Cuban forms of spiritism as ‘low spiritism’ (1978), as he did for Umbanda practices in Brazil. But even these científicos, who hold that spiritism is science, morality and philosophy, reject ‘matter’ (ritual paraphernalia) in their mediumship sessions only inasmuch as they also recognise its ontologically transformative capacities – that is, in their view it creates undesirable kinds of spirits (cf. Espirito Santo 2010). What we are looking at, then, is a widely shared appreciation that the agency of ‘things’ is not restricted to their capacity to carry meanings. Something else is going on.

Representing as making

Many religious people in Havana are advised, for their own well-being, to ‘represent’ their spirits, mostly in the form of dolls or small plaster statues, the latter widely available in hierberos, shops that specialise in Afro-Cuban religious materials such as special plants, necklaces and cocoa butter for initiations. The dolls can be white- or black-faced (in which case they are sometimes painted), vinyl or plastic, and are purchased either in the shops mentioned above or from private sellers, who will also have dressed them, some being clothes-makers themselves. They will be generally recycled dolls, some even antiques which will over time have passed through several pairs of hands. Around them might be placed necklaces, in colours belonging to the ‘santo’ with whom the spirit is associated – red beads for Changó, yellow for Ochún, and so on. If the dolls represent female spirits, lips may be painted with crayon or lipstick, or eyebrows retouched. Some of these dolls, particular if they represent African spirits, will have their head covered with a cloth, typical of initiates of Santería; the gypsies might wear a lace shawl, and hold fans and divination cards. Candles will be placed next to them; in most religious houses candle-stubs abound next to the dolls, evidence of favours asked and granted, as do cups of rum, sugar-cane

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liquor and coffee. The very anthropomorphic characteristics of these dolls, including their sitting poses and their carefully laid out costumes, create spaces around them that invite an anthropomorphisation of materialhomage exchange. They will receive gifts worthy of people, because they once were people. Dolls may also be made of rags or cloth, their head and limbs stuffed with cotton to appear human. One such doll is that belonging to Leonel, a Santero and spiritist in his forties whose African slave spirit – Francisco – is represented in life-size proportions, and sits with a smile on his face on a chair in Leonel’s religious room, sometimes with his legs crossed. Yet most spirit representations are relatively small objects, handled easily by their carers, who routinely wash their clothes and comb their hair, maintaining their cleanliness. The wood, clay or plaster statuettes are usually the smallest, although versions of indigenous spirits crafted in earlier days can also be of impressive proportions. But however standardised certain forms of ‘representing’ spirits have become (in Havana, identical statues of índio spirits can be bought from every religious dealer), the attention given to each one is what turns the unique ‘things’, with correspondingly unique and unfolding attributes, into spirit forms. In essence, it is what happens around and to the object that gives the spirit the capacity to intercede in the lives of those to whom it belongs – not the doll’s initial condition as a doll. Via the constant attentive and active social gaze of humans, the dolls acquire their mediatic role to the beyond. As Webb Keane argues: These materializations bear the marks of their temporality … To try and eliminate the materiality of religion by treating it as, above all, evidence for something immaterial, such as beliefs and prior experiences, risks denying the very conditions of sociality, and even time itself (2009: 118–19). In my last visit to Havana, my knowledge of some of my spirits was both reaffirmed and augmented. I had retained much the same set of protective entities – a gypsy woman, a Christian orthodox nun, a Jewish notary/ lawyer, an Arab astrologer, a Franciscan priest and an African sorcerer, among others – but some had also grown and shifted in unpredictable ways, according to the mediums I visited. C, an Afro-Cuban espiritista in her early fifties whom I was meeting for the first time, told me that I should place a plate of honey next to my gypsy – whom I have represented at home – so that I can sweeten my love prospects. The gypsy also works with flower petals, C informed me: I should offer her a small box with coins

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inside, in which I could also lay the petals that have fallen from the flowers I place for her. My notary spirit also demanded some attention. C described him as a serious, trustworthy and confident man, an expert in the law, who may have come from Middle-Eastern lands. He wears spectacles and carries a briefcase, and he seems to have strong links with the Afro-Cuban deity Obbatalá, one of the most powerful beings in the Yoruba pantheon. I should place a glass of water for him, and a miniature scale, representing justice, as well as a small eight-step staircase, representing an ascending spiritual path (eight being the number corresponding to Obbatalá). On previous occasions, the notary had ‘presented’ himself to mediums quite simply – wearing a dark suit and with the document case mentioned above. Now his physiognomy and appearance had become more complex. The gypsy, too, had mutated, according to Olga. She described her long tunic, necklaces and pale skin. Whereas two years earlier I had been advised to offer my gypsy a pack of divination cards (such as Tarot or Spanish deck), this same spirit now projected a different image to that of the ordinary card- or palm-reading fortune teller, so common in Cuban portrayals. As C had observed, I should be offering her coins and flowers as a response to this change, which had somehow been brought about by a change also in myself. As her husband Eduardo told me: ‘The spirit transforms itself according to the facets of yourself that you are developing at that moment. The attributes, the garments – these are symbols that the spirit ‘wears’ so that you will identify different stages of your own spirit.’ The descriptions in the above paragraph are meant to point to two overlapping but vital facets of the process of ‘representing’ spirits. The first point is that description – of the spirits’ physical appearance, personal characteristics and strengths – tends to be coupled with prescriptive information on how to represent and cater for them. For example, while all Arab and Indian spirits appreciate being offered sunflowers, the individual nature of each will determine what else they may warrant in order to be efficacious as protective entities. Thus, I have heard these spirits asking for objects such as feathers or plumes from large birds, or specific kinds of precious stones, fruit, eggs or flowers, depending on how they are perceived by the mediums or on the messages they give during possession. They may also ask for miniature instruments of war, such as knives or bows and arrows. Many of these requisites will not have obvious antecedents, but will follow from the inspiration of each medium on each occasion. The second point is that these forms of homage will turn on the individual’s own interpersonal, religious and situational problematics. This is not just because followers of spiritism tend to materialise ‘goodies’ when they want something from

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their muertos, but because, as Eduardo suggests above, a spirit’s ‘virtual’ state (i.e. what it projects as a workeable image of itself) is to an important degree subject to the life context of the person to whom it belongs. Thus, a spirit may need a weapon because it is fighting a war on the person’s behalf. Or indeed, it may make itself known precisely so that it can fight that war, one perhaps brought on by the person’s own conduct. It may also be perceived according to circumstance, so that its physique may be a telltale sign of the perceiver’s own situation or ‘grade’ of evolution. Thus, in a way, it ‘materialises’ the perceiver. There are several important aspects of this self-referencing and recursive relationship between person and spirit that are of relevance here. One of these is the processual and mutually constituting nature of the ‘self’, of spirit and of person, where alterations and evolutions in either one are seen to affect and be evident in the other. Another is that ‘matter’ is a direct player in such alterations and evolutions, precisely because it is a means of controlling, evoking or directing change. Both of these factors point to the centrality of personhood in an understanding of materiality, and viceversa. ‘Selfhood’ is here intimately tied to ‘spirithood’, where ‘matter’ operates as an instantiator of both on a simultaneous plane – in other words, as a facilitator of the creative dimensions of self-making. Understood as a ‘system’ rather than as a set of entities each of which exists independently of the others, in espiritismo the spirit-person complex is both anchored by and made visible via the manipulation of objects such as dolls. This remits us, among other things, to consider the role of materiality in the formation of persons. The field of material culture studies takes for granted that materiality is constitutive of humanity at many levels. In his ‘Introduction’ to Materiality (2005), Danny Miller argues – following Hegel – that: ‘We cannot comprehend anything, including ourselves, except as a form, body, a category, even a dream. As such forms develop in their sophistication we are able to see more complex possibilities for ourselves in them’ (2005: 8). Matter, then, is the mirror in we gauge the processes by which we create form; it is the measure of our own creative capacities. In another recent edited volume, David Morgan phrases the issue in this way: There is the politics of things, their inflection within social fields, and there is the poetics of things, that is, their capacity to act upon us, to assert agency, to make rather than only to be made. […] Seeking an integrated account may begin with recognizing the degree to which things are the scaffolding by which the body

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Cuban spiritists would agree with all these definitions on the place of ‘form’, ‘matter’ and ‘object’. In spiritist practices, artefacts extend persons by giving shape to human intentionality and consciousness; in particular, by locating the souls of the dead with whom the mediums work in one feasible material location, so that ‘more complex possibilities’ of interaction and mutual constitution between humans and spirits are enabled. And they are testament to the mind’s scaffolding in its physical environment. But this is not all they are. Artefacts, objects and other ‘things’, including consumables, are also technologies of ontological transformation, both generative of spiritual presence in the physical world, and of physical attributes in the spiritual one, as I have attempted to show above. In the following section I will pursue this point further by examining the ways in which the ‘making’ of spirits is also experienced as the ‘making’ of oneself through otherness – the spirit medium as ‘maker’ of cosmology, both in relation to spirits who paradoxically already exist, and those whose existence must be fabricated ex nihilo, to which I will briefly allude in the conclusion to this chapter.

Presence: personhood and cosmogony

Eva is a charming, middle-aged Afro-Cuban Santera and medium. She remembers ‘seeing’ things ever since she was a 14-year-old girl, even though her parents believed in nothing. Eva discovered her devotion to Cuba’s main patron saints – the Virgin of Regla and the Virgin of the Caridad del Cobre – very early on, and her mother would often accuse her of being a ‘fanatic’ for going to church so often, echoing the Cuban Revolution’s early stance on religiosity, warning her that she would go crazy. When she grew up, Eva would place a single glass of water on her altar and sit down with the spirits she suspected (and felt) were around her. She would pray to them, and they would place images and information in her mind. Slowly, she began to help her friends and colleagues with these messages. One of the key moments in her spiritual development was the strong and sudden impulse to acquire a doll for her beloved spirit guide, an African slave in Cuba she calls Francisca Siete Sayas (lit. Francisca Seven Skirts). She remembers it clearly: it was 21 July and she was sitting chatting with a friend, when an overwhelming feeling came over her. ‘It was like something was telling me – today – do it today [acquire a spirit representation]’. So she went home and took out one of her daughter’s dolls, a small ‘mulatta’ with

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a baby-doll dress (typical of the 1960s), and began to prepare it. ‘I suddenly wanted to dress her in a skirt of many colours,’ Eva continued, so she sewed seven strips of different cloths onto the dress, until she was satisfied the image was consistent with her intuition – she had felt the spirit’s affinity with the Afro-Cuban deity Yemayá, the goddess of the seas, associated in Cuba with the Virgin of Regla and with the number seven. Since that day she has attended to this doll on a daily basis. ‘Francisca Siete Sayas – everything I have in the world, in my 59 years, I owe to this spirit, even my initiation in Santería,’ she says. ‘Ever since I began sitting down with her, she puts things in my ears (me pone las cosas en el oído)’. For Eva, representing her spirits is part and parcel of having spirits. The alcance (‘reach’) she enjoys as a medium was, for Eva, forged via just this materiality, her spirit’s and her own basis of development: first a glass of water, then the imperative doll. ‘Sitting down’ (sentarse), as Cuban spiritists frequently say, is exactly this – to acknowledge by acknowledging materially, spatio-temporally, and thus to bring forth the spirit world. But Eva also knows that in some ways, she is also what brings it forth. The overlap between her sensations and those of her muertos is so tangible that rigid views of the separation of matter and the immaterial are premised on wrong categories. For just as she may somatise this spirit’s ailment, so her spirits ‘materialise’ the actions and attention she directs at them, pointing to a need to examine the person-spirit relation beyond the matter-spirit one. Indeed, understanding what I have been calling the ontologically ‘creative’ aspects of ‘matter’ in Cuban spiritism crucially requires understanding ideas of the body as a particular kind of matter (and matter as a particular kind of body), as well as local ontologies of the self which undercut this division almost entirely. It is by locating the relation between the two that we can come to terms with how materially developing one’s spirits is also about developing oneself as a person. In the following paragraphs I will explain how this comes about. Kardecist spiritism posited the ultimate expendibility of matter. The body was a ‘skin’ of sorts, that the evolving soul would shed once its purpose in one or another life had been achieved (or not). The notion of metempsychosis, or the belief in multiple incarnations, made popular through the works of the democratic and romantic socialists of the early nineteenth century (Sharp 2006), critiqued disenchanting forms of materialism by placing individual and social evolution on a grander temporal scale. Spiritism attempted to enchant science itself, but by doing so it also superficially reproduced common dualisms of spirit and body. It was clear for early spiritists that the genuinely ‘real’ lay beyond the world of the

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visible; the body was not an extension of the spirit, it was its temporary vessel, even if it was also what made quantifiable the previously unquantifiable. Matter was of minor importance – ‘good’ spirits were characterised by the predominance of spirit over matter. Indeed ‘matter’ and ‘spirit’ were such radically different substances that they needed to be woven together by what Kardec’s spirits called the ‘perispirit’, the ‘intermediary principle’, a subtle ‘semi-material substance, which constitutes the innermost envelope of the spirit, and unites the soul with the body’ (The Spirits’ Book, Bk. II, Ch. 2, question 135), permitting the spirit (one’s own and those of disencarnate beings) to act on the material body. For Kardec, mediumship itself was enabled by the perispirit, which reached out to connect to those of the dead, and which could change its appearance throughout a body’s lifetime. Later on, in his second work, The Mediums’ Book, Kardec also described the perispirit as a ‘fluidic body’, which could be dispersed or emanated by spirits or persons. Thus, while spiritists were undeniable dualists, the notion of a perispirit also contained within it the seeds of dualistic subversion in its implicit suggestion that matter and spirit could be mutually creative, even if separated by the event of death. It was the ‘fluidic’ aspect of the perispirit that was to have greater influence. In Latin America in particular, there is a prevalent idea that a spirit (free or incarnate) can generate healing ‘fluids’. Nowadays, Brazilian mediums ‘fluidify’ their clients; for instance, with their laying-on of hands (called ‘passes’ in Portuguese, cf. Cavalcanti 2008). In sum, the concept of ‘perispirit’ opened up a field of interactive possibilities between beings, and between beings and things, while the explicit link between them remained suitably ambiguous in the literature. In Cuba, understandings of fluido came to associate themselves closely with West African notions of aché. Indeed, it is fluido that has currency in common syncretic forms of Cuban spiritism, not the more formal notion of ‘perispirit’. Like aché, fluido is thought of as an invisible substance that may be passed from one person to another in order to heal or cleanse; from a spirit to a medium so that she may heal or cleanse for him; it is the spirit itself expressed in formless matter, thus a potential: it is both generated in a misa espiritual (a spiritist ritual called a ‘spiritual mass’) and crucial for the efficacy of the same ritual; it must be evoked but also held by the medium for its successful evocation; it is both spirit and information (because mediums translate the sensations of the fluido into messages); concept and thing. Like aché, fluido is neither fully matter nor fully immaterial, and in this way it is uncontainable in bodies or souls. To ‘feel’ the fluido is to feel spiritual presence, not just in the body, but out there – yet co-extensive with

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it. In Cuba, the ‘perispirit’ has spilled out into the world, so to speak, which then assumes the role of mediating a return back to the spirit. Indeed, analytically speaking, it seems to me that there are two possibilities which are not mutually exclusive. The first is that objects and artefacts replace the function of the original concept of ‘perispirit’, which acted as a link between the consciousness of the body and that of the soul, or other souls. This means that like bodies, which are permeable to aché and fluido, ‘things’ are not just physical substances. The nature of their ‘thing-ness’ is relative – it is given by their ability to transport information from one realm to another, changing both in the process. Examples of the ontologically transgressive capacities of objects are plentiful in a country where forms of magical manipulation are premised on the idea that witchcraft objects can directly affect the physical or psychic lives of its victims, namely by having the object be the ‘body’ of the person in question. The second possibility (suggested by Marcio Goldman in personal conversation) also supports the above descriptions, namely the ‘African’ perspective. The idea is that this same dual existence of ‘things’, so to speak, derives in part from the role of worship ‘materials’ in West African religious understandings such as those of the Yoruba described by Barber (1981). ‘Things’ must exist as other than just things in order to establish such reciprocity bonds, as gods also exist in more ways than one – as original gods and as their earthly, particularistic versions, manifest through the bodies of their followers. But in Cuba notions of personhood have complicated this picture further. Some spirits are experienced as actual parts or aspects of persons, through the importance they assume in everyday life and through their primordiality in relation to the person’s own existence. When Cubans refer to their muertos, they mean one of two things. One’s muertos are one’s ancestors – religious, ritual, and kin; iku lobi ocha (the dead give birth to the orichas). Santeros repeats this phrase in answer to questions relating to the role of the dead in their practice: first come the dead, then come the santos, since the dead give birth to the santos, mythically – because the orichas were once living persons in Africa, which gradually became deities – and pragmatically – because before any ritual step is taken the spirits of the ancestral dead must be complicit and willing. But the spiritist movement in Cuba introduced another meaning for the term, one that constitutes the most prevalent understanding of muerto: namely, one’s protective dead. Kardec had talked about ‘spirit-protectors’ and ‘guardian angels’; in Cuba, these entities are known collectively as one’s cordón espiritual (lit. ‘spiritual cord’) and form a group of spirits that accompany and guide people, from the moment of their birth to that of their death. While for Kardecists

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these spirits were elevated and generally anonymous beings, in Cuba they assumed entirely historical characteristics (Brandon 1997) and appeared with very human guises and temperaments. They became African slaves, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century creole Cubans and Spaniards, doctors, colonial-society grandes dames and intellectuals, indigenous Caribbean ‘Indians’, gypsies, Haitians and Chinese, Muslims, and any other personality embedded in the nation’s imaginary and its sense of collective identity and memory. Nowadays, these muertos find life among those they protect by acting on their dispositions and talents, thoughts and moods, decisions and even illnesses. When Cuban spiritists discover their mediumistic abilities, they must also discover the relations obtaining between aspects of themselves and their spirits’ previous incarnations, which in some cases are vital to the exercise of mediumship – such as with spirits that cleanse or heal. Catering, materially, to such entities requires patience and perseverance, for these relations are revealed and consolidated only with time, and importantly, this is a question of placing self-awareness (psychological and bodily) at the centre of the experience of spirit presence. In Cuban spiritism, the development of selfhood can be characterised at its crudest as a two-fold process: first, an embrace of multiplicity, where medium may begin to see themselves as constituted through and by their spiritual relationships (thus, as a multiple existence); and second, a process of material exteriorisation, through which these relationships are transformed into ontologically potent (and present) ones. It is in this exteriorisation that we may see what Jackson calls ‘arrested moments’ (1998: 6), tensions generated by the interface of self and spirit that seems to engender the existence of both simultaneously. A spirit representation helps contain and control a spirit, as well as furnishing a space around which to render tribute; the same applies in a more general way to spiritual altars, the bóvedas espirituales. They are places of communion and emotional bonding. But they are also organic and emergent ‘things’, whose growth is tightly woven into the medium’s own growing sense of confidence, vision and spiritual presence, and whose direction may not be fully determinable. Just as a doll’s appearance may mutate, the gradual construction of an altar provides us with a clear instance of how such expansions of ‘matter’ are also expansions of ‘soul’ (or consciousness), and vice-versa. In this ethnographic context, it is unsurprising that it is here that experiences akin to what Robert Orsi calls ‘abundant events’ – ‘experiences of radical presence or realness’ (2008: 15) – can take place. Bóvedas are small tables, usually decorated with white linen or knitted cloths, and on which the medium places seven glasses of water, as well

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as a more ornate chalice dedicated to God. The bóveda will normally be adorned with flowers, and the medium will cleanse him/herself with cologne and pray to the spirits while facing them. In some religious houses an extra shelf is added above the bóveda, to set out other items such as cups of coffee, tobacco and spirit representations. In others, photographs or items belonging to deceased family members are also hung, in remembrance and as means to assist these spirits also, who, while not necessarily part of a cordón espiritual, may come to need attention. But it is the glasses that define the bóveda’s raison d’ être, for the spirits manifest their fluido through the water, making them readily accessible to those in close proximity (the accumulation of air bubbles in the glasses is frequently cited as post-facto evidence of the strength of the spiritual vibes at a given moment). In principle, each one will be placed for a single spirit, or for a comisión – a group of spirits – where the layout of the glasses on the table will often mimic the structure of the person’s spirit set, and even its hierarchical divisions. But rarely does a medium set out all eight glasses of water at once. Instead, it is more usual for a neophyte to begin with one glass, as in Eva’s case above, and then expand, as her own cordón espiritual assumes shape and presence. In a sense, the water is the first port of call, the universal form of spirit representation, the ‘entry’ and ‘exit’ point for spirits and their knowledge, which transposes potential into presence, much like the spirit representation. Some may place specific flowers in the water requested by their spirits, others coins, crucifixes, objects from the sea such as shells and stones, and jewellery. The point here is also that objects and artefacts can and do provoke moments of intense revelation and catharsis. It is at the foot of the bóveda or in conversation with a spirit representation that Cuban spiritists report achieving ‘closeness’ (acercamiento) to their spirits, so vital for the functioning of good mediumship. In sum, if in all this we see what Cuban spiritists call ‘to educate the dead’ (educar a los muertos), by which they mean the transformation of the dead into intelligible, manageable and manifest beings, this same process also occurs in reverse: educating the muertos implies the continuous creation of a particular kind of ‘self ’ defined by this presence – a self whose multiplicity must be not just materialised but recreated constantly through this materiality. And it also implies that the relationship is never one-sided. Cuban spiritists’ typical tenderness, dedication and respect towards their muertos remind us that much as these spirits may materialise the wills and intentions of living human beings, humans are also shaped by other-worldly designs for their destiny, some of which they may be a participant to. Just as a change of clothes on a representation has

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ontological effects – the spirit ‘puts on’ the clothes and appears differently to the medium (as in the above example with Daniel) – so a person’s conduct and imagination has dividends for the existences of the entities with whom he/she is irrevocably related. The processual nature of this mutuality is so pronounced that, according to one informant, protective spirits may even replace others so as to keep up with the person’s development. As Rane Willserlev argues: ‘The moment we accept that the self is caught up in a world that transcends it, our selfhood cannot take the kind of unified transparency that Descartes attributed to it’ (2007: 24). Rather, he says, the self ‘needs the “otherness” of the world as a condition of its possibility’ (ibid). By this I take him to mean not just social ‘others’, but also ontological otherness.

Conclusion: fabricating entities

Maximo, a religious friend of mine in Havana, once told me that he had started to ‘cultivate’ economic abundance by photocopying one-dollar bills (actually Cuban Convertible Pesos) and distributing them to his friends. He now has over a million dollar notes himself, he told me. But why, I asked? In a climate of poverty and need like Havana’s, this is surely an ironic, even cruel, joke. Maximo’s answer elucidates one of the points on ‘matter’ that I have been arguing here: like attracts like, he says. It is not difficult to read into Cuban spiritism’s understanding of matter James Frazer’s formulation of the Laws of Similarity and Contagion. Or even more ‘new age’ formulations of such laws, like those in the massively popular recent book The Secret, which are not in the least unfamiliar to religious Habaneros. But cosmogonic creativity in spiritism is not just a question of mimesis – of copy and contact and mimetic ‘magic’ (Taussig 1993). While spiritists use the mimetic faculty with great dexterity to ‘mime the real into being’ (particularly via songs during ritual, details of which I omit due to space considerations), speaking precisely to the paradox I mentioned at the start of this chapter, spiritists also sometimes participate in the creation of what does not already exist. It is in these cases that the spirit is more clearly an object-carrier of the meanings and intentions of its maker, existing almost singularly by virtue of this, and in which we see the cosmogonic power of religious experts at work. I am here referring to the literal ‘fabrication’ of entities, which, while conceived to be impossible to achieve using solely spiritist ‘tools’ – usually, the ‘heaviest’ kind of witchcraft work is done within the domain of Palo Monte – is nevertheless premised on some of its basic understandings of matter and spirit. Consider the following story.

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Reina is an Habanera in her twenties whom I recently accompanied to a misa espiritual. She was about to throw a homage party for her spirits – in Cuba called an acción de gracias – and, as is protocol, she needed to ‘let them [the dead] know’ (darles conocimiento) about it, via ritual. But the misa did not turn out quite as she expected: very soon into the ritual, Esther, one of the two mediums working the misa, told her that as she had sat down, a very strange spirit had sat down behind her, indicating that he had come into the house with her. He’s a mulatto man, with patchy hair. And he’s murmuring something, like he’s talking to himself. When he looks at me his eyes are as transparent and green as a cat’s, contrasting with the colour of his skin. But at the same time, it’s like this man were a kind of devil. Reina was taken aback by these descriptions. Just a week earlier she had encountered in the street a man who had these same physical traits. Enigmatically, he had called her name from among a crowd of people, but when he approached her, she realised she had never seen him before. Following a sudden hunch, she turned her back and fled. What these two mediums were now suggesting was that this had been an encounter with a spirit – a very materialised one – and here he was. But where did he come from and what did he want? In the careful mediumistic deconstruction of Reina’s problem that followed, the entity was slowly (and literally) taken to pieces, and its origins made explicit. Juan, the other medium, described the ‘mulatto man’ that Reina had seen not as a spirit proper, but somehow as a ‘skin’, a disguise, that in the mediums’ eyes could be easily peeled off, only to reveal a kind of diabolic entity inside. Both mediums concluded that this was a case of an enviación, a spirit sent to trap Reina into falling in love with its sender, and they slowly but surely determined who it was. ‘But if it’s not a spirit, what is it?’ I asked. ‘Something built to convey and achieve its maker’s purposes,’ came the answer. From ‘bits’ of spirits and elements and forces of nature woven together with magical formulas and prayers, Reina’s enviado was made to resemble a person in ways that were fully clear neither to her nor to me, but that signalled the powerfully cosmogonic quality of whatever material elements were used to construct it, and most singularly, the intentional force behind it. Spirit ‘creations’ are not uncommon in Afro-Cuban religious practice. Palo Monte itself is premised on the distribution of the spiritual agency of the nganga, in which muertos are conceived to be composites

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of sorts, amalgams of the nganga’s own power (also generated by material substances) and aspects of the ‘identities’ of spirits of people who once lived. As Stephan Palmié argues, in relation to the object that is the nganga: ‘The entire assemblage constitutes more than the sum of its parts. Inside the total object, its various and variegated parts enter into synergetic relations’ (2006: 861), producing, I would add, spirits that may be constituted equally on such variegated parts, rather than essences. While this may be an extreme case of the cosmogonic capacities of religious experts in Cuba, in my view it underlines well the logic of materiality in the practices that I have been describing, of which the most important principle is that the manipulation of matter has creative and thus often unpredictable effects.

Acknowledgements

The doctoral and post-doctoral research on which this chapter is based was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) and the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Portugal), respectively. I also acknowledge the Royal Anthropological Institute for their financial help. In Cuba, I am deeply grateful to Leonel Verdeja Orallo, to Daniel, Eva, Maximo, and especially to Eduardo and Olga Silva. In Brazil, I thank the ‘Sextas na Quinta’ group at the Museu Nacional for listening to and commenting on a draft of this paper, particularly Marcio Goldman. This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Enriquitico Musachio (deceased December 2009), his ‘coronas’, and their beloved spirit, Papá Elegguá.

Bibliography

Argyriadis, Kali (2005). ‘“Religión de Indígenas, religión de científicos”: la construcción de la cubanidad y santería’, Desacatos, 17 (January–April), pp. 85–106. Barber, Karin (1981). ‘How man makes god in West Africa: Yoruba attitudes towards the “Orisa”’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 51/3, pp. 724–45. Bastide, Roger (1978). The African Religions of Brazil: Towards a Sociology of the Interpenetration of Civilizations, trans. Helen Sebba (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press). Brandon, George (1997). Santeria from Africa to the New World: The Dead Sell Memories (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). Brown, David H. (2003). Santeria Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Castellanos, Jorge and Isabel Castellanos (1992). Cultura Afrocubana 3: Las Religiones y las Lenguas (Miami, FL: Ediciones Universal). Cavalcanti, Maria Laura Viveiros de Castro (2008). O Mundo Invisivel: Cosmologia, Sistema Ritual e Noção de Pessoa no Espiritismo (Rio de Janeiro: Centro Edelstein de Pesquisas Sociais, Biblioteca Virtual de Ciencias Humanas).

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Espirito Santo, Diana (2010). ‘Spiritist boundary-work and the morality of materiality in Afro-Cuban religion’, Journal of Material Culture, 15/1, pp. 64–82. Feraudy, Heriberto (1999). Irna (Un Encuentro con la Santeria, Espiritismo, y Palomonte) (México: Editorial Conexión Gráfica). Garoutte, Claire and Anneke Wambaugh (2007). Crossing the Water: A Photographic Path to the Afro-Cuban Spirit World (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Hagedorn, Katherine J. (2001). Divine Utterances: The Performance of Afro-Cuban Santeria (Washington, DC, and London: Smithsonian Institution Press). Henare, Amiria, Martin Holbraad and Sari Wastell (eds.) (2007). Thinking Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically (London: Routledge). Hess, David J. (1991). Spirits and Scientists: Ideology, Spiritism and Brazilian Culture (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press). Holbraad, Martin (2007). ‘The power of powder: multiplicity and motion in the divinatory cosmology of Cuban Ifá (or mana, again)’. In A. Henare et al (eds.), Thinking Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically (Abingdon: Routledge) pp. 189–225. Jackson, Michael (1998). Minima Ethnographica: Intersubjectivity and the Anthropological Project (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Keane, Webb (2009). ‘The evidence of the senses and the materiality of religion’. In M. Engelke (ed.), The Objects of Evidence: Anthropological Approaches to the Production of Knowledge (London: Wiley-Blackwell), pp. 105–21. Lambek, Michael (1981). Human Spirits: A Cultural Account of Trance in Mayotte (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Manning, Paul and Anne Meneley (2008). ‘Material objects in cosmological worlds: an introduction’, Ethnos, 73/3, pp. 285–302. Mederos, Aníbal Arguelles and Illeana Hodge Limonta (1991). Los Llamados Cultos Sincréticos y el Espiritismo (Havana: Editorial Academia). Miller, Daniel (2005). ‘Materiality: an introduction’. In D. Miller (ed.), Materiality (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press) pp. 1–50. Morgan, David (2010). ‘Materiality, social analysis and the study of religions’. In D. Morgan (ed.), Religion and Material Culture: the Matter of Belief (London: Routledge), pp. 70–95. Núñez Molina, Mario A. (1987). ‘Desarrollo del Medium’: The Process of Becoming a Healer in Puerto Rican ‘Espiritismo’. Unpublished PhD thesis, Harvard University. Orsi, Robert A. (2008). ‘Abundant history: Marian apparitions as alternative modernity’, Historically Speaking (September/October), ‘Abundant History’: A Forum, at , accessed 09/2009. Palmié, Stephan (2002). Wizards and Scientists: Explorations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). —— (2006). ‘Thinking with Ngangas: reflections on embodiment and the limits of “objectively necessary appearances”’, Comparative Studies in History and Society, 48, pp. 852–86. Sharp, Lynn L. (2006). Secular Spirituality: Reincarnation and Spiritism in Nineteenth-Century France (Lanham, MD and Plymouth: Lexington Books). Taussig, Michael (1993). Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (New York and London: Routledge).

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Willerslev, Rane (2007). Soul Hunters: Hunting, Animism, and Personhood among the Siberian Yukaghirs (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Wirtz, Kristina (2009). ‘Hazardous waste: the semiotics of ritual hygiene in Cuban popular religion’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15, pp. 476–501. Wolf, Fred Alan (2000). Mind into Matter: A New Alchemy of Science and Spirit (Needham, MA: Moment Press).

Chapter 3

Conchas, Candles and Flowers in the Creation of the Concheros’ Religiosity Susanna Rostas

For many decades, in their study of other religions, scholars were influenced by the example of Western Christianity and tended to be overly interested in trying to elicit the propositions that believers assented to, in order to understand their adherence in terms of beliefs. This was based on the assumption that the practices, although they were linked to material ‘things’, were (as it were) mere signposts rather than constitutive of or active in the formation of their religiosity. In his book Religion and Material Culture, Morgan has suggested that belief can be better understood in ‘somatic or material terms’ (2010a: 3). He argues that as some religions may not involve propositions or affirmations at all, belief may not be ‘fundamentally different from seeing or smelling, or dressing or arranging space. People need not recite creedal statements to be described as believers’ (ibid: 5). Belief is a practice that like many others is inculcated bodily, from early childhood onwards. The materiality of religious practice is important because it shapes ‘the feelings, senses, spaces and performances of … a pervasive community’ (ibid: 7). Asad pointed this out long ago when he commented that religion had ‘rarely [been] approached in terms of “technical actions” – that is to say, the disciplining of the body, or of speech, which is used to produce religion in its variety’ (1983: 251, see also 1993). Keane too has suggested that an anthropology of ‘“religion” might benefit from an approach to materiality that does not always expect it to provide evidence of something hidden’

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(2008: 110). He also proposes that it would be fruitful to look at the ‘materiality of practices’ and to realise that things can be objects of religious experience’ (ibid: 124). I want to take up these ideas and suggest that, without the various material artefacts deployed, many practices would be very differently enacted. The ‘things’1 involved are of significance in the shaping of the practices in which people participate: they are enabling, recognised as having a form of (albeit non-anthropocentric) agency and of assisting in the creating of religiosity. The spirits or the ancestors come to those who are open to the possibility not because of some sublime experience but via the nitty-gritty of practice, by means of the round of things that need to be done during ritual: the lighting of candles and incense and their subsequent odours and heat, the putting on and wearing of the appropriate clothing, the tuning and then playing of the musical instruments, the singing and, importantly in some instances, the actions of the dancing. Belief is what the practitioner knows with his/her body, ‘as touching and seeing, hearing and tasting, feeling and emotion, as will and action, as imagination and intuition’ (Morgan 2010a: 8). In small face-to-face societies, the enacting of practices is all-important: they are repeated often and are usually fairly uniform throughout a community. In Tenejapa, Chiapas (Mexico), the indigenes who are interested learn early in life how to carry out a certain range of activities in relation to their deities – such as taking out the figures of their saints from the Church in procession through the town. The figures of the saints are their deities in physical anthropomorphic form. However, they have both a Roman Catholic and a Tzeltal ontology and nomenclature. According to the mestizo Spanishspeaking Catholics who live in the community, the two most important are the saints San Alonso and Santa Maria. But to the dominant indigenous population, who mainly speak only Tzeltal, these two are known as Kahkanantik and Halame’tik, appellations which are also used for the sun and the moon. The Tenejapans ‘know’ that these figures are to an extent animate, that they need to be washed and clothed and cared for as any other human might – a broken finger for example needs to be replaced – but they are at the same time divine. During a fiesta, special foods are offered to them indirectly, which the humans actually eat, while the latter also drink large quantities of alcohol in order to draw closer to them. But the majority of Tenejapans are unable to verbalise their beliefs much further than this: they know only that they need to honour their deities and that the material things involved (aside from the figures of the saints themselves), such as the clothing and necklaces they are adorned with during fiestas, are objects both of and for their religiosity (Rostas 1987).

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This is of course also true to quite a large extent in world religions, but is more clearly the case with religious practices that do not rely on the written word, so do not have a text to interpret or a specific hermeneutic. That is, ‘practices are not merely expressions or enactments of concepts, they are objects within experience to which people respond with intuitions and interpretations’ (Keane 2008: 123). While Keane’s main focus is on language, mine here is predominantly on the ‘language’ of things, on the artefacts of practice as the locus of and for religious experience, and the spiritual agency that the objects have or are given, by and in the practices with which they are associated. In this chapter, I will be looking at some of the ‘things’ that the Concheros utilise when they carry out their all-night vigils and enact their ritualised circle dances. The Concheros, unlike the Tenejapans, are not an indigenous ethnic group but predominantly mestizos, although some of those who live in the countryside (and who are rural peasants) may have recent indigenous forebears. In the larger towns of the Bajio2 and in particular in Mexico City, the dancers come from all levels of society: some are urban workers, some middle class, others professionals and many are involved in the arts. In the past, the dance was closed and positions in it tended to be inherited, the leadership of a group (mesa) passing from father or mother to a son or daughter, while today in the City, almost anyone who is so moved can join, although not all will stay and not all will gain full membership (achieved by initiation). The Concheros meet at regular intervals to perform their circle dances, which are sometimes preceded by a vigil which lasts throughout the night. Each group celebrates the four major dances of the year, organised by that part of the larger Association to which it belongs. These are mostly convened at sacred locations outside Mexico City, although the dance in December is held at La Villa during the fiesta dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe. Each mesa also celebrates a host of other much smaller annual dances, many of which will be particular to it or held in collaboration with other mesas both in the City and elsewhere. Although a vigil may precede a major dance, the more elaborate relate to particular saints and their fiestas: the most important being that held on All Souls (or the Day of the Dead). This is not linked to a dance and is dedicated to the spirits of the most significant of that mesa’s predecessors. A special one-off vigil may also be arranged after the death of someone of current importance to that group. During the hours of darkness, flowers are slowly laid out on the ground in the form of a cross surrounded by candles, cigarettes and other objects, whilst those attending also make music, sing, and say various prayers. In the early hours, after a few hours’ sleep, those involved then prepare themselves for the dance (if one is to be held).

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I say a little more about the dancing later on in this chapter. But although I do not discuss it in any detail, it must be borne in mind that that too is an essential part of the Concheros’ practice and of creating their sought-after religiosity (Rostas 2009). So for example, a Conchero does not enact the dance steps on other occasions in his/her life (except perhaps to perfect certain movement patterns), partly because for each, the dancing is conceived of as being part of a larger whole – something that should only be done with other dancers – and only under ritual conditions. Equally the concha, the stringed musical instrument that is particular to them, should be used only for vigils and dances: it would be highly inappropriate to play any other type of music on it or to accompany other kinds of singing or dancing. The same applies also to the leg rattles that each dancer wears for the dance and to the clothing worn,3 to the incense burner, and to the candles and flowers provided for a vigil. This is because these artefacts are considered to have not only material but also spiritual agency. The Concheros, like most Mexicans, have been raised as Catholics although in discussion they often espouse a range of diverse beliefs. For Catholics generally the figures of the saints when seen in a church are conceived of as being somewhere between representations and material entities with praesentia (presence) – a felt power which analysts have always found difficult to pin down (Schieffelin 1998; Mitchell 2010: 265–7; see also Freedberg 1989). Images of those Catholic saints with whom the Concheros have close connections are to be found on their house altars. However, the ‘things’ that they are most involved with are less anthropomorphic figures than what might be described as ‘charged’ objects: those entities with which their various practices are inextricably entangled. The main argument of this chapter is that the things deployed (and I am using the word ‘deployed’ here in the sense of both to employ, that is to utilise, and to display) are of consequence to their practices: they are not only of significance in how those practices are brought about but also aid in channelling and achieving contact with the spiritual. In daily life, many objects are just taken for granted, outside awareness, seen as tools or the means by which we achieve our various purposes (Miller 1987). But if we move our focus from the human beings who are using them to include the objects themselves, it becomes possible to see them in a rather different way as having a form of non-anthropocentric agency, as actors or agents: as being enactors. But before I develop the theme of enactive agency, both material and spiritual, further, I would like to bring in some ethnography.

Figure 1 Building the flower form during a vigil in a private house. Note the sahumadora on the upper left-hand side.

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Flowers, candles and the four winds

Both flowers and candles are deployed during a vigil. As already indicated, the main work is the laying out of a cross on the floor: a physical form that has to be slowly constructed. The flowers to be used are brought by those attending. Flowers of all types and colours are acceptable – such as carnations, lilies, gardenias, chrysanthemums or gladioli. The flowers should be as fresh, new and open as possible, although flowers that are still in bud are considered by some to be particularly appropriate for the Virgin (for example). Each bunch donated is presented to the sahumadora (the person who is responsible for the incense burner) who cleanses them by passing them over the lit incense and presenting them to the four winds. Those attending also need to ask permission of the four winds to perform the upcoming ‘work’, which they do on their knees. Holding the candle that each will have brought, they move bodily through the cardinal directions – that is, turning from, as it were, north to south, then east to west. They are then obliged to kiss the base of the smouldering incense burner held by the sahumadora who will herself have already kissed it. Finally, holding it firmly, each celebrant makes the sign of the cross above, below and to each side of the held candle, and kisses the base of the burner once more before handing it back to the sahumadora. The four winds are of the greatest significance to the Concheros and yet are an almost taken-for-granted aspect of their practice. Both a vigil and a dance are carried out to honour them. They are described as the animators of these obligations and are conceived of as immanent forces that have to be contended with, that need to be supplicated and to an extent tamed or controlled. Their origin may go back to the Aztecs, who mapped the world into four spatial sections (related to the sun) which formed a conceptual cross that gave cohesion (or stability) to what was otherwise conceived of as an unstable and slippery earth (Burkhart 1989). The four directions could easily be transformed into the European idea of the four winds – north, south, east and west – which predates the precision of the compass. In earlier generations too ‘the winds’ often referred to those places from which the prevailing winds were thought to blow, and certainly the locations of the Concheros’ four principal dances are said to be the birthplaces of the four winds, which conceptually form a cross. At the centre of the cross is Santiago (St James) where at Tlatelolco, the fifth most important dance of the year is held. Santiago is said to be the courier of the four winds and thus the ultimate animator of the dancers who (as one dancer put it) ‘go out to the four winds to do their work’ before returning to the centre. But the winds are also important during a vigil, for the sahumadora is described as convoking the four winds in their physicality and with these

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she invokes those spiritual entities that are of significance to the Concheros. This is usually done as the music of the pasión is played (a piece played on the concha which is simple, extremely powerful and considered to be of ‘divine inspiration’ (Warman 1965)). This is followed immediately by the petición de permiso (‘petition for permission’) which seeks to solicit aid and protection from the four winds. At this time two large candles are lit on either side of the altar, which has often been constructed especially for the occasion. But to return to the flowers. The sahumadora will by then have prepared the majority of them for building the cross by shortening their stalks. It is she who not only indicates what the form should be – whether a simple Christian cross or one with more equal arms4 – but also where the various different types of flowers should be placed. Only a few of those present are called upon to participate in the actual laying-out, which they do on their knees. This can take a number of hours, as each flower head is not only censed again by the sahumadora but also by the adept she subsequently hands it to, who then places it carefully in its indicated spot. Each flower head deployed is said to create a link to a human soul or spirit (anima) and the person concerned, usually an ancestor, should be thought about as it is positioned. Only once the flowers have become ‘enmeshed in a texture of social relationships’ are they considered to be fully able to aid in transcendence5 (Gell 1998: 17). During the work on the flower form, music is played and a variety of songs (alabanzas) are sung by the assembled company. Many clearly indicate the significance that flowers have: in one they are described as being ladders that ascend to heaven. Recibe estas flores con gusto y anhelo que son escaleras que suben al cielo (‘receive these flowers with pleasure and yearning for they are ladders that ascend to heaven’).6 In the early hours of the morning, once the form has been completed (‘dressed’), it is ‘raised up’ (levantamiento): that is, the flowers are (ritually) taken up from the floor and attached to a stick-like structure made of wood known as a bastón. Later in the day this may either be left on the altar or, if it has been fashioned for a saint, taken to the church. As dawn breaks, extra bastones are made up from the remaining flowers, which have been in lesser contact with the animas. Used to cleanse those present, this process seems rather to rely on the inherent quality of the flowers to create a connection between the somatic and the spiritual. It consists in the passing

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of the bastón over the head, down the back and over the arms of each of those present. This is often done quite roughly causing many flower petals to fall to the ground. According to some, the flowers absorb the negative energy from those being cleansed, and these particular bastones should subsequently be discarded. As already indicated, one of the aims of a vigil is to contact various spiritual entities: those Catholic saints that are of importance to the group, the Holy Spirit (as many Concheros put it) but most importantly the animas conquistadoras (‘the conquering spirits’). These spirits or souls of the Concheros’ ancestors are said to have ‘bequeathed them the obligations’ – that is, the vigils and the dances that are performed today: and this is a phrase that is repeated frequently in their prayers both formal and more informal. As one Conchero said: A vigil aids the dead person to leave the house. All that’s left of you is dressed in flowers, watched over [in the sense of opened up to the spiritual domain] and then rises up. Nothing is left that ties you to the earth. The animas conquistadoras are especially significant for the much more elaborate vigil held for the Day of the Dead (2 November – All Souls). For this vigil a rather more complex flower form built predominantly from marigolds7 is slowly set out on the floor, and then affixed to a form known as the santa xuchil,8 a twelve-armed cross on a stand (armazón). Often a second form is also laid out on the ground, surrounded by numerous night lights further indicating the importance of this particular occasion. At this vigil the animas conquistadoras are individually called up. Each of the previous leaders of the group and allied groups are summoned by name one by one, accompanied by a short prayer: the most significant being called up first. In addition, all those present are given the opportunity to call up the animas of three or four people who were known to them personally. After each has been invoked a candle is lit. As one Conchero put it, ‘We work a lot with candles, different types of candles tell us different things’, admitting that the Concheros are, as he put it, animeros (animists). There is a long history in anthropology of other people’s belief in the animate. Gell recently gave this debate renewed impetus when he suggested that the ‘immediate “other” in a social relationship does not have to be another “human being”. Social agency can be exercised relative to “things” and social agency can be exercised by “things” …’ (1998: 17).9 However, Gell’s work does not go as far ontologically as that of Latour, whose use of

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‘actor network theory’ (ANT) conceives of agency as ‘variously distributed and possessed in relational networks of persons and things’ (Knappett and Malafouris 2008a: xi). For ANT, human actors do not have primacy over non-human counterparts. The two are mutually constituted, ‘each being transformed by the other in their conjunction’ (Knappett 2008: 140). This approach allows analysts to escape a structure-agency dualism, with the idea of ‘material semiotics’ disentangling ‘agency from intentionality’ (Law and Mol 2008: 58). Just as words give each other meaning, so ‘entities give each other being’ and ‘enact each other’ (ibid: 58).10 So those involved in a vigil cannot carry out the work without the participation of flowers and candles: the latter are as much enactors as the people involved. As already indicated the flowers are the first of the material agents used to contact the animas, but of equal significance are the candles. For every vigil, a row of candles are lit near the beginning which are said to be the cuenta or planta de las animas.11 As one dancer, using an analogy, commented: ‘The candles are like a screen that lets you see how the obligation is going. We say things like: “Did you see how serene Compadre Faustino was tonight?”’12 Reading the candle flames is an ability that some claim just to have while others have to develop it. According to some Concheros, lighting the candles should be done in a particular way by letting a drop of burning wax fall from a candle held above the one to be lit. If that wick lights easily, the anima has descended and is clearly happy to be present. If not, this is said to indicate that the anima cannot, for one reason or another, make contact. So humans, objects, spirits and ideas are tightly bound up with each other, and ‘agency becomes ubiquitous, endlessly extended through webs of materialised relations’ (ibid: 58). Agency then is realised in the human/ object interface by means of a network of associations (Latour 2005: 128–31). Knappett and Malafouris have called this ‘material agency’. For the purposes of this chapter I want to push the idea of ‘material agency’ a little further and suggest that the objects deployed or their emanations can also be seen to have ‘spiritual agency’. This has already been touched on above for the candles and flowers: their spiritual agency emanates from their materiality, and can be conceptualised as providing links with the sensory in the sense that their various emanations (flames, smoke, smells) by enacting with each other, bring the animas into contact with the people involved. So the candle flames have an ineffability about them, the incense burner holds incense whose emanations have transcendent qualities, and the flowers have a beauty such that their very ephemeral qualities are seen as numinous or immanent.

Figure 2 The culmination of a dance at La Villa in Mexico City. Note the concha held in the hands of the dancer on the right.

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The concha

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If flowers and candles can be seen to play a significant part in creating the Concheros’ religiosity and helping to attain what Deren has called ‘exaltation’ (1953: 229), what can be said about their musical instrument, the concha? In a way it is more germane to this discussion than either the flowers or the candle flames, although few dancers actually credited their instrument directly with having ‘spiritual agency’. Yet it was clear in the way that some of them are made and the reverence with which most were treated when in ‘service’, that they were considered to be spiritually powerful, to be in Meyer’s term ‘sensational’, capable of evoking a sense of transcendence (2006: 10).13 The concha when played by a Conchero produces music which, although transient, has inspirational qualities and this is important not only during a vigil but also during a dance. Most dancers do not play a concha to accompany the dance but rely on others who do. The latter are often the more accomplished, dedicated and long-term dancers who can both play and dance at the same time and who hold named positions (such as capitanes, the sergeant or alferez). These are linked to particular tasks within the group, one of which is to choose the next dance and to decide also which of the dancers should lead it from the centre. For the latter task, the capitan, rather than using words, positions him/herself in front of his/her chosen dancer, and by holding out his/her concha signals the invitation by gesturing. At this point the role of the concha is less that of a musical instrument and more that of a material signifier. The dancer usually affirms the invitation with a similar gesture (provided he/she has a concha) and will then take up a position in the centre of the circle. From there he/she will play the opening bars of the next dance, which will be recognised by those performing it and lead them into it. Most dances are simple and quite easy to execute once a dancer has enacted them on a number of occasions.14 For a dance, it is important to think too about the ‘where’ as well as the ‘how’ of practice (Morgan 2010a: 6). The role of objects in the creation of religiosity can be better analysed if their physical and relational contexts are taken into consideration (Knappet 2008: 143).15 Morgan goes further, suggesting that religious practices happen ‘not in spaces … as indifferent containers, but as them, carved out of, overlaid, or running against prevailing modes of time and place’ (2010a: 8).16 During a vigil, an altar is constructed for the occasion and the placing of the flower form in front of it is fairly standardised, but the spaces in which it occurs can be of all shapes and sizes: sometimes it is a small room in a house, which for the duration effectively becomes a sacred place, sometimes it is a church: those

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involved simply accommodate to the circumstances. A dance is slightly different, demanding as it does a sizeable location, out of which the place for the dance circle to form itself is ritually created by means of a complex ritual procedure (Rostas 2009: 56–60). At its centre, the sahumadora places herself and from there she presents her incense burner to the four winds to ask the final permission before the dance can begin, while other dancers may be invited into the circle to do the same with their conchas. At the beginning of both a dance and a vigil, the daily exigencies tend to fall away as each enactor begins to respond to the incense and the music played on the concha. With the passing of time, as each is taken over by the rhythm, resonance and repetitions of the music, the adepts become ever more attuned to one another and a state of ‘entrainment’ develops, where a merging and uniting occurs that can lead to ever more transcendent states (Needham 1967: 610–11; Clayton et al 2004).17 The expectations, the habituation to the music and to the dancing – that is the ‘training’ in attending to and responding in practice through time (hence ‘en-trainment’) – all help to achieve interpersonal synchronicity (Clayton et al 2004: 1).18 I would like now to consider the concha’s transition from being a ‘thing’ to having spiritual agency in more detail. A concha should ideally be fashioned from the shell of an armadillo. Concha is the term used in Spanish for the carapace of mammals such as tortoises and armadillos, and thus the generic term for the shell, which via the musical instrument has given the dancers their name. Some years ago, I commissioned one from the workshop of Damasio Vidales in Mexico City, who makes a variety of stringed instruments such as guitars, cuatros and tiples (small guitars), Paraguayan harps and charangos – the name he gives to the instrument the Concheros call a concha.19 At that time he had in his workshop the shell of an armadillo which I was told had been killed by a Conchero and which was to be made available to me. Some believe that how and by whom the animal is captured and killed is ritually significant, for the shell is still thought to be animate and to transmit something of the manner of its dying, although rendered apparently inert by death. Structurally (that is physically) the shell has a flexibility of its own which has to be constrained as the process of forming it into a musical instrument of a predetermined shape is undertaken. Malafouris has suggested that human agency and that of the materials used, or the instrument deployed, cannot be disentangled (2008: 22). That is, ‘the line between human intention and material affordance [is] … difficult to draw’: the artefact is the ‘substantiating’ entity that can bring forth the desires of the player or worker (ibid: 33).20

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Thus as Vidales worked to make the concha, he gently restretched the shell – which, once the fleshy part of the animal is no longer alive inside, tends to curl up on itself and offer some resistance – to enable it to fit the wooden last that he had prepared for it. Many shells are insufficiently large to form the entire curved back and require extra pieces of wood to be added. But no two instruments will be exactly the same size. The wood used is chosen carefully, for the maker has the expertise to know what will or should assist the instrument’s sound which is essential to its achieving spiritual agency. In this process it could be said that the material agency of both the shell (its elasticity) and of the wood are subverted to that of the larger whole, the instrument. However, the concha only acquires its designated musicality when its strings are put on. This will be done initially by the maker to check the quality of the instrument. The strings give it the capacity to become more than a material entity, much more than just a ‘thing’. They enable it to begin to be able to make music which, when played during an obligation – whether a vigil or a dance – will (or should) be directed towards contacting the deities. However, it is only thought to be capable of attaining this spiritual agency after it has been presented to the jefe and sahumadora, censed, and presented to the four winds. And it will be censed and re-presented to the four winds repeatedly during its active life as a musical instrument, reaffirming its link on each occasion to its ability to create the religiosity of the Concheros. However, its ability to forge a way through to the sacred (Clendinnen 1990: 125) is also dependent on its being played, and to the music that is being played on it. It cannot make contact with the animas conquistadoras if it has not itself been animated. To better explain what I mean by this, I revisited Don Vidales’ concha, now housed in a museum.21 There it shares a box with one made in about 1903 in the town of Guanajuato. The older concha in particular has suffered from benign neglect. Since its confinement it has had (in Appadurai’s terms) no social life at all (1986). Both conchas have effectively been severed from the context and purpose for which they had been intended, and the older one in particular is in a fairly moribund state. To be animated and to have agency a concha needs to be used often: that is, handled, offered to the four winds and encouraged to resonate. Equally, a concha cannot offer much to a Conchero unless he has learnt to play it: that is, until his agency has linked up with that of the concha. The concha forces him to master a particular technique and will resist him until he does so. Once he has learned the technique (and a player of any guitar will do this more quickly than a non-player), then the agency of the

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two – the agency of the instrument (only ‘a kind of second class agency’ in Gell’s view), and the human agency of the player – can act together to produce the music that summons the ancestral spirits (1998: 17). I would like to emphasise again at this point that spiritual agency should not be seen to be necessarily a property of an artefact (or instrument) but is rather, the emergent product of the interface between its users and itself, achieved in the process of enactment: ‘not something given but something to be … realised’.22 What an entity is matters less than what it becomes or what the enactors enable it to become ‘and where it stands in the network of … engagement’. For the music that emerges is a collaboration between the player and the musical instrument; Malafouris has called this an ‘unfolding dance of agency’ (Malafouris 2008: 34). So we could perhaps even say that in part the concha ‘dances’ the Concheros’ obligations. Clearly there is a complex interrelation between the player and the instrument. The former knows what music he/she wishes to play, and the fingers move to the appropriate strings and position on the fret by an embodied haptic sense, to achieve the opening note. To play is a technique that once learnt becomes tacit – the hands know more than the conscious mind just as the know-how of the dancing itself becomes internalised in the body and can be reproduced without thought. But the concha is perhaps more constraining than the human body – only a certain range of music can be coaxed from it. In the group with which I danced, as an indication of the regard in which its members held their conchas, only the jefe tuned them, in part because the tuning is quite complex.23 This process also ensured that each was more in tune with all the others than might otherwise have been the case. The music played is predominantly quite simple. Much is based on three chords in the keys of G or D and the strings are strummed with the fingers (or a pick). Often two players will gently play together before an obligation begins, thereby beginning to create a sense entrainment. Despite its simplicity, some of the music such as the Guadalupana has an ethereal quality that gives to those listening to it (such as myself) a sense of being in touch with the sublime. For the Concheros, this state of being is not only created by a vigil or in the case of a dance, by the dancing linked to the music played on the concha, the various things utilised but is also induced by the Concheros’ leitmotif of ‘union, conformity and conquest’. These words appear on their various banners, and the terms themselves are often used when discussing the dance (see Rostas 2009: 87–102). To an outsider the significance of these terms is far from clear and may invite enquiry,

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whilst to a Conchero they have the quality of immanance. Here I am in part speaking of how I experienced the religiosity of the dance: the effect of the incense, the clothing worn, the rattles held in each dancer’s hands, the rhythmic sound produced by those tied around each dancer’s ankles, the music from the concha and the various drums, plus the apparently discursive message on the various banners of what each should be aiming for – union, conformity and conquest. All added up to a ‘shared imaginary’ which (at least for me, as for many other neophytes) conjures up an enchanted world (Morgan 2010c). The various ‘things’ deployed linked to the music and dance practices open up religious possibilities: a religiosity that is ‘not an emanation’ in the sense of the outward expression of pre-conceived knowledge, ‘but a generation of being in a world that is not pre-ordained but incipient, forever on the verge of the actual’ (Ingold 2006: 11–12). Dancers frequently emphasised that what was about to happen during a vigil or a dance was openended, that because the circumstances were different each and every time – such as the availability or choice of flowers and candles for a vigil, or of concha players for a dance, the other people attending or dancing, the locale itself – it was never possible to know what would happen next. What the various practices involving the flowers, candles and concha achieve is to open up a way-of-being in a world that has generally become closed in on itself (Ingold 2006: 11). A vigil is undertaken, the animas are contacted, a dance happens, some participants achieve a trance-like state, but like all forms of religiosity, it is transitory, and, as one Conchero put it, a dancer is always learning – that is, gaining in religiosity. In the last decade or so a good number of the Concheros’ practices have been becoming increasingly elaborated: for the dancer’s attitude to their practices has been changing quite radically. If we take the candles, as already discussed, only a few Concheros ‘know’ how to read them. For many they are simply candles, and unless they are so minded, the flames give them no information about their ancestors. One dancer suggested to me that perhaps the desire to interpret the candle flames has grown because this was something that was lost as the dance came into Mexico City. For, early in the twentieth century, many migrated to towns and cities from the countryside, where the dance was enacted primarily by indigenes. This could be the case as practices linked to candles in other indigenous communities bear many similarities.24 However, during a vigil I attended in San Miguel de Allende (a very small town by comparison to Mexico City and where, according to the dominant myth, the dance is believed to have established itself initially), those present were if not indigenes (and there

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are many Otomi still living in the region) at least gente humilde – that is those of clearly peasant origins – the overall proceedings were much less ritualised. Nobody stood on ceremony when there was (ritual) work to be done, most of those present simply got on with it. When the music stopped, work on the flower forms did not cease, as at the vigils I attended in Mexico City. Their attitude towards the candles did not support the suggestion of the dancer mentioned above. But San Miguel de Allende is not the countryside, and those who perform vigils there have generally become quite acculturated in many respects. Linked to the more ritualised attitude to the candles, there has too been a change in the flower forms. Rather than a simple Christian cross or one with arms of equal length, today practitioners often bring a drawing, for example of the Aztec nahui ollin, which is laid out on the floor and on which the flower form is then constructed.25 For these vigils, it had also often been decided beforehand which type and colour of flower should go where. Furthermore, during the night the form is sometimes changed into the shape of a mythical flower or animal, again because of a predetermined decision. Such flower forms are less enactive, much less a part of a creative interrelationship in which the sahumadora and those carrying out the work, having received intimations as to where the flowers should be placed, slowly construct the form during the night as the religiosity of the vigil intensifies. Rather they are representations, reproductions of preconceived ideas about what is appropriate. Linked to this trend is a growing tendency to emphasise ideology – not even a Catholic but rather an Aztec one. For almost four decades, there has been an increasing desire by a few to ‘Aztecise’ the practices, and associated with that a tendency to intellectualise them, to provide interpretations, if not explanations, for them. In the run-up to the so-called 500-year celebrations in 1992 for the ‘discovery’ of the Americas, which led to an explosion of interest in the Aztecs, many more dancers became convinced that their dance is Aztec (despite an origin myth that indicates that it is Chichimec). This has led to an Aztecisation of the clothing worn for the dance, of the names of the individual dances and of the music – seen in the growing use of drums and other Aztec instruments (such as bone rasps and flutes) as back-up to the concha. For those who tend to call themselves ‘Mexica’ (rather than Concheros), the Hispanic origins of the concha have led them to reject it completely. Nor do they hold all-night vigils: thus candles and flowers have little enactive significance for them. In part this is because the Mexica have a very different ontology. For them, the dance and its associated practices in the 1990s were seen rather

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as an instrument of identity politics.26 The long-term effect of the Mexica on many of the Conchero mesas has been to lead to a disenchantment of the dance: those dancers have now become less involved in creating their religiosity during enactments and more in reproducing what has been previously inscribed. For from being largely oral, the tradition has increasingly become a largely inscribed one. The words of the songs and prayers have been carefully annotated, the content of some in part Aztecised and in some cases translated into Nahuatl. One version thus tends to predominate over the variety found in oral practice. Perhaps in an attempt to ensure that the practices never change (something that most Concheros frequently claim, but which clearly is not the case), the words of the songs or prayers are now given out in printed form to new dancers, with indications as to which should be used when. Mostly, those who have danced for years rely on the context and the sensory aspect of the obligation to prompt them as to which song would be appropriate next. This new attitude greatly reduces the ability of the flowers to speak, the candles to reveal, or the concha to enact directly with those involved and has meant that, increasingly much more is done by the book. Neophytes especially tend to be of the opinion that there is a correct – that is, predetermined – way of carrying out most of the practices: that there is, to return to the songs, an appropriate one for each stage of a vigil.27

Conclusion

Although the Concheros have predominantly been brought up as Catholics, and indeed a few do still go to church from time to time, for many this is rendered more difficult today (at least conceptually) as most dances occur on Sundays. As children they will have embodied practices that are still very much a part of their religiosity, such as making the sign of the cross.28 The Concheros’ most popular songs also contain an admixture of Christian and non-Christian imagery. Many of the prayers they employ are mainstream Catholic such as the Lord’s Prayer and what is known to them as the agradecimiento (‘giving thanks’). But many of their invocations are a commingling of Catholic with strictly Conchero elements, such as the already-mentioned petición de permiso which asks permission of God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit, but also of las animas conquistadoras de los cuatro vientos (‘the conquering spirits of the four winds’). By being called up the animas are made present particularly during a vigil where they guide those attending during the course of the night, aided also by the four winds.

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What I have aimed to show by means of the ethnography in this chapter is that the material entities and their emanations (smoke, flames or music) that are made, exchanged or acquired, displayed and deployed by the Concheros are charged entities that enable those involved to act reciprocally with the spirits. Although belief in the animas and the four winds is ongoing, these entities can only be created by means of the practices outlined here linked to the material artefacts (while during the vigil for the Day of the Dead, their names are also part of the invocation). What the Concheros have is a collective ‘landscape of feeling’ but one that is not static (Morgan 2010b: 57). What happens during a vigil or a dance is not predetermined: every obligation is carried out for a reason – to celebrate a saint’s fiesta or to acknowledge the death of a person who was of significance to someone in the group – but its outcome is not known in advance because how precisely the material entities involved will enact with each other is unknown. Although the ontologies of many Concheros have changed – and few of the practices in a physical sense are unchanging in the longer term – what in the past was part-Catholic, partly more rural indigenous practice, has now been Aztecised, and although attempts are being made to fix certain aspects, it is far from clear that the ‘things’ that are deployed at present to create the sacred will remain static. Rather, as the discussion above has indicated, the practices are in a constant state of flux and regeneration. Objects are adopted and absorbed from the everyday world as the ontologies of the dancer’s change, as new ideas are brought in, reformulated or left pristine and adopted, for the charged objects deployed in the creation of their religiosity are inextricably entangled with those who enact them.

Acknowledgements

An initial draft of this paper was given as part of the panel on the material culture of dance at the ASA conference in Bristol in 2009. I am particularly grateful to Liana Chua for comments on an earlier version of the more extended paper, which was submitted for discussion to Social Anthropology Research Associates seminar Cambridge. I would also like to thank Diana Espirito Santo and Nico Tassi for the work they have put into assembling this volume and the very helpful comments made on the draft I sent them which encouraged me to push my argument just a little further. Notes   1 Knappett discusses the difficulties of defining the difference between things and objects (2008: 143). Morgan suggests that things help people to ‘feel’ but

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that they have two dimensions: the politics of things, – ‘their inflection in social fields’ – and the poetics, ‘their capacity to act upon us, to assert agency, to make rather than only be made’ (2010: 72).  2 Specifically, Queretero, Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende. This is a region in close proximity to Mexico City which was the first to be conquered by the Spaniards.   3 I say little more about the leg rattles or the clothing here, but see Rostas 2009: 103–28.   4 As the dance has become less clearly Catholic in recent years, for some vigils an equal armed cross is preferred which is considered more ecumenical, even Aztec in form thus indicating that ontologically a vigil is not necessarily fully Christian.   5 In this chapter, I use the term ‘transcendence’ loosely to indicate a process of ‘uplifting’ which can lead to a state of trance. Most Concheros associate transcendence with the presence of the spirits of the dead (the animas) and with the divine. For some just seeing flowers can give them a sense of elation; however, for this to be sustained the flowers need to be ritually embedded.   6 In Mexico, flowers have been linked to the divine for many centuries. For the Aztecs, they were closely connected to singing and the phrase xochicuicatl (Nahuatl, ‘flower-song’) was used to indicate a form of sung poetry (Clendinnen 1991: 220). There was no specific word for music, although song was also closely linked to dance and the playing of various instruments. Cuicatl could also imply dancing, although there were special terms for the many different types of dances (Lockhart 1992: nn 282, 393). Many songs mention flowers, linking them to the divine and to beauty, but also to death – ‘warriors falling in death “rain down like flowers”’, as the song-maker ‘seeks out the sacred “place of flowers, the place of my fulfilment, that with flowers my soul is made drunk”’ (ibid: 221). As Clendinnen has suggested, it was everyday things – like flowers – ‘things of the daylit world which by careful framing and placing could be made to reveal the cryptic world of the sacred’ (ibid: 243).   7 For marigolds (cempasuchil) are associated with death.  8 Santa xuchil glosses as ‘saintly flower’, xuchil being an alternative spelling for xochil or xochitl (flower) and linked to Xochipilli, the Aztec deity of dance, music and flowers (Miller and Taube 1993: 190).  9 The book triggered wide discussion on how to apply Gell’s ideas to other objects or contexts (see for example Pinney and Thomas 2001; Osborne and Tanner 2007). 10 Enaction implies a mode of linkage (sometimes described as a ‘structural coupling’ (Varela, Thompson and Rosch 2000; Sutton 2008)) between entities (humans, animals, etc. and/or objects), ‘that brings forth a world’ or a way of being (Varela et al 2000: 206). In other words, the links between people and things are not structured in a predetermined way but ‘reciprocally bring one another into existence’ (Ingold 2006: 10): they are creative and of the moment although embodied history plays its part. This implies a world that is in a constant state of becoming: enactive knowledge is knowledge acquired by doing, by action ‘in the interface between mind, society and culture. The knowledge does not pre-exist in any one place or form but is enacted in particular situations’ (Varela et al 2000: 179).

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11 Cuenta and planta are difficult to translate but can be loosely glossed as ‘the account’ or ‘state.’ 12 One of the most important previous jefes, who died in the late 1900s. 13 For Meyer, ‘sensational forms’ are those that are seen to wield power over their beholders, and evoke and transmit feelings of the transcendent, and possibly even of awe and wonder (Meyer 2006). 14 Any steps taken to the right are balanced by the same number to the left; every advance towards the centre of the circle is balanced by one that returns it to its previous size. Importantly, dancers never touch each other. In total there are well over 20 named dances. 15 Knappett suggests that ANT has not paid enough attention to this aspect: to ‘directionality, frequency, fidelity and distance’ (2008: 143). 16 Italics in the original. 17 A state of entrainment involves the gradual moving together of two rhythmic entities such that they merge and unite rather than continuing to be disparate (see Clayton et al 2004). 18 Entrainment can certainly occur with the repetition for hours on end of a series of orchestrated movements carried out by a group of people (Blacking 1968; McNeill 1995; Becker 1994: 50). However, although it has been observed that dance rarely exists without music (Rouget 1985: 118), and that states of transcendence are closely related to music, there is no clear interrelation between a type of music and trance (ibid: xvii). Importantly, music rather than ‘triggering’ or ‘manipulating the trance state’, socialises it (ibid: xviii). Becker pushes this slightly further, when she claims that achieving a transcendent state depends in part on cultural expectations: it is a matter of ‘knowing how one is supposed to act’ (1994: 41). As she has noted it is one of the possible ways of ‘being-in-the-world’ (ibid: 42). In other words even trance can be resisted. 19 In Peru, where the charango originated, it is usually made from smaller armadillo shells, has the same number of strings but rather different tuning. 20 Malafouris has used the example of the potter shaping clay on a wheel who finds that it either resists or accommodates him. The potter has a degree of expertise that enables him to shape the clay bit by bit to his ends – that of making a pot of the desired shape and size. The potter, when asked how he does it, usually finds it easier to demonstrate using tacit embodied knowledge rather than trying to explain in words the many variables that are involved. He may or may not succeed in his aims depending on whether the clay ‘resists’ or ‘accommodates’ him (2008: 20). Here the suggestion is that the clay has material agency – that it may defy/resist or assist the would-be maker. See also Mitchell (1996: 71–82) who has suggested that objects (and in particular paintings) can themselves be thought of as having desires. 21 The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge. 22 A number of Concheros showed me artefacts that they claimed had inherent animate qualities which they either kept in their homes or brought with them to ‘facilitate’ the dance. Some of these were special articles of clothing, others ornaments or little bags containing crystals that they wore while they danced. 23 A concha has five double strings (or courses) usually pitched an octave apart. Each pair is then tuned a fifth apart, except for the fourth set down from the top which is tuned two tones higher than the third (known technically as a

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re-entrant). The tuning from the bottom up is as follows: E up to B, down to G, up to D, then up to A. 24 In many societies in Mexico, candle flames are clearly conceptualised as creating a connection between this world and that of the gods. For the Mixtec, of Nuyoo in Oaxaca, candles are ‘associated with the life span’ and their light related to ‘the light of the mind’, while flowers are considered to be directly related to the anima (which there refers to the heart or soul) (Monaghan 1996: 185). They believe that the ‘odor of flowers, the light of candles and the smoke of incense are all food that gods consume’ (ibid: 185). Further, if a man ‘bathes’ himself with candle wax was ‘by rubbing it over his body’, the candle will be imbued ‘with the farmer’s anima and destiny, and [it] may even be addressed as if it were the person so bathed’ (ibid: 186). In many Mexican communities, the smoke of candles is said to carry prayers to heaven (Nash 1959: 1460; Rostas 1989). Further afield, amongst the Tlingit, candles are used to help souls to heaven – if the flame burns brightly, the journey is thought to be easy, and if weak, the soul is believed to be unable to make it to heaven (Kan 1987: 46). In Canchis, Highland Peru, Orlove noted that during divination on a mountain top, when candles are lit in a niche in the rock, ‘it is a bad sign if the wind blows the candle out, and a good one if it does not’ (1979: 90). Finally In Mollomarca, a rural Quechua-speaking community in Peru, candles are used for divination (Greenway 1998: 150). Many more examples could be quoted. but it is clear that, as for the Concheros, candles, flowers and incense (I have only mentioned incense en passant here, but see Rostas 2009) are frequently encountered as providing a way to the sacred and to transcendence. It is possible that some Concheros, through their reading, have imported beliefs from other traditions. 25 In form this is rather like a cross tilted on its side, with an angle at the top (and bottom) of 135 degrees and of 45 at both sides (see Friedlander 1975: 178). 26 Although recently there have been signs that their religiosity is on the increase as some of the Mexica’s practices become more ritualised – even if these are still more ritualistic than the creative enactments of the Concheros used to be. 27 To an extent this is the case but there are always a number to be choose between. The same could be said of the choice of dances. Although it is apposite to begin some obligations with one particular dance or a series of three, thereafter it is up to the regidor in charge to choose whatever dance seems to be apposite to him/her for the next. The large number of modifications in the last 20 years go largely unremarked on, as they are rapidly assimilated or embodied and thus with time remain unrecorded and hence unremembered (see Connerton 1989). 28 Interestingly the Concheros now cross themselves with an increased frequency during a vigil (despite the Aztecisation of the dance).

Bibliography

Appadurai, Arjun (1986). The Social Life of Things (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Asad, Talal (1983). ‘Anthropological conceptions of religion: reflections on Geertz’. Man, N.S., 18, pp. 237–59. —— (1993). ‘Towards a genealogy of the concept of ritual’. In T. Asad, Genealogies of Religion (London: Johns Hopkins University Press).

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Becker, Judith (1994). ‘Music and trance: sound and the mind’. Leonardo Music Journal, 4, pp. 41–51. Blacking, John (1968). ‘Percussion and transition’. Man, N.S., 3/2, pp. 313–14. Burkhart, Louise (1989). The Slippery Earth: Nahua Christian Moral Dialogue in 16th Century Mexico (Tucson, AR: Arizona University Press). Cannell, Fennella (ed.) (2006). The Anthropology of Christianity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Clayton, Martin, Rebecca Sager and Udo Will (2005). ‘In time with the music: the concept of entrainment and its significance for ethnomusicology’. European Meetings in Ethnomusicology, 11 (ESEM Counterpoint 1), pp. 3–75, at . Clendinnen, Inga (1990). ‘Ways to the sacred: reconstructing “religion” in sixteenth-century Mexico’. History and Anthropology, 5, pp. 105–41. —— (1991). Aztecs: An Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Connerton, Paul (1989). How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Deren, Maya (1953). Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (London: Thames and Hudson). Engelke, Matthew (2007). A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in the African Church (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Freedberg, David (1989). The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press). Freidlander, Judith (1975). Being Indian in Hueyapan (New York: St Martin’s). Gell, Alfred (1998). Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon). Greenway, Christine (1998). ‘Objectified selves: an analysis of medicines in Andean sacrificial healing’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, N.S. 12/2, pp. 147–67. Hughes-Freeland, Felicia (ed.) (1998). Ritual, Performance, Media (London: Routledge). Ingold, Tim (2006). ‘Rethinking the animate; re-animating thought’, Ethnos, 71/1, pp. 9–20. Kan, Sergei (1987). ‘Memory eternal: orthodox Christianity and the Tlingit mortuary complex’. Arctic Anthropology, 24/1, pp. 32–55. Keane, Webb (2008). ‘The evidence of the senses and the materiality of religion’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, N.S. 14, April, pp. 110– 127. Knappett, Carl (2008). ‘The neglected networks of material agency: artefacts, pictures and texts’. In C. Knappett and L. Malafouris (eds.), Material Agency: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Approach (New York: Springer), pp. 139–56. —— and Lambros Malafouris (2008a). ‘Material and nonhuman agency: an introduction’. In C. Knappett and L. Malafouris (eds.), Material Agency: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Approach (New York: Springer), pp. ix – xix. —— and —— (eds.) (2008b). Material Agency: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Approach (New York: Springer). Latour, Bruno (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor NetworkTheory (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Law, John and Annemarie Mol (2008). ‘The actor-enacted: Cumbrian sheep in 2001’. In C. Knappett and L. Malafouris (eds.), Material Agency: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Approach (New York: Springer), pp. 57–77.

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Lockhart, James (1992). The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Malafouris, Lambros (2008). ‘At the potter’s wheel: an argument for material agency’. In C. Knappett and L. Malafouris (eds.), Material Agency: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Approach (New York: Springer), pp. 19–36. McNeill, William (1995). Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Meyer, Birgit (2006). ‘Religious sensations: why media, aesthetics and power matter in the study of contemporary religion’. at Miller, Daniel (1987). Material Culture and Mass Consumption (Oxford: Blackwell). Miller, Mary Ellen and Karl Taube (1993). An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya (London: Thames and Hudson). Mitchell, Jon P. (2010). ‘Performing statues’. In D. Morgan (ed.), Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (Abingdon: Routledge), pp. 262–76. Mitchell, William T. (1996). ‘What Do Pictures “Really” Want?’ October, 77, pp. 71–82. Monaghan, John (1996). ‘The Mesoamerican community as a “great house”’. Ethnology, 35/3, Special Issue on ‘Mesoamerican Community Organization: Barrios and Other Customary Social Units’, II, pp. 181–94. Morgan, David (2010a). ‘Introduction: the matter of belief’. In D. Morgan (ed.), Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (Abingdon: Routledge), pp. 1–17. —— (2010b). ‘Materiality, social analysis and the study of religions’. In D. Morgan (ed.), Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (Abingdon: Routledge), pp. 55–74. —— (ed.) (2010c). Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (Abingdon: Routledge). Nash, Manning (1959). ‘Introducing industry in peasant societies’. Science, N.S., 130/3387, pp. 1456–62. Needham, Rodney (1967). ‘Percussion and transition’. Man, N.S., 2, pp. 606–14. Orlove, Ben (1979). ‘Two rituals and three hypotheses: an examination of solstice divination in southern highland Peru’. Anthropological Quarterly, 52/2, pp. 86–98. Osborne, Robin and Jeremy Tanner (eds.) (2007). Art’s Agency and Art History: New Interventions in Art History (Oxford: Blackwell). Pinney, Christopher and Nicholas Thomas (2001). Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the Technologies of Enchantment (London: Berg). Rostas, Susanna (1987). From Ethos to Identity: Religious Practice as Resistance to Change. Unpublished DPhil thesis, Sussex University. —— (2009). Carrying the Word: the Concheros Dance in Mexico City (Boulder, CO: Colorado University Press). Rouget, Gilbert (1985). Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations between Music and Possession (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Schieffelin, Edward L. (1998). ‘Problematizing performance’. In F. HughesFreeland, (ed.), Ritual, Performance, Media (London: Routledge), pp. 194–207.

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Sutton, John (2008). ‘Material Agency, Skills and History: Distributed Cognition and the Archaeology of Memory’. In C. Knappett and L. Malafouris (eds.), (New York: Springer), pp. 37–55. Varela, Francisco (1992). ‘Afterword’. In H. Maturana and F. Varela, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding (London: Shambala), pp. 251–256. Varela, Francisco, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch (1993). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (Cambridge, MA: the MIT Press). Warman, Arturo (1965). Notes for the record, ‘Danzas de la Conquista’. Vol 2, Mexico D.F: INAH/SEP (Vinyl).

Chapter 4

‘We Worship Nature’ The Given and the Made in Brazilian Candomblé Roger Sansi

How are spirits made in Afro-Brazilian Candomblé? Mãe Aninha, founder of what today is the most famous, traditional and orthodox Candomblé house in Brazil, Ilê Axé Opó Afonjá, once said to an American sociologist: Africans don’t worship things made only by the human hand. They worship nature. What is a stone (fetish)? A mineral, isn’t it? It is not made by the human hand … Like Catholics have images for their saints, we have something to remember our Orixás. But we don’t adore images made by the hand of men like they do. We worship nature.1 Mãe Aninha made a clear distinction between images ‘made by men’, essentially images, and ‘something to remember our Orixá’, not made by the hand of man: a stone, a mineral, a ‘fetish’. I will come back to the question of the ‘fetish’ later on. I wish now to focus on the clear distinction Aninha makes between things made by the human hand, and ‘something to remember the Orixás’, things that are not made, but ‘natural’ and given. Aninha is talking about Candomblé’s capacity to find people in things, actors behind events: Xangô in lightning, Iansã in storms, and so on. She is not only discussing the relation between ‘humans’ and ‘non-humans’, humans and spirits, the material and the immaterial, people and things, but in more fundamental terms, she is talking about the relation between

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things found and things made by the human hand, or the given and the made: the classical Western distinction between nature as ‘pre-ordained and self-contained’, to quote the introduction to this volume, versus culture as artifice and convention. Candomblé would be a religion of the given, of things that are already there: ‘natural’ things. But by putting Candomblé on the side of nature, and not culture, Aninha is obviously provoking a paradox; she is subverting this distinction. How could Candomblé be a religion of nature? What does it mean to say that Candomblé is a religion of things that are already made? Mãe Aninha’s words can be interpreted at different levels; she was a sophisticated and subtle thinker and strategist, whose seminal role in the present configuration of Candomblé as a ‘pure’ African religion has been underscored by many scholars (Capone 1998; Costa Lima 1987; Serra 1994). But this chapter will not address directly the history or cultural politics of Candomblé. Here I am more interested in understanding what she meant when she said ‘we worship nature’, or things ‘not made by the human hand’. Such questions take us to a deeper level than the cultural politics of this religion, to the fundamental ideas and practices on which Afro-Brazilian religions are built. In recent years there has been a renewal of interest in the cosmologies and ontologies of these religions. Some authors (Anjos 2006; Goldman 2005, 2009; Halloy 2005, 2009, this volume; Sansi 2005) have started to ask how people, things, and spirits are made in them; how entities come into being in Afro-Brazilian religions. In this chapter, I want to make a contribution to this new literature by focusing in particular in how the notion that Candomblé is a religion of ‘nature’ can shed light, or perhaps complicate, our understanding of how entities are made. One of the possible problems of this renewed interest in ‘ontology’ is that researchers can end up building an image of AfroBrazilian or other religions as if they were unified and coherent, replacing what was once called a ‘symbolic system’ or a ‘culture’, by a rather lax use of the heavy term ‘ontology’. This approach to Afro-Brazilian religions as a unified ontology has the advantage of offering a clear narrative, which can overcome the functionalist reductionism of previous studies. And yet the story is always more complex: there is no straight answer to the question ‘how do entities come into being in Candomblé?’, there is no single ‘ontological matrix’ (Descola 2005: 179), but a multiplicity of ontologies, if we still want to use the term. What is fascinating, in fact, is how people in Candomblé can come to terms with the ways their spirits and themselves are made, even if they are not always consistent. Of course, it is much more difficult to address a scenario of multiple ontologies than to analytically

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describe and prescribe a ‘ontological matrix’, and so I have to ask the reader of this chapter to be a bit patient through a narrative that will at times seem convoluted and contradictory. I will start in the next two sections by describing what could be a straight model, based on orthodox approaches that emphasise initiation and ritual reproduction. In the sections after that, we will see how this model is complicated by revelations, miracles, and other forms of ‘natural’ or pre-ritual encounter with the spirits.

People, things and spirits in Candomblé

Candomblé is a Brazilian religion that integrates West African, Central African, European and indigenous elements. Its place of birth is Bahia, and most of my fieldwork was done in the cities of Salvador and Cachoeira in that Brazilian state. It is very similar to Xangô in Pernambuco as Halloy describes it in this volume. In recent decades, the Candomblé of Bahia has also become the dominant model of Afro-Brazilian religion throughout Brazil. In Salvador and Cachoeira, it is increasingly difficult to find AfroBrazilian houses that identify themselves with any other terms – such as ‘Umbanda’. There is a clear model of ‘orthodoxy’ of Candomblé proposed (even imposed) from some houses in Salvador, and yet there are still infinite variations from this model, of which I will only be able to give a quick glimpse in this paper. In this section I will describe what Candomblé is in this more orthodox model. After that, we will see how this orthodox model does not necessarily account for everything that happens in Candomblé. People do not join Candomblé out of choice, but because one of the spirits or gods, called Orixá, forced them to. The Orixá are personal entities, often described both as ancient queens and kings of Africa and as elements of nature. Thus, for example, Xangô was the King of Oyó, but he is also the god of thunder. Oxalá was the king of Ife and the god of the sky. Not only that, but all kinds of beings (animals, plants, colours, foods) correspond to one or another Orixá. Likewise, people individually correspond to mainly one of the Orixás: some people belong to Xangô, some people belong to Oxalá, etc.2 Everyone belongs to an Orixá. But one may spend his whole life without noticing it. In some circumstances, however, the Orixá asks for worship. The Orixá can cause physical, mental and social afflictions if the people they choose do not fulfill their duty (obrigação) to them. In order to recognise if they have been chosen by an Orixá, who is this Orixá, and what they have to do to fulfill their duty, people go to Candomblé houses. There, a mãe de santo (a priestess, or ‘mother of the saint’) will identify the Orixá and what they are asking for. This could

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be a simple offering, but it could also be much more than that: the Orixá may want to seize the body of the person through spirit possession. In that case, the person will need to go trough a process of initiation, called fazer o santo, ‘making the saint’. This process will teach the person to deal with the Orixá, through habituating her body to spirit possession and the construction of an altar. From then on, the person will be a filha de santo (a daughter of the saint). To be a filha de santo means to be a ‘daughter’ of one specific Orixá – but also means to obey the order of the mãe de santo, who will help you ‘make the saint’. The expression ‘making the saint’ is not to be taken for granted, because indeed there is a notion that the santo is made through the process of initiation. This may seem contradictory with the notion that initiation starts as a response to an Orixá, or even more with the argument made by Aninha at the beginning of this chapter: that Candomblé people do not make their own gods. But this is not contradictory. The Orixás are already there – they are given: they are ‘in nature’. But when they ask someone to take care of them, they want them to build a particular instance (or to be adventurous, a particular ‘avatar’) of them: that particular instance is the santo. Therefore, Xangô, a very famous and well known Orixá, exists in the world, and is identified with some specific things – thunder, manhood, generosity, the colour red, the king, certain cities, animals, trees, certain stones. But each instance of Xangô in each filho de santo is a different santo. The process of initiation is highly hierarchical, not simply in the relation between filha and santo, but also in the literal relation between filha and mãe, daughter and mother. The filha is under the direct orders of the mãe, and she will continue to be so, since the mãe is in a higher degree of correspondence with her santo – she has a stronger force (axé) which allows her to help people make their own santos. Eventually, the filha de santo can reach the same level in the hierarchy, herself becoming a mãe de santo, though not all do so. The relation between mãe and filha is described in terms of reproduction, since the filha partakes in the force not only of her santo, but also of her mãe and the house where she has been initiated. Thus, if eventually she herself becomes a mãe de santo, the force (axé) of her house will be an extension of her mother’s, in the same way that her force (axé) is an extension of her mother’s. Hierarchy is everything: beginning, means, end. Without it, it’s chaos (Azevedo Santos 1994). Initiation involves the seclusion of the person in the house of Candomblé, to habituate her body to possession and the construction of a shrine. Halloy, in this volume, describes this relation body/altar in terms of isomorphism, in which the body is treated as an object and the shrine

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like a person. The shrine is in fact a part of the ‘distributed person’ (Gell 1998) of the initiate. The santo is ‘seated’, or better ‘set’ (assentado) both in the head and in the altar; in fact the head and the altar are both seen as repositories for the santo. The shrine is built around a fundamento, a ‘foundation’, an object where the Orixá is found. Halloy in this volume talks extensively about the fundamentos. The fundamento is found normally in an object and a place that correspond to the santo (for example, a fresh water source for Oxum, goddess of fresh water). These are the stones Aninha was making reference to, ‘not made by the human hand’. But as Halloy points out in this volume, that is not always the case – since many times the fundamentos are not only ‘natural objects’, but made things – like the tools, ferramentas, used for Ogun shrines. And yet, the distinction that Aninha made could be understood in wider terms: the crux of the point is not if the fundamento is an ‘artifice’ or a ‘natural’ thing. What is important is that people find the Orixas in them; and that is only possible because the Orixas are there already. To give you a couple of examples: my mãe de santo, Madalena, found a huge pot made of iron while digging in her backyard, probably dating back to the nineteenth century. She said that it was Ogun, the god of iron, who made her find it there, because he wanted her to put the pot in his altar. Another example, which I used in a previous text (Sansi 2005): after a storm, the house of Madalena’s sister felt down. Madalena heard a voice of someone asking her to dig and unearth him. She did, and found the skull of a goat. It was an Exu, a spirit that wanted to be ‘seated’ (assentado). One of these things is an artefact, a pot, the other one a natural ‘thing’, a skull. And yet, the story is articulated in the same terms: Madalena responds to a call, the spirit wanted to be found. This is what I described elsewhere (Sansi 2005) in terms of ‘objective’, or ‘driven chance’, following the surrealist expression: things are found because they want to be found. It is not so important if they are artefacts or not. People find the spirits, they don’t make them out of the blue. Then, once they are found, they are ‘set’, and ‘made’ into the particular santo of the person who found them. So it could be said that they are ‘made’ out of something that was already there, ‘in nature’, given.

Participation and vitalism in Candomblé

So in fact, the distinction between the ‘given’ and the ‘made’, or in other terms ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, is not an absolute ontological dichotomy, but a matter of degree. Marcio Goldman (2009: 116) explains this point describing Candomblé’s ontology in terms of participation, or vitalism:

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Candomblé would not be a religion of Nature, as opposed to Culture – following the ontological split which, according to Descola (2005), constitutes modern naturalism – but of participation in a chain of being in which humans are along with plants, animals, stones or meteorological phenomena. Thus the filha would be Xangô, together with stone and thunder. Participation is also the model through which the relations between mãe and filha de santo are organised. This participative ontology was already described by Bastide, as Goldman himself (2005) mentions, in relation to a medieval European (or rather neo-Platonic) cosmology that described the world as a ladder of degrees of being (Bastide 1978); ‘the great chain of being’, in Lovejoy’s terms (1936). Goldman unfolds the implications of that ontology, explaining how the distinction between the given and the made would only be a matter of degree, using as an example a metaphor commonly used in Candomblé comparing initiation with the process by which a rough stone becomes a precious stone. I quote the full paragraph because it is very important for my argument: The expression ‘brute saint’, used to denote the Orixá before initiation, cannot be understood as a ‘violent’ saint manifesting itself in a passive person, but rather should be perceived, as the English expression has it, as a saint ‘in the rough’. Before initiation, saint and person are more like ‘uncut diamonds’ waiting to be discovered and ‘cut’, rather than wild force and inert matter awaiting animation … Thus, this indicates a way of thinking about the creative process that is distinct from that which centers around a model of production and property – a model that, as Strathern demonstrated (1988: 18–19, 1996: 518), constitutes the ‘root metaphor’ that underpins our ways of thinking and

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establishing relations … Worlds are determined by theories and practices involved in the creation of beings, persons, and gods that already exist. But this is not done according to a JudeoChristian model of creation ex nihilo, in which creator is necessarily superior to created. In fact, these theories and practices seem to resonate rather with concepts such as that of ‘desiringproduction’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1972), which posits production as an uninterrupted process of cuts in fluxes, rather than as modelling of content; or with the construction of the person in Melanesia, as analyzed by Strathern (1988), where one proceeds more by subtraction than by addition; or, further, with Latour’s (1996) maxim, according to which we are always ‘slightly surpassed’ by what we create (Goldman 2009: 124). In other terms, nothing can be given or created out of nowhere, but only as the actualisation of a pre-existing being, in a process of becoming. In Candomblé, more specifically, there would be a number of general or virtual beings, the Orixá, which are limited in number and known through mythological accounts (Xangô, Iemanjá, etc.). But when people are initiated into Candomblé, they ‘make the saint’ (fazer o santo); the santo is an actualisation of the Orixá which is particular to the person – it is made through the person. In fact, Latour mentions the Candomblé term for initiation, fazer o santo, as an example of how social actors are made (Latour 1996: 21). For Latour, reading about fazer o santo was a sort of profane illumination that made him see how science also ‘makes’ its objects, and how these objects are not simply artifices, but actors. Latour does not know much about Candomblé, but his illumination is basically correct: in fact, Candomblé people do ‘make’ their santos as autonomous actors. And yet, although the ontology of participation brilliantly described by Goldman can account for much of what happens in Candomblé, I think it cannot account for everything. The participatory model is strictly lined to a very orthodox interpretation of Candomblé, that takes for granted that hierarchical reproduction is at the core of its practice, as Mãe Stella said, ‘hierarchy is everything’. But this account obviates the fact that in Candomblé, not everything is learnt in initiation; no recipe, ritual or prescriptive method is enough to build a person. There are imponderables: not everybody is called to ‘make the saint’. There is no such a thing as mechanic reproduction: initiation is a response to an event of encounter with the santo in the body and in the fundamento, the thing; this encounter

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is not contained in initiation. The serendipitous nature of the relation between people and the santo does not end with initiation, but is only channelled through it: not everybody who gets initiated will become ‘mother of the saint’. One does not only need a straightforward initiation but also a particular ‘gift’ (dom), an innate capacity to recognise and communicate with the santo (Boyer 1996). ‘Initiation’ and ‘gift’ are not opposite, they are complementary; but one cannot go without the other (Sansi 2009). Candomblé is not just a matter of training but an art, and people with a particular ‘gift’ may enjoy from the very beginning a privileged relationship with their santos, quickly ascending the steps of ritual power, inducing conflict with their mães de santo. Conflicts between mães and filhas are not infrequent. In fact, they are so frequent that they are almost a rule.3 Hierarchy is not everything, and even the best families have their fights. When the filhas de santo quarrel with the mãe de santo, they often try to leave the house, but this is not easy because their assentos are there, under the control of the mãe de santo, who owns the house and takes care of them – she is the zeladora, literally the ‘keeper’ of the saints. To leave the house for good, they have to take their assentos away, and often they can only do this out of the mãe de santo’s sight: she would consider it a theft of her axé (power) since a part of her ritual power has also been poured upon these assentos. We could say that she considers these assentos a part of her ‘distributed person’ too. Thus, it is often only through violence and ‘theft’ that the umbilical cord linking ‘mother’ and ‘daughter’ through their assentos can be severed. Once they have taken away their assentos, the filhas de santo may rebuild a shrine at their own house. And if they are ‘gifted’ enough, and keep a good relationship with their santo, or convince people that they have enough ritual seniority, they can become mães de santo in their own right. In this sense, the history of Candomblé is not only one of continuous, mechanical, ‘natural’ reproduction, but also one of constant rupture. This rupture is often punctuated by the ‘gift’ of particular individuals of getting to the sources of power (axé) directly, bypassing the hierarchies of reproduction. The participatory or vitalist model seems a bit limited in particular when we consider the emergence of new spirits, unknown in the orthodox mythology of the Orixás – such as, for example, the Caboclos and Erê spirits, which have particular histories that are not contained in the mythology of the Orixás, and that often are generated outside or at the margin of the narratives of initiation and ritual reproduction. Another aspect of Candomblé practices that is difficult to contain in this participatory model

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are the ‘natural shrines’, the revelations and miracles happening in places of worship and pilgrimage outside Candomblé houses. In both instances, these spirits and places of worship break with the cycle of initiation, they are not ascribed to the logic of reproduction of the Candomblé house: they are exceptional events, in which new spirits and new places of worship are being made, without the explicit ratification of the hierarchy of initiation. To understand how spirits are made in Candomblé we cannot talk just about actualisation of a virtual model, but it is important to consider also the presence of events and revelations that generate totally new spirits.

The Caboclo: the made and the brute

We could start by returning to the expression santo bruto, ‘brute saint’. As Goldman said, this makes reference to a pedra bruta, a coarse stone that is then polished. But santo bruto also makes reference to the wilderness, the untamed and savage. The santo can also be said to be bravo (‘wild’), particularly in relation to one kind of spirit, the Caboclos, or Indian/mixed-race spirits (as in índio bravo, ‘wild Indian’, as opposed to índio manso, ‘calm’, ‘tamed’). The term caboclo in Brazil makes reference to indigenes, or those of mixed indigenous and other parentage. The caboclo is associated with the sertão, the interior of the country, which until very recently was seen as a kind of Wild West. The caboclo is the ‘owner of the land’, historically associated with Brazilian independence, a nationalist symbol (Santos 1995). In the following I will introduce the story of Caboclo Oxossi, an índio bravo from the Amazon region, according to her filha de santo, Madalena. When Madalena was seven years old, she went with her mother to wash clothes at a little waterfall in the forest, not far from the town of Cachoeira. There she was bitten by a snake, that her mother then killed, whereupon Madalena fell into a trance for the first time: she was possessed by a spirit, Caboclo Oxossi, although she of course knew nothing of this at the time. While in the trance, she found a small offspring of the snake and took it home, hiding it from her family. When her mother found out that a snake was being raised under a bed, she was horrified, and asked a young man to kill it. While he was trying to do so, he tripped over and broke his leg, at which Madalena fell into a violent trance. She remembered almost nothing of what happened in the following months, when she was initiated into Candomblé. Madalena never had a good relationship with her pai de santo, the priest who initiated her. According to her, this was due to Caboclo Oxossi, who resisted her initiation, because he disliked a pai de santo putting his ‘hand on her head’, that is to say, initiating her. This is a very important point:

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Madalena went to a Candomblé house to ‘make’ the santo to the Orixás Iansã, Oxum and Obaluaiyé. But Caboclo Oxossi had no need to be ‘made’: he came to her as a gift before she was initiated, and he would stay with her despite that initiation. In fact, even today she seldom falls into a trance with her Orixás. After her initiation, Madalena lost interest in Candomblé. But after some years the Caboclo started to provoke more frequent crises of possession, in the most unexpected situations, while she was in the market, or dancing at a party. After many unfortunate events, including the death of her husband, she decided to carry out her obrigação, her duty, to the Caboclo, and built a shrine (assento) to him. Initially, this was in a little room, but the spirit began to perform a number of miracles (milagres) and to help people; and with his help, the little room became a house of Candomblé, dedicated to him. On the early occasions that Madalena was possessed by the Caboclo, it was a very wild spirit (muito bravo). Madalena’s Caboclo did not dance, and ‘talked Greek’ (which in Portuguese is a way of saying ‘an incomprehensible language’), he was truly an índio bravo. Later on, through going to other Candomblé houses he met other caboclos, who taught him to dance and sing, and ultimately, to speak. Through these public rituals, dreams and apparitions, little by little it has become clearer to Madalena who Caboclo Oxossi is, and at the same time their relation has become more stable. Caboclo Oxossi is not to be confused with the Orixá of hunting, king of Ketu: he is an Indian from the Amazon. The festa of the Caboclo in Madalena’s house starts with the hymns of Brazil and Cachoeira (the colours of the Caboclo mimic those of the Brazilian national flag). But in Candomblé, where the Caboclos come from is complex and uncertain: the Caboclo spirits claim to come not only from Brazil but from many other places (Brazeal 2003), in particular, Aruanda-Luanda, in Angola. These places, in any case, are identified with the sertão, which etymologically is connected to ‘desert’, an uncultivated, uncivilised, barren area – the outback, or wilderness. In the first half of the twentieth century, the cult of the Caboclo was seen as an impure, syncretistic and fake form of Candomblé by the leaders of the dominant houses in Bahia (Santos 1995); it then became extremely popular, and most Candomblé people have a Caboclo spirit. In recent years, in the context of the movement towards the ‘reafricanisation’ and purification of Candomblé, some houses, like the Opô Afonjá, have forbidden their members to worship their Caboclos inside the temple. However, many of them continue to do so elsewhere. In fact Madalena has had several conflicts with more orthodox and traditional

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Candomblé houses, who would reject her because her house was grounded on a Caboclo. But ultimately, Madalena overcame most of her suspicions by giving proof of her ‘gift’, her personal power, her ‘axé’, in many situations. The big difference between the Caboclo and the Orixá is that the former is not ‘made’ – in the sense that people are not initiated into it through the long ritual process of the feitura de santo; the Caboclo is already made. As opposed to Orixás, a Caboclo is often unique to one person: they are known to people because somebody embodies them. They are also much closer to people than Orixás, who do not talk to people: if they do speak, they say only a few words in Nagô, an African language that few understand; and such words are deemed to have a terrible force (axé). Nor do Orixás open their eyes, which are thought to have a power too strong for human beings to bear. The only way to communicate with them is through the oracle of the búzios, cowry shells. By contrast, Caboclos speak in Portuguese, even if with a strange accent, they listen and joke, and they heal people. The incorporation of these native spirits should not be interpreted as the degeneration of an African religion, but as ‘embodied history’, as Stoller (1995) puts it, integrating different elements of local history in the popular imagination. A spirit like Caboclo Oxossi is not only a part of Madalena’s story, but of the history of her people and her country. And yet what is interesting about Madalena’s story is not just her ‘gift’ in incorporating new spirits and the Brazilian historical imagination, but how in fact parts of her personal story incorporates certain elements of the cycle of initiation as if they were ‘natural’, or given, as I will explain in the next section.

Inkita, a ritual of encounter

Magdalena’s ‘innate’ initiation is very similar in its structure to a ritual which, according to Gisèle Binnon-Cossard (1970), was part of the cycle of initiation in the past, particularly in one of the ritual traditons of Candomblé, called Angola, but which has been lost or forgotten in most houses: the inkita. In this ritual the initiates, in the state of erê, a sort of childish, roguish version of the santo, were abandoned to ‘a state of nature’, where they lived alone, finding their own means of survival by hunting, fishing and sometimes stealing. After eight days, they would come back to the house, in a state of total wildness. They carried in their hand emblems or ferramentas of their Orixá: a stone (Xangô), a piece of iron (Ogun), a snake (Oxumare or Oxossi), or fish (Iemanjá).4 Binon-Cossard mentions remarkable African precedents for these forms of initiation in the Kikongo rituals of the nkita described in the colonial ethnographies of Laman or Bittremieux, where the novices found their

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‘fetishes’ in the bush or in water.5 Each fetish would have its own story, which only the initiate would know.6 When they returned to their homes, the initiates would be in a state of violent trance.7 In the Jeje houses of Cachoeira we find something similar to the inkita – the grau, or gra, according to Nicolau: ‘an elemental force of nature, sometimes referred as o bicho (“the beast”), sometimes identified with the aggressive side of the erê or even an Exú’ (2010: 82). Since it has already been mentioned, I perhaps should discuss the erê a bit further. Each santo has a childish version; for example, the erê of Caboclo Oxossi is Flor Branca, his son. Flor Branca is the spirit of a street child: he likes to hang out with street children, beggars and drug-takers, and he likes reggae music. Like his father, Flor Branca is a generous spirit, organising big parties every year at the beginning of October. These parties are replete with food and sweets for children, reggae music and games. The erê is a contradictory and ambiguous spirit the term comes from the Yoruba for ‘play’). In the process of initiation, initiates spend a great deal of time in the state of erê, in which they can talk, listen, learn and eat, as opposed to the state of santo, which (particularly in the case of the Orixá) neither eats nor talks. Interestingly enough Madalena had never heard of the inkita, but at the end of the celebration for the Caboclos Madalena and her family perform an analogous ritual, the maionga. Before dawn, the initiates leave the closed initiation room in the Candomblé house to have a bath (maionga) in a pond in the bush, at the Caperuçú, where it is said Indians lived in pre-colonial times. There they would fall into a trance and grab the first thing they saw – stones, animals or plants, and bring them back to the house. What is even more interesting about this is that in many ways the story of Madalena’s first encounter with the Caboclo reproduces the inkita, even if she was not aware of it then – it was as it were a spontaneous (natural) initiation: in her encounter, Madalena appears as a child, an erê, finding the snake as a ‘natural’ embodiment of the Caboclo Oxossi- her spirit. The made is given, the ritual as such is forgotten and turned into a gift, without the necessary injunction of a pai or mãe de santo, breaking the model of reproduction, and generating a wholly new entity, the Caboclo Oxossi.

Water and miracles

There is also another important element in the story: water. According to Madalena, her Caboclo does not accept sacrifices (matanças), and therefore, blood. This is related with the fact that the Caboclo is not ‘made’ through ritual initiation (which involves sacrifice). The ritual substance that is more openly used in Madalena’s house is water. This water is, however, not any

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water, but water from a miraculous source, the Milagre (miracle) de Santa Barbara, a sanctuary near the house. There, some 20 years ago, a man heard a voice when he was about to cut down a tree, saying: ‘Don’t cut me!’ He thought it was just his imagination, so he continued with his task, but when the axe hit the tree-trunk, it started to bleed. The man then had a vision of Saint Barbara, or Iansã in Candomblé, who entreated him not to cut the tree – it was sacred to her, and spring water with miraculous properties ran under it. He promised to comply, and vowed that he would make an altar to her on that very spot. The man kept his promise to Saint Barbara, and people from all over the region come to get water from the Miracle spring, including Madalena. Another miraculous water source is the Milagre de São Roque, where Madalena goes on a romaria (pilgrimage) every year. The Milagre is a precipice made of one big solid rock with water pouring from the vegetation on it. Local people say that the water falls over the precipice in both the rainy and the dry season, and at the same rate; it comes not from any river or other source of water but directly from the earth. There are two stories as to its origin as a Milagre: for some, there is a giant snake that protects it, while others claim it was discovered when an image of Saint Roch was found in a small cave, where nowadays there is a Catholic altar. The Milagre de São Roque has become the object of an immensely popular celebration on the last Sunday of August, with many houses of Candomblé taking part, and with many of their initiates incorporating their Caboclos in the groves surrounding the Milagre. Obviously, this is also a popular Catholic celebration, but is important to make clear that these two milagres are not promoted by the Catholic church, and have not in either case been explicitly recognised by it. At the same time that there is no doubt that both the Milagre de São Roque and the Milagre de Santa Barbara are expressions of popular Catholic devotion: and they are simultaneously Candomblé ‘natural’ shrines. What brings the two belief systems together? The answer is the miracle itself. The miraculous event, the encounter that revealed these places, and their waters, as holy, is recognised by both. The argument that John Thornton made in reference to the sudden success of Catholicism in the kingdom of Kongo following the first colonial encounter is based on the same idea – that what brought Kongo beliefs and Catholicism together was not necessarily their analogous cosmologies, but the centrality they gave to miracles and revelations: Many Kongo might come to understand that the beings who had long revealed themselves had always been saints or angels and,

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Thus revelation is used to find spirits and saints in objects and territories, both in Kikongo ritual traditions and in Catholic practice – what Thornton calls ‘continuous revelation’.8 In this sense, the mechanism operated is more complex than ‘syncretism’: it involves not only a mixture or identification of different religious beliefs or cosmologies, but also a redefinition of what is particular and what is universal, from a new point of view resulting from an encounter – an event leading to a revelation. The encounter of different cosmologies, or religions, or cultures – whatever term we wish to use, is redefined by the encounter with the local spirit, the nkita, which is by this token redefined as a universal saint. And in some cases, it results in the emergence of prophets, like Beatriz Kimbangu, who proposed a wholly new religion and description of the world. How does the question of revelation relate to the model that Goldman describes? To recapitulate, he describes a model of initiation by which the divine is general and particular at the same time, it is given as a general Orixá, and then is made as a particular santo, following the analogy of the virtual and the actual in Deleuze (1994: 208–9). But what is interesting about revelation is that it also articulates the emergence of unprecedented elements, that were virtually not there – they were unknown in either their virtual or their general being: new saints, new sacred places, with particular historicities. In other terms, not everything is virtually there: unexpected events also occur. In the next section, I will deal a bit more extensively with this notion of the ‘event’.

Events and fetishes

Mattijs van de Port, who has also worked on Candomblé, recently proposed a possible definition of pilgrimage: ‘Pilgrimage is going places to make things come your way’ (2007: 107). ‘Going to places’ is to bring forth an event; paradoxically, it induces serendipity. Van de Port makes reference to Badiou’s understanding of the event as a supplement that makes truth emerge as a process:

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For the process of truth to begin, something must happen. Knowledge as such only gives us repetition; it is concerned only with what already is. For truth to affirm its newness, there must be a supplement. This supplement is committed to chance – it is unpredictable, incalculable, it is beyond what is. I call it an event. A truth appears in its newness because an eventful supplement interrupts repetition (Badiou 2002: 46). In the event, there is something more than repetition. This notion of the event, however, is very different from Deleuze’s, for whom the event is only an intensification or actualisation in the process of becoming. For Badiou the event is a rupture, a new truth that reconfigures the past (see also Humprey 2008). As we have shown, some cases in Candomblé can be described more in this strong sense of the event that Badiou proposes, than in Deleuze’s weak sense. Some spirits, like the Caboclos, are a result of this unique encounter, which is something more than an actualisation. I think this strong sense of the event also applies to Latour’s expression that ‘we are always slightly surpassed by what we create’, quoted by Goldman in the paragraph I cited before alongside Strathern. But in fact, in that sense, Latour is very different from Strathern. Latour talks about something that happens, an event,9 which produces something unprecedented, something more, or other, than the addition (or subtraction) of the elements that compose it (Latour 2001: 131). This notion of the event is different from Strathern’s discourse of chains and flows that can turn around and return;10 there is no way back from an event, no possibility of a return to previous conditions. The event is not an invention in Strathern’s sense, an element whose character has been altered by someone’s inventiveness to become eventually an object of property.11 The event is not an object but an emergent actor.12 The question of the event is central to the problem of the fetish, as described by Pietz (1985, 1987, 1988), for whom one of the definitions of the fetish is precisely a unique and unrepeatable event. A recurrent image in this article has been the encounter with a snake. This is in fact one of the main examples used by Bosman, the Dutch sea-captain who popularised the term ‘fetish’ in the eighteenth century. Africans made gods with their own hands, scandalising him: they attributed power to the thing produced, rather than to its producer. ‘They take every thing which seems extraordinary in Nature for a God, and make offerings to him’ (1705: 454). Bosman presents a case he found particularly ridiculous: the snake god of Ouidah, Dangbe, was the god of a neighbouring town, but it came by

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itself to Ouidah, at which the inhabitants were ‘overjoyed’ and decided to worship her (ibid: 370). He commented: ‘How their Gods are represented to them, or what idea they form of them, I never yet could learn, because in fact they do not know themselves’ (ibid: 155). The so-called ‘fetishes’ do not represent anything, they are the gods themselves, and it is in the event of an encounter that they reveal themselves as such. They are not so much materially made as found. This event, this revelation, brings something else – a supplement, a new subject. This new subject is not created ex nihilo, as Goldman has correctly observed, but it is also not simply an actualisation of something that was already there: it only comes to exist through the encounter, and this encounter is not reversible – it has a historicity. Reviewing some of the examples we have given: if a man one day had not decided to down cut a tree, it could be that no one would have discovered the ‘miracle’ of Saint Barbara in São Felix. If Madalena, when a child, had not gone to wash clothes with her mother, it could be that no one would ever have heard of Caboclo Oxossi. If the snake had not left her native town for Oudiah, it would not have become the latter’s god. Again, these events have a particular historicity. Am I then defending the proposition that Candomblé is built on fetishism? Not really. Perhaps we should finally clarify the implications of the problem of the fetish. From a Marxist perspective, like for example Graeber’s (2005), both Africans and modern Europeans are fetishists, the only difference being that Europeans fail to recognise their fetishism. Naturalism and fetishism would be two sides of the same coin. But what is fetishism for Graeber? The fact that humans make the world in which they live, invariably making their own gods and commodities. This approach to the problem of the fetish is quite reductionist, as Goldman (2009) says, since it avoids addressing the main issue – the emergence of new actors that are not just the result of the work, imagination, agency or creativity of humans. What, then, are they? According to Goldman, these new actors are to be seen, from the perspective of a fetishist ontology, as the actualisations of virtual beings. In fact, for Goldman, the term ‘fetishism’ describes the ontology of Candomblé even better than participation and vitalism. According to him, fetishism holds that the creative process consists more in the actualization of already existing virtualities contained in beings and objects in the world than in the model of ex nihilo production, which is characteristic of our dominant Judeo-Christian and capitalist cosmologies (Goldman 2009: 108).

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But as we have seen, there is something else at play: the new actors are neither just the result or extension of human agency or creativity, nor the outcome of a process of becoming, in which virtual beings become actual entities. They are the result of particular encounters, events from which they emerge, unprecedented and unrepeatable. In fact, precisely because of this, even if there are fetishes, there is no fetishism. That is to say, it is precisely because these events are exceptional that they are recognised as fetishes; they are not the normal process through which actors are formed. This is precisely the reason why they have a particular historicity, and that is not specific to any African or Afro-Brazilian ontology, but is a general feature of the problem of the fetish, that as Pietz explained, is irreducibly historical. Of course, this history is not an evolutionary history, nor history as becoming, but a convulsive history made up of events, encounters, disruption and revelation

Conclusions: on creativity, ontologies and ethnographies

I started this chapter by addressing the apparently paradoxical statement that Candomblé is a religion of nature. I used this statement to address how spirits are made in Candomblé. But my answer has not been straightforward, since there are actually two possible answers to this question. The first answer is that Candomblé is a religion of nature because its spirits, the Orixás, are already there, virtually, or ‘given’ as it were, only waiting to be actualised, or being ‘made’, by humans. This would be the more orthodox answer, stemming from initiatic practices that emphasise hierarchy and reproduction. The other answer is that spirits are created in and through exceptional events, with a radical immanence and historicity. This would be a more peripheral, and marginal answer, underscoring revelations, miracles and the ‘gift’ of spirit mediums. In both answers, ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, the given and the made, are not separate ontological realms, they are continuous. However, the way this continuity is articulated in both is different. However, these two ontological possibilities are not incompatible, in fact they are entangled in different ways. It could be argued that one way of reducing this ontological pluralism is by distinguishing two traditions, or two cultures, in Candomblé: a West-African ‘participative’ ontology, based on initiation, and a Central-African ‘fetishist’ one, based on revelation. But this reductionism is what I have been explicitly avoiding throughout this chapter, for various reasons: first, because revelations, miracles and gifts are also central in the West-African model: the unpredictability of the encounter of the Orixá is key in it; reversely, in the Central-African model, initiation

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is as important as in the West-African one – as the inkita ritual shows. In contemporary Candomblé, it is impossible to distinguish one from the other – initiation and gift are mutually constitutive, as much as the given and the made. As Goldman (2009) and myself (2005) have mentioned, the process of ‘making the saint’ in Candomblé is an art, not simply a technique. By this I mean (as also, I think, does Goldman) what Viveiros de Castro, following Lévi-Strauss, mentioned when he said that art makes people out of things, instead of things out of people (2002: 489). In fact he and Lévi-Strauss see art as the ecological reserve of the savage mind inside the domesticated mind. And yet, the way persons are ‘made’ can be described in different ways, one of which could be, in Goldman’s terms, like sculpture, where the ‘brute’ or coarse stone is transformed, little by little, into a person. But there are other ways of making art; contemporary art, after Duchamp, is not defined as a technical practice that produces objects, but situations of encounter, in the words of art critic Nicolas Bourriaud (1998). These situations are guided by the ‘objective chance’ of the surrealists, the practice of ‘making things come your way’ that Van de Port mentioned. In Candomblé, things are made in different ways, and in these different ways, they respond to multiple and coeval ontologies, sometimes complementary, sometimes in conflict. To pretend that Candomblé is the result of a single, coherent ontology would be a dangerous mistake. In fact, there are further levels of complexity to the argument I just developed: the influence of Spiritualism; or even the influence of the social sciences, and its ideas about ‘fetishism’, which is in fact quite clear in Aninha’s words. But that would ask for another chapter. Notes 1 ‘O africano não adora coisas feitas só pela mão humana. Adora a natureza. O que é uma pedra (fetiche)? É um mineral, não é? Não foi feita por mão humana … Assim como os católicos têm imagens para seus santos, nós temos alguma coisa para lembrar os nossos orixás. Mas não adoramos imagens feitas pelas mãos dos homens como eles fazem. Adoramos a natureza.’ (Pierson 1971: 320–1). 2 In Brazilian Candomble, the attachement of the Orixás to kin and territory has been to a big extent diluted, and the cult of the Orixás has become individualised. 3 The presence of ritual conflict in Candomblé has been documented since the 1970s in the excellent book, Guerra de Orixá (1975), by Yvonne Maggie. However, few authors have followed this research, preferring to focus on the (supposedly) ‘normal’ procedures of reproduction of Candomblé houses. But, in fact, it can be argued that it is this ritual conflict that is at the core of the

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dynamic force of Candomblé, which is not only a folkloric ‘survival’ but also a thriving, expanding religion.  4 ‘Les ere étaient lâchés dans la nature où ils vivaient seuls, se dissimulant aux yeux des profanes et se nourrissant de plantes sauvages, ou même de ce qu’ils pouvaient dérober aux alentours des habitations … Au bout de huit ou dix jours, le père de saint les rappelait en faisant jouer les tambours. Ils attendaient les ere à la porte du baraquement, tenant un drapeau blanc d’une main et un atori de l’autre. Toutes les autres personnes prenaient soin de s’enfermer dans les pièces d’habitation, car les ere apparaissaient dans un état de sauvagerie extrême, battant tous ceux qui se trouvaient sur leur passage. Le père de saint se défendait d’eux au besoin avec son atori. Chaque ere arrivait en tenant à la main la preuve de la personnalité de son orisa. L’un tenait un outil de jardinage en métal (Ogun), l’autre un serpent (Osumare ou Ososi), un troisième un panier à poisson ou un filet de pêcheur (Jemanza), un autre une pierre ou encore une brasée de feuilles consacrées à tel ou tel Orisa … Le père de saint faisait jouer l’adarum pour appeler les orisa et les gens pouvaient alors sortir de leurs cachettes. Les orisa dansaient puis étaient ramenés à l’état d’ere. Ayant retrouvé leur calme, ils reprenaient alors la vie à l’intérieur du rônko’ (BinonCrossard 1970: 204).  5 ‘Certains minkisi (fétiches) sont fabriqués dans un bois ou dans l’eau … Une personne en état d’extase va chercher beaucoup des ingrédients dans les forets, les plaines ou dans l’eau’ (Laman 1962: 72–3). More recent anthropological literature also describes the inkita as local ancestral spirits, often associated with pools and waterfalls (Devish 1993: 180). MacGaffey makes reference to the nkita as ‘nature spirits’ (MacGaffey 217: 2000), and Thornton as a guardian deity of the land (1998: 55).   6 ‘Chaque fétiche jeune ou vieux a son histoire connue seulement de son “légal”, le prêtre. Celui-ci est allé le prendre par exemple au fond de l’eau, oú il demeura pendant neuf semaines de quatre jours. D’autres fois le nganga a trouvé son fétiche au fond de la grande forêt, où il est allé le prendre soit pendant que lui, prêtre, dormait soit dans son divualu, son ermitage, pendant une syncope ou mort, apparente (fua ngambu), ou encore au cours d’un ravissement extatique’ (Bittremieux 1936: 119).   7 ‘C’est l’habitude des bakinaba de se déchainer dans le village’ (Laman 1962: 252).   8 Thornton is very careful not to identify Catholicism as such with ‘continuous revelation’, as opposed to Protestantism and ‘discontinuous revelation’. He states clearly that the tension between the continuous and the discontinuous was already at the core of Christian thought and practice well before the Protestant reformation, and is also present in the doubts, contradictions and confrontations within the Catholic missions to Kongo.   9 ‘An actor, if words have any meaning, is exactly what is not substitutable. It’s a unique event, totally irreducible to any other … In structuralism nothing is really transformed, it’s simply combined (Latour 2005: 153). Latour takes his notion of the event from Fleck, as a ‘unique historical process, which can be neither reproduced by experiment nor confirmed by logic’ (Fleck 1981: 97). 10 ‘While these Melanesian chains – of persons, and of the wealth that flows along with them – are followed outwards to a certain extent, some may turn

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around at key points and return. This may be accomplished over time: previous generations are reborn, persons making up other persons. In terms of social process, alternating socialities come to be effected by, among other means, the sustained difference between flow that spreads and growth that gathers or stops the flow’ (Strathern 1996: 529). 11 ‘An invention implies by definition that culture has been added to nature. The ingenuity of the inventor is held to change the character of an entity; intellectual activity confers property in it, as does the application of skill or labour which gives people (the possibility of) property in products’ (Strathern 1996: 524). 12 Yet, I would agree with Strathern’s distance from some of the terminology used by Latour – terms such as ‘network’ and ‘hybrid’ limit his approach; but I would argue against them for reasons quite different to Strathern’s. Although the image of the network helps in diffusing any implications of hierarchy between ‘humans’ and ‘non-humans’, it also flattens the landscape into a kind of ahistorical, transient continuum – a ‘chain’, in Strathern’s sense. Equally, the hybrid is an interesting image because it conveys a dimension of the unprecedented, which is basic to the notion of an event: and yet the sterility of the hybrid is also problematic, precisely because to be successful an event has to be (re)productive. This is perhaps the central point of the theory of the event that Latour says he has borrowed from science studies: a theory of history that proposes to step aside from the distinction between production and reproduction, without reducing one to the other.

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Sansi, Roger (2005). ‘The hidden life of stones: historicity, materiality and the value of Candomblé objects in Bahia’, Journal of Material Culture, 10/2, pp. 139–56. —— (2008). ‘Ecologismo, patrimonialización y prácticas de domesticación de lo sagrado en el Candomblé de Bahia’. In N. Ellison and M. M. Mauri (eds.), Paisaje, Espacio y Territorio: Reelaboraciones simbólicas y reconstrucciones identitarias en América Latina (Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala), pp. 127–44. —— (2009) ‘“Fazer o santo”: dom, iniciação e historicidade nas religiões afrobrasileiras’, Análise Social, xliv/ 190, pp. 139–160 dos Santos, Jocélio Telles (1995). O Dono da terra: O caboclo nos Candomblés da Bahia (Salvador de Bahia: Sarah Letras). Serra, Ordep (1994). Aguas do Rei (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Vozes). —— (2002). Projeto Ossain (Salvador de Bahia: Edufba). Stoller, Paul (1995). Embodying Colonial Memories: Spirit Possession, Power and the Hauka in West Africa (London and New York: Routledge). Strathern, Marilyn (1996). ‘Cutting the network’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, NS, 2, pp. 517–35. Thornton, John (1998). Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Verger, Pierre (1995). Ewé, o uso das plantas na sociedade ioruba (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras). Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo B. (2002). A Inconstancia da Alma Selvagem (São Paulo: Cosac & Naify). Voeks, Robert A. (1997). Sacred Leaves of Candomblé (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press). Wagner, Roy (1981). The Invention of Culture (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press).

Part II Transformations

Figure 1 Waapi Saaki ceremony in Kumim hamlet (Nyamikum village), 3 June 2003

Chapter 5

Knowing What Has Been Done The Techniques of Ritual ‘Objects’ among the Abelam (East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea) Ludovic Coupaye

Foreword: a scene

The scene is set in the ame (public place) in the hamlet of Kumim, Nyamikum Village (in the district of Maprik, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea). It is 16 June 2003, the day of the Waapi Saaki, the ‘lining-up of the long yams’ (see Figure 1); it is about four pm. About 20 elongated tubers, ranging in size from 1.7 to 2.4 metres, are being presented, hanging on wooden poles which rest against vertical structures. These structures have been erected at different positions around the ame: one inside each of the two ‘reunion’ houses (which face each other), and one on the ame itself. The waapi (long yams, Dioscorea alata) are all decorated with a highly colourful set of composite elements, such as sticks wrapped with red and yellow leaves (sometimes replaced by the plastic packaging from Chinese noodles, or by soda-bottle labels), bailer shells, painted wooden masks, feathers (from cassowaries, cockatoos, roosters and birds of paradise), pieces of white cardboards or odoriferous leaves. Some of the tubers have been painted, their reddish-brown skin enhanced by a feast of yellow, red, white and black, often forming strong visual contrasts. The lining-up of the yams on the ame is visually striking (for the best part of the year, the space is left empty, apart from a central heap of stones).

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Their presence cannot even be completely concealed by the crowd of some hundred people – men, women children –­ some from other Nyamikum hamlets, others from neighbouring and distant villages, such as Nyelikum, Kimbagwa, Kalabu or Apangai. The yams were brought out some 30 minutes earlier, each carried by two men. Once set against the wooden structures, people have moved closer, in groups of two to five, to have a closer look. I could not stop myself comparing this scene to those at many agricultural fairs, such as the Salon de l’Agriculture in Paris, where farmers present their most prized products – cheeses, tomatoes, wines, bulls, stallions – for a huge crowd of French and foreign visitors in the Parc des Expositions near the Porte de Versailles. Groups of men are moving from one waapi to another, talking softly among themselves, touching the tubers, looking at their undersides, and pointing at protuberances that sometimes deform the straightness of the waapi. Indeed, these are Maambutap, the cultivar considered as the epitome of long yams, the best variety of the 30-odd other cultivars grown in Nyamikum, and they are supposed to be as long, smooth and straight as possible. When satisfied with their examination, the men take some lime (used for betel-chewing) with their fingers out of the baby-food jar that has replaced the once-customary gourd, and put a white spot on the tuber, while letting out a short cry (‘woo-ah’) to express their appreciation. Then they move to another waapi, and are replaced by another group of men. Being here to study the making of yams, I (again) asked one of my Nëmandu1 friends, Ganbakiya, how one evaluates the Maambutap. I have to confess that my intention was to cross-check the use of the formal criteria I had been told of in previous discussions. Instead, Ganbakiya asked me to follow him to a tuber, and surprised me by crouching down to show me how to evaluate the yam: ‘See, you first look at the length, then you put your hands around its belly to see how big it is, then you touch the skin and see if it has not too much hair on it, and then … ’ He was showing me the actual physical techniques used in such evaluation. Either because my question was formulated in Tok Pisin (not trusting skills in the Ambulës language) in a way that indicated my desire to know the procedure, or because it was Ganbakiya’s spontaneous response to such an enquiry, the moment was for me a kind of ‘productive misunderstanding’. The following night I was told more about what the groups of men had been discussing, sotto voce, while evaluating the yams. The main topic was not in fact focused on the dimensions or sensorial characteristics of the yams, but rather on their cultivator and on their origin (such as who provided the original tuber to be planted, and who was involved in the

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cultivation process). While the nature of the groups’ discussions pointed to another way of considering the yams, Ganbakiya’s answer directed me towards a specific aspect of yam evaluation, which can be read in different ways: phenomenological, for instance, as demonstrating the ways in which one can actually get to know (about) an object through sensory engagement with it, during which vision is complemented by touch and smell (the different plants used for the decorations having a strong odour). But, to me, it also pointed to something essentially different from the Parisian Salon de l’Agriculture; unlike most visitors to such an exhibition, every single person in the ame can be considered as knowing how to grow yams. They all know what has been done to produce them, because all have some degree of expertise and can thus relate to what such a display of spectacular results, framed within a ritual setting, implies in terms of processes. Indeed, the different groups of men were themselves yam cultivators. For some, their own ceremony had already been held, while for others it had yet to come. Women and children, because of their everyday role in the garden, also have a good knowledge of how to plant yams, their general characteristics and what is required to obtain such impressive results.

Productive misunderstandings and revelatory processes

In retrospect, this ‘productive misunderstanding’ directs my focus, not towards the content of the evaluations (which is another topic in itself), but rather to how the material presence of waapi on the ground, during the ceremony, was connected to forms of embodied (i.e. non-verbal) knowledge about the complex process of making yams. From the perspective of the project tackled by the editors of this volume, analysing the ceremony through the waapi places my discussion at the intersection of three interrelated aspects of the particular setting I am dealing with. The first deals with the field of analysis of rituals, one of the constitutive domains of anthropology. In Melanesia and particularly in the area I am dealing with – where initiation rituals have provided abundant ethnographic material – discussions have tackled, either separately or together, the constructivist, cognitive, psychological, non-verbal or knowledge-related dimensions of such phenomena (Bateson 1936; Barth 1975, 1987; Gell 1975; Lewis 1980; Wagner 1984; Juillérat 1986, 1992; Houseman and Severi 1996). However, as pointed out in the introduction, most of these analyses have seldom considered the analytic value of things and artefacts for an understanding of religious phenomena. The second aspect relates to the fact that, in the same settings, rituals and religious practices are also major occasions for the production and

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exhibition of a rich and visually striking material imagery, ranging from body ornaments to elaborate temporary or permanent constructions, all in relation to complex performances. In many cases, such productions have occupied an uneven methodological or analytical role in the study of rituals. The people known as the Abelam have been anthropologically notorious for their elaborated initiation system (Forge 1967, 1972, 1990; HauserSchäublin 1989a, 1989b, 1995; Heerman 1983; Kaberry 1941, 1941–42) involving the creation of temporary elaborated images. They were also made famous in the field of the anthropology of art by the founding work of Anthony Forge, who demonstrated the non-verbal and cognitive dimensions of Abelam forms of visual representations. In many ways, Forge’s analysis of the Abelam material prepared the ground for further development, such as in Gell’s approach (1992, 1998), one of his students. The third aspect deals with absence. In Nyamikum village, as in many other Abelam localities, people indicate that no such initiations have been conducted for the past 20 years, seeing this as a consequence of both a scarcity of certain appropriate resources (especially pigs) and conversions to the diverse forms of Christianity in the area. As a result, the main part of this richness of ritual visual and material production is today mostly visible in Western museums (cf. Hauser-Schäublin 1989b; Heerman 1983; Smidt and McGuigan 1994). However, the cultivation and decoration of long yams seem to have endured as the main contemporary ceremony, along with new forms such as occasional gatherings in Maprik town, where delegations of villagers decorate and display themselves, and perform dances similar to those which conclude initiations. During the period of my stay, such ceremonial events took place in support of the candidacy of a local MP, or (in May 2002) to celebrate the start of the asphalting of the Maprik-Wewak road. These three aspects of my own field research relate to the multi-layered and multi-dimensional roles of artefacts explored in anthropological studies of art and material culture. Concentrating on the part played by decorated yams, I am attempting to investigate whether, being framed within a ritual setting and enhanced by the impressive display of long yams, yams could be somehow connected to a local wider cosmological understanding of the world, through the embodiment of technical practices. In this chapter, I first place my vignette into the wider frame of a yam ceremony, and then discuss the visual productions made for initiations to outline how verbal exegesis is made redundant through the relations that visual and conceptual connections instantiate in other forms. In the second section, I discuss how recent analytical reversals (for instance Holbraad 2011: 17) allow for rethinking the relationships between techniques and

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rituals through the perspective of the artefact produced/displayed. In my particular case, yams, as central artefacts of the Waapi Saaki, instantiate the effective success of a year-long process. The analysis of the chaîne opératoire (operational sequence) of this process shows a series of connections that link garden, society, landscape and cosmology through the type of materials, substances, sociality and agents that pervade everyday routines, across domains of experience. It is, I suggest, this process-made-thing that is exhibited during the Waapi Saaki. The last part of the chapter hints at how yams, and their particular botanical properties, could correspond to a form of ‘Abelam sociology’ that is, in part, non-verbal discourse on social forms and their reproduction. It could be that the revelation of such ‘sociology’ seems then to have a double effect. On the one hand, it provokes people’s responses to the type of relationships materialised, fixed for a brief moment, in order to be engaged with. On the other hand, the ceremony, by revealing in this fugitive moment the fundamental fluid nature of sociality (I am tempted to write ‘yam-ity’), enchants both past and future relationships. I conclude by suggesting how this sociologically constructed yam could help us to understand and comment upon past initiation ceremonies and contemporary rituals.

Yam ceremonies and initiations

A Waapi Saaki ceremony at Kumim hamlet, Nyamikum village 2 While our focus is on the things that play a role within ritual, I would like to start by summarising briefly the sequence of the Waapi Saaki that took place on 16 June 2003. Indeed, as Eric Schwimmer suggests (1990), rituals in anthropology of art – or material culture – can be considered as proper ‘objects’ in their own right, rather than only as categories or ‘subjects’ of anthropological enquiry. The multi-dimensional nature of ritual constructions could indeed render the isolation of a single artefact – here the yam – even for the purpose of analysis, fundamentally contradictory to the entire endeavour of understanding the phenomenon. The point here, of course, is not to extract waapi from their ritual framing – as Gilbert Lewis puts it (1980) – but rather to follow them through the course of the event. While preparations start months before the actual day (with negotiations between the different members of Nyamikum communities, the gathering of supplies – of which the purchase of a pig is perhaps the most problematic one – and the harvesting, selection and preparation of the tubers to be presented), the work on the ame itself only started on 14 June, with the sweeping of the ground by women and children, and the making by men of the different fences and wooden structures surrounding the ceremonial

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area. The ground was cleaned and some decorations of leaves and flowers were placed on the heap of stones (baapmu-taakwa; the ‘moon’ or ‘spider’) in the centre of the ame. The waapi harvested between April and May, decorated in the course of the previous weeks, were to remain out of sight until the moment of their revelation. Thus, most had been brought at night from their different locations by the various participants, and placed in a special enclosed area, near the ame, just behind the western-most reunion house (putë). Most of the men of the Kumim hamlet then came and spent the night in the putë, to keep a watch on the yams and their decorations that had already been moved there. The following was the programme of events on 16–17 June:3 1

Arrival of the audience: on the morning of the 16th, from about 9am to 2pm, the ame was first populated by men from other hamlets of the village itself, then by delegations from other villages. Children and women remained on the periphery of the ground, while others were still preparing the food for the feast. Arriving visitors all followed the same routine, entering the ground in silence and circling the baapmutaakwa counter-clockwise, then coming to a halt and letting out a single cry, before dispersing to greet local friends and relatives. The ame became steadily busier and the atmosphere merrier. 2 The puyaa dance: around 3.30pm, two men, each holding a spear, wearing a forehead ornament, and holding a manuwi ornament in their mouths, ran silently into the ame from the side and circled the baapmu-taakwa in opposite directions for less than a minute, menacing the crowd and each other every time they crossed, and then left, running from the ame by one of the exits. 3 Arrival of the waapi: right after this dance, a procession of five men (mostly Nëmandu) beating hour-glass shaped drums and singing, entered the ground, followed by a line of five women, wearing their string bags on their heads, and responding to the men’s song. Following them, there came a succession of 21 decorated waapi, each pole carried by two men. The procession circled the central stones clockwise, before installing the yams on the three standing structures. 4 Evaluation of the waapi: once the yams were installed, the audience (including women and children) moved forward to see them. At the same moment, food, mostly ordinary boiled yams (Dioscorea esculenta), was brought and set at one side of the ame. Simultaneously, areca nuts and tobacco were distributed among the audience by groups

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  6

  7

  8   9

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of young men. Once presented, the food was then distributed to the groups, and immediately consumed. Speeches: 4.30pm there began a series of speeches from the different Nëmandu present. All of them were conducted in Ambulës, addressing current topics such as recent conflicts, and the necessity of mediation, between villages, and commenting on future or past public exchanges. Yam cultivation was central to the exchanges, in the form of metaphorical references, using images such as national politics, war in Afghanistan, or football teams. Start of the Kaagu dance: around 6.30pm, as night was falling and fires were being lit, all the women left the ame.4 Successive groups of four to five men (from Nyamikum or from other villages) performed a series of short songs, called Kaagu, each song lasting about one minute, all based on the same rhythm, and telling three types of stories: past war deeds, ceremonial exchanges, or love. In the two reunion houses, younger men were beating horizontal slit drums, coordinating their rhythm with the voices and the hour-glass drums, and the singers were joined by a crowd of dancers. Meanwhile, the audience was sitting together in groups according to their various affinities, talking together, eating, sometimes sleeping, getting up to dance, or moving between groups, or beyond the fence in the hamlet. Outside the ame, beyond the fences, under the moonlight and in the light of petrol lamps, the entire hamlet was very active, either around kitchens, where women were cooking food, or in the surrounding area where younger men gathered to drink alcohol, or to listen to contemporary PNG pop music on tapes, much to the disapproval of older generations. The waapi exhibited had a silent presence, with people moving around, dancing around or sleeping close to them. Distribution of pork: about midnight the distribution of meat began, accompanied by rice and vegetables, all wrapped in leaves. The hosts swiftly distributed portions of this food according to status and to political alliances. The rest of the night was spent dancing, with men moving in and out of the ame, joining in the animation in different parts of the hamlet. Final speeches: at dawn (around 6am on 17 June), the singing and dancing stopped, and more food was brought. This was the moment of the last public speeches, about future ceremonies to come. Small groups started to leave to go back to their villages or hamlets, while the remaining people slept in the ame, under the shade of the putë or the neighbouring trees, or chatted.

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During the entire ceremony, the looming presence of the decorated waapi formed a general background. Later on during the day, they are carried back to their owner’s storage house. In previous times, the Waapi Saaki was followed by competitive exchanges of the decorated tubers between ceremonial partners (see below) within the village itself or from other villages. Today, in order to avoid conflicts that could result from these exchanges (cf. Forge 1990), such exchanges are said no longer to occur between villages, and rarely between fellow male cultivators. Nowadays, decorated waapi circulate between groups, mostly in relation to disputes, marriage or funerals. Once exchanged, they are usually cut into sections, some for eating, others for replanting.

Initiation ceremonies (in absentia)

The literature on Abelam initiation ceremonies (Forge 1966, 1967, 1970; Hauser-Schäublin 1989a, 1989b, 1995; Kaberry 1971; Smidt and McGuigan 1994) allows us to draw a general picture. Every village is composed of patrilineal, virilocal and exogamous clans, and is divided into two ceremonial moieties that cross-cut the clan organisation. Each man has an official ceremonial partner (saambëra) in the opposite moiety, either within the village, or in another village. These two moieties were materialised particularly during initiations, when men from one moiety would prepare and supervise the initiation of their partners’ sons. In the following installment, their own sons would then be initiated by their partners. Initiations were organised in sets of four stages over the life of an individual, the entire cycle (eight stages in total, four for each moiety) covering several decades. Only a few older men (who have managed to gather the required influence and resources) underwent the final stages. Initiations involved the isolation of the initiated during several weeks (up to a month or more), and then putting them, in the final stages, in the presence of temporary images conceived in secret by the opposite moiety. For the higher stages, these images were built inside the ceremonial house, forming an overwhelming visual complex said actively to transform the uninitiated into initiates (cf. Smidt and McGuigan 1994; Losche 1995). At the end of the initiation, the men were richly decorated, and released during a dancing ceremony on the public ame. Their decoration visually and materially had strong echoes with paintings on the façade of the ceremonial house, sculptures of the initiation chambers, and decorated yams themselves. The subject of images and ritual objects particularly attracts one’s attention because of their roles. As discussed by Forge (1970) and more recently

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by Losche (1995), none of these images, be it the colourful paintings on the ceremonial house façade, the carved figures presented within (HauserSchäublin 1989b), or the composite figure of the puti (Smidt and McGuigan 1995) that formed the most elaborate construction of the initiation environment, were subjects of elaborated verbal exegesis. To make matters more difficult for a traditional iconographical analysis, the oral tradition among the Abelam is considered comparatively poor in comparison with neighbouring groups, who possess some very complex mythological cycles. This made impossible the provision of sufficient iconographic clues to help in the analysis of these modes of representation; but this disconnection from any verbal narrative led Anthony Forge to develop some of the most fertile and groundbreaking anthropological analyses of art and of the ritual role of images. Forge insisted in particular on studying ‘carvings and paintings as things in their own right relating to each other and the beholder, and not as mere manifestations of some other order of cultural fact such as mythology or religion’ (1966: 23). Contrasting with the thendominant representational approach to ritual objects and figures, Forge’s investigations of ‘meaning’ led him to suggest that, in the Abelam case, ‘the meaning is not that a painting or carving is a picture or representation of anything in the natural or spirit world, rather it is about the relationship between things’ (Forge 1973: 191, original emphasis). Forge’s final interpretation was that the ceremonial house paintings were in fact dealing with male-female relations – a theme that was then recurrent in the analysis of Sepik rituals. But, beyond this interpretation, Forge’s insights also allowed thinking through how Abelam artefacts (especially those with strong visual characteristics) played an active role in rituals. Indeed, the rich visual dimension of initiation rituals seems overtly to have been the major component of the entire aesthetic experience – even to the extent that the performances themselves (dances, songs, etc.) sometimes appear to fade into the background in favour of understanding ritual as a complex artefact in itself (see Schwimmer 1990; Hobart and Kapferer 2005). If this is accepted, both initiations and the Waapi Saaki have to be conceived as a single ‘object’, with many interlocking and interrelated components forming a kind of sense-scape, directed to the active creation of an experience meant to transform its audience. Indeed, it is as if the fact of simply being put in the physical presence of the ritual images was in itself sufficient to operate the transformations of initiates into initiated. This particular functionality of Abelam images has been discussed on several occasions (for a recent example, see Morphy 2005), and notably reformulated in a very evocative way by Diane Losche:

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This echoes strongly Gell’s position regarding the agency of certain visual productions, perhaps less in his last publication (1998), than in his work on the relationship between enchantment and technology (1988, 1992). The role of images, in the Abelam case, can indeed be conceived as enabling a transformative experience, as well as the materialisation of forms of dispersed cosmological knowledge, at the limit of the speakable, or even the conceivable (cf. Tuzin 1995). The absence of initiation ceremonies, of course, relates to phenomena such as conversion to the various forms of Christianity, migrations (Roscoe and Scaglion 1990) and, in Nyamikum, to discourses where hopes and representations about modernity are intertwined with mixed feelings of nostalgia and fear about earlier days. This begs another question, too vast to be treated in this chapter, but worth mentioning, which is to what extent Waapi Saaki rituals carry modes of values-reproduction, similar or different to initiations. However, what initiations tell us is that the socially active role of images is well established in this domain, not as iconic representations of a higher order but rather as a double tool: on the one hand, an actual technical apparatus, or device, aiming at a form of social efficiency; on the other, and perhaps connected, as a form of commentary on past, present and future relationships. This is, I believe, exactly the point made by long yams in Waapi Saaki. To unpack this double nature, I suggest reaching for the source and origin of long-yam materiality, not from the angle of aesthetic or cognitive processes, nor as valuable, food or images, but from how they actually came into being. This requires bringing in discussion of techniques and objects.

Rituals, techniques and objects

Over the last 40 years, the field of material-culture studies has done a great deal to unveil the non-verbal, cognitive, social agency of objects and things, and one the main strategies used to overcome divides and essentialisations has been to operate what could be called epistemic shifts, from essences to relations, from entities to processes.5 These shifts emerged particularly from the resistance of indigenous categories to fitting into Western frameworks,

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and from the growing resistance from anthropologists themselves to engage in the cultural translation (treason) of these categories into new ones. In this light, from a Melanesianist perspective it has almost become a truism that one of the dominant paradigms of indigenous ontologies is about fluidity, relationality and processes. While this has been explored in domains such that of persons (e.g. Strathern 1999), and myth (e.g. Goldman and Ballard 1998), the phenomenological level of artefacts and landscape is increasingly being submitted to the same analytical treatment (in addition to Forge’s insights, see also for instance Bell and Geismar 2009; Henare, Holbraad and Wastell 2007; Jeudy-Ballini and Juillérat 2002; Leach 2002). The challenge – in many ways, culturally counter-intuitive to Western scientific endeavour – is thus to overcome the apparent givenness, static and finite nature of things (percepts) in order to address them as potentially processual entities, that is, things in movement through time and in stages, as potentialities made thing, or as movements given shape and form or indeed concepts in themselves (cf. Holbraad 2011). Discussions on the biography of things, their social lives and their agency have contributed a great deal to this understanding of artefacts. In other words, one could easily say that these transformations in interpretative frames of things have both come from and confirmed the challenge to static categories used to analyse indigenous cosmologies. The analysis of techniques has also benefited from these shifts (Douny and Naji 2009; Ingold 2000; Mauss 1973; Schlanger 2006; Warnier 2001, 2007), and brought back the question of physical engagement with materials and of their relation to cosmology, environment, history or society. What Ganbakiya’s response brings attention to – encompassing the phenomenological level – in fact provides one of the entries into the question asked by the editors of this volume, when it comes to artefacts in ritual themselves. Combined with discussions on people, this points to the processes from which artefacts originate. Investigating what long yams are and how they are cultivated – or materialised – provides some fundamental elements in understanding how they manage effectively to occupy a central position within Nyamikum life. For this, I resort to the French anthropology of techniques, which emerged at the intersection of archaeological and anthropological questions (see Lemonnier 1993). Having changed since its original Marxian angle, which contributed to constrain ‘technology’ to the study of the loaded conception of ‘processes of production’ (Lemonnier in press; Warnier 2009), the analysis of techniques, following Mauss’s programme (Schlanger 2006), can unpack the interrelated role of body, knowledge and substances in the

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making of the social life in artefactual forms. Using the methodological tool of the operational sequence (chaîne opératoire, cf. Lemonnier 1992: 25–32; Schlanger 2005), in particular, allows the observation and recording of the combination of procedures, materials and knowledge in the actual order (sequence, thus, following the local logic) in which they are performed, where and by whom. In other words, the analysis of how yams come into being provides the necessary empirical complement to analyses of the ways in which they appear and are used as substitutes for persons – that is, for relationships. It might also provide us with a better understanding of why yams (and not pigs, or shells) are the subjects of such elaborated display and of what is actually given to see, and why people make Waapi Saaki.

The efficacy of yam ceremonies

The first level of interpretation, which I have discussed elsewhere (Coupaye 2009c), follows from people’s own accounts. Local explanations6 of the Waapi Saaki ceremony are particularly clear about the fact that celebrating long yams, and particularly Maambutap, opens the way for all food. Indeed, if long yams are not harvested and celebrated, then no other food can ‘come out of the gardens’. In other words, the reason why all Abelam villages hold their yam ceremony is that this is required for them to be able to produce any food. While a functionalist analysis could well interpret this statement in the same way that Malinowski (1978) did in his study of Trobriand gardens, this could lead to a utilitarian vision of the ceremony, confining waapi to a ceremonial (i.e. ‘symbolic’) role, a category that has too often been opposed to efficaciousness, thus putting long yams apart from what also make them proper food. A rejection of functionalist premises, however, should not lead to a dismissal of the ethnographic fact that Waapi Saaki rituals carry intentions – which in turn brings in the notion of ‘efficacy’. However, efficacy and intentions, instead of being only used to qualify the active nature of ritual in processes of social formation, could also be considered as more fundamental underlying principles, giving access to an indigenous conception of materiality and of metaphysics. In addition, from an analytical point of view, it is intentionality and efficacy which allowed Mauss, in his insights about rites and techniques, to move beyond a classical understanding of rituals, and to point out that both share the common features of being ‘traditional’ (i.e. transmitted, in other words as part of what a community shares and sees as somehow connected to its identity), and effective (Mauss 1968: 404, 1973: 75). The notion of efficacy, as perceived by the actors themselves, opens up the necessary conceptual space to reconsider objects

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as a particular entry point for an analysis of ritual. For what the ritual display of artefacts such as yams invites us to think is not only how rituals and techniques merge in a single artefact, but also how the ceremonial display pertains to processes that extend beyond the particular instance of ritual itself. This possibility is made easier through Gell’s idea of the agency of visual things, and their capacity for enchanting (i.e. socialising, cf. Gell 1988, 1992, 1998) – in this case, decorated yams as part of the magical enchantment which the ritual imposes on the audience. However, what interests me, in this chapter, is how Gell’s notion of the technology of enchantment helps to combine the discussion of the agency of things with materiality and ritual, as well as allowing a discussion of the efficacy of ritual artefacts, without falling into the old trap of functionalism. The idea of enchantment here could be taken in a more emic sense than Gell’s cognitive slant allows us to think. As we shall see briefly, yam cultivation is made of technicoritual actions – that is, following Mauss’s definition, both intentionally efficacious and traditional (appropriate): work, jëmbaa, is made of a precise combination of actions on materials, substances, relationships (Coupaye 2009b, 2009c), and shrouded in mayëra (secrecy/sacredness/power). The display of the material result of such process is necessarily potentially powerful, especially when framed within a ritual. I take for granted that ritual is a transformative device, which resorts to kinaesthetic and cognitive processes geared to memories, knowledge, sociality and power. In Nyamikum’s case, it means that the framing of yams in an exhibition and in a performance of ritual (re)activates forms of embodied and non-verbal types of knowledge. Shared knowledge is what connects the ritual experience to wider domains of everyday life, and transforms it into a cosmological regenerative moment that brings together body, memory, sociality, landscape and time. While this is the case in most rituals, the particular ways in which yams seem to operate, as I have claimed, rest on the fact that everybody in the audience actually knows how to grow them. While their size creates the necessary displacement and enchantment (i.e. frame) to bring the focus on that particular instance, everybody knows what has been done to bring them into being. In other words, the long-yam ceremony, because of the techniques the massive tuber instantiates for their audience, does not deal with the revelation of anything particularly secret;7 but it does suggest something about the metaphysical nature of what is at work behind the gardening practices from which they emerge, which in themselves have a ritualistic quality that is not confined to the ceremony itself. The regenerative process of the ritual

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might be more about creating new relationships with old ones, using this very ceremonial moment as a point of contact between domains (human, non-human, dead, living, initiates/non-initiates, and so forth) in order to ‘fuel’ this regeneration, than about creating new knowledge or cosmology. It is more about recombining than creating. This, I suggest could invite us to consider the entire technical system as being a year-long ritual, of which the Waapi Saaki is but one stage – though a crucial one that resonates throughout the entire cycle – coalescing into a specific artefact: the yam.

Techniques as social relationships: yams in the garden

As mentioned above, the study of technical processes (‘technology’, cf. Sigaut 2002; Coupaye 2009b; Schlanger 2006: 2–3), has often been reduced to the study of ‘processes of production’, in which the second term came with a long historical, economical and anthropological past. While the Marxian terminology has been useful for developing an analysis of indigenous relations of production, it is fair to say that its contribution to our understanding of things in themselves is more directed towards how the social value of artefacts is conditioned by the social relations of production, rather to what their materiality is composed of, and what the emic logic is governing this process. That yams are objectifications of relations of production is hardly questionable. But this still leaves at least three other questions largely unanswered: why people choose that particular object to be imbued with such an important role, as well as how do they actually imbue it, and of course, what with. Yams are the plants that receive most attention over the agricultural cycle (cf. Lea 1964; Coupaye 2010, forthcoming). Two main species of yams are cultivated: Dioscorea esculenta, ‘short’ yams, called ka (or ‘mami’ in Tok Pisin), and Dioscorea alata, ‘long’ yams, waapi (or ‘yam’ in Tok Pisin). Each is associated with a particular type of garden. Small yams are cultivated in opened gardens, planted by a work party of the hamlet’s inhabitants (often from the gardener’s clan), and associated with a host of other intercropped species (such as taro, beans and peanuts). The crops are cared for by the gardener and his wife. Long yams are cultivated in fenced and more secluded gardens, away from major footpaths, along with a smaller number of intercropped plants. Officially forbidden to women, only the gardener himself and his male allies, are normally allowed to enter the garden. As already mentioned, among the dozens of cultivars used by cultivators, the most valued is the Maambutap. There is no space here to describe the entire operational sequence,8 but to investigate how waapi, as finished products, instantiate past relationships

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requires one to modify slightly the conventional use of the chaîne opératoire. In its original use, and for archaeologists, the notion has been mostly helpful in revealing technical variations and choices (cf. Lemonnier 1992; Schlanger 2005). The documentation of these choices was a way both to debunk narrow perceptions of technical facts and to illustrate how the question of differences between techniques and society was a moot one. In the English-speaking domain, this intertwining has been attributed to the combined work of science and technology studies and actor-network theory (ANT – see for instance Latour 1993). It must be said, though, that at the end of the 1980s proponents of ANT such as Bruno Latour were engaged in collaborations and discussions about technology with anthropologists such as Pierre Lemonnier, along with other members of the French group Technologie Culturelle (stemming from the work of Leroi-Gourhan) (cf. Coupaye and Douny 2010), leading to ANT, largely benefited from anthropological insights (Latour and Lemonnier 1994). In the case of yams, I used operational sequence to document the processes that led to the making of an artefact, while following not a positivist, agronomic line, but rather dimensions and processes that cultivators consider essential to their success. As a result, the ethnography of yam cultivation reveals the complex intertwining of several elements of the gardeners’ reality (cf. Coupaye 2009b, 2009c) occurring over the agricultural cycle. Some material dimensions of the techniques differ depending on the types of yams. Short yams are planted in relatively shallow holes, covered by a small mound of soil; one tuber set (the germinated tuber) will produce several others. The yam vine is a single climber staked on a vertical pole. The long-yam sett, on the other hand, is planted on top of a large mound, built up from a deep hole which has been previously dug and then refilled with soft soil, in order to create a bed of softer soil. The set produces a long vine which will branch out into several more, all carefully laid on a horizontal trellis and checked every day as they grow. Reaching the end of this trellis, they are trained up a vertical one.9 In addition, precautions are taken to ensure that the plant will yield only one new tuber, which will grow down through the softer soil of the mound and into the bed. Nevertheless, what the analysis of the operational sequence shows is that, in spite of some differences, the cultivation and display of long yams cannot be entirely separated from the cultivation of short ones. The classic ethnological label of ‘ceremonial yams’ has in fact being highly problematic, in not only reproducing a Western-like form of opposition between ceremonial and functional (i.e. ritual and technical), but also concealing

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the web of technical and spatial – in other words empirical – relationships between the two species of short and long yams, and the places, crops and techniques of their cultivation. These relationships are exemplified in different ways. Some long yams are planted within the short-yam garden (and vice-versa), implying the same type of devices and processes but also following local conceptions of plant sociality – no plant can grow alone, and requires the support of others. Obviously, elements such as body techniques (in which I would include not only the gestures and actions concerning materials, but also the set of behavioural prescriptions and proscriptions aiming at controlling the cultivator’s body substances) are used in both gardens. Even more so, these techniques are part of other types of operation, pointing out the systemic nature of technical processes (see Gille 1979; Lemonnier 1992: 8–11);10 it also means that certain values and properties attributed to particular operations on materials in yam cultivation are at play in others. For instance, penis bloodletting, as a way to get rid of bodily substances nefarious to the gardener’s efficacy, is said to be among the first operations to take place before planting long yams, but it is also required for initiation, as well as before painting, hunting or a football game. But less dramatic techniques are used, such as using a digging stick, starting a work session in a garden by lighting a fire in the garden shelter, sleeping or eating periodically in the garden, or joking with friends and family while taking a break from garden work, also considered an integral part of the process, influencing the success of the harvest. Some materials, such as seeds, shoots and sets planted within the longyam garden in fact originate in the short-yam gardens, of which they are explicitly construed as material extensions. The land itself provides a pervasive and dominant paradigm in Abelam sociality (cf. Huber-Greub 1988, 1990), substantially, conceptually and spatially connecting the gardener and his clan with its reproductive capacity, as land itself is said to recognise its owner and to allow him (or not) to grow things in it. Other connections with domains outside the long-yam garden involve visible or invisible substances (such as those used as fertilisers, cf. Forge 1962) and agents (such as water-spirits, ancestral figures and earthworms), as well as sociality (relationships between opposite sexes, and between and within hamlets and villages, exchanges with the living and the dead – for instance, verbal exchanges during regular public gatherings are said to provide the ‘heat’ necessary for the procreative power of garden, cf. Coupaye 2007a). Such connections are also elicited in the material decorative elements used on displayed waapi, presenting a general composition

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(in a material and visual sense) which associates long yams, initiates, figures painted on the front of the ceremonial house, carvings used in initiation settings, called wapinyan (‘children of the yams’, cf. Forge 1966: 24). All these different components draw in, originate from or connect with sets of relationships and domains that gardeners consider as technically efficacious – delineating a form of metaphysics. Although these components are required in order to obtain a satisfying result in the form of a long, straight yam, it is only through the cultivator’s knowledge and ability to manipulate, negotiate and mix them that the required specific agencies coalesce, and are objectified in the form of the harvested tuber. Because yam-cultivation techniques are about merging substances, agents and sociality, matters that connect to local cosmological, material and social understandings, they indeed have the capacity to invoke powerful emotions in the Waapi Saaki audience – but in turn this makes a strong statement about society. What the chaîne opératoire renders visible to the researcher is thus the mixing of different domains, relations established through body techniques and social relationships, which are not visible in the finished product but which nevertheless underlie its further use. It also shows that operations conceptualised by Western analyses as either exclusively ‘material’ or ‘non-material’ are in fact tightly interwoven within the social fabric of the artefact. This strongly evokes ANT’s approach, even more so in that the yam could be construed indeed as an hybrid between Society and Nature, between a ceremonial artefact imbued with symbolic values – making it a valuable – and a botanical species requiring certain climatic conditions and agronomical techniques – imbuing it with nutritive qualities.11 So, the next question could be: is a yam a materialised network, perhaps?

Cutting the network in order to give it to see

In a famous paper that tackles the ANT concept of network, Strathern (1996) provides me here with the necessary imagination to outline what is given to see during the Waapi Saaki. Long yams are particularly beautiful, efficacious to display, and good to think, because, in fact, they are – and not only in the mind of the anthropologist – social (technical) relationships, or a network of humans and nonhuman domains temporarily brought to a halt. For a brief moment, the fluidity, the uncertainty, the contradictions are stopped, concretised and make things, in order to be glimpsed by those who experience them during the course of their everyday life. In other words, yams originate from the technical combination of different social, spatial cosmological sources, and thus form condensed

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images of procreativity. Stemming from human agency, sociality and negotiations, they allow the transference of the invisible power of ancestors (procreativity) into an immanent and detachable (thus consumable) form. This is, I suggest, what is revealed during the Waapi Saaki, to be seen, and ready for being exchanged, consumed and replanted. Being the vegetable result of procreativity, they are thus the epitome of all food, celebrating the efficacy of all gardening processes and the future harvests. But this could be said of many artefacts, and my demonstration would only have a methodological value, if I was not also bringing the attention to the fact that, for the Abelam, the choice of yam is far from being incidental. The agronomist, linguist and anthropologist André-Georges Haudricourt (Ozanne-Rivierre and Rivierre 1995), in two articles that have become famous (at least in French circles), brilliantly pointed out two important features of relationships with plants, and how these relationships are relevant to the understanding of social forms. First, he pointed to the correlation between how people interact with plants and how they interact with each other, notably through processes of domestication but also through agronomic techniques (1987a). Second, Haudricourt demonstrated how, in Melanesia, yams constitute a form of paradigm for clans, social relationships and human beings (1987b), which is confirmed by the pervasiveness of yams in Abelam metaphors and sociality (Tuzin 1972; Scaglion 1999; Coupaye 2007a). The iterative nature of the agricultural year – of which the ceremonial part is but one operation within the entire sequence – re-instantiates over time the paradigmatic nature of human/ plant relationships, based on ontological constructions (see Descola 2005: 145–62). This dynamic procedure, anchored in material relationships, allows for processes of trialling, inventing and/or discovering old and new forms of conceptual bricolage, for comments, and for passing from agronomic techniques to social processes, and vice-versa. This is made possible, Haudricourt pointed out, because yams, as botanical species, have a mode of reproduction differing from many other vegetable species within the Melanesian environment. It is through vegetative reproduction, that is the cutting (or dispersal) of a germinated tuber, that new tubers are produced. Each of these new tubers of the same cultivar are, in fact clones of the original set, and of each other (Burkill 1951; Haudricourt 1987b: 288). All are, in fact extension of the same individual vegetable. This particularity is shared by a number of other cultivated plants, most with some symbolic dimensions, such as the taro (Colocasia esculenta) or the cordyline (Cordyline fruticosa). Because all the specimens presented are clones of the same vegetable individual, they also make visible variations, no

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longer as the result of some invisible uncontrollable process, but as material instantiations of the gardener’s skill, capacity and sociality. It implies that the cultivator – as is not the case with other types of crop – knows that in case of a bad harvest, only the soil, his cultivation process and the weather can be considered responsible, Haudricourt remarked (ibid). Thus, during the Waapi Saaki, the audience’s attention and evaluations goes through the material result, towards the technical process – not as production process but as ways of recruiting, engaging and combining relations – now invisible but known to all. While yams as clones and their mode of reproduction have been interpreted as a fantasy of male parthenogenesis (Tuzin 1995: 300), I feel that over-emphasising the a-sexual reproductive capacity of cloned yams would miss another part of the ontology they manifest: the botanical property of the vegetable species itself. Cloning is not only a materialising process of multiplying and diversifying the same original. It could also be providing a sort of ‘neutral ground’ to make visible the fact that social reproduction also requires long-term human agency. Yams, displayed so as to be seen, as a conflation of relationships, evaluated and commented upon, can thus be seen as a form of Abelam non-verbal comment on society – a form of sociology. This is made possible not only because of the ceremonial context in which they appear, but also because they instantiate, within the garden, a process at work within society. It is also made possible because both initiations and Waapi Saaki rituals work by equating, and placing on the same conceptual plane, yams, clans, human beings, ancestors, hamlets and villages. Through the collapsing of these fluid entities through ritual display and performance, it shows how everything reproduces and is made material through the manipulation of cosmological forces – potentially dangerous and opposed, but brought together through the agency of human beings and their capacity to negotiate passageways, bridges between different cosmological domains. In other words, the yam indeed provides what could correspond to a form of Abelam sociology, not only because of the pervasiveness of its metaphorical dimensions, but also because its socio-technical grounding throughout the agricultural year provides people with the means they need to interpret and to comment on the value of the sociality-made-thing displayed during the Waapi Saaki. In the end, yams, clans, human beings, carvings, ancestors can all be considered as clones, whose particularity is to emphasise how it is techniques – in their most mundane forms (and not only through beautiful objects) – which constitute sociality through matter, essential to social reproduction. It is this centrality of technical

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processes, as a comment on yam metaphysics, which I believe is displayed in the Waapi Saaki. In turn, long-yam rituals can be seen as recreating in their audience metaphysical bridges or channels, not only at the particular moment of the ritual but throughout the entire operational sequence of yam cultivation, that allow people to produce food during the entire year, and to regenerate society. This is possible because techniques are embodied socialisation, while also calling to cosmological domains constantly reactivated, checked and readjusted in order to maintain their efficacy. The intertwining of representations with acting on the material (whose reality and efficacy is to be seen, eaten and shared through yams) can be seen as an emanation of technical practices (in a Maussian purest sense) throughout the agricultural year, and as spilling over into domains of existence through the multiple passages (materials, substances, agents, sociality) created by the technical system.

Conclusion: an attempt at putting initiation and yam ceremonies in perspective

Like in the initations, the display of waapi does have a revelatory power. By tying up together (giving it shape) a ‘snapshot’ of past relationships, the potential to create other ones (exchanges, compensations, new tubers, new food, new cultivation processes), and the embodied knowledge of how these have already occurred and will happen again during the next cycle, Waapi Saaki offers a fugitive but holographic glimpse of the complexity of social processes. As with initiations images that reveal the tuber-like nature of humans, clans, hamlets, villages (in a fractal way), it could be that yams enable the revealing of the human-made nature of social relationships, and the possibility of their enduring agency through time. What exhibiting waapi does is bringing to light, in a framed circumstance, images of sociality, as well as providing people with specific social forms to think through. Instantiating (‘made in an instant’) processes that are known, even if experienced in a messy, fluid and fuzzy way, it simultaneously makes present what has been done before, and announces what will happen: the harvesting of the food made possible by human agency on, and commerce with, the world and the nurturing of the community with the social relationships they are able to recreate. If the audience is transformed, it is through the renewal and confirmation of its capacity to generate social relationships. Ultimately, it is not so much ancestors or supernatural entities who create society but rather human beings themselves.

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And what of the initiations? While it is difficult to interpret the absence of initiations within the scope of this chapter, I would suggest some kind hypothesis of how to relate them to the Waapi Saaki. Both rituals carry similar commentaries about sociality, through formal and conceptual echoes of yam cultivation and display. Both are processes of social reproduction; both equate human beings and yams, but also work by adding ancestors, clans and the dead to the process. The appearance of yams – like the appearance of decorated initiates – corresponds to the recursive coming-into-being of ancestral entities whose materialisation is in fact the result of mixed agencies: humans themselves as an instantiation of these non-human entities, and the distributed forms of those powers in the physical and social landscape. Thus both ceremonies make manifest ancestral powers, which are summoned to participate in this cosmo(re)genesis, by reaffirming simultaneously their transient nature, and their enduring temporality – as yams are the same (in)dividual repeated over and over each cycle. In the case of initiations, the materialisation of ancestors leads to the making of elaborate images and figures, notably inside the ceremonial house. At the end of the initiation, once they had been put in the presence with these images, initiates were released into the world, dressed as ancestors themselves or as yams. In the Waapi Saaki case, long yams are also, at one level, images of ancestors, made manifest through the use of iconographic clues (such as masks, colours and the general structure of the decoration), and at another level are the actual manifestations of ancestral procreativity through their nature as ‘relations-made-things’. In both cases, the return of ancestors has to be made temporary by human agency – as exemplified by the aggressiveness of puyaa dancers welcoming both the yams and, I was told, the initiates, which act both as a warning and a welcoming of these powerful entities. Again following Forge’s suggestions, initiations and the Waapi Saaki ritual are mostly about the relationships between things. But the transformation of relationships into things does not happen only at a dramatic moment of the ceremony. What the ceremonies show is that it has occurred before that, over the course of the agricultural year, through the everyday routine (operational sequence) of garden work and social engagements that it requires, and it also carries the hope that it will remain so. What the Waapi Saaki ritual do – following what Gilbert Lewis demonstrates (1980: 30) – is to isolate the yams and focus attention on them. It surrounds them with special features that ‘frame’ them, and that alert the attention of the spectators. In turn, the ritual invites them to discover aspects and relationships that are ‘otherwise too ordinary to see’, but whose nature as

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‘ordinary’ is the actual stuff of everyday life. Through the ritual enchantment of yams during the Waapi Saaki, the entire technical process is enchanted too, making yam cultivation a whole-year ritual. The ritual enchants the technical process in both directions, past and future. The past, as it confirms what everybody knows about the ways yams – as society – come into being; the future, as yams contain potential relationships that can only be released once the display has been done. In between, the Waapi Saaki can be seen as a sort of turning point, which brings attention to yams as the fugitive instantiation of the transient and fluid nature of past and future sociality. Yams frame the ritual as much as ritual frames yams. Notes   1 Literally ‘Big Man’, but also ‘big brother’. These are older men who have a preeminent position in the village’s collective decision-making processes (cf. Godelier and Strathern 1991).   2 This ceremony is further described an illustrated in Coupaye 2007b and in Coupaye, forthcoming.   3 The division is mine, based on comparison between 10 different venues.  4 There are different types of Waapi Saaki dances, not all of which exclude women. The Kaagu, though, is said to be specific to Maambutap yams, while ceremonies for other types of cultivars can involve different types of dance.   5 While this can be traced back to Lévi-Strauss’s adaptation of Roman Jackobson’s phonology to kinship (Lévi-Strauss 1974: 46), among many recent instances of such analytical shifts one remembers Latour’s (1993), from society/nature to the semi-objects that proliferate in between, or Melanesianists’ shifts from individual/society to sociality (Strathern 1988)   6 Such explanations, I believe, would benefit from taking seriously Wittgenstein’s discussion of Frazer’s interpretation of magic (Wittgenstein 1982; de Lara 2005).   7 As Barth (1975) points out, secrecy is less about an actual content than a form of cloaking device, in itself a symbolic-creation process.   8 Cf. Coupaye 2009a, 2009b, 2010 for partial descriptions.  9 In fact, because the gardens are set on slopes, the entire structure is more oblique, than horizontal, including the vertical one. The shape of the long yam trellis has some formal (and architectonic) echo in the famous ceremonial house described and analysed in the literature (cf. Hauser-Schäublin 1989a; Coupaye 2009a). 10 For instance, using a hammer to drive in a nail can be seen in the processes of building a barn, fixing a painting on a wall, or crucifying a human being. 11 This repartition – or as Latour would say, ‘purification’ – is particularly visible when doing a literature review the particular topic of yams in Melanesia. The review shows a clear distinction between works concentrating, on the one hand, on geographical, botanical and agronomical aspects of yam cultivation and, on the other hand, anthropological investigation of their symbolic, social or, ritual dimensions, with little passage between each (Coupaye forthcoming).

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Ingold, Tim (2000 [1988]). ‘Tools, minds and machines: an excursion in the philosophy of technology’. In T. Ingold (ed.), The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 294–311. Jeudy-Ballini, Monique and Bernard Juillérat (eds.) (2002). People and Things: Social Mediation in Oceania (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press). Juillérat, Bernard (1986). Les Enfants du Sang: Société, reproduction et imaginaire en Nouvelle Guinée (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme). —— (1992). ‘“The mother’s brother is the breast”: incest and its prohibition in the Yafar Yangis’. In B. Juillérat (ed.), Shooting the Sun: Ritual and Meaning in West Sepik (Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press), pp. 20–124. Kaberry, Phyllis (1941). ‘The Abelam tribe, Sepik District, New Guinea: a preliminary report’. Oceania, 11/3, pp. 233–58 and 11/4, pp. 345–67. —— (1941–42). ‘Law and political organisation in the Abelam tribe, New Guinea’. Oceania, 12/3, pp. 209–25 and 12/4, pp. 331–63. —— (1971). ‘Political organisation among the northern Abelam’. In R. M. Berndt and P. Lawrence (eds.), Politics in New Guinea (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press), pp. 35–73. de Lara, Philippe (2005). Le Rite et la Raison: Wittgenstein Anthropologue (Paris: Ellipse. Latour, Bruno (1993). ‘Ethnography of a “high-tech” case: about Aramis’. In P. Lemonnier (ed.), Technological Choices: Transformation in Material Culture since the Neolithic (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 372–98. —— (1993 [1991]). We Have Never Been Modern (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf). —— and Pierre Lemonnier (eds.) (1994). De la préhistoire aux missiles balistiques: L’ intelligence sociale des techniques (Paris : La Découverte). Lea, David A.M. (1964). Abelam land and sustenance horticulture in an area of high population density, Maprik, New Guinea. Unpublished DPhil thesis, Australian National University, Canberra. Leach, James (2002). ‘Drum and voice: aesthetics, technology, and political relations in a Rai Coast (Papua New Guinea) society’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 8, pp. 713–34. Lemonnier, Pierre (1992). Elements for an Anthropology of Technology (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press). —— (in press). ‘Des objets pour penser l’indicible La nécessaire convergence des théories de la culture matérielle’. In N. Schlanger and A-C. Taylor (eds.), La Préhistoire des autres. Comment l’archéologie et l’anthropologie abordent le passé des sociétés non-occidentales (Paris: La Découverte). —— (ed.) (1993). Technological Choices: Transformation in Material Culture since the Neolithic (London and New York: Routledge). Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1974 [1958]), Anthropologie structurale (Paris: Plon). Lewis, Gilbert (1980). Day of Shining Red: An Essay on Understanding Ritual (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Losche, Diane (1995). ‘The Sepik gaze: iconographic interpretation of Abelam form’. In J. F. Weiner (ed.), Too Many Meanings: A Critique of the Anthropology of Aesthetics. Social Analysis 38 (Adelaide: Department of Anthropology, University of Adelaide), pp. 47–60.

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Malinowski, Bronislaw (1978 [1935]). Coral Gardens and their Magic: A Study of the Methods of Tilling the Soil and of Agricultural Rites in the Trobriand Islands (New York: Dover). Mauss, Marcel (1968 [1909]). Œuvres, Vol. 1: Les fonctions sociales du sacré (Paris: Editions de Minuit), pp. 357–477. —— (1973 [1934]), ‘Techniques of the body’. Economy and Society, 2/1, pp. 70–88. Morphy, Howard (2005). ‘Style and meaning: Abelam art through Yolngu eyes’. Res, 47, pp. 209–30. Ozanne-Rivierre, F. and Jean-Claude Rivierre (1995). ‘In memoriam: AndréGeorges Haudricourt, 1911–1996’. Oceanic Linguistics 36/1, pp. 1–5. Roscoe, Paul and Richard Scaglion (1990). ‘Male initiation and European intrusion in the Sepik: a preliminary analysis’. In N. Luthehaus et al (eds.), Sepik Heritage, pp. 414–23. Scaglion, Richard (1999). ‘Yam cycles and timeless time in Melanesia’. Ethnology, 38/3, pp. 211–25. Schlanger, Nathan (2005). ‘The Chaîne Opératoire’. In C. Renfrew and P. Bahn (eds.), Archaeology: The Key Concepts (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 25–31. —— (ed.) (2006). Marcel Mauss: Techniques, Technology and Civilisation (New York and Oxford: Durkheim and Berghahn Books). Schwimmer, Eric (1990). ‘The anthropology of the ritual art’. In A. Hanson and L. Hanson (eds.), Art and Identity in Oceania (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press), pp. 5–14. Sigaut, François (2002). ‘Technology’. In T. Ingold (ed.) Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology (London: Routledge), pp. 420–59. Smidt, Dirk and Noel D. McGuigan (1994). ‘An emic and etic role for Abelam art (Papua New Guinea): the context of a collecting trip on behalf of the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden’. In P. C. Dark and R. Rose (eds.), Artistic Heritage in a Changing Pacific (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press), pp. 121–41. Strathern, Marylin (1988). The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia (Berkeley, CA, and London: University of California Press). ——  (1996). ‘Cutting the Network’. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2/3, pp. 517–535. —— (1999). Property, Substance and Effect: Anthropological Essays on Persons and Things (London and New Brunswick, NJ: Athlone). Tuzin, Donald (1972). ‘Yam symbolism in the Sepik: an interpretation account’. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 28, pp. 230–54. —— (1995). ‘Art and procreative illusion in the Sepik: comparing the Abelam and the Arapesh’. Oceania, 65/4, pp. 289–303. Wagner, Roy (1984). ‘Ritual as communication: order, meaning, and secrecy in Melanesian initiation rites’. Annual Review of Anthropology, 13, pp. 143–55. Warnier, Jean-Pierre (2001). ‘A praxeological approach to subjectivation in a material world’. Journal of Material Culture, 6/1, pp. 5–24. —— (2007). The Pot-King: the body and technologies of power (Leiden and Boston MA: Brill).

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——  (2009). ‘Technology as Efficacious Action on Objects … and Subjects’. Journal of Material Culture, 14/4 pp. 459–470. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1982 [1969]). Remarques sur le Rameau d’Or de Frazer (Paris: L’Âge d’Homme).

Chapter 6

Objects, Bodies and Gods A Cognitive Ethnography of an Ontological Dynamic in the Xangô Cult (Recife, Brazil) Arnaud Halloy

Introduction

Over the last three decades, objects have forced their way into the spotlight of the social and cognitive sciences.1 Until that happened, they remained largely concealed, off-stage, in the analysis of social life. This situation started to change with the (late) recognition of the tacit influence which these acteurs de l’ombre wield in everyday life. Quite recently, objects have been playing a leading part in a number of scientific theories, especially in the social and cognitive sciences. In the latter, it is mainly through the emergent fields of distributed and situated cognition that objects have entered the limelight. They might appear as the necessary means of coordinating complex cognitive tasks (Hutchins 1995), as external support for cognition, action and memory (Norman 1988, 1993) or, in more specific cases, as ‘cognitive technologies’, indispensable to the processes of cooperation and transmission (Conein 2005). In sociology, they are sometimes considered as equal partners for ‘social actors’, able to mediate social interaction by linking material and social trajectories (Appadurai 1986; Kopytoff 1986; Sansi-Roca 2005), by connecting the global and the local (Latour 1994, 2006) or by binding the social, cognitive and sensory dimensions of experience (Blandin 2002; Keane 2008). Anthropologists are also fascinated by objects because they help to rethink classical topics such as fetishism, identity, power relations, art, or magic

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practices (Augé 1988; Moisseeff 1994, 1995; Warnier 1999; Bonhomme 2005; Gell 1998). Closer to the present research, scholars such as Daniel Miller (2005) and Webb Keane (2006, 2008) emphasise the constitutive but paradoxical role of materiality for expressing the immaterial: ‘The greater the emphasis upon immateriality, the more finessed becomes the exploitation of the specificities of the form of materiality by which the immateriality is expressed’ (Miller 2005: 25). As suggested by this brief overview, objects carry out a wide range of social and cognitive tasks, leading to a real renewal in approaches to culture and human interaction. In this chapter I will discuss what might be considered an extreme case of the ‘empowering process’ of material things. I will try to understand why and how some natural objects such as stones, or mere artefacts such as pieces of iron, become such powerful and intimate mediators between gods and worshippers in an Afro-Brazilian cult. To say it differently, my main aim is to describe how social practices involving ‘things’ are able to produce distinct and dynamic ontologies between, in this particular case, persons, objects and gods. My analytical approach is in line with work of Maurice Bloch (1998, 2005), Alfred Gell (1998) and Pierre Liénard (2003, 2006) on the cognitive underpinnings and consequences of ritual treatments of artefacts. I also endorse part of the ontological approach as defined in the introduction of this volume by recognising the embedded, generative and performative dimensions of artefacts. But I depart from both cognitive and ontological frameworks in at least two ways. I go beyond a strictly cognitivist approach by trying to identify not only the cognitive, but also the emotional and perceptual processes potentially at work in producing the relational quality between persons, gods and objects. And I move aside from the ontological approach when it recommends ‘a suspension of an inquiry into the mental states of the devotee under whose beliefs “things” are expected exclusively to take shape and behave’ (Espirito Santo and Tassi, this volume) or when it presupposes the ‘emergence of new actors that are not just the result of the work, imagination, agency or creativity of humans’ (Sansi, this volume). Ontologies, even if dynamic and context-dependent, are not just a matter of cultural shaping of the world: they are also deeply rooted in cognitive, emotional and perceptual processes proper to humankind. Of course, cultural practices, as the ones involving artefacts, are able to strengthen, weaken or ‘hijack’ (Boyer 2008) natural distinctions between, for example, living and non-living entities in one or other direction, but ontological distinctions are not built up upon a cognitive tabula rasa, and mental constrains (cognitive, emotional and perceptual) should be taken

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into account for describing the processes through which new ontologies are produced.2 Methodologically, the present research might be situated at the intersection of ethnography and of cognitive approaches in anthropology. Neither purely speculative nor strictly descriptive, the analytical perspective lies between these two poles, suggesting what we might call ‘a cognitively informed ethnography’. I will adopt a cognitive approach to the ‘why’ question, suggesting that some objects might become so powerful because they are part of an ontological dynamic generated by ritual activity and characterised by ontological ‘twists’ between objects, bodies and gods. My central claim is that ritual activity generates ontological hybrids that are cognitively and emotionally salient entities, capable of marking religious imagination. I will try to show, in addressing the ‘how’ question, that the making of powerful ontological hybrids takes place thanks to formal features of ritual action, involving objects and body treatments able to mobilise, to capitalise on but also to ‘hijack’3 intuitive cognitive, emotional and perceptual processes. In order to develop this theoretical claim, two ethnographic tracks will be privileged. First, I will focus on the introductory process of two categories of objects into the cult: stones and pieces of iron. Then I will describe their ritual manipulation through the initiation process. Because, as I will try to show, their ‘empowering’ process relies primarily on the sensory and cognitive properties of ritual action, my analysis will focus on ethnographic description of ritual actions involving objects and bodies. But before diving into the intimacy of ritual action, I will briefly present the cult where the observations have been made.

The Xangô cult

The Xangô cult, an Afro-Brazilian possession cult of Yoruba origin, is located in Recife, the capital of Pernambuco state, in north-eastern Brazil. According to Roger Bastide (1960), its name derives from the popularity of the African deity Xangô in the city. Its genesis in Recife took place in the late nineteenth century. From being quite restrained during the first half of the following century, the cult expanded rapidly through the city from the 1940s and the 1970s, thanks to the influence of charismatic cult chiefs (de Carvalho 1987).4 The social organisation of the Xangô cult is based on ‘saint families’ (famílias-de-santo). These collective entities rely on initiatory links between their members, elaborated on the model of the biological family. The initiators are called ‘saint-father’ and ‘saint-mother’, initiates ‘saint-son’

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or ‘saint-daughter’, and those co-initiates subject to the same initiator ‘saint-brothers’ or ‘saint-sisters’. The temple (casa-de-santo or terreiro) is conducted by a saint-father and/or a saint-mother. Every initiate is potentially a future cult chief, which is why initiatory parenthood is at the core of social networks linking various temples through space and time, allowing the spread of knowledge and a constant negotiation of power and leadership (Capone 1999). Xangô members worship two categories of ‘spiritual entities’:5 the eguns, or family ancestors, and the orixás (pronounced ‘orishas’), the Yoruba deities associated with natural elements like river, sea, thunder … or with human activities like hunting and metalworks. Due to syncretism with popular Catholicism, the word santo (‘saint’) is frequently used as a synonym of orixá. At least two orixás are ascribed to every initiate in the Xangô cult. The first one is called orixá-de-cabeça, lit. ‘orixá-of-thehead’, and the second one juntó or adjuntó, meaning ‘joined together’. Every initiate has to worship his orixás by offering them an annual sacrifice and receiving them by possession. Every initiate might be possessed by his/ her orixás, but possession is not a condition for initiation, nor its necessary outcome. In this analysis, I will mainly focus on the ritual episodes involving object and body manipulation – which also often involve possession, as we will see. The principal reason for that choice is that it is during such occasions that objects acquire their specific ‘power’ over their human counterpart, as I will try to show.

Objects in the Xangô cult

Two categories of objects will interest us in the first place: stones (otãs) and pieces of iron pieces (ferramentas), both being the central element of the assentamento (or assento), the altar of the orixá.6 Every initiate has his own assentamento, whose constitutive elements (otãs or ferramentas) are assembled and consecrated during the assentamento ceremony, an important step in the initiating process.7 Assentamentos are of a central importance in the religious practice of the Xangô, for at least two reasons: the pragmatic one is that they are the material receptacle for offerings and sacrifices: ritual practice is unconceivable without them. The conceptual one is that otãs and ferramentas are not considered as mere representations of the orixás, but as ‘being’ the orixá himself.8 This idea is repeatedly made explicit in the way Xangô members refer to their assentamento, designating their altar – and more specifically their otãs or ferramentas – as ‘my orixá’, or the altar of other initiates by expressions such as ‘the Oxum9 of Zite’, ‘the Xangô10 of Tiago’, and so on. As key materials and conceptual elements in the Xangô cult, otãs and ferramentas also play a central role in liturgy as intimate and

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powerful mediators between the initiate, his orixá and the initiators, as I will show in the next section. The power of objects: ethnographic ‘evidence’ We may start with an apparently anecdotal episode I personally encountered in January 2003.11 The third day after an important sacrifice, I was invited to lend a hand in a ‘cleaning up’ (limpeza) session for the altars of many orixás, replete with offerings. The activity consists in throwing away the rotten food and cleaning up the assentamento and its permanent objects (otãs, ferramentas, gigatas,12 bracelets, old coins, skulls, etc.). While cleaning up a Yemanjá’s13 assentamento, I realised that I had inadvertently thrown away the small otã of the orixá with the rest of the offerings,14 notwithstanding a warning from the saint-father who had teased me before I started to work: ‘Careful not to throw away the otã with the ebo!’15 (Cuidado para não dispachar os otãs com o ebo!) The reaction was prompt and collective. The relaxed, good-humoured atmosphere of the cleaning-up session stopped instantly, and was replaced by an emotional and dramatic treasure hunt. As an initiate told me afterwards, losing the otã of an initiate is a ‘real spiritual drama!’ (um verdadeiro drama espiritual). According to cult leaders, it might entail misfortune, craziness or even the death of the disgraced ‘son’ or ‘daughter’. This episode marked the start of my questioning of the ‘power’ contained in cultic objects. During the following months of field research, additional ethnographic observations would come to confirm the vital role played by otãs and ferramentas between the initiate and his orixás. Dramatic stories about the reconversion of cult members to Pentecostalism emphasise this. Some of these reconverted initiates, following their pastor’s advice, decide to throw away their assentamento, usually getting rid of it in a river or even in an open sewer. What is especially striking in these stories is the insistence on the tragic consequences of such acts: mutilation in car crashes, severe burns or illness, craziness, troubles with police and justice, or even precipitate or inexplicable death – in brief, profound misfortune. These stories feed the imagination about the ‘power’ of otãs and ferramentas. This vital role could explain why many converted worshippers16 prefer to abandon their assentamento in their initiator’s temple rather than destroying it. This attitude is generally interpreted by cult leaders as a temporary ‘distancing’ (afastamento) of their saint-son or saint-daughter. ‘She will come back’, as a self-confident young saint-father told me about one of his saint-daughters recently converted to Pentecostalism. Pointing to her assentamento with his head, he concluded: ‘Her orixá will take her back!’

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The changing of initiator also highlights the central place of otãs and ferramentas in the orixá-initiate tandem: the first action any unsatisfied initiates will perform consists in taking away their assentamento from their initiator’s temple.17 They will then install it in their new initiator’s terreiro, or keep it in their own house. Indeed, candomblé requires initiates to have total trust in their initiator. First, the latter must be a competent ritualist able to act efficiently on his initiates’ orixás through ritual practice. Secondly, he must not be ill-intentioned: Xangô members know that a wrong manipulation of the assentamento – intentional or otherwise – will attack them directly in their own body and mind. What these observations emphasise is the close and powerful bond between some cultic objects (otãs, ferramentas), spiritual entities (orixás) and their human counterparts (initiate and initiator). It is now time to go a step further in defining the type of bond we are talking about, but also why and how some peculiar objects become such ‘powerful’ mediators. As a first step in that direction, let us see how Xangô members conceptualise such an intimate connection between objects, human beings and gods. Xangô members’ conceptual background about otãs and ferramentas According to worshippers, there is an ‘obvious’ causal link between ritual manipulation of otãs and ferramentas and their effects on the initiate (health, well-being, ‘peace of mind’, social equilibrium, etc.). Two ‘core’ ideas support this ‘obviousness’. The first is that, as we have already seen, ‘the otã is the orixá’, not a mere representation or symbol of it. The second is that orixás can act upon the material world, and especially upon the body, mind and social life of their own ‘children’. We would thus have a ritual causal chain, intuiting that by manipulating otãs and ferramentas during ritual activity, we are acting upon orixás that might in their turn act (positively or negatively) upon their ‘children’. Xangô members’ tacit theory about the ‘power’ of objects is an important step towards a better understanding of the cultural conceptual background that supports it. Punishment stories, in our case, provide worshippers with a powerful cognitive tool able to organise their experience by developing mental models (Herman 2002), cultural schemes for making sense of dramatic events involving cultic objects but also for guiding worshippers’ behaviour towards them. Notwithstanding this, narratives underscore the existence of a tight link between the worshipper and his orixá and altar, but they fail to tell us how and why such a connection is actually woven; as a ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ explanation, this is precisely what we should try to understand.

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What I suggest is that the way objects are introduced into the cult, as well as the way bodies and objects are manipulated during ritual activity, provide the conditions for triggering specific cognitive, emotional and perceptual processes that stand at the core of the ‘empowering’ process of cultural objects. I will proceed by two ethnographic steps; in the first, I will describe how cultic objects are actually introduced into the cult (stage 1), then how they are manipulated during ritual activity (stage 2). The second part of this paper is a theoretical elaboration and discussion of this hypothesis.

Connecting objects to gods: from presumption to conviction (stage 1)

In an enlightening analysis devoted to the question of the ‘historicity, materiality and valour of objects in the candomblé of Bahia’, Roger Sansi-Roca (2005) underlines the importance of the finding of the otã as a foundational event in the relation between this object and the person who has discovered it. Such importance would largely rely on the recognition of the active part played by the stone in this singular event: the orixá would present himself through the stone, effectively seeking to be found. To account for this agency displacement, Sansi-Roca suggests the useful notions of ‘driven chance’ or ‘hazard objective’.18 If such an event as the finding of the stone in the Xangô cult is conceivable, its ‘foundational’ character is questionable. A first reason is an important distinction Xangô members make between what they call a cheche stone, meaning a common stone which is not a ‘saint’, and an otã, ‘which is an orixá’. When I asked them how to discriminate between a cheche stone and an otã, they all pointed to oracle consultation as a necessary recourse – that is, as the only authority capable of ruling on the divine nature of the stone. They also mentioned several clues linked to the finding. Such indices, as we will see, would act upstream of the oracle consultation giving birth to a first presumption about the singular ontological status of the stone, but also about the orixá’s identity. A first category of indices comes from the stone aspect. Most of the otãs encountered in the Xangô present similar physical traits: they are naturally polished stones with a plane surface. Their shape, from that of a walnut to the size of a small pineapple, is usually regular, and generally spherical or oval.19 Shape, on first perception catching the eye, may attract the person’s attention and orientate his/her thoughts in the direction of an early presumption – that this stone might be an orixá. But additional clues will be necessary for identifying it with more certainty.

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Another important physical index for identifying the orixá is the stone’s colour. A white stone, for example, will be more easily associated with Orixalá, whose colour is white, and a yellow stone with Oxum, whose colour is yellow-gold. But visual salience is not the only process involved in the identification process. A second category of clues is linked to the circumstances of the finding. First of all, environmental circumstances may play a central role: from time to time, Xangô members bring back to the temple stones they have found in the street, on a river bank or a beach, or at the foot of a tree. The place of the finding might orientate the finder’s thoughts in identifying the orixá. For example, a stone found on the beach will be easily associated with Yemanjá, the orixá of salt water, and a stone found near a river with Oxum, the orixá of sweet water, and so on. Secondly, another set of circumstances might predispose the individual to the finding of an orixá: his/her state of mind. The participation in an offering in the forest or the expectation of an initiation, for example, might enhance the individual’s ‘receptivity’ to events associated with the ‘spiritual’20 dimension of life, such as uncanny feelings stemming from the orixá’s ‘approximation’ (aproximação) – communication with the orixá through dreams or visions, as well as the finding of an otã. However, in all cases the finding of a stone gives birth to a first presumption about the divine nature and/or identity of the orixá. The degree of certainty might fluctuate by reference to the co-presence of concomitant clues, as for example the finding of a yellow stone in the surroundings of a river during an offering of a future initiate of Oxum. The force of the presumption might also vary with the religious status of the finder; if the latter is a saint-father or saint-mother, or an old member of the community, the finding is in itself the result of legitimate and expert judgment. But for the presumption to become a conviction, the oracle must invariably be consulted.21 Most of the time, the oracle will confirm the first presumption. But sometimes it might unexpectedly reorientate that first interpretation, or at other times might falter – it will give a verdict on the divine nature of the stone but fail to identify the orixá with any certainty. Such an outcome might be due to contradictions inherent in the oracular process, but also to a cognitive tension between the oracle’s verdict and the physical and circumstantial clues associated with the finding of the stone (for example, a black stone identified by the oracle as an Orixalá, which colour is white). But every stone does not need to go through the oracular process in order to be confirmed in its status of otã. Coriscos (‘fire stones’) are systematically associated with Xangô, the orixá of thunder. And every corisco is a

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Xangô. Three categories of factors contribute to this automatic identification. First, their presumed origin – a direct product of thunder. Secondly, their physical features: coriscos are oblong, black stones with a satin-like quality that give them a unique and mysterious appearance. Thirdly, they are comparatively rare. Because of their singular status and rarity, coriscos are very much soughtafter by Xangô members, and above all by the ‘sons’ and ‘daughters’ of the orixá Xangô. A saint-father told me of one of his initiates who bought his corisco in a market for the equivalent of almost two months’ wages. This example, as well as the case of the introduction of semi-precious stones in assentamentos, puts in perspective Sansi-Roca’s affirmation: quoting a saint-mother of the candomblé, he says that ‘the orixá is not bought, but found’. More importantly, the identification of stones inside the Xangô cult nuances the ‘foundational’ character of the finding event, suggesting a more diachronic process starting from a first presumption and leading to a strong conviction through a necessary ritual (oracular) practice. Another important point is that, for many Xangô members (I would say most of them in the Xangô of Recife), the finding event will never happen at all. I have already mentioned that Xangô members regularly bring back stones to the temple. Once identified, the otã is placed in the assentamento of its respective orixá waiting for an initiate to whom it will be given. There is a third reason for treating the ‘foundational’ character of the finding event in a relativist fashion – and amplifying, as I suggest, the ritual process through which stones are introduced into the cult: stones are not the only category of objects that are considered as being the orixá. Various orixás, for mythological reasons, are made of pieces of iron called ferramentas.22 They are called ‘iron orixás’ (orixás de ferro). The introduction of these objects into the cult corresponds only partly to the introductory process for stones as described above. They might be found by chance, corresponding to what Sansi-Roca calls a ‘driven chance’ or ‘hazard objective’. But contrary to otãs, every ferramenta is efficacious, because it is essentially its materiality – that is, it is made of iron – that justifies its place in the assentamento.23 For the same reason, oracle consultation is not necessary. Pieces of iron might also be actively prospected by a future initiate who needs to compose his/ her altar rapidly. And, for orixás such as Ode, the orixá hunter, and Ossain, the orixá of leaves, ferramentas are pieces of art made by a specialised blacksmith. Like many religious artefacts, these objects are imbued with an explicit symbolic dimension that others such pieces of iron, or even stones, do not have. But like any other such objects, they will need to be ritually ‘consecrated’ (Gell 1998) in order to become ‘sacred’. As a specialised

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blacksmith once told me: ‘You make a “saint” in one instant … But to give food to Him and maintain Him: this is another story!’ The next section is dedicated to the description and interpretation of this ritual ‘story’. But pending this it is worth mentioning a third category of artefacts that plays a central role in the Xangô cult. Contas finas (‘fine necklaces’) are the coloured pearl necklaces initiates wear under their clothes in everyday life. All initiates receive their conta fina after an oracular consultation, or after their first bath of leaves. For many, this ceremony also corresponds to that of the assentamento where the whole altar is ‘washed’ with folhas – fresh leaves corresponding to their orixá – and installed in the temple (peji). Contas are important objects for Xangô members because they can be considered as the material continuity, outside the ritual sphere, of a spiritual relation established through ritual action between the initiate, his/her orixás and the initiators. We might describe this first stage of the ontological dynamic of objects in the Xangô cult as the transformation/hybridation of a natural object or artefact into an object-god – that is, a material object which is a deity, and part of its material actualisation. Some stones, called otãs, are imbued with a ‘divine nature’24 that might be directly perceived, as in the case of coriscos, or gradually revealed through an interpretative process relying on physical and circumstantial features, and confirmed by an oracular consultation. Every piece of iron, on the other hand, is a potential candidate for becoming part of the orixá of iron’s altar (Ogun), with the exception of two iron orixás’ assentamentos (Oxossí and Ossain) containing specific pieces of art with a symbolic content, as we have seen. But this first stage, even if necessary, is not sufficient for creating powerful artefacts. In order to understand the pouvoir agissant (Moisseef 1994) of objects over their human counterparts, they will have to go through a second ritual stage: the transformation of an object-god into an object-body. The second part of this paper is dedicated to the description of this second ritual stage.

Connecting objects to bodies (stage 2)

The main rituals where stones and ferramentas (and necklaces) are manipulated are the amasí/assentamento ceremony or bath of leaves,25 the obrigação or animal sacrifice and the feitura, which is the initiation ritual par excellence. The amasí/assentamento ceremony is a prophylactic and purificatory ritual that precedes the animal sacrifice. The novice’s body and head as well as his/her assentamentos are washed in a decoction of fresh leaves. The assentamento ceremony establishes a first connection between the initiates, their initiators, and their altar and orixás. This is why Xangô members often

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refer to it as the very first stage of initiation. A Yoruba formula underlines the importance of leaves in the cult: ko si ewe, ko si orixá, meaning literally, ‘no leaves, no orixá’. The ceremony is repeated every year for every initiate, known as the amasí ceremony. During the amasí ceremony, otãs or ferramentas and contas are cautiously manipulated and brought into contact with the initiate’s head while the initiator is washing it, and calling upon and singing for his/her orixá. Possession is frequent during this ritual sequence. Obrigação is the sacrifice ceremony. It takes place during initiation and subsequently every year for the initiate’s orixás. The main animals sacrificed are quadruped animals (pigs, sheep, rabbits) and/or gallinacean (chickens, cockerels, ducks). During such ceremonies, blood and feathers are first poured inside the altar on the otãs or ferramentas and necklaces and then on the initiate’s shoulders and head. Blood is also swallowed by the initiate directly from the cut throat of the animals. These actions are accompanied with songs and invocations to the initiate’s orixá. Again, possession is frequent during these ritual episodes. Feitura is the initiation ritual par excellence. It is performed only once in an initiate’s life.26 The initiate’s head is shaved and his/her body and head are scarified (catulagem). The otã or ferramentas and necklaces are brought into contact with every cut of the scarified parts of the body, the most important one being the one performed on the top of the shaven head. Once again, possession is also frequent during this ritual episode.27 As we can see in the short descriptions above, the main initiatic rituals involving orixás (amasí, obrigação and feitura28) also involve the ritual treatment of cultic objects (otãs, ferramentas and contas). Such treatment is closely associated with the manipulation of substances (such blood or the decoction of leaves), as well with the initiator and initiate’s bodies; a frequent result is possession of the initiate. If we try to systematise our observations of religious rituals directed to orixás, three remarkable and recurrent features of ritual treatments of cultic objects are to be found. First, they are concomitant with the ritual treatment of the initiate’s body – it might even be said that ritual treatment of cultic objects during the initiation process implies ritual treatment of his/her body and head: initiation and further annual rituals are simply inconceivable without the co-presence of both objects and initiate. Secondly, they are contiguous: cultic objects and bodies are systematically brought into physical contact during amasí and feitura. Thirdly, they are, in a certain way, isomorphic: to be more precise, I would say that ritual treatments of cultic objects and the initiate’s body correspond to a ‘symmetrical’ or ‘inverted’ isomorphism.

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Indeed, stones and ferramentas are manipulated cautiously,29 as if they were living and/or fragile entities, and bodies are treated like mere ritual artefacts, the initiate being largely passive while his/her body is treated as mere ‘material’ (matéria, the term Xangô members explicitly use for it). I suggest that this second stage of ritual action contributes directly to a second ontological hybridisation process of cultic objects. While the process of introducing such objects into the cult (stage 1) gives birth to a generic ‘hybrid’ I call an ‘object-god’, the initiation process (stage 2) gives birth to an ‘object-body’ – that is, a personal object that corresponds to the binding of the object-god to a specific body, a decisive step in the empowering process of cultic objects. How does the transformation of ‘object-god’ into ‘object-body’ actually work? In the introduction of this chapter, I suggested that features of ritual action involving cultural objects and the body of the initiate would play a central role by activating, but also hijacking, cognitive, emotional and perceptual resources. In the next section, I will try to identify such features as well as the potential mental tools they are able to co-opt.

Empowering objects: ritual features and mental processes

Contiguity As I have already mentioned, objects and body are systematically brought into physical contact during rituals of amasí and feitura. Why is that so? What might contiguity do to the hybridisation process of cultural objects? Recent experimental research on magical thinking suggests an interesting answer. Very sketchily, what we learn from these studies is that the laws of contagion and similarity described by Tylor, Frazer and Mauss more than a century ago are not a singular feature of ‘primitive’ thought, but should rather be conceptualised as deeply rooted cognitive processes of the human mind (Rozin et al 1989). For the present analysis, what interests us in the first place is the law of contagion and how it actually works. A formula grasps it elegantly: ‘Once in contact, always in contact.’ Magical contagion, in other words, operates as if one entity, through a physical contact with another, would permanently transfer some of its fundamental properties to the other (Rozin and Nemeroff 1990). Of course, people can react and use rationality to overcome this emotional impression, but in most cases without being able totally to suppress it. The idea of a transfer of ‘fundamental properties’ from one material entity to another by physical contact fits very well with Xangô members’ notions of ritual efficiency. Blood and its ritual use, for instance, exemplify the idea.

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For Xangô members, blood is not imbued with a precise religious meaning, but is highly evocative and is frequently associated with ‘life’. This is why, when combined with ritual activity, Xangô members associate blood with the concept of axé (pronounced ‘ashé’), the vital force present in living things but also in many objects and substances. Ritual acts are, in their view, conceptualised as the necessary means for transferring axé from one body or object to the other, like some kind of ‘spiritual’ transfusion: Why the blood, the animal? What is blood? Isn’t blood life itself? Nobody lives without blood! Don’t we need blood to stay alive? So what does it mean? That if we stop doing these things [sacrifices], something will die as a result! (Junior, a cult chief) People and objects involved in ritual action are thus at the centre of a kind of incremental process of axé, through the spiritual transfer of fundamental properties from one entity to the other. Otãs and ferramentas, in such a process, would accumulate their power from the many substances (blood, red palm-oil, feathers, African pepper, powders, leaves, water and so on) with which they are ‘fed’ or ‘washed up’, but also from the persons who manipulate them (initiators and their ritual assistants). Systematic contiguity between otãs or ferramentas and the body of the initiate during ritual activity would thus be able to activate the kind of inferences associated with magical thinking, and more specifically with the law of contagion. A second feature of ritual action might also directly participate in the empowering process of cultural objects by enhancing – but also and at the same time ‘blurring’ – their profoundly plurivocal meaning. Heterogeneity of liturgical elements A common feature of many material elements involved in ritual action is their high evocative potential. Blood, as we saw, has no precise or univocal meaning, but it is associated with ‘life’ and axé, which are highly evocative concepts. The same is also true for ‘leaves’, the plants used in ritual washing, powders made from animal skulls, fruit or chalk, as well as water, red palm-oil, honey, etc. In an inspiring analysis of aborigine cultural objects, Marika Moisseeff convincingly defends a provocative idea closely related to our own discussion: ‘Everything happens as if the aptitude of cultic objects to produce meaning relied profoundly on their impossibility to give them a univocal meaning’ (1994: 15).

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In other words, the profoundly polysemic nature of cultic objects directly contributes to the foundation of their exceptional nature (ibid). In the case of otãs and ferramentas, I have tried to show that, on the one hand, their physical aspect, and the ecological and mental circumstances of their finding, as well as the oracular procedure for their identification are propitious for increasing their evocative potential. On the other hand, heterogeneity of material elements not only boosts religious imagination about them, but also seems to make cultic objects hard to grasp conceptually. Ritual activity would play a crucial role in this process in two distinct ways. First, by temporarily assembling a multitude of highly evocative material elements, it activates an intense symbolic process which enhances their ‘profound polysemy’ or ‘unrepresentable’ character (ibid: 25–6). Secondly, ritual songs and invocations contribute to activating, but also to shortcircuiting the inferential process associated with the manipulation of objects during ritual activity. Two features of the liturgical repertoire might induce this paradoxical process. The first one is that songs and invocations are mostly in Yoruba, an African language Xangô members do not understand, or only very partially. However, as the Brazilian ethnomusicologist José Jorge de Carvalho notes, the capacity of Xangô members to project ascribed meaning to songs for the orixás is very great (1993: 205). Even if they have no access to the literal meaning of these songs, ‘they make they own translation, based principally on certain associations and phonetic concordances with the Portuguese language’ (ibid: 205). A second relevant feature of ritual songs is not semantic but performative: songs for the orixás are ‘much more emotional, dynamic and energetic, especially during trance occasions when the presence of the gods is celebrated with joy’ (ibid: 205).30 The performative dimension of songs for orixás draws our attention to a central aspect of object and body manipulation: they can elicit intense emotional responses. As I have already noted, objects and body treatments are largely concomitant, and they take place during ritual sequences where a possession trance is expected. How might such concomitance affect the empowering process of cultic objects? Concomitance I have defended elsewhere the notion that systematic association between body treatments and songs for the orixás during ritual activity might lead to a powerful coupling process between what I called ‘sensory’ and ‘symbolic captures’ (Halloy 2009). Sensory capture could be defined as

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the attentional focus of the initiate on the sensations provoked by ritual treatments and/or the ‘approximation’ (aproximação) of his/her orixá as, for example, tactile and olfactory information given by hot blood or a decoction of leaves poured over his/her shoulders and head, or intense emotional responses such as ‘goose bumps’ and shivering provoked by the orixá’s acting (atuação) upon his body. Symbolic capture refers to the evocative process described above, which infuses sensory capture with meaning. ‘Meaning’, however, as I have tried to show in the case of otãs and ferramentas, is far from being clear and univocal. During ritual action, concomitant manipulation of objects, substances and bodies, as well as gestures, songs and invocations not only stimulate the religious imagination but also tend to blur it by a kind of cognitive and ‘sensory overload’ (Cox 1969: 110, cited in Gell 1980: 233). A central outcome of such a coupling process between sensory and symbolic captures is what I call the ‘somatic signature’ of the orixá – that is, a singular and ‘uncanny’ sensory and emotional configuration recognisable by initiates as marking the action of their orixá upon their own body (Halloy 2009). Cultic objects such as otãs, ferramentas and contas, in this specific context, are part and parcel of the intense emotional process, acquiring – through the process of coupling sensations, emotions and imagination – not only a boosted evocative power but also intense ‘somatic markers’ associated with them (Damasio 1995). If this analysis is correct, ritual features such as the heterogeneity of liturgical elements, the concomitance of treatments and the contiguity between the body of the initiate and otãs or ferramentas, are propitious for eliciting, intensifying but also blurring the ‘evocatory’ and ‘emotional potential’ (Liénard 2003) of cultic objects. In the last section, I will try to show that isomorphism of body and object treatments, another important ritual feature, operates primarily at the perceptual level by hijacking intuitive expectations about the objects’ potential for action. Isomorphism A curious and, at first sight, insignificant ethnographic detail characterises the way stones and pieces of iron are ritually manipulated: once introduced into the ritual sphere, they are handled with caution and attention; they must not be tossed about or knocked together, and Xangô members take care not to let them fall. In more technical terms, we can say that the object’s ‘affordances’ are hijacked during ritual activity. Very schematically, an affordance could be defined as the potential for action which an object could offer because of its pure materiality (Gibson 1979:

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127). In other words, an affordance is an intuitive or direct perception of an object’s potential for action. Another central characteristic of an affordance is that its perception varies according to the organism interacting with the object (Gibson 1979).31 In the case of (small) stones, their ‘hardness’ and regular shape make them ‘graspable’ and good candidates for being thrown, interlocked, knocked together and banged more or less violently against other objects. Depending on the context of where they are encountered, they might thus be used as a tool, as a toy or as a weapon. But if objects have affordances, their use is also constrained by cultural expectations. This is why some authors have suggested differentiating ‘natural’ affordances, which would correspond to some ‘sensori-motor disponibility’ of objects, from their ‘cultural affordances’ (Nisbett and Miyamoto 2005), from their affordance derivée (Liénard 2005) or from their ‘intentional disponibility’ (Tomasello 2004). In the case of otãs and ferramentas, we have seen that, as opposed to the ordinary use of stones and pieces of iron, they are treated with elevated levels of attention and, to a certain extent, with sensitivity; they are not used as a tool or weapon.32 What I suggest here is that the ‘hijacking’ of natural affordances might be considered a specific feature of many cultic objects. Michael Tomasello describes this new quality of objects as their ‘intentional disponibility’, which would be learned through imitation and which implies taking into consideration the intentional relation of the learner towards the world, through the bias of the artefact (2004: 83). But even closer to our theme is Pierre Liénard’s notion of affordance dérivée. He defines it as ‘a new potential for action obtained by a process of ritualising ordinary behaviour’ (2003: 295). Going a step further in his analysis,33 Liénard tries to identify the cognitive processes at work in ritual manipulation of objects, suggesting that ritual action activates specific assumptions about the difference between living things and artifacts, and gives them a twist. Living kinds are used as tools, henceforth acquiring a function, an important feature of our understanding of artifacts. And artifacts are manipulated as if endowed with a powerful inherent quality, an essence, a central feature of our understanding of living things (2006: 343–4). Liénard also describes the cognitive and emotional consequences of such hybridisation processes between ontological categories. He concludes that symbolic material such as an ‘artifactual living kind’ or an ‘essentialized

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artifact’ is ‘somewhat attention-grabbing (at least for a majority in the course of its successive instantiations) and should attain great success in a cultural tradition’ (ibid: 370). I think this is also what happens with otãs, ferramentas, contas and the initiate himself. On the one hand, sacrificial animals are manipulated as mere artefacts, being categorised as members of a functional class (ibid: 352). What is of interest about them is their very materiality: their blood as the main vehicle of axé, and their organs as the main ingredients in offerings to orixás. Such a process of ‘artefactualisation’ is also true of the initiate himself, who is enclosed in the same ontological dynamic. As a matter of fact, it is as if the initiate were reduced to pure corporeity during ritual activity, and even more radically during episodes of possession. As Xangô members say,34 he becomes mere ‘material’ (matéria) for the orixá to ‘incorporate’. On the other hand, some objects (otãs, ferramentas and contas) are manipulated with caution, not because they are breakable, but as if they had embedded within them an ‘essential quality’, which is the constitutive quality of living kinds (ibid). In my view, such ‘essentialisation’ is a fundamental step in the empowering process of cultic objects. Because they are endowed with a new ‘essence’, a divine nature, their status changes from ‘passive’ to ‘potentially active’. In other words, from being objects to be manipulated they become objects themselves capable of manipulation. In the present case, a specific ritual feature I described as ‘invert isomorphism’ – where living kinds are manipulated as tools and artefacts as living kinds – would play a central role in the ontological hybridisation of ritual artefacts. The initiates who see many objects and substances (heterogeneity) systematically associated with the manipulation of their head and body (concomitance and contiguity), who see – and feel – their treatment responding to very similar gestures and attitudes (isomorphism), are led to perceive these objects as their ‘external organs’ (Sansi-Roca 2005: 144), or as a ‘composite body’ (Losonczy, personal communication), or more generally as their person ‘distributed’ in the material environment (Strathern 1988; Gell 1998). The frequency of association between object/body manipulations and possession trance (concomitance) also strengthens the intimate connectivity between the stone, the orixá and the initiate’s body by blurring ontological frontiers between the three categories of entities. Does blurring ontological frontiers between objects, bodies and gods imply that Xangô members consider cultic objects as ‘living kinds’ or ‘psychological beings’ (Gell 1998)? Most certainly, candomblé people do not talk about cultic objects as having a mind, but they do say they have

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a life: they need to be ‘fed’ and their essential force or axé might ‘grow’ or ‘decrease’ according to ritual treatments and contact with powerful beings, objects and substances.35 And what makes such ontological hybridisation possible is a cognitive, affective and perceptual mode proper, in my view, to ritual activity, characterised in this particular case by a deeply rooted belief in magical contagion, by an exacerbated and blurry evocatory process, by an intense and ‘uncanny’ emotional quality and by a potential for action which is largely hijacked.

Concluding remarks

How do some cultic objects become powerful mediators between participants in an Afro-Brazilian cult and their personal deities? And what do we mean by ‘empowering objects’? Defining objects as ‘powerful and intimate mediators’ between humans and deities consists in describing them as material entities able to make their human counterparts think, feel, perceive and act in a way that presupposes a tight connection between them, gods and bodies. In the Xangô cult, this ‘power’ of cultic objects would be elaborated through the interweaving – and mutual reinforcement – of at least two categories of factors. The first is the cultural transmission of interpretative models through narratives, such as dramatic stories of punishment, or cultural schemes such as the ‘transference of axé’ during ritual action, which are able to ‘organise experience’ by making sense of dramatic episodes or by framing the ritual interpretation of cultic objects. But neither narratives nor cultural schemes tell us how and why the intimate binding between objects, deities and humans is actually woven; and this is precisely what we should be able to explain. I suggested that the answer could be found in the second category of factors: the formal features of the body’s and objects’ treatments during ritual action. My central claim is that the fundamental cognitive, emotional and perceptual processes that sustain the empowering of some cultic objects consist in an ontological hybridisation process realised through their introduction into the ritual sphere. A first step in this process starts with the ontological transformation of mere objects and artefacts into ‘object-gods’, where physical cues such as the stones’ shape, texture and colour, as well as the circumstances in which they were found, play an important role in guiding first presumptions of ‘object-god’ identification. But some exceptions apart, as we have seen, for presumption to become conviction, oracular consultation remains essential. A second step in the hybridisation process of cultic objects consists in transforming an ‘object-god’ into an ‘object-body’.

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I suggested that such a radical change in apprehension is elicited by the formal features of ritual action (contiguity, heterogeneity, concomitance and invert isomorphism) involving objects and the body of individuals for whom they are being manipulated. Many other factors might be added to the list, such as the breaking of any standard connection between means and end in ritual (Liénard and Boyer 2006), the length and complexity of entanglement between objects, bodies and substances (Liénard 2006) and, in some cases, strategies of simulation and dissimulation (Houseman 2002 ; Sansi-Roca 2005). In my analysis, I tried to identify ritual features directly at work in the Xangô cult and able to elicit, but also hijack, evocatory, emotional and perceptual resources. If such an analysis is correct, it raises a central question about the ‘empowering process’ of objects: is ritual action the only means of creating such powerful hybrids? A parallel with Ara Norenzayan and Scott Atran’s considerations about the nature and impact of some religious concepts on memory will help us to formulate a response to this difficult question. Relying on experiments he conducted with Atran, Faulkner and Schaller, Norenzayan (2006) contests Pascal Boyer’s thesis, which posits that minimally counter-intuitive concepts (MCI)36 are cognitively salient concepts easily remembered. Instead of sticking to concepts per se, the authors draw our attention to the importance of contextual expectations, concerns and goals of individuals dealing with MCI. More precisely, they insist on taking into account a ‘set of beliefs’ instead of simply ‘beliefs’: the impact of MCI is better when embedded in narratives where they are combined with intuitive concepts. What I suggest is that the same might be true for the cognitive and emotional impact of objects on their human counterpart. The cognitive impact or ‘ascendancy’ of cultic objects will depend, on the one hand, on individual motivations and cultural expectations relative to why and for whom these objects are mobilised and manipulated, and, on the other hand, on the very form of the practices in which they are embedded. On the ‘motivational’ and ‘cultural’ side, in our case study, ritual practices involving cultic objects are perceived as vital by Xangô members: what is at stake in purifying cleansing and sacrifice is their own life and health, but also, as mentioned by Xangô members themselves, the continuity of life in a broader sense. On the ‘formal’ side, I emphasise the importance of ritual features such as concomitance, contiguity, heterogeneity of ritual elements, and isomorphism of body/objects treatments, engaging the body in its most intimate (sensory and emotional) dimensions. As Atran points out elsewhere: ‘The meaning of an act of faith (like communion)

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is not an inference to a specific proposition or set of propositions, but to an emotionally charged network of partial and changeable descriptions of counterfactual and counterintuitive worlds’ (2004: 725). I have attempted to show in this paper that what Atran calls ‘counterintuitive worlds’ can be described in our case study by four categories of cognitive treatments of cultic objects: a deeply rooted belief in magical contagion, paradoxically enhanced and blurred evocatory process, hijacking of objects’ intuitive potential for action, and intense and ‘uncanny’ emotional responses to their manipulation. Is ritual action the only means of creating such powerful hybrids? Religious rituals are perhaps the best cultural devices for producing ‘powerful objects’ because of their ability to mobilise ‘distinct belief networks that contribute to making religious claims quite natural to many people’ (Boyer 2008: 1039). But many cultural practices can potentially produce ‘powerful object’ as soon as they are able, at least to some degree, to generate the same kind of cognitively, emotionally and perceptually charged networks of intuitive and counterintuitive material and immaterial worlds. Notes 1 Objects are, obviously, at the core of materiality-based disciplines such as archaeology, architecture, history of art, ergonomics and engineering. 2 A question social and cognitive sciences should pay close attention to is not just how our cognitive architecture constrains cultural practice, but also how cultural practice may (deeply) transform intuitive ways of thinking, perceiving and feeling. 3 I borrow this term from Pascal Boyer (2008: 1039) who uses it to describe how religious concepts and rituals capitalise on our ‘cognitive resources’, and in many cases ‘give them a twist’ (Liénard 2006). 4 Close to the Bahian Candomblé Ketu in its mythology (based on African deities’ stories) and liturgy (exclusive use of Yoruba in songs and invocations, complex and long initiatic process, ritual focus on African deities and family ancestors), the Xangô cult was classified by Brazilianist scholars (Bastide 1989; de Carvalho 1987; Segato 1995) as a ‘traditional’ cult – that is, a religious practice still very close to its African roots. The reference to a ‘mystical’ Africa but also Xangô members’ emphasis on ‘blood inheritance’ and initiation as the unique models of transmission tends to legitimate and reinforce the idea of a preservation of such a ‘traditional’ knowledge. (Halloy 2010). 5 The vernacular expression ‘spiritual entities’ designates all the spiritual beings present in Afro-Brazilian religions. 6 Every altar is composed of a small earthenware bottle containing water and a large earthenware, wooden or ceramic plate containing the otã or ferramentas, as well as other objects associated with the orixá.

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  7 I will also mention contas, the coloured pearl necklaces that Xangô members wear in everyday life. Contas are not permanent objects on the altar, but, as we will see, they ‘extend’ the ritually built connection between the initiate, his initiator and orixás outside the ritual scene.   8 Nina Rodrigues made the same observation at the beginning of the twentieth century, asserting: ‘The orixá is the stone itself ’ (1900: 29). Monique Augras (1992: 71) and José Jorge de Carvalho (1984: 101), nearly a century later, confirmed the persistence of this belief for Afro-Brazilians from Recife and Rio de Janeiro.  9 Orixá of sweet water, Oxum is frequently associated with femininity and fecundity. 10 Orixá of thunder, Xangô is the most popular orixá of the Afro-Brazilian pantheon in Recife. 11 I spent a total of some 17 months with the Xangô cult. The episode happened during my main period of fieldwork, between September 2002 and September 2003. 12 A gigata is a cross made of two small bones extracted from the lower part of a ‘four-legged’ animal’s jaw; it is a material relic of past sacrifices to the deity. 13 Orixá of the salted waters, Yemanjá is also considered the mother of orixás. 14 My repulsion in digging my hands into the rotten food and blood was perhaps the main cause of my unforgivable clumsiness. 15 Ebo means ‘offerings, sacrifice’ in Yoruba (Sachnine 1997 : 104). The priest’s words evoke the saying in English: ‘Throwing out the baby with the bath water’! 16 Conversion to Pentecostalism is, for many Xangô worshippers, the only way of leaving the candomblé. As Xangô members put it: ‘You know when you enter the candomblé, but you never get out of it!’ According to Xangô members, the ritually and socially constructed relations between the initiate, his orixás and his religious community (saint-family) cannot be erased. It is as if such relations could only be replaced by another strong spiritual, emotional and social link, one they may find in Pentecostalism, though such a hypothesis would of course need to be tested by more systematic ethnographic data. 17 As Roger Sansi-Roca rightly points out (this volume) : ‘it is often only through violence and ‘theft’ that the umbilical cord linking ‘mother’ and ‘daughter’ through their assentos can be severed.’ 18 In the present volume, Sansi-Roca nicely refines his theory by identifying two potential and mutually constitutive ontological dynamics at work in encounter events between a person and an object in candomblé. Following Marcio Goldman’s fetishist ontology (2009), such events can be described as the actualisation of ‘existing virtualities’ already present in persons and things, just waiting to be revealed and transformed through ritual practice and/or specific encounter situations. Taking a step aside from this point of view – which would correspond to the initiation process in orthodox candomblé – Sansi-Roca also underlines the ‘revelation’ potential of person/object encounters – that is, the possibility of producing a new, ‘unprecedented and unrepeatable’ emergent outcome. I am very much in phase with Sansi-Roca’s fine-grained ontological approach. However, I think that both ontologies are even more intimately

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intermingled than Sansi-Roca presupposes in candomblé. As I suggest it elsewhere (Servais and Halloy, in press), first possessions could be described as a ‘promise of surprise’ for most initiates. In the Xangô cult, for example, possession is neither a condition, nor the necessary outcome of initiation, and it might happen at any time in the initiate’s religious career. Because possession is a personal and social highly gratifying experience, able to instill an intimate feeling of self-confidence and protection to the initiate and to enhance his reputation in his religious community, first possession can be described as some kind of an ‘ordinary revelation’ or, as suggested before, as a cultivated ‘promise of surprise’ which correspond to both actualisation and revelation ontologies. 19 The importance of shape and texture as criteria is clearly present in the recent introduction of (recomposed) semi-precious stones into the cult. Recomposed stones are not ‘natural’, being made of powdered stone. 20 The vernacular term frequently used by Xangô members to designate the dimension of existence marked by the intervention of spiritual entities. 21 As we will see later on, there is one exception to this rule in the Xangô cult. Let’s also mention that other modalities of cult such as Umbanda, or even more syncretic Afro-Brazilian cults where deities are used to deliver messages orally, oracle consultation can be ‘bypassed’ by possession. In the Xangô cult, however, orixá hardly speak to people, and even when they do it, their desiderata has to be confirmed by consulting the oracle. 22 Orunmila, a demiurge orixá, and Exu, the messenger orixá between men and gods (and a trickster), represent two specific cases in the Xangô cult. Indeed, the permanent material elements of Orunmila are organic rather than mineral, while the main material element of Exu’s assentamento is a roughly carved stone. I will not develop the singular introductory process – and the concomitant ontological dynamic – of these material elements in this paper. 23 The assentamento of Ogum, the orixá of war and vehicular locomotion – most weapons and vehicles being made of iron. 24 Marcio Goldman (2009) would say its divine ‘virtuality’ … 25 The term ‘leaves’ designates metonymically the plants that are used in the cult. Every orixá has his own ‘leaves’ that are preferentially used for preparing his altar and washing his children’s body and head. For an excellent study of the selection and categorisation processes at work in the choice of leaves in the candomblé, see Ming (2001). 26 While the feitura ceremony only occurs once in the initiate’s life, its ritual syntax is repeated almost point by point during the deká, the ‘confirmation’ ritual that takes place after at least seven years of initiation, where initiates acquire ebomi status and will be authorised to open their own terreiro and have their own initiates. 27 Contrary to obrigação and amasi, possession during feitura is not valued by every cult chief. Some of them do not allow their initiates to be possessed during feitura, because, as one of them told me: ‘If they are manifested, they will remember nothing!’ 28 To be exhaustive, the initiation process starts with the bale ceremony, the sacrifice to ancestors (eguns). It also includes the obori ceremony, or ‘sacrifice for the head’, a ceremony that precedes the amasí. The saída de iaô, the public

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ceremony where the novice emerges from seclusion and is shown to his/her community, is also an important step. Finally, I could also mention the ebo ceremony, which takes place the third day after every sacrifice and corresponds to the transport of offerings outside the cult. But apart from the ebo ceremony, the bale and the obori do not involve the orixá altar nor the orixás themselves, but other spiritual entities such as the eguns (bale) and the ori, the ‘head’ of the initiate (obori). The saída de iaô ceremony involves orixás, but not the manipulation of their altar. 29 This particular feature is also clearly observable during the cleaning of the altars, on the third day after the sacrifice. 30 As de Carvalho (1993) has shown, musical repertoire of the Xangô cult can be divided into two distinct groups of songs, which differ in their semantic and performative dimensions. The first repertoire, he called ‘functional’ repertoire, is associated to precise acts or sequences of acts as, for example, the preparation of leaves decoction during the first part of the amasí or the preparation of the animal and the killing act during obrigação. The second repertoire is composed by songs for the orixás, and, in our case, corresponds to the second stage of rituals, when objects and body treatments are associated and possession expected. 31 Two distinct animal species might perceive different affordances in the same object (if they perceive any affordance at all). 32 There is one exception to this rule – coriscos might be used to render unconscious the ram offered to a Xangô. But even in this case, the gesture of doing this with three blows on the animal’s head is most often ‘symbolic’ rather than real. 33 His analysis is of a sacrificial rite among the Turkana (Kenya). 34 During possession, initiates are no longer in command; their orixá assumes their own motility, character and desiderata. Do ordinary people need to be, as a preliminary stage, transformed into a mere artefact in order to become endowed with a divine essence during possession? 35 I am particularly grateful to Roger Sansi-Roca who drew my attention to this important distinction between ‘having a life’ and ‘having a mind’ for objects in the candomblé. 36 A MCI concept has been defined by Justin Barrett as ‘a special group of concepts – concepts that largely match intuitive assumptions about their own group of things [e.g. persons, animals, tools, plants] but have a small number of tweaks that make them particularly interesting and memorable’ (2004: 23).

Bibliography

Appadurai, Arjun (1986). ‘Introduction: commodities and the politics of value’. In A. Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 3–63. Atran, Scott (2004). ‘Religion’s evolutionary landscape: counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion’. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, pp. 713–70. Augé, Marc (1988). Le dieu objet (Paris : Flammarion). Augras, Monique (1992). Le double et la métamorphose: L’ identification mythique dans le Candomblé brésilien (Paris: Meridiens Klincksieck).

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Barrett, Justin (2004). Why Would Anyone Believe in God? (Oxford: Atamira). Bastide, Roger (1989 [1960]). As religiões africanas no Brasil: Contribuição a uma sociologia das interpenetrações de civilizações (São Paulo: Livraria Pioneira). Blandin, Bernard (2002). La construction sociale par les objets (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France). Bloch, Maurice (1998). How We Think They Think. Anthropological Approaches to Cognition, Memory, and Literacy (Boulder, CO: Westview). —— (2005). Essays on Cultural Transmission (Oxford and New York: Berg). Bonhomme, Julien (2005). Le miroir et le crâne: Parcours initiatique du Bwete Misoko (Gabon) (Paris: Éditions CNRS). Bonnot, Thierry (2002). La vie des objets: D’utensiles banals à objets de collection (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme). Boyer, Pascal (2008). ‘Religion: bound to believe?’, Nature, 455, pp. 1038–9. Bromberger Christian and Denis Chevallier (1999). Carrières d’objets (Paris: Cahiers de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme). Capone, Stefania (1999). La quête de l’Afrique dans le Candomblé: Pouvoir et tradition au Brésil (Paris: Karthala). de Carvalho, José Jorge (1993). ‘Aesthetics of opacity and transparence: myth, music and ritual in the Xangô cult and in the Western art tradition’, Latin American Music Review (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press), 14/2, pp. 202–29. Conein, Bernard (2005). Le sens sociaux: Trois essais de sociologie cognitive (Paris: Economica). Damasio, Antonio (1995). L’erreur de Descartes: De la raison des émotions (Paris: Odile Jacob). Gell, Alfred (1998). Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon). Gibson, James J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin). Halloy, Arnaud (2009). ‘Incorporer les dieux: Les ressorts pragmatiques de  la transe de possession religieuse dans le culte Xangô de Recife (premières pistes)’. In S. Baud and Nancy Midol (eds.), La conscience dans tous ses états: Approches anthropologiques et psychiatriques, cultures et thérapies (Paris: Elsevier Masson), pp. 77–95. —— (2010). ‘Chez nous, le sang reigne!’. Apprendre la tradition dans le culte Xangô de Recife’, Terrain, 55, pp. 10–27. —— (forthcoming). ‘Gods in the Flesh. Outline of an emotional learning process in the Xangô possession cult (Recife, Brazil)’. Special issue of Ethnos. Journal of Anthropology. Herman, David (2002). Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press). Houseman, Michael (2nd edn. 2002). ‘Dissimulation and simulation as modes of religious reflexivity’, Social Anthropology, 10/1, pp. 77–89. Humphrey, Caroline and James Laidlaw (1994). The Archetypal Actions of Ritual: A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship (Oxford: Clarendon). Hutchins, Edwin (1995). Cognition in the Wild (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Kaufmann, Jean-Claude (1997). Le coeur à l’ouvrage: Théorie de l’action ménagère (Paris: Nathan).

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Keane, Webb (2006). ‘Subjects and objects’. In C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Küchler, M. Rowlands, and P. Spyer (eds.), Handbook of Material Culture (London: Sage), pp. 197–202. —— (2008). ‘The evidence of the senses and the materiality of religion’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14/1, pp. 110–27. Kopytoff, Igor (1986). ‘The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process’. In A. Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 64–94. Latour, Bruno (1994). ‘Une sociologie sans objets? Remarques sur l’interobjectivité’, Sociologie du travail, 4, pp. 587–607. Liénard, Pierre (2003). Le comportement rituel: Communication, cognition et action. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Université Libre de Bruxelles. —— (2006). ‘The making of peculiar artifacts: living kind, artifact and social order in the Turkana sacrifice’, Journal of Cognition and Culture, 6/3–4, pp. 343–73. —— and Pascal Boyer (2006). ‘Whence collective rituals? A cultural selection model of ritualized behavior’, American Anthropologist, 108/4, pp. 814–27. Miller, Daniel (2005). ‘Materiality: an introduction’. In D. Miller (ed.), Materiality (Politics, History, and Culture) (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), pp. 1–52. Moisseeff, Marika (1994). ‘Les objets cultuels aborigènes, ou comment représenter l’irreprésentable’, Genèses, 17, pp. 8–32. Nisbett, Richard and Yuri Miyamoto (2005). ‘The influence of culture: holistic versus analytic perception’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9/10: 497–473. Norenzayan, Ara, Scott Atran, Jason Faulkner and Mark Schaller (2006). ‘Memory and mystery: The cultural selection of minimally counterintuitive narratives’, Cognitive Science, 30, pp. 531–53. Norman, Donald (1989). The Psychology of Everyday Things (NewYork: Basic Books). —— (1993). ‘Les artefacts cognitifs’, Raisons Pratiques, 4, pp. 15–34. Rodrigues, Nina (1988). Os africanos no Brasil (Brasilia: Editora Universidade de Brasilia). Rozin, Paul, Carol Nemeroff, Marcia Wane and Amy Sherrod (1989). ‘Operation of the sympathetic magical law of contagion in interpersonal attitudes among Americans’, Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 27, pp. 367–70. ——  and Carol Nemeroff (1990). ‘The laws of sympathetic magic: a psychological analysis of similarity and contagion’. In J. Stigler, G. Herdt and R.A. Shweder (eds.), Cultural Psychology: Essays on Comparative Human Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 205–32. Sachnine, Michka (1997). Dictionnaire usuel yoruba-français (Paris and Ibadan: Karthala- Ifra). Sansi-Roca, Roger (2005). ‘The hidden life of stones: historicity, materiality and the value of Candomblé objects in Bahia’, Journal of Material Culture, 10/2, pp. 139–56. Servais, Véronique and Arnaud Halloy (in press). Rencontres sensorielles : approches sociologiques et anthropologiques des sens (Paris : Petra). Sperber, Dan (1974). Le symbolisme en général (Paris: Hermann). ——  and Deirdre Wilson (2nd edn. 1995).  Relevance: Communication and Cognition (Oxford: Blackwell).

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Strathern, Marilyn (1988). The Gender of the Gift (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press). Tomasello, Michael (2004). Aux origines de la cognition humaine (Paris: Retz). Warnier, Jean-Pierre (1999). Construire la culture matérielle: L’ homme qui pensait avec ses doigts (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France).

Chapter 7

Divinity and Experiment Conversion in a Japanese Jam Jar Philip Swift

‘Never interpret; experience, experiment’ (Gilles Deleuze)1 In the year 415 bc, there took place one of the most infamous episodes in the history of ancient Athenian religious politics. As the state of Athens was preparing to launch its ill-fated invasion of Sicily, the inhabitants awoke one morning to discover that almost every statue of Hermes to be found across the city had been vandalised in the space of a single night. The attacks on these images of the god were brutal and systematic: their faces were mutilated and their phalluses smashed. Now, while historians continue to debate over the motives behind this riot of iconoclasm,2 I want to propose my own idiosyncratic reading, relevant to the aims of this chapter. I suggest that these ancient attackers were merely putting into practice one of the more familiar forms of modernist methodology; for, in smashing up statues of Hermes, they were being faithful to the method of hermeneutics. It is a strange kind of piety, to be sure, since it would seem to be bizarre indeed to piously vandalise the icon of a god by means of his own method. Yet, as Taussig reminds us (Taussig 1999), defacement can be strangely consecratory, sanctifying the very thing it destroys. Hence, in dishonouring the material forms of Hermes, these Athenian iconoclasts were paying him the very highest act of reverence.

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My interpretation of this historical episode is pure fantasy, of course, but I offer it in order to give definition to a problem that is rather more real. It concerns a particular model of interpretation and its consequences; a hermeneutic doctrine that still remains the default mode in much scholarly analysis of religion. The precise problem with this model is its tendency to treat the phenomenal or material aspects of religion as resembling a screen or a container. So conceived, the aim of the method is to slip round the back of the material, to crack open the container of the phenomenal, in order to access the space of meanings or motives that would account for it. As a result, the materiality of religion is thus treated as a more or less inconsequential vehicle for a more important meaning made elsewhere (see Faure 1998; Keane 2008).3 Material form (say, a statue of Hermes) is taken to be ancillary to the meanings or beliefs of which it is an index. All that remains, says Lyotard, in a caustic commentary on this hermeneutic tendency, are ‘Materials to dematerialize and to make signify’ (Lyotard 1993: 45). ‘See what you have done,’ he continues, in a rebuke that could have been directed at an Athenian iconoclast, ‘the material is immediately annihilated. Where there is a message, there is no material’ (ibid: 44). If I begin with this fantasy about hermeneutic iconoclasm, it is to illustrate one of the regular effects of interpretative intervention, which is the elimination of the material. However, I also want to point up a further consequence of the method, by making explicit the etymological link between Hermes and hermeneutics, since the god, of course, gives his name to the method. But – to make a long story very short indeed – the history of hermeneutics is a story of how the discipline came to cut divinity down to size. For, once it parted company with Hermes, hermeneutics came to be associated with a very different god, becoming deployed in attempts to make sense of scripture. From there, hermeneutics moved from exegesis of the Bible to the understanding of texts in general, so that the potential of the method was realised, said Dilthey, with ‘the liberation of exegesis from [religious] dogma’ (Dilthey, cited in Vattimo 1997: 42). But if hermeneutics had to be demythologised to attain the level of a general scientific method, at the same time it increasingly became, when applied to the study of religion, itself a tool of demythologisation – a means of reaching the ‘real’ meaning behind all the accidental forms of religion.4 This, then, is the other common consequence of the doctrine in action: that it not only dematerialises, but it de-divinises as well. For, having been consigned to the human (as opposed to the natural) sciences, and so confined to the realm of the cultural, the spiritual and the symbolic, hermeneutic doctrine came to equate ‘religion’ with the inner space of subjectivity, an equivalence that

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neatly coincides with our own common sense. As Stolow smartly summarises the matter, insofar as ‘the actions and perceptions falling under the rubric of “religion” are assumed not to produce any objectively measurable effects within the order of the real’, the ‘real’ in religion must therefore be subjective (Stolow 2008: 669). As such, it fell within the province of hermeneutics, while the realm of ‘measurable effects’ came to be presided over by science. In short (to paraphrase Vasconcelos), where religion ended up with ‘experience’, science inherited ‘experiment’ (Vasconcelos 2008: 14). If hermeneutics – mindful of its place – has tended to abide by this distinction,5 it has, perhaps, been doing no more than upholding the functions of its former benefactor: Hermes, god of demarcations. But what the discipline seems to have forgotten is that, if Hermes once exercised authority over frontiers, he was also the patron of their transgression.

Interpretation versus experiment

The subject matter of this chapter is expressly concerned with transgressive territory, a place where divinities mix with science, and experiences fraternise with experiments. Indeed, I intend my argument in this chapter to be a pint-sized experiment of its own – a litmus paper, if you will, that dips into two problems at once. The first problem is ethnographic and concerns the efficacy of experiments in a Japanese new religion. These experiments involve jam jars, into which substances – commonly foodstuffs – are placed, and their subsequent changes recorded over time. Briefly put, the problem is this: what do these experiments do? The second problem is anthropological: what do we do with these experiments? That is to say, what are we, as anthropologists, to make of them? And what different kinds of effects are produced by the particular theoretical interventions we choose to make? Were we to have recourse to the usual hermeneutic procedures, we would very likely conclude that divinities can have nothing to do with experiments; hence, these jam-jar trials must be about something else, with the solution to the problem being no doubt locatable in another kind of container altogether – the heads of the experimenters.6 But what if we were to try out a method that would allow the experiments to, as it were, speak for themselves? Put this way, as a choice between methods and the kinds of differences they make to the ways in which ethnographic material gets conceptualised, I want to claim that the second, anthropological problem is intrinsically linked to the first, and is no less connected to efficacy. This is so because, as Stengers points out, our theories ‘are always efficacious, they always add to the situation, even when they only aim at diagnosing it’ (Stengers 2008: 53).

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The question, then, concerns the difference that our additions make, because different effects are produced depending on the ways in which anthropology chooses to intervene theoretically. What I mean by this is simply that different ways of knowing things create different kinds of possibilities and consequences. And I want to make a distinction, all too crude, no doubt, between two kinds of theoretical intervention and their attendant effects: between, interpretation – the hermeneutic mainstay – on the one hand, and experiment, on the other. Two types of method, then: interpretation and experimentation; and my argument, in sum, is that the former tends to have the effect of assimilating other people’s concepts to our own, of flattening them out to the consistency of our common sense, a conceptual flattening that – as emphasised in my Hermes-smashing anecdote – all too often coincides with a demolition of materials.7

Divinity and experience

To see that interpretation has the effects I claim it has, consider Godfrey Lienhardt’s (1987) classic monograph on Dinka religiosity – the title of which I have obviously alluded to in naming this chapter. In Divinity and Experience, Lienhardt brilliantly shows how, in various ways, divinities are the objects of intimate encounter in Dinka social life. Indeed, he says that, for the Dinka, it is the divine powers that make certain kinds of experiences possible. But then he says that his readers would find this claim hard to understand, so he reverses the relations: if, for the Dinka, experience is a function of divinities, then for anthropology the divinities must be a function of experience. As he explains: ‘to a European, the experiences are more readily understood than the [divine] Powers, and the existence of the latter cannot be posited as a condition of the former’ (ibid: 170). Thus, what Lienhardt calls the ‘interpretative task’ is to show that Dinka divine powers are ‘representations’ (or ‘images’), and what they represent are experiences (ibid: 147). Elsewhere, Lienhardt argues that the representation of experience is also the object of Dinka rituals: ‘If they [Dinka rituals] do not change actual … physical events – as the Dinka in some cases believe them to do – they do change and regulate the Dinkas’ experience of those events’ (ibid: 291). Now, Lienhardt’s book blazed a trail; he was busy with experience while almost everyone else at the time was occupied with social structure. But his analysis poses a problem. It is, I think, the problem of what interpretation does – of what interpretation, as a certain kind of theoretical intervention, does to the things in which it intervenes. Interpretation, I want to argue, is a kind of intervening that changes ‘interventions’ into ‘representations’. (I

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should explain that I borrow these terms, ‘representing’ and ‘intervening’, from the philosopher Ian Hacking (1983: 31). To represent is to say what the world is like; to intervene – as in the practice of experimenting – is to change it.) Thus, when I just suggested that ‘interpretation is a kind of intervening that changes “interventions” into “representations”’ what I meant was this: Lienhardt’s Dinka informants stated that their rituals do produce changes in the world. Their practices, then, would seem to be forms of intervention. But here is Lienhardt’s interpretation: Dinka ritual does not actually change the world (because it cannot), but it does change how the Dinka see the world. What for the Dinka, then, is a mode of intervention is for the interpreting anthropologist a mode of merely representing. Interpretation intervenes, and changes ‘their’ intervening into ‘their’ representing. It is arguably the case that Lienhardt’s argument – that Dinka ritual does not really do what the Dinka say it does – follows from the notion that the only place where religion can be said to ‘work’ is within the space of subjectivity. It was an idea of this kind that became enshrined in the anthropological axiom (famously articulated by Edmund Leach) that ritual – as opposed to technique – neither makes nor does anything ‘actual’ or ‘physical’. Instead, ritual is a sort of tag-end of technique, an ‘aesthetic frill’, a symbolic accompaniment to technique that says something, while technique actually does something (Leach 2000: 153–5, 168–9). As such, ritual is a sort of whistling while we work; a form of symbolic expression that accompanies the real work that technique actually achieves. Ritual whistles, as it were, while work works. All this is well known, of course. But what I want to draw attention to is that if, for interpretation, ritual cannot be a form of intervention – because it possesses no efficacy to change the world – but can only change the way the world looks, then interpretation itself is understood to be thoroughly efficacious. As a form of intervention, it possesses the capacity to go beyond appearances and to access the real meaning of things. In doing so, it exerts a transformative capability, changing what people say they are doing into what their doing is really supposed to be: that it is, in fact, just an alternative form of saying – of representing. In interpretation’s wake, ritual does not actually change the world: it merely says something about the world, or changes the way the world is experienced. But what would have happened, I wonder, if instead of interpreting experience Lienhardt had experimented with it? That is to say, what kind of wide-eyed flight would the analysis have taken had it followed the strange claim that Dinka divinities are generative of experience (rather than that

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they are generated by it)? What kind of change would have been effected then? Or, as Viveiros de Castro has elegantly posed the question: ‘What happens when the native’s discourse functions within the anthropologist’s discourse in such a way that it produces a reciprocal “knowledge-effect” on the latter?’ (Viveiros de Castro 2003) It seems to me that this is an excellent invitation to experiment. To follow a similar proposal by the same author, according to which, our anthropological theories constitute ‘versions’ of the ethnographic practices we study (idem 2009: 6), I intend my experiment here to be just such a version – a version of conversion, in fact, because the process of conversion is exactly what the jam-jar experiments instantiate, as we shall see. And so we come to our ethnographic problem: Mahikari, a Japanese new religion and its experiments with jam jars. But before we can lift the lid on the problem, so to speak, some essential background information is in order.

Mahikari: a Japanese new religion

Sûkyô Mahikari is a Japanese religious group founded in 1962. Its membership in Japan has been estimated to be about half a million.8 Mahikari means ‘true light’, but as the other name of the organisation reveals – in a play on words that is standard practice for the movement, as a means of making known the truth of the divine – Mahikari is not a ‘religion’ (shûkyô); it is ‘above’ religion, a ‘supra-religion’ (sûkyô), claiming to surpass all religions and religious groups. The founder of Mahikari, Okada Kôtama, called repeatedly for religion to go back to its pure beginnings, a return to the words of God that ‘transcend religions and religious groups’ (chô shûkyô, chô shûha). Mahikari, he said, is not some religious faction invented by human beings, and neither does it ‘make believers’ (shinja tsukuri) for the sake of any such faction. Instead, Mahikari is a coming back to sûkyô, a return to an eternal, suprareligious truth that is, at the same time, a ‘divine science’ (kagaku).9 The cosmology of Mahikari draws on a number of influences, including both Buddhist and Christian conceptions, although arguably most prominent is a strong emphasis on purification, inspired by Shinto. According to this cosmological vision, the world is mired in pollution and materialism. In the modern period, the advances made in science, technology and medicine are ever-accelerating, but, carried along in the rush of technoscientific developments, humanity has forgotten God, and has fallen into an obsessive love with things. In love with their own productions, with human-made objects and ideas, human beings have come to ignore the god

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who produced them. In the divine words of Okada, humanity has been ‘shot with the poisoned arrow [dokuya] of materialism’ (Sûkyô Mahikari 1983: 144). Lured to the very limits of their selfish modern lifestyle, human beings contaminate both the world and themselves. This is the crucial point. The world of the present, according to Mahikari, is a world ‘full of toxic energy’ (dokki jûman no yo) (quoted in Yasaka 1997: 59). Through the unchecked development of industrial capitalism, the environment has become polluted beyond all human remedy. Toxic energies from acid rain, ultra-violet rays and other pollutants constantly lodge in human bodies, like so many more poisoned arrows. These poisonous imports accumulate and sediment in the body to form ‘mud poisons’ (dakudoku), hard knots of pollution that solidify over time and become the causes of spiritual and physical suffering. Although the spirits of human beings were once as pure and transparent as glass, they have become clouded by pollution and by the accumulated action-effects of karma (zaie). In the present, then, these once limpid spirits have become ‘muddy’, wrapped and layered in impurities, as the divine teachings put it, with an assonating play on the words for wrapping (tsutsumi), stacking (tsumi) and transgression (tsumi again). But the detoxifying powers of human bodies are now so diminished that only the divine practice that Mahikari advocates is capable of cleansing them. Mahikari literature refers to a sliding scale of comparative toxic densities, from the softness of chocolate, to the hardness of diamond. Lower down the scale, the softer toxins may still be expelled by the body’s own cleansing operations, passed out in sweat, catarrh, etc. But, at the high, hard end of the scale, the body is unable to dissolve the densest poisons; hence the necessity of purification. The core practice of Mahikari is the practice of purification, okiyome, otherwise known as the ‘Mahikari Technique’ (Mahikari no waza). The practice involves the radiation of divine light from the open hand, a light that is deemed to purify anything it contacts, although it is most often bodies that are the centre of purifying attention. Under the hot light of okiyome, the hardened poisons lodged in the body can be melted and accumulated karma dissolved, so the self can be brought closer to divinity. As purification, then, okiyome unblocks, melts toxins and opens flows. But purity is never a stable condition, because the infiltration of pollution into the body is constant. Thus, the practice of purification is seen as an urgent requirement, to be carried out daily. But, though I have up to now been speaking of the body in the singular, Mahikari in fact recognises three bodies, corresponding to the three overlapping dimensions of existence. There is the physical, or

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‘flesh’ body (nikutai), the astral (yûtai), and the spiritual body (reitai), and in all things, it is the latter that comes first, according to the principle of ‘spirit first, mind follows, body belongs’ (reishu, shinjû, taizoku), as the doctrine is rendered rather obscurely in English. What this means, in short, is that the spirit world (reikai) is the ultimate influence on everything else, the highest point in the hierarchy of cosmological powers and operations. The light of okiyome, channelled from an ‘ultrahigh dimension’ (chôkô jigen), functions on this elevated, spiritual level, its effects streaming down towards the physical domain. It is for this reason that Mahikari members sometimes say of okiyome that, although its object appears to be the fleshly body, it is really more deeply directed towards the spirit body. However, Mahikari doctrine teaches that the three bodies are not discrete, but are subtly intertwined; ‘three bodies in one’ (sanmi ittai). This was explained to me by Ishida-san, a Mahikari member. We were discussing the three bodies when, by way of exposition, she pointed to a cardboard box, half-filled with Mahikari leaflets. ‘You see this,’ she said, indicating its lidless edge, ‘you wouldn’t know where its outside becomes its inside’ (‘omote wa doko kara ura ni naru ka wakaranai deshô’). In such a way, she went on, are the three bodies connected, and she clasped her hands tightly together, with her fingers linked; an object demonstration of chiasmic corporeity, insides and outsides turning about one another.10 On the one hand, therefore, Mahikari theory holds that although these intimate involvements between the manifold worlds and multiple bodies provide the conditions of possibility for continual defilement, it is, on the other hand, these same relations that furnish the conditions for possible salvation, by means of the regular intervention of purification practice.11

Experimenting with purification

Okiyome is typically given to human bodies, but divine light can be radiated at almost anything: to watches, bento boxes, plants, pets – even to atmospheres and places. In order to test its potential, Mahikari members conduct ‘experiments’ (jikken) from time to time. A typical trial involves jam jars (and it is common to see these jam-jar experiments on display in Mahikari practice-halls). For the experiment, the Mahikari practitioner takes two jam jars, and puts a sample of foodstuff into each of them (typically tofu, boiled rice, bread or raw eggs). The jars are then sealed. After this, okiyome – the purifying, divine light, radiated from the hand – is repeatedly given to one of the jars only, with a time-sheet sometimes being used to indicate how much light was given for how long. Andris Tebêcis – a

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Latvian neurophysiologist and high-ranking member, who has written a book about Mahikari – states that: ‘As time passes, very obvious differences can usually be seen between the control jar and the one that received True Light’ (Tebêcis 1988: 305). Usually, the difference that becomes apparent is that the food given light remains pure and intact, since okiyome has the capacity to block the action of decomposition. Mari-san, a Mahikari practitioner, told me about her own experiments with tofu. Unexpectedly, she found that the tofu she had not purified (the ‘control jar’) still seemed fresh, while the purified stuff had spoiled. Initially, Mari-san thought she had somehow made a ‘mistake’ (shippai). But then she heard that divine light cleanses chemical preservatives: the tofu had decayed quickly, she concluded, because it had become pure. Mari-san cheerfully urged me to try it out for myself. She recommended anpan, a sort of cake containing red-bean paste, as well as Yamasaki-brand white bread. It’s ‘most easy to see’ (ichiban wakaru) the effects of purification if you experiment with these, she said. Although such experiments are most often carried out in order to verify the efficacy of okiyome, other kinds of trials are possible. In the practicehall I visited most regularly, I once saw two jam jars on display that contained cooked rice. One jar bore a label upon which were written the words, ‘Thank you’ (arigatô), while the label on the other jar simply stated, ‘You idiot!’ (baka yarô). The rice in the first jar was relatively fresh-looking; that in the second was a green, fetid mess. The words on the labels were directed at the rice itself, and the experiment was designed to prove the Mahikari doctrine of ‘word-spirits’ (kotodama), a kind of occult speech-act theory in which words are understood to be invested with divine performative powers. The same principles are put to work on farms maintained by Mahikari, which are run according to a system that the organisation calls ‘Yang-light agriculture’ (Yôkô nôen). In addition to using organic methods, Mahikari members address the crops themselves with words of encouragement, as well as radiating them with divine light, to purify them and to promote their growth. Taken as a whole, all these practices articulate a key theme of Japanese religiosity, which is its thorough-going pragmatism. As Kawano (2005: 1) remarks of this general tendency, the ‘attitude of “do it and see if it works” is widespread.’12 In Mahikari, there is an incessant double-barrelled emphasis on the importance of ‘experiment’ (jikken) and ‘experience’ (taiken), which is summed up in a phrase one hears again and again: ‘If you don’t experience, you won’t understand’ (taiken shinai to wakaranai) – an insistent appeal to the empirical. Indeed, John Dewey’s appraisal of the Alexander

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Technique would work just as well as a description of Mahikari’s pragmatist ethos: its ‘principle is experimental,’ wrote Dewey, the ‘proof lies in doing it’ (cited in Armstrong 1998: 108, italics as in original).

Interpreting purification

Be that as it may, scholars who have studied Mahikari have reached a rather more critical verdict: that Mahikari experiments are less like tests and more like tricks. Thus, McVeigh (2004: 248) writes: ‘Regardless of Mahikari’s reliance on science to gain legitimacy, its actual use of science is methodologically unsound’, while for Pfeiffer (2000: 166); such experiments lack ‘the scrutiny of the scientific method as we know it’. ‘The aim of the “experiments,”’ states Davis (1980: 97), ‘is to confirm miraculous experiences, not to falsify scientific hypotheses.’ What is interesting about these judgements is less the question of their validity, than the fact that these authors felt the need to make them in the first place – as if sociological analysis must necessarily be a matter of Popperian legislation.13 But if such experiments are really ruled to be nothing of the sort, then what are they? What do they do? The answer, it appears, is that, if such experiments do anything, then their efficacy is understood to be wholly ideological. These authors all assert, with varying degrees of emphasis, that Mahikari experiments are mere legitimating tricks designed to reinforce the magic circle of the Mahikari belief system. Although Mahikari members are quite emphatic that the practice of okiyome is a method of intervention – actually, an intervention of the most critical kind, since it is the paramount means of achieving salvation – scholarship decides otherwise; Mahikari practice is a means of representing – in fact, of misrepresenting, since the way it says what the world is like is oh so spurious. But note the effect of interpretative intervention here: that, by zeroing in at once on ideology, these accounts pass right over the stuff – the slowly transforming substances – in the jam jars themselves. But it is not just in Japan that social scientists are telling the natives that they are not really doing what they say they are doing. Consider what Tanya Luhrmann has said about the practices of New Age magicians in London: [P]ractitioners do not in fact go to great lengths to treat their rituals like experiments, to tabulate the results and judge the hypotheses. To describe some theory as falsifiable – the fiercest test for a science – there must be a clear-cut set of hypotheses which are tested against empirical events and rejected should the

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test repeatedly fail. In magic, that elaborate set of hypotheses is rarely present, let alone subjected to scientific test (Luhrmann 1989: 125). Despite the fact that these natives say that their practices produce actual empirical effects, Luhrmann has interpreted otherwise. What really happens – the only actual transformation – is the slow switch that Luhrmann christens the ‘interpretative drift’; the transition, over time, from some prior beliefs (among them, the proposition that ritual does not work), to a new view (the assumption that it does). Ritual experimental interventions, then, do not really create changes; they just induce the experimenters to believe that they do. But it is worth observing that the interpretative drift is itself an interpretation of Luhrmann’s. To consider, then, the effects of her own interpretative intervention, we might better speak of the ‘interpretative shift’, insofar as the effect of interpretation itself is displacement; it shifts the source of efficacy elsewhere, away from the ritual experiment and into the mind of the experimenter. Change, transformation, does not take place in the experiment itself; it happens in the head of the native experimenter, who comes to believe that the experiment works. We, the anthropological interpreters, know better, of course. By means of the hermeneutic intervention, we are able to see what they do not: that the natives are representing. (I am inclined to say that Luhrmann’s magician informants might well have felt that Hermes could have been better served here.)14 Our Mahikari jam-jar experiments get treated in exactly the same way. Whatever changes may actually be occurring in the jam jars – the boiled rice going bad in one jar; but staying moist, intact, in the other – is of no interest to the interpreting anthropologist. The jars themselves, as experimental and material artefacts, are only of interest insofar as they are taken to be evidence of something else quite obvious beyond them: the beliefs (representations) of the Mahikari members who think that they are experimenting.

Jam-jar conversions

Let us take up the question of the jam-jar experiments again, this time by means of a method that is itself experimental. The approach I have in mind here is along the lines of what Latour (2004: 61) has called ‘experimental metaphysics’, meaning only that the methodology makes no prior assumptions about what kinds of agencies, entities and relations are in play in any particular ethnographic case.15 I suggest that from such an experimental metaphysical perspective, the Mahikari jam jars show up as very different

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kinds of artefacts to the transparent ideological props they are figured to be in interpretative accounts. Earlier, I remarked that the central Mahikari practice of okiyome – the radiating of light – is understood to effect transformation through purification. The action of purification is deemed to produce what Mahikari members regularly call ‘henka’ (‘changes’), sensuous transformations in both bodies and things. Thus, following a session of okiyome given to the body, it is not uncommon to be asked afterwards, ‘Did you have any henka?’ Mahikari members typically report that some part of their body had grown warm while they received the light. Similarly, in okiyome experiments, the question is often asked whether any henka, any changes, have occurred. To give an instance, in a monograph published by Mahikari, Yoshizawa, a professor of biochemistry and a Mahikari member, documents the ‘changes in temperature’ (ondo henka) registered by a thermograph in an experiment to measure the surface heat of the hand of a subject during the giving of okiyome (Yoshizawa 2001: 55–6). Now, the same question of henka is posed by the substances in the jam-jar experiments: did any changes occur? If so, when? Where? To what extent? The substances in the jam-jar trials do not, I suggest, represent, signify or stand in for change somehow happening somewhere else. They do not represent change – they actualise it. The jam jars actualise a concept of transformation that has little to do with epistemic change or interpretative drifts or intellectual switch-overs. Rather, the concept of transformation being articulated here has to do with the conversion of substances. That is to say, the changing substances in the jam jars instantiate conversions analogous to those that take place in the bodies of Mahikari members. But bottled, made visible, the conversions happening in the jam jars make it possible to ‘see’ the light, to see the special effects of divine light at work on substances. As one member put it to me, while you can tell others about the efficacy of okiyome, it is better if you can demonstrate it: ‘They won’t believe through words alone, but they’ll believe if you show them’ (kuchi dake de shinjinai, misete agetara shinjiru). Hence it is in this experimental immediacy of proof, that seeing is understood to be more effective than saying. I am suggesting, then, that the henka-effects made visible in the jam jars provide a model of what conversion ‘looks like’ in Mahikari. But it is not the only model, of course. In addition to the changes that henka describes, there are a number of other ways of conceptualising transformation in Mahikari; terms such as shinseika (‘becoming divine’), or sônen tenkan (‘conversion of the innermost attitude’) which, taken all together, constitute a vital programme of spiritual and ethical formation and purification

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which all Mahikari members are expected to follow. It is important to stress, however, that ideas of transformation in Mahikari are not easily equated with a concept of conversion which, in its routine usage, is often taken to refer to affiliation or adherence to a religious group. On the contrary, when Mahikari members spoke to me about transformation, they referred to a wide range of changes of various intensities, taking place in persons, in things, in places and relations. More often than not, such transformations were described as effects of okiyome interventions. The jam-jar experiments are anthropologically interesting for precisely this reason: because, understood as miniature exhibitions of the transformative effects of purification, they dramatise a concept of conversion that takes place outside the heads of so-called converts. This way of talking about conversion is, however, more or less alien to the idiom established in the sociology of religion, for the premise of much of this sociological literature is that conversion is fundamentally epistemic, a change that is often understood to take place at the level of ‘worldviews’.16 In other words, once again, converting is equated with ‘representing’; what changes is the way the world looks, and little else. But this is surely an impoverished conception, for conversion qua change may entail many things. In a compelling study of medieval Christian practices, for instance, Philippe Buc demonstrates that certain precious objects donated to the church were understood to undergo conversions, and they sometimes underwent them in an absolutely material manner, the items being melted down and refashioned into objects more suitable to Christian liturgy (see Buc 1997). Hence, even such a cursory comparative example suggests that there might be more to the concept of conversion – both historically and ethnographically – than a switching of subjectivities or world-pictures. I maintain that something more is exactly what is going on in Mahikari, for my argument, in a nutshell – in a jam jar, in fact – is that the jam jars are capsular conversions, small-scale transformations that permit us to learn that the concept of conversion in Mahikari is much less intellectual or epistemic than it is sensuous, spiritual, moral and material – all at the same time. Conversion transforms substances – human bodies and bean curd alike. Or, put differently, conversion is ontological. For, in so far as conversion can be understood as a kind of becoming, a process of being transformed, then the jam jar experiments show up as so many potentially measurable micro-becomings; the powers of the spiritual, at work on a material and molecular level. It might be recalled, in conclusion, that Heidegger, in his famous meditation on the ‘thing’, gave his thinking to the ‘thingly character’ of a

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rustic jug. With other ends in mind, I have been giving thought to a very different, experimental kind of vessel; a thinking owed to a Japanese jam jar (Heidegger 1975: 165–86).

Acknowledgements

I am grateful twice over to Nico Tassi and Diana Espirito Santo, firstly for the invitation to contribute to their panel at the ASA Conference, and secondly, for their excellent editorial interventions. Thanks also go to Martin Holbraad, Allen Abramson, and Joe Streeter for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter. Some of the ideas presented here were also set forth, in a more experimental exposition, in a blog, ‘High time for Hermes to take back hermeneutics’, posted on the Open Anthropology Cooperative website: http://openanthcoop.ning.com, on 31 May 2010. Notes 1 Deleuze (1995: 87). 2 For a comprehensive study of this incident, see Furley (1996). 3 For approaches that take the material mediations of religion seriously, see, for example, Keane (2007), Meyer (2008), for anthropology; Morgan (2010), for religious studies; and Rambelli (2007), on Japanese Buddhism. 4 In a marvellous send-up of the pretensions of interpretation’s ability to explain mythology, E.B. Tylor remarked that ‘no legend, no allegory, no nursery rhyme, is safe from the hermeneutics of a thorough-going mythologic [sic] theorist’ (1958: 319). 5 For example, the distinction is respectfully observed in a recent exposition of Continental philosophy of science, passing over the work of philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze and Michel Serres, who have done so much to undermine it. See Sherratt (2006). 6 For an excellent account of what happens when divinities come to conjugate with experiments, and the differences that explanations make, see Vidal’s (1998) case-study of the so-called ‘milk miracle’. 7 In addition to Lyotard’s barbed remarks on the dematerialising effects of semiotics, note Sontag’s (1987) similar critique of interpretation with regard to the understanding of artworks – ‘The modern style of interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys’ (ibid: 6). It is worth observing here that Donald Davidson’s theory of ‘radical interpretation’ – which has its advocates in both anthropology (e.g. Pina-Cabral 2009) and religious studies (e.g. Godlove 2002) – while it may escape the charge of disregarding materiality (see Godlove 2002: 20), nonetheless results in that other deleterious effect which I am associating with interpretation, namely: conceptual flattening. This is so because (according to the requirements of Davidson’s ‘principle of charity’) the doctrine demands that utterances to be interpreted (including the kinds of native statements that anthropologists take as their evidence) must be

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reducible to our own pre-existing stock of concepts. But, as McGinn (1977: 522) observes of this thesis, ‘You appreciate the reasonableness of an action by putting yourself into its agent’s shoes, not by forcing him into yours’. Thus, ‘radical interpretation’ does not seem to me to make for provocative, or even especially promising anthropology. For a devastating philosophical critique of Davidson’s position (which includes anthropological evidence in support) see Forster (1998).   8 Mahikari has also established various branches outside Japan, in South-East Asia, Australia, Western Europe, Latin America and elsewhere. For some of the organisational aspects of Mahikari’s expansion, see Smith (2002).  9 This is another pun. ‘Kagaku’, in ordinary Japanese, means ‘science’, but Mahikari substitutes a different Chinese character so as to read the term as ‘divine science’. 10 Elsewhere, I have briefly touched on the affinities between these three, intertwisting bodies in Mahikari, and the dynamic, chiasmic structure of the concept of mono (thing-spirit-person) as figured in the theory of the scholar of Shinto, Kamata Tôji. See Swift (2011). 11 Such a theory is not unique to Mahikari. The idea of intimate, microcosmic connections between humans, divinities, and the various worlds of existence is a cosmological notion common to Japanese new religions in general. See Shimazono (2004: 49–50). 12 Likewise, Reader notes ‘the importance of personal verification’ in Japanese religion; see Reader (1996: 268). 13 It is, of course, a perfectly legitimate question to ask whether or not, or the extent to which, Mahikari experiments are ‘experimental’ in some sense or other. But I fail to see how denunciation – in advance of any serious consideration of what these practices are about – furthers our understanding of them. 14 On which, see Greenwood 2000, who remarks that Luhrmann’s approach fails to take seriously ‘the magicians’ ontological reality of the otherworld’ (ibid: 42). 15 Perhaps I should state here my belief that, if there is a fault with Latour’s recent work on religion, it is that it is not experimental enough. Wardle, incidentally, has expressed similar misgivings. ‘Latour’s pluriverse,’ he thinks, might be ‘insufficiently plural’. See Wardle (2009: 19). 16 See for instance Bruce (2006: 1, 10); Buckser and Glazier (2003: xi); Gooren (2007: 350). For a criticism of this literature, and an attempt to argue for an ontological conception of conversion, see Swift (forthcoming).

Bibliography

Armstrong, Tim (1998). Modernism, Technology and the Body: A Cultural Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Bruce, Steve (2006). ‘Sociology of conversion: the last twenty-five years’. In J. N. Bremmer, W. J. Bekkum and A. L. Molendijk (eds.), Paradigms, Poetics, and Politics of Conversion (Leuven: Peeters), pp. 1–11. Buc, Philippe (1997). ‘Conversion of objects’, Viator, 28, pp. 99–143. Buckser, Andrew and Stephen D. Glazier (2003). The Anthropology of Religious Conversion (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield).

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Davis, Winston (1980). Dojo: Magic and Exorcism in Modern Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Deleuze, Gilles (1995). Negotiations, 1972–1990. trans. M. Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press). Faure, Bernard (1998). ‘The Buddhist icon and the modern gaze’, Critical Inquiry, 24/3, pp. 768–813. Forster, Michael N. (1998). ‘On the very idea of denying the existence of radically different conceptual schemes’, Inquiry 41/2, pp. 133–85. Furley, William D. (1996). Andokides and the Herms: A Study of Crisis in FifthCentury Athenian Religion (London: Institute of Classical Studies). Godlove, Terry F. (2002). ‘Saving belief: on the new materialism in religious studies’. In N. K. Frankenberry (ed.), Radical Interpretation in Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 10–24. Gooren, Henri (2007). ‘Reassessing conventional approaches to conversion: toward a new synthesis’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 46/3, pp. 337–53. Greenwood, Susan (2000). Magic, Witchcraft and the Otherworld: An Anthropology (Oxford: Berg). Hacking, Ian (1983). Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Heidegger, Martin (1975). Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row), pp. 165–86. Kawano, Satsuki (2005). Ritual Practice in Modern Japan: Ordering Place, People, and Action (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press). Keane, Webb (2007). Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter (Berkeley: University of California Press). —— (2008). ‘The evidence of the senses and the materiality of religion’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14, Special Issue, pp. 110–27. Latour, Bruno (2004). Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Leach, Edmund (2000). The Essential Edmund Leach, Vol. 1, Anthropology and Society, S. Hugh-Jones and J. Laidlaw (eds.) (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Lienhardt, Godfrey (1987). Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Luhrmann, Tanya (1989). Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England (Oxford: Blackwell). Lyotard, Jean-François (1993). Libidinal Economy. Trans. I. H. Grant (London: Athlone). McGinn, Colin (1977). ‘Charity, interpretation, and belief, The Journal of Philosophy, 74/9, pp. 521–35. McVeigh, Brian J. (2004). Nationalisms in Japan: Managing and Mystifying Identity (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield). Meyer, Birgit (2008). ‘Religious sensations: why media, aesthetics, and power matter in the study of contemporary religion’. In H. de Vries (ed.), Religion: Beyond a Concept (New York: Fordham University Press), pp. 704–23. Morgan, David (ed.) (2010). Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (London: Routledge).

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Pfeiffer, William Sanborn (2000). ‘Mahikari: new religion and Japanese popular culture’, Journal of Popular Culture, 34/2, pp. 155–68. Pina-Cabral, João de (2009). ‘The all-or-nothing syndrome and the human condition’, Social Analysis, 53/2, pp. 163–176. Rambelli, Fabio (2007). Buddhist Materiality: A Cultural History of Objects in Japanese Buddhism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Reader, Ian (1996). ‘Pilgrimage as cult: the Shikoku pilgrimage as a window on Japanese religion’. In P. F. Kornicki and I. J. McMullen (eds.), Religion in Japan: Arrows to Heaven and Earth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 267–86. Sherratt, Yvonne (2006). Continental Philosophy of Science: Hermeneutics, Genealogy, and Critical Theory from Greece to the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shimazono, Susumu (2004). From Salvation to Spirituality: Popular Religious Movements in Modern Japan (Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press). Smith, Wendy A. (2002). ‘The corporate culture of a globalized Japanese new religion’. In H. Nakamaki (ed.), The Culture of Association and Associations in Contemporary Japanese Society, Senri Ethnological Studies 62, pp. 153–176. Sontag, Susan (1987). Against Interpretation (London: André Deutsch). Stengers, Isabelle (2008). ‘Experimenting with refrains: subjectivity and the challenge of escaping modern dualism’, Subjectivity, 22, pp. 38–59. Stolow, Jeremy (2008). ‘Salvation by electricity’. In H. de Vries (ed.), Religion: Beyond a Concept (New York: Fordham University Press), pp. 668–86. Sûkyô Mahikari (1983). Daiseishu: Okada Kôtama-shi (‘The Great and Holy Master: Okada Kôtama’) (Tokyo: L.H. Yôkô Shuppan). Swift, Philip (2011). ‘Monomania?: A Japanese take on “thing theory”’. In Kamata Tôji (ed.), Monogaku: kankaku kachiron, dai-go-gô (‘Mono-logy: studies in sense-value’, Vol. 5) (Kyoto: Kokoro Research Centre, Kyoto University), pp. 142–43. —— (forthcoming). ‘Touching conversion: tangible transformations in a Japanese new religion’. Taussig, Michael (1999). Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Tebêcis, Andris K. (1988). Mahikari: Thank God for the Answers at Last (Tokyo: L.H. Yôkô Shuppan). Tylor, Edward Burnett (1958). The Origins of Culture: Part I of Primitive Culture (New York: Harper Torchbooks). Vasconcelos, João (2008). ‘Homeless spirits: modern spiritualism, psychical research and the anthropology of religion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’. In F. Pine and J. de Pina-Cabral (eds.), On the Margins of Religion (Oxford: Berghahn Books), pp.13–37. Vattimo, Gianni (1997). Beyond Interpretation: The Meaning of Hermeneutics for Philosophy Trans. David Webb (Cambridge: Polity). Vidal, Denis (1998). ‘When the gods drink milk! Empiricism and belief in contemporary Hinduism’, South Asia Research, 18/2, pp. 149–71. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo (2003). ‘(anthropology) AND (science)’, at , accessed 30 July 2008.

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—— (2009). Métaphysiques Cannibales (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France). Wardle, Huon (2009). ‘Cosmopolitics and common sense’. OAC Press Working Papers, Series 1, at , accessed 2 October 2010. Yasaka, Tômei (1997). Saigo no ama no iwatobiraki: Okada Kôtama-shi no daiyokoku (‘The final opening of the heavenly rock door: the great warnings of Okada Kôtama’) (Tokyo: Riyonsha). Yoshizawa, Zensaku (2001). Tekazashi: igakusha no taiken to kenbun (‘Raising the hand: the experiences and observations of a doctor’) (Tokyo: L.H. Yôkô Shuppan).

Part III Matter and Spiritual Power

Chapter 8

Things We Grow With Spirits, Matter and Bodies in La Paz, Bolivia Nico Tassi

Urbanised indigenous highlanders (cholo-mestizos)1 in Bolivia’s capital city, La Paz, can be referred to as a ‘non-bourgeois middle class’. In a country where the indigenous population is still stigmatised by its association with poverty and backwardness, cholo-mestizos have produced a successful form of market economy, mostly based on trading imported commodities such as televisions, computers and domestic appliances. However, economic affluence has not softened racial discrimination on the part of urban elites. Cholo-mestizos’ limited social mobility has strengthened their bond with the indigenous world, their practices, beliefs and networks generating original forms of consumption and investment. Rejecting locally dominant bourgeois values – for example, thriftiness, moderation and modesty – the cholo-mestizos engage in a thriving transnational economy of conspicuous consumption. They use unofficial banking networks, centred on local indigenous religious brotherhoods, and alternative currencies, particularly crates of beer which serve as a store of value and a medium of exchange, beer being a prime means of instantiating social relations and communication with local cosmological forces. The cholo-mestizo economy appears to be powerfully intertwined and imbued with religious connotations. The religious festival of Gran Poder, one of the largest religious celebrations in the continent, is thought to be both an expression of cholo-mestizos’ affluence and a means of reproducing their social structure, organisation and economy, the last of these

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being not only regulated by the equilibrium of demand and supply but also by the constant action of spiritual forces. Dedicated to the Catholic Holy Trinity but permeated by indigenous practices and beliefs, the Gran Poder festival takes the form of a majestic devotional dance parade, with more than 40,000 costumed participants snaking through La Paz city centre. Unable to find social recognition among the urban elites, cholomestizos had maintained and revived traditional kinship networks, around which they structured both their religious cycle and the import/export of commodities. Both economic and religious activities were centred upon religious fraternities (fraternidades) often formed according to trade unions (tailors, butchers, appliance traders, shippers) and/or the community of origin (Viacha, Taraco, Achacachi). Often, members of the same trade union would originate from the same rural community, which is why still today cholo-mestizo fraternities and trade unions are referred to by their own members as families; and the structure of the fraternidad bore similarities to the organisational dynamics of rural indigenous communities (see Platt 1996). The counter-intuitive intersection of economic and religious values, of market economy, advanced technological know-how and solid kinship networks, has led some intellectuals and members of the elite to deem the Gran Poder economy an unfulfilled stage of modernity and capitalism. According to such lineal interpretations of socio-economic processes, religious superstitions and powerful ethnic bonds represent an impediment to the full realisation of a free market. Simultaneously, however, those same urban sectors are characterising cholo-mestizos’ socio-economic practice as a distortion and betrayal of ancestral indigenous values, given its connivance with the market and the principles of capitalism. I have argued elsewhere (Tassi 2010b) for the necessity of looking at cholo-mestizos’ specific intersection of religious and economic values, kinship and market, spiritual and material, as an economic philosophy in its own right. Although based on indigenous lineages, celebrations and networks, the cholo-mestizo community and economy has opened up to Chinese, American and non-indigenous investors as well as to franchising agreements with international brands. Today, cholo-mestizos find themselves in a position where they control the flow of the market and produce strategies to attract foreign/global capital for the expansion and ‘reproduction’ of a local system made up of unique patterns of consumption and investment, circulation and ritual celebration. Cholo-mestizos’ relations with Catholicism and the official clergy appear to be based on a solid and reciprocal misunderstanding, so substantial is

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the clash between their respective rationalities and moralities. In addition, they tend to attach a sense of incompleteness to Catholicism: for cholo-mestizos, God is the most powerful of all beings, the highest in the spiritual hierarchy, and yet God ‘does not have money’ (no tiene plata). And this is not a minor drawback, as in the Andes the ownership of raw materials, minerals and resources has long been associated with spiritual forces and still has powerful religious connotations (Nash 1979; Taussig 1980; Harris 2000). Daniel Aguilar, alias ‘el tío gringo’,2 a rituals specialist (yatiri) in his sixties, explained to me that, given this situation, yatiri have to resort to other religious forces and entities. During a visit to his ‘office’ he made me parade in front of a series of local Saints holding purses (supposedly filled with money) and visibly, if not ostentatiously, displaying rich decorations and objects, gold and silver. About ten years ago, when I was carrying out fieldwork in the Andean plateau, people vigorously, and sometimes sarcastically, exposed what they saw as the limitations of the Catholic figure of Jesus Christ. Jesus was the Son of God, held unquestionable power and constituted an element around which was structured the ritual and productive cycle of the community. Yet Jesus never married, and had no children – he died without procreating, or ‘reproducing’. The Catholic clergy attaches a similar kind of incompleteness and limitation to the religious practices of urban indigenous. Not only are the latter seen as fomenting an atavistic form of ‘popular religion’, which beyond mere appearances remains animist at heart, but they also do not seem to grasp the basic dogmas of the Catholic doctrine. For instance, urban indigenous are considered devoted churchgoers who dramatically fail to understand the motives and the rationale of the Mass. They attach great importance to the priest’s blessing with holy water, to ostentatious dance and musical performances for the Lord and to the food offerings they make to him, but they do not quite seem to grasp, nor to practice, the one most important ritual of the Catholic religion: Holy Communion. According to the clergy, the subtle and counter-intuitive nature of dogmas such as the Holy Trinity and Communion are commonly ‘distorted’ or ‘misunderstood’. For instance, to believe that Christ is actually ‘represented’ in the wafer – as several Catholic priests suggest – requires such a sophisticated leap of faith that most urban indigenous are put off by the challenge. Daniel Aguilar’s explanation for the lack of interest in Holy Communion was to me revealing: ‘eating God’ during the Mass was not seen as the most appropriate of behaviours – in fact, people were scared to death, almost

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literally, by the potential consequences of such action. On the one hand, Daniel turned the supposed lack of faith in the dogma into an ‘excess of faith’, since Christ was not only represented in the wafer, he actually was the wafer. On the other hand, he exposed a crucial difference between cholo-mestizos and the clergy. As we shall see, for urban indigenous relations with the divine are mediated by a series of complex food and material offerings, feeding being both a way to placate the insatiable hunger of God and a tool in communicating a request, as such offering implies a quite explicit invitation to reciprocate the gift. Therefore, to ‘eat God’ during a Sunday Mass, during God’s feast day, would be not only improper but also inauspicious, since it might induce God to reciprocate the gesture by eating the worshipper. The main objective of this chapter is to reveal the nature of these ‘misunderstandings’ between the Catholic Church and urban indigenous, highlighting different conceptualisations of the relation between the spiritual and the material, the economic and the religious, and consequentially outlining a cholo-mestizo ontology. I will argue that in this context spirits encompass ‘things’ and ‘bodies’ – the reverse also being true – in a specific way, and that communication across these overlapping domains is instantiated and regulated by means of physiological exchanges across defined pathways. It is through such ongoing exchanges that both the material and the spiritual, the economic and the religious, are reproduced and human and divine relations are constantly redefined. ‘Things’, instead of being an impediment to conceptual dexterity and to the experiencing and construction of such relations, may instantiate a connection with spiritual forces. Things in their materiality are brought back into the frame not as new objects of anthropological research but rather as relational elements crucial in revealing the functioning of spirits and concepts. Such a different paradigm of the relation between what we call ‘material’ and ‘transcendent’ domains, and their ontological separation, arguably a bedrock of modern Christian societies (Cannell 2006; Keane 2007), may also enable us to outline a different perspective on other constitutive dichotomies of modernity – such as object and subject, sign and thing, economy and religion. In so doing, I will attempt to expose the ambiguity of a modernist approach which on the one hand breaks up the world into supposedly autonomous spheres, regulated by different logics and moralities, and on the other maintains the illusion of the supreme unity and coherence of modern rationality.

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Representation as reproduction, spiritual action as ‘digestion’: the physiological relation with the ‘transcendent’

One of the most recurrent features of ethnographic descriptions of the Andean region has been the portrayal of an interconnectedness, or rather a fluid enlacement, between the features, qualities and appearances of sacred, human and natural worlds. Bastien’s (1985) description of the Pachamama (the Andean Mother Earth) as a hungry human body carved on the landscape suggests a physical and immanent relation between the non-ordinary domain and the human. Not only is the Pachamama materially fed but she is also asked for permission whenever the plough or bare hands ‘touch’ her body/ground. Andean mountains are renowned for their ability to feel emotions, and material objects can be physically affected by external stimulation. Apart from being resentful and angry if mistreated by their fellow villagers, mountains can also be sexually aroused and produce mating noises similar to those of llamas and bulls (Stobart 2000: 28). Mountains’ combination of a majestic and calm appearance with an irascible and ‘volcanic’ nature is thought to be reflected in the human character. This emotional dualism is extended to spiritual forces in general (Platt 1987), thought to be both powerful and dangerous. They can alternate between a devastating kindheartedness and a belligerent and vengeful attitude, and are thought to be present in and to (re)produce the most beautiful manifestations on earth. The attraction elicited by such events always bestrides on a thin line between beauty and danger (Cereceda 1987). Communication pathways The ‘intersubjective’, sensitive and physical substance understood to connect humans, things and spiritual beings can be referred to as animu (cf. Stobart 2000). Music, for instance, can be played to a workshop, a shop or a minibus to stir its animu, and to stimulate its generative force and its capacity to produce wealth and profit for its owner. Dances can be performed for the saints and spiritual forces who are supposed to be gradually shifting from an attitude of watching to one of enjoying and participating in the performance (Tassi 2010a). In rural areas, the steps of the dancers would massage the ground, the Pachamama, to make it fertile – literally ‘aroused’ (caliente) – for a new season of production, while the music would stir its emotions and stimulate its reproductive force. In this sense, music and dance have not only a transformative effect on the landscape, enabling crops to grow faster and animals to stay happy and healthy (Arnold and Yapita 1998; Stobart 2000), but also an impact on cosmological forces and their reproductive capacity.

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The concept of animu presupposes the inseparability of mind and matter, embodied in a shared matrix of animated substance, and attributes animation of some kind to all materials (Allen 1997: 75). This animation, however, is fundamentally relational, enabled by the ongoing exchange which feeds a constant overlapping of material, human and spiritual features. This does not mean that Andeans fail to differentiate between an object, a person and a spirit, but that such differentiation does not preclude connection, communication and exchange across such entities. The implication of this belief is that interaction with the external environment becomes a crucial cognitive practice. As suggested by Rosaleen Howard’s analysis of the Quechua concept of knowledge, yachay, Andean knowledge is shaped by interaction with the outside and implies the constant crossing of the boundaries of personal space and human features (Howard 2002: 19). In fact this kind of knowledge seems to be founded more on one’s opening towards the exterior world rather than an introspective, contemplative practice. Scholars have often referred to the interconnective passageways regulating the exchange between different domains (cf. Platt 1996; Abercrombie 1998) as ‘pathways’ (caminos). The main preoccupation in Andean religious practices is actualising pathways of communication for material and physical exchange with spiritual forces. It is usually through ritual and non-ritual practices, offerings and/or specific aesthetic patterns that the ‘velocity’ of such sensitive and physical exchange can be either heightened or reduced, and the pathways either opened or shrunk. Offerings are an emblematic tool in regulating such exchange. Food and drink remain crucial means of exchange between the worshipper and the spiritual entity and they can be performed to traditional Andean deities such as the Pachamama, to ancestors (achachilas) but also to religious images of Catholic saints.3 As much as dancing, offering still implies a bi-directional movement where the host offers (convida) something to the spiritual forces and at the same time ‘shares’ (comparte) with them. ‘Sharing’ is here intended in a quite literal sense as a communication of powers and bodies. Ritual offerings (also referred to as mesas4) usually consist of a number of sweets, of different shapes or with different drawings on them, which, together with Andean herbs, llama fat, incense and sheets of gold paper, are carefully arranged by a yatiri on a bed of firewood according to the requests (pedidos) of the person addressing the spirits or saints. Frequently, a carboncopied sheet of paper with a written list of pedidos is added to the offering, and this is sometimes covered with honey on its written side to ‘attract’

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the spirit and to sweeten the requests. I have also seen live flies and ants, stuck on honey in linear sequences, being incorporated into the mesa with the intention of attracting customers ‘like flies’ to the shop of the person ‘paying’ (pagar) the offering to the Saint or the Pachamama. After each and every one of the sweets – symbolising the Pachamama, Pachatata, US dollars, ants, llamas, toads, and so on – is touched and named by the yatiri, and a final summary of the pedidos is verbalised, the offering is spread with alcohol and then burned. This is usually seen as the spiritual peak of the event as the Pachamama or the saints come to ‘eat’ (servirse). To complete the circuit of this reciprocal overlapping and exchange between material offerings, spiritual power and the person paying, the latter is requested to smoke in the proximity of the burning mesa, as if to inhale and ‘share in’ the power of the saint now feeding on the offering. Communicating bodies The mesa plays the role of ‘inviting’ the spirits and consequently ‘attracting’ their benevolence and kind-heartedness, simultaneously putting in a request which is communicated through the food offered. Don Daniel was reluctant to believe that in my country the way people intercede with God is mostly through immaterial and often silent prayers, without offering material means to attract its compassion and put forward pedidos. Among cholo-mestizos communication takes place fundamentally through material exchange, which is invested with the capacity to trigger rather physical forms of ‘sharing’ with spiritual forces as well as transformations. When I asked Don Daniel whether the offering performed for the Pachamama was later reflected back from the spiritual onto the material world, his answer was intriguing: he commented half-jokingly that it was not reflection, it was digestion. It is through a physiological process that the request expressed through the food of the mesa ‘ingested’ by the Pachamama activates a tangible transformation of the material world. It is the pedido itself that, digested by the body of the Pachamama, produces a change. The mesa becomes an instrument of direct world-making (cf. Devisch 1993), which enables the ‘development’ and transformation of the world. In other words, this form of exchange between spirit and devotee becomes a form of production (cf. Harris 2000). Exchange is made into a tool of creation. More than activating a mechanism of sacrificial reciprocity, the offering produces a physical transformation of the cosmos in which we live. In fact, the Pachamama is thought to house and include human beings within her body; therefore any transformation taking place on the Pachamama has immediate, rather than reflected, repercussions on you.

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Robert Randall (1993) has previously observed not only a series of correspondences between the human body and the body of the Pachamama but also a certain kind of communication between them. For instance, the stimulation of the human body by means of alcoholic liquids and food is understood as having a similar stimulating effect as the feeding of the Pachamama with mesas or libations, therefore stirring her (re)productive capacity. Quoting Pachakuti Yamki, Randall describes the work of a kind of ‘Ambassador of the Inca’ (the Qhollaq Ch’away) that was sent to eat and drink with local chiefs. Given the Qhollaq Ch’away’s capacity to eat and drink large quantities, the growth of the local production would be stimulated. It is common sense in the Andes that if you drink abundantly but with faith you will not get drunk, as the spirit will imbibe the alcohol from within your body. Much could be said here about cholo-mestizos’ compulsions and moral obligation to ingest food and drink in large quantities (see Allen 1988, and her idea of ‘forced feeding’). During religious fiestas and celebrations, it is not unusual for the steward to go round carrying a bottle of spirits in one hand and a lash in the other. Those participants who refuse to exaggerate their drinking are often the target of seriously painful whipping. As Randall suggests, it is through the same physiological process – the feeding of the human body and the feeding of the Pachamama – that the reproduction of the cosmos is enabled. There are two interlinked elements which I want to draw from this description. One is the physiological quality of the processes and relations which govern the cholo-mestizo cosmology. Cosmological transformations and the exchanges with spiritual forces are regulated by corporeal process such as ‘reproduction’, ‘growth’ and ‘digestion’. Rather than constituting flickering recipients of symbolic meaning, such ‘body metaphors’ employed to describe cosmological processes imply a substantial co-penetration of senses, bodies and worlds. The second element is the fact that saints and spirits, ‘like everything we like’ (see also Allen 1988) – including candy and beer, but also the latest cumbia tunes, the innovative and flashy decorations of dance costumes, money and, last but not least, sex. According to my informants, the Lord of Gran Poder (or Holy Trinity) enjoys parading new, elegant and abundantly decorated clothes as much as the urban indigenous enjoy ‘premiering’ (estrenar) costumes and suits during the dance parade. The desire to show off material plenty, commonly identified as a typical characteristic of the cholo-mestizo, is also ascribed to the saints. This correspondence between the body, the desires and the will of the saint and the worshipper appears in profound contradiction to the message of a

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certain kind of Christianity (see Saint Augustine 2006), which identified the route to (the City of) God in human beings’ withdrawal from their will and desires and in their capacity to embrace a very different kind of will: that of the Lord. Such an ongoing reciprocal relation, communication and transformation between the saint’s body and the human’s body produce an ‘ontological instability’ (Viveiros de Castro 1998; Platt 2009), a tendency to constantly and repeatedly blur the frontiers between humans and spirits. Words such as ‘sharing’ and ‘attraction’ not only exemplify this rather unstable boundary but also point to the physiological co-penetration of these worlds. Due to the tendency of practicing offerings to Sat (a spirit of the underworld, also known as Tío – see Taussig 1980), and therefore his habit of ‘sharing’ with him, Don Daniel often refers to himself as Tío. Similarly, successful miners (Absi 2005) or traders are often invested not only with the heighten capacity to deal with spirits but also with a supernatural power derived from their constant interaction with minerals and money. Representation as reproduction: the material and the conceptual Corporeal and physiological processes, and the passageways linking material and spiritual domains, become instrumental in also redefining the relation between signifier and signified, material and conceptual. In fact, the physical and psychological correspondence between the material and the ‘transcendent’ also appears to lead to a reframing of the supposedly qualitative difference dividing the material from the conceptual, matter from meaning. While a clear distrust in and sublimation of materiality is to be found in Western modalities of representation, Andean representational practices highlight a rather different perspective: an intersection between the material and the conceptual. When representation is discussed in academic circles, there is a general urge to keep the conceptual and the material, at least theoretically, separated. As Stuart Hall asserts: [I]f you have to put down the glass you are holding and you walk out of the room, you can still think about the glass, even though the glass is not there. Actually you can’t think with a glass, you can only think with the concept of the glass (1997: 17). In the Andes, objects such as textiles and religious images exemplify the rather powerful connection existing between physical reproduction and representation, or in other words the capacity of material inscriptions to instantiate and generate transformations, objects and beings. Certain

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forms of weaving have traditionally been associated with the act of ‘giving birth to a baby’ (Arnold and Yapita 2000). A physical quality and reproductive capacity seems to be inscribed both in the material and the techniques of weaving. For instance, a woman who is weaving a textile opens and closes the mouth of the weft in order to set down her ‘seeds’ onto her textile drawings (Arnold and Yapita 1998: 85). The same act of setting up the loom using multiple threads and yarns can be understood as tensing human ‘hair’, so as to give birth to a new being. (Archaeological findings from colonial times have suggested the use of human hair in textiles; the hair was probably ripped from the heads of dead enemies who were then ‘reborn’ as members of the community). The quality of the representation produced by textiles cannot be univocally traced in the symbolic quality of the drawings and patterns, or read as a text on the fabric. On the contrary, if a communication is inscribed on the fabric, that statement becomes a presence which affects the objects the textile contains and wraps. An ‘emotional fusion of being and fabric’ (Cereceda 1986: 163) takes place in the textile, and this comes to evoke a ‘corporeal perception’ inextricably blended with the aesthetic of the representation and its message. In other words, the signified is not sublimated from the signifier to another domain but holds the quality of an immanent force with corporeal manifestations. In the urban context, religious images are the artefacts that most explicitly embody the interconnection between representation and reproduction. In La Paz, images are often characterised as having physiological qualities, and particularly by a certain capacity to grow and produce offspring. It is generally on the day of the image’s birthday – following the Catholic calendar – that images reproduce themselves and offspring appear both on the private shrines and the altars of urban churches. These small plaster images are referred to as niños (children) and function as proper sons and daughters of the mother image. At Christmas, in the representations of the nativity, it is rather common to encounter several niños which appear to refer both to the birth of Jesus and to the reproductive capacity of the image-God.5 Other key figures embodying the physiological texture and performative agency of artefacts are the Andean god of plenty, the Ekeko, and the illas, popularly understood as auspicious talismans. The most common illas are miniature dollars, houses and cars, air tickets to Miami, credit cards and Master’s degree-certificates from La Paz University. It is common practice to bury illas in the ground for the Pachamama to grow them into the entities they represent. In the case of these religious artefacts, the relation existing between the material and the conceptual, between signifier and

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signified, is of a physiological kind, like that between a seed and a fruit. The sign ‘grows into’ the thing. This is so because the illa contains the living and reproductive energy as well as the ‘genetic material’, so to speak, of the ‘thing’ it represents. Illas do not merely provide a conceptual model, in miniature, of the objects, desires and goods they represent but give rise to the objects themselves, their energy and even their physical form (Allen 1997). The Ekeko and the illas are iconic statements which bring about ‘growth’, abundance and reproduction. Like the sweets of the mesa, illas are artefacts of world-making, ‘things’ which enable the development and transformation of the world as well as which actualise the abundance they physically represent.

Exchanges with God: the cholo-mestizo spiritual economy

If in the previous section we have observed the tendency of spiritual forces to blur traditional frontiers and categories and detected a certain aptitude of exchange practices to produce cosmological transformations, I believe that some details about the cholo-mestizo economy might provide instrumental insights on the cholo-mestizo cosmology. The economic domain provides us with relevant knowledge on the ‘ontological’ frontier between humans and things – and particularly between humans and a special kind of things: commodities. But it may also provide some clarifying ideas about the concept of ‘paying God’ that we came across in the previous paragraphs. The capacity for reproduction and physiological transformation are key features which not only apply to humans and animals but are also inscribed in artefacts, money, factors of production, and goods. Olivia Harris (2000) suggests that the circulation, movement and exchange of goods transform the things which are being moved, and the cosmos. The circulation of goods comes to constitute a crucial cosmological principle invested with reproductive and regenerative qualities. Harris suggests that products which have ‘circulated’, and the profit in the form of money generated by such circulation, are referred to as ‘growing’ and ‘giving birth’ (cf. Strathern 1988). As also became evident among the cholo-mestizo traders I worked with, the circulation/movement of goods appear to be part of a single reproductive process involving both material and spiritual forces. One of the features of the cholo-mestizo market economy is the impressive intersection of the market sphere ­– with its regulatory dynamics of demand and supply, production and exchange – with cosmological reproduction. Cholo-mestizos often employ the word ‘movement’ to refer both to the amplitude of their market transactions and to the recursive circulation of people and commodities which is supposed to consolidate ‘growth’

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and power in the urban space. The aymara word employed to refer to ‘economic development’ – often associated to this process of circulation and/or movement of both goods or money – is jiltaña. Interestingly, the word refers to a kind of ‘growth’ or ‘multiplication’ based on doubling repeatedly the initial quantity (i.e. 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.). According to cholomestizos is not only money and goods that ‘grow’ but also the person(s) carrying them.6 The economic and the cosmological domains of their activities seem to overlap. One of the favourite anecdotes of my fieldwork is the pilgrimage of some friends, traders in domestic appliances, to the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Urqupiña (Virgin of the Mountain). As modern pilgrims they travelled to the Sanctuary of Quillacollo by aeroplane, and as is typical of such pilgrimages they ‘borrowed money’ from the Lady. This ‘money’ was actually stones dug up from the ground around the Sanctuary and brought back home, where they were carefully stored and looked after so as to speed up the process of their materialisation into real monetary wealth. The following year, on the day of the Virgin of Urqupiña, my trader friends travelled back to Quillacollo, with their hand luggage filled with stones, to return the money to the Virgin. As in a proper financial transaction they returned the ‘money’, after a year of loan, with the necessary ‘interest’ which consisted of real money deposited in the Sanctuary. The ‘economy of salvation’ (Parry 1986), the heavenly altruistic economy which regulates exchange between God and the devotee and constitutes a superior realm of exchange severed from ordinary trade, is not here in opposition to the worldly economy in which business and self-interest are dominant. The two appear surprisingly intertwined. Monetary interest, in the Christian tradition considered unnatural, because it generates profit without producing matter (Le Goff 1980; Parry and Bloch 1989), as well as detrimental to the internal bonds of the community (cf. Simmel 1990), appears here to be an important tool in regulating relations with spiritual forces. In fact, interest is itself promoted by the Virgin. What I am describing here it is not, however, a unidirectional transaction in which economic values pervade religious domains. In fact, the cholo-mestizo concept of interest is powerfully associated with the capacity of money and monetary means to ‘grow’ physiologically,7 and to stimulate cosmological reproduction. On the day of the wedding of my ‘sister’ Ilonka, while she was being dressed she was made to stand, together with her soonto-be-husband, on a yellow textile which for the occasion had been filled with potatoes, tunta (a kind of dehydrated potato), sugar, cinnamon and coins. My ‘mother’ Marta explained that the act was an auspicious practice

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to charge the bride and bridegroom with new strength, power and money. The couple were now starting on a new path and in a different hierarchical tier of society, and they were being prepared by being provided with appropriate ‘dress’, embodying new power. Simultaneously, through this act the couple could ‘attract’ the power of the objects gathered in the textile and ‘grow together’ with them (cf. Allen 1988). A few months after the wedding, my ‘mother’ Marta and I retrieved the cloth from the closet where it had since been kept. A quick glimpse at the roots which had grown off the potatoes was enough for her to shout that Ilonka would be given with plenty of money. A similar association of money with physiological growth can be observed in many other practices of urban indigenous. For instance, the foam that ‘grows’ out of a glass after pouring beer from a bottle is so closely associated with money that people would often grab a fistful of foam and squeeze it into their pockets. The hairs uncommonly ‘growing’ on arms and legs are referred to as money. It seems that money is associated with those objects, forces and beings subject to physiological growth (roots, hairs, beer foam, llamas, etc.).8 In the case of cholo-mestizos in La Paz, the earning of interest does not appear to constitute an unnatural practice, or money a morally threatening instrument. In fact, there is no moral preoccupation with the practice of interest-bearing loans within kinship and family networks. On the contrary, the small-scale lending common among family members instantiates an auspicious ‘movement’ of money and people paying and cashing their daily quotas of the loan. The family does not work as a blockage of the money flow but rather contributes to reproducing it. Money and interest are not abstract impersonal elements destructive of social relations, but rather work as physiological instruments articulating things and beings. The usual boundaries and oppositions that late capitalist societies tend to create between the different moral values of public and private spheres, the latter associated with family, solidarity, altruism, religion and charity, and the former with competition, self-interest, profit and commodities (Carrier 1995; Parry 1986),9 are constantly blurred by urban indigenous practices. In the cholo-mestizo market economy, not only do kinship networks and religious values permeate economic domains, but also economic values, financial interest and money transactions enter the sphere of the family and religion without necessarily deconstructing it. This creates an apparent lack of well-defined spheres of exchange (Bohannan 1959) and a situation where objects, even commodities, are neither fully objectified nor alienable (Weiner 1982).

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The social life of commodities I have recounted elsewhere (Tassi 2010b) the particular blessing of and offering to commodities performed among the urban indigenous in La Paz. Such practices usually take place at Carnival time, since this coincides with the sowing season, and therefore with the beginning of the season of production. In La Paz, Carnival has become intertwined with the Aymara festival of Anata, which constitutes both an auspicious celebration of the Pachamama to induce the earth to bear fruits and a form of getting her physically and emotionally ready for ‘production’. In the urban context ‘factors of production’ also need to be prepared for the new productive season. Therefore workshops, shops and commodities become at Carnival time the object of a series of ritual practices (ch’allas) aimed at reinvigorating their spirit and inducing (re)production. I found particularly revealing the blessing of minibuses performed by the drivers’ trade union. At Carnival, the drivers occupy the streets around the cementerio bus terminal for a whole day, lining up their trade-union minibuses on the street in rows of three vehicles, each in a style and order which is powerfully reminiscent of urban indigenous dance parades where dancers are perfectly ordered in lines and rows. In fact, the vehicles are parked to face an improvised stage, usually standing in the middle of the street and from which powerful loudspeakers broadcast the latest morenada tunes. The minibuses are decorated with flowers tied to their rear-view mirrors, and a mixture of confetti and flower petals are spread on their roof. If the latter practice reminds one of the blessing of the fiesta sponsor in all urban celebrations, the former has an immediate resemblance to the fastening of colourful decorations to the ears of llamas and sheep at the beginning of the mating season.10 The minibuses are also offered beer, and the drivers would drink with them for the entire day. In fact, they came to be treated as human bodies to which music was played to fortify their spirit, make them ‘grow faster’ and stimulate their emotions. In so doing, the minibuses were energised, decorated and re-powered for the beginning of a new season of production. Following a traditional Andean pattern, modern objects, goods and factors of production can be perceived as ‘functioning bodies’ whose spirit is enthused by music and alcohol.11 All cholo-mestizo traders would invariably bless their goods at Carnival, offer them food and drink and arrange decorations on them and their shops. Traders would drink and eat with them in order certainly to extract from them the highest possible profit but also to ‘grow together’ with them, suggesting once again an unexpected interlocking and even communion between traders and commodities.

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Rather than the objectification of relations and the disassociation of the human from the object generated by industrial production, the minibus and the commodities remained inserted in a network of communicative relations with other beings and objects. The minibus is re-energised and re-socialised by grouping it together with its fellow-vehicles, making it dance and drink and therefore strengthening its social bonds and widening its reach and scope in the urban landscape. As in the case of the saint, the minibus ‘likes what we like’ (beer, morenada music, dancing, etc.) and grows as we grow. By growing with the trader, the commodity remains trapped in networks, of relations and bonds of a physiological kind, with persons. This stands in opposition to a certain philosophical conviction that once objects turn into commodities oriented to external trade they start eroding bonds and reliance among members of the community (cf. Parry and Bloch 1989). The material abundance brought about by the influx of commodities, the seduction produced by plenty of material goods come to be seen as antagonistic to the creation of stable and solid human relations (Marx 1990). What we have observed in the case of the urban indigenous is that commodities are actually functional in, if not conducive to, the reproduction of social relations, which are actually instrumental both in the reproduction of the market and in the development of the person. Local intellectuals tend to see a sense of ignominy and a loss of dignity in the market activities which had supposedly ‘infiltrated’ religion and other sacred and intimate spheres, such as the family, severing the bond of the urban indigenous with all that is spiritual and sacred. As we have observed, what takes place in cholo-mestizo practices is simply the reciprocal intertwining of categories, domains and spheres that a ‘modern’ worldview strives to keep apart, as they supposedly function according to different moralities and rationalities. On the one hand, cholo-mestizos show an uninhibited display of market-like behaviour in religious practices, kinship rituals and other intimate spheres (cf. Geschiere 1992); on the other, market and money possess human, physiological and spiritual qualities embodied by their association with ‘growth’, reciprocity and relationality.

The aesthetics of abundance

In the previous paragraphs we have quickly touched upon the practice of ‘forced-feeding’, on the moral emphasis placed by cholo-mestizos on abundant feeding and drinking and on the physiological and material quality of the relation with spiritual forces. In cholo-mestizo practices and ideas, abundance is another crucial aspect which, counter-intuitively, brings into a close concomitance matter, bodies and spirits. If an excess of matter has

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been often envisioned as an obstacle to social relations, to abstract thinking and to an unmediated live and direct communication with God, I will dwell here on the importance of material abundance and its specific aesthetic patterns, as a tool in activating and regulating exchange and communication between spiritual and material worlds. I will also address abundance as a force, an ‘iconic statement’ – see the remarks on illas above – that given its capacity to ‘attract’ material and spiritual forces into relation it also allows for their simultaneous ‘growth’ and reproduction. The aesthetic of abundance is a visually astonishing characteristic of both the cholo-mestizo market and religious practices (Tassi 2010b), to the point that terms such as ‘abundance’, ‘plumpness’ and ‘fleshiness’ have come to identify the wealthy cholo-mestizos. The body is a crucial locus where the performance of abundance is enacted. First of all, the body is the place where the unsubstantial profit of economic activities is materialised into fatness and rotund bodily shapes, thus incorporated into physical form. Being fat among cholo-mestizo is often considered an expression of power, and a series of dress devices are employed in order to emphasise plumpness. Successful female sellers would wear traditional pollera skirts piled one on top of the other and stuff their undershirt with purses, money and objects so as to amplify the volume of their bodies and convey an attractive feeling of abundance, roundness and power. They would often use smaller-size open shoes –­ to produce the effect of a visible overflow of abundant flesh – and minute bowler hats to stress the size and fatness of the face. Religious dance parades are another space where the material amplification of the body takes place together with an unrestrained display of material plenty. Heavily costumed and masked, hundreds of identically dressed cholo-mestizos devotionally parade across the urban landscape for the Lord of Gran Poder. The repeated visual abundance generated by these dancers, heavily decorated with precious brocade ribbons, Czech pearls and braids from the Far East, dancing in step with each other and in perfectly ordered rows and lines to the rhythm of large brass bands, is thought to create a tangible effect both in the body of the dancers and in the spectators. In addition, the circular path of the dance tends to heighten the roundness of the bodies, and the coordinated movements consolidate the potency of the performance. As observed earlier dance constitutes an important ‘pathway’ through which contact and exchange with spiritual forces can be instantiated. Events such as dance parades are thought to create material and sensorial amplifications where the material world appears as an ontological extension of the spiritual (Himpele 2003). The material abundance, the devotees’ displays of joy, beauty and material excess thrust into

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the festival, is thought to activate a contact with spiritual forces and grant cholo-mestizos with the power to reproduce in their own life the same abundance – plus interest. Material abundance works in a similar way to food offerings. At one and the same time spiritual forces are visually ‘attracted’ by the display of material plenty and ‘feed’ on it, while at the same time ‘sharing’ with the dancers not only abundance but also power. During one of the dance parades for the Lord of Gran Poder, which lasted for about five hours of uninterrupted dancing along a six-mile route, I was about to give up dancing due to the weight of the costume and the continuous oscillations which had become unbearably painful for my back. My fellow dancer, however, after forcing me to bolt down a considerable amount of alcohol, put on a straight face and commented seriously that I could not leave: I had to ‘exaggerate’ if I wanted the power of the Lord. A few months later I was reproached in rather similar terms and tone by Daniel Aguilar. After performing a ritual offering at an open-air shrine (apacheta) in the outskirts of La Paz, Daniel and I stopped at a friend’s tavern close to the apacheta. As I had eaten earlier, I only ordered a soft drink. On Daniel’s advice, the owner completely ignored my request and came back with two full meals and four bottles of beer. Since we had just performed the offering it was the right moment to ‘exaggerate’ with food and drink, not only because it would have been auspicious to ‘share in’ with the spirits while they are also being fed but also because to exaggerate with food would have enabled as to ‘catch’ (agarrar) their power. Counter-intuitively, spiritual forces and gods are attracted by material abundance, which appears able to consolidate communication and exchange. The butcher Justo Soria once revealed to me that the performance of material abundance during religious dance parades enables the saint to ‘reverberate’ and ‘multiply’ in every corner of the city, thereby reproducing and amplifying its reach and power across the urban landscape. For the cholo-mestizo, material abundance constitutes, in the first place, a force whose exaggeration appears to amplify the reciprocal ‘attraction’ between bodies, things and spirits. Simultaneously, the repeated and synchronised statements of material plenty during the Gran Poder parade enable the saint to ‘grow’ (jiltaña) and reproduce its power and presence. Such aesthetics of abundance is not limited to ritual and religious practice. In fact, the cholo-mestizo market represents another domain where the provision of abundance constitutes a crucial aesthetic practice driving economic exchange and relations, and whose similarity with the aesthetic patterns of dance parades is striking. If we look at the commercial area of

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Gran Poder, the first impression we gather is that of a repeated sequence of small shops trading in the same commodities. Not only does one find consecutive and identical shops selling exactly the same goods, but an overflow of commodities from their small premises onto the pavement. If on the one hand the practice of concentrating such a large number of shops in the same commercial area heightens competition unnecessarily, on the other it creates a crucial aesthetic effect. Apart from generating a sense of repeated abundance the small and consecutive shops are meant to agarrar (catch) the customers. Successful sellers would not invest their profits in buying a bigger shop, as the logic of the liberal economy would require, but would rather buy another small shop. They would thus eventually find themselves owning two small shops, selling similar goods and perhaps next door to each other, a situation intended to maximise the possibility of ‘attracting’ customers. This unusual practice is explained as a consequence of the idiosyncrasy of the Bolivian buyer, who instead of preferring a large shop with a variety of products, is convinced and ‘caught’ by, and eventually gives in to, the repeated abundance of consecutive shops and their goods. Through specific aesthetic patterns of repetition and abundance, the cholo-mestizo market itself can become an aesthetic performance, watched by and exerting its ‘attraction’ on not only the layman but also cosmological forces. Catherine Allen (1988) has suggested that patterns of decoration placed on objects and animals may enhance the growth and ‘procreation’ of such beings not only because their ‘bodies’ were physically affected but also because decoration and specific aesthetic patterns – abundance being one of them – attracted, stirred and stimulated the activity of spirits. In this sense it would be an error to understand the cholo-mestizo market as playing a purely economic role. The market itself is reintroduced in local dynamics of cosmological reproduction and creation, and it comes to constitute a social element articulating relations among objects and beings. Needless to say, such material exaggerations and performances of abundance go largely unappreciated by the urban elites and the Catholic Church. On the one hand, those ostentatious performances of material abundance clash with the sense of propriety, parsimony and ‘right measure’ (Le Goff 2003) which embody the fundamental values of the middle classes, at least in their private sphere. On the other hand, when judged from the perspective of the public sphere of the market, where audacity, self-interest and the maximisation of profit are paramount values, those performances of abundance are seen as a loss of important reinvestment capital. The urban elites shifted continuously between these two opposed moral positions in order

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to criticise cholo-mestizo practices while simultaneously failing to acknowledge the arbitrariness and duplicity of their own judgments. First, abundance was identified by the bourgeoisie as a sign of cholomestizos’ coarseness, which reaffirmed the difference between them and their social betters, a difference lately eroded by cholo-mestizo economic success. Secondly, according to the elites cholo-mestizos were depriving themselves of important resources which could have been employed much more rationally. Their displays of abundance were identified as destroying resources merely to display prestige and wealth (cf. Veblen 1994; Bataille 1988). As we have already observed, however, for the cholo-mestizos themselves that display is far from a superfluous practice, a pretentious act of destruction, but on the contrary a practice of self- and world-making (cf. Gell 1992). The elites, meanwhile, advocate a withdrawal from the material in the heavenly regime of exchange with God, and simultaneously promoting maximum material profit in the worldly economy. Cholomestizos’ ongoing communication and exchange between bodies, matter and spirits allow them to intertwine the rationality of the market with that of God therefore overcoming and exposing the moral and conceptual dichotomies of the elites.

Conclusions

There are a series of terms employed by cholo-mestizos to refer to cosmological processes and religious practices which hint at the physical nature and physiological functioning of spiritual forces and objects. Expressions such as ‘attraction’, ‘growth’, ‘digestion’, ‘feeding’, ‘reproduction’ and ‘giving birth’ can be employed to describe divine transformations, conceptual processes, the animation of things and their capacity to affect and be affected by external elements and forces. Objects as different as money, textiles, commodities and minibuses, or religious entities such as images, amulets and spirits are all ascribed corporeal qualities, and the ability to produce physical transformations while simultaneously transforming themselves. A way of thinking among certain Christians, and particularly their assumptions of religious transcendence, have induced a tendency to define the value of the human in terms of its distinctiveness from the material world (Keane 2006). The infinite worth of the human subject simultaneously implies the disparagement, the negation in terms of value, of the material world as it is (Dumont 1986). Material objects can therefore be dematerialised, becoming purely signs of their immaterial value (Keane 2006). Commodities, for instance, presuppose both a clear-cut separation

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between the subject and the object and the possibility of abstracting value from their concrete practices and material forms. As I have observed, in the cholo-mestizo cosmology objective, human and spiritual often overlap on the same entity, therefore a commodity can ‘grow with’ its seller, money can ‘grow with’ its owner and an abundant market can ‘attract’, gather and reproduce spiritual power. I suggested that this is a consequence of the existence of pathways of communication and exchange which constantly feed this intertwining between human, material and spiritual domains. Actually, where this overlap originates is in the ongoing intercommunication of bodies: the body of the saint, the body of material things and the human body. Feeding the human body is simultaneously a way of feeding spiritual bodies. Bodily growth among urban traders is associated with the growth of their money and of the commodities they are selling. In fact, the repetition of abundant and identical material objects, in both the cholo-mestizo market and religious dance parades, are a reference to a process of cosmological ‘filiation’ and ‘multiplication’ (cf. Platt 1996; Urton 1997; Ferraro 2004). From impediments to the consolidation of healthy and unmediated relations and to the fortification of intellectual dexterity, matter, and material abundance in particular, instead become necessary tools, as well as physiological prostheses in the instantiation of contact with spiritual forces. Material abundance also becomes instrumental in forging pathways, communications and exchanges which are paramount in processes of cosmological creation; in shaping and acquiring ‘knowledge’; and in extending one’s influence in time and space – therefore enabling a person to gain access to certain social and spiritual domains (cf. Munn 1986). Andean discourses and practices on the relation between matter and spirit would be unintelligible without considering a physiological and corporeal dimension, which makes us wonder whether this dichotomy is operative at all. Such a different ontological perspective outlines new perceptions on other dichotomies characteristic of the convergence of Christianity, modernity and capitalism: God and market, subject and object, private and public. One of the basic characteristics of Andean peoples has been their capacity to carve spaces of endogenous power in a context of profound social and political subordination (cf. Arnold and Hastorf 2008). This has been possible because of a striking capacity not so much to reject modernity, capitalism and Catholicism but rather to transform the ‘enemy into an auxiliary’.12 By such an expression, I refer to the cholo-mestizos’ creative attempt to re-semanticise, digest and appropriate others’ ideas, and actively to include them in the reproduction of their own system. This has meant they have been capable of articulating the market with kinship,

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interest with cosmological reproduction, the circulation of commodities with social relations, material abundance with God, and signs with things – all without that sense of contradiction attached by a certain ‘modern’ reasoning. All this forces us not only to doubt any new, abstract and universalised conceptualisation of religion (Geertz 1973; and cf. Asad 1993), conceived as severed from science, economics and aesthetics, and subordinating corporeal practices to cognitive processes in the formulation of moods, motivations and conceptions of a general order, but also to interrogate ourselves on where the locus of religion might be. Rather than in a delimited, transcendent and reified space, in the case of cholo-mestizos religion and the sacred seem to be located in exchanges and relational ‘pathways’, as well as in the matter and bodies enabling such exchanges. Notes 1 In the rest of the text I will refer to urbanised indigenous highlanders as cholomestizos. I have explained elsewhere (Tassi 2010a, 2010b) the meaning of this specific term in the intricate social composition of Bolivia’s capital city. It identifies a group of mostly traders and small entrepreneurs who in the past decades have achieved economic prominence in the urban fabric, while maintaining a strong bond with indigenous networks, practices and beliefs. 2 Don Daniel is a member of the Fraternidad Los Vacunos, with whom I collaborated during my study of Gran Poder, and the progeny of a family of butchers and yatiris. He operates mostly in La Paz and El Alto. 3 Hans Van den Berg (personal communication) related an anecdote of the image of a saint who, despite originally being an apostle, was widely recognised as a local ancestor of the community. Scholars working in the region (Abercrombie 1998; Gisbert 2004; Platt 1996) have often suggested that worship and divine representations in ancestral Andean cults have often taken on the semblance of Catholic images and festivals. 4 The word mesa can be literally translated as ‘(dining) table’. Alison Spedding (2008) suggests that both in Aymara and Quechua, given the lack of a differentiation between the Spanish vowels ‘i’ and ‘e’, the word mesa is not phonetically different from misa – Mass. In fact, the Catholic Mass in the Andes is often reinterpreted as the performance of an offering to spiritual forces. 5 Interestingly enough, the sons and daughters of the father image, clearly made by devotees, have the double function of enhancing the reproductive powers of the saint, and therefore of affecting the power of the original (cf. Taussig 1993), and of distributing the saint’s power to the devotee. 6 The expression ‘I have grown!’ (he crecido!) is often used by successful traders to communicate a recent increase in their wealth or capital. 7 Tristan Platt (1995) has pointed out the use of corn and potatoes as local currencies in specific epochs of Bolivia’s economic history, to the point that the ‘cob’ had become the conventional way of referring to a monetary unit. Money still maintains a powerful association with silver and ‘precious minerals’ more

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generally. The tío, the main deity of the mine and of the underworld, is thought to control and dispense mineral in the highland mines as much as money in the urban banks. Several scholars (Bouysse-Cassagne 1998; Harris 2000; Absi 2005) have pointed out how minerals in the Andes are thought to be subjected to growth and reproduction. The reproductive capacity of money should not sound therefore so counter-intuitive.   8 After a mesa, it is common practice for the yatiri to hand to the worshipper two replica two-dollar banknotes. The notes are characteristically bent in the middle in order to hold threads of llama wool. You are supposed to keep the replicas and the wool in your wallet or purse together with your money so that the ‘couple’ of new banknotes can induce reproduction.   9 Fenella Cannell (2006) describes the emergence of a series of similar dichotomies from the foundational Christian tension between the material and the transcendent. Ultimately, as stressed earlier by Daniel, God does not own money. 10 See Allen (1988) on the importance of colourful decoration and specific aesthetic patterns in both attracting the power of spiritual forces and instantiating reproduction. 11 There is not enough space here to elaborate on this point. However, the dynamics which have just been highlighted suggest a blurring of the dichotomy according to which if in a gift economy things and persons assume the social form of persons, in a commodity economy they assume the social form of things (see also Strathern 1988: 134). 12 With regard to the transformation of the enemy into an auxiliary, Denise Arnold and other scholars (Arnold and Hastorf 2008; Arnold and Yapita 2000) have been trying to establish a new American paradigm exemplifying the relation with the other/enemy. In her work on head-taking in the Andes, Arnold has emphasised through the use of ethnographic and archaeological materials how the head of the enemy taken in battle was appropriated, re-semanticised and transformed into a member of the community with living and reproductive qualities.

Bibliography

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—— and Juan de Dios Yapita (1998). Río de Vellón, Río de canto: Cantar a los animales, una poética andina de la creación (La Paz: Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, Colección Academia 8, Hisbol/Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara). —— (2000). El rincón de las cabezas: luchas textuales, educación y tierra en los Andes (La Paz: Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencia de la Comunicación, UMSA/ ILCA). Asad, Talal (1993). Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, MD, and London: Johns Hopkins University Press). Bastien, Joseph (1985). Mountain of the Condor: Metaphor and Ritual in an Andean Ayllu (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland). Bataille, George (1988). The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy (New York: Zone Books). Bohannan, Paul (1959). ‘The impact of money on an African subsistence economy’, Journal of Economic History, 19, pp. 491–503. Bouysse-Cassagne, Thérèse (1997). ‘Le palanquin d’argent de l’Inca: petite enquête d’ethno-histoire à propos d’un objet absent’, Techniques et Culture, 29, pp. 69–112. Cannell, Fenella (ed.) (2006). The Anthropology of Christianity (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press). Carrier, James (1995). Gift and Commodities: Exchange and Western Capitalism since 1700 (London: Routledge). Cereceda, Verónica (1986). ‘The semiology of Andean textiles: the Talegas of Isluga’. In J.V. Murra, N. Wachtel and J. Revel (eds.), Anthropological History of Andean Polities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 149–173. —— (1987). ‘Aproximaciones a una estética andina: de la belleza al tinku’. In O.  Harris and T. Bouysse-Cassagne (eds.), Tres reflexiones sobre el pensamiento andino (La Paz: Hisbol), pp. 133–231. Devisch, René (1993). Weaving the Threads of Life: The Khita Gyn-Eco-Logical Healing Cult among the Yaka (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Dumont, Louis (1977). From Mandeville to Marx: The Genesis and Triumph of Economic Ideology (Chicago, IL, and London: University of Chicago Press). —— (1986). Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective (Chicago, IL, and London: University of Chicago Press). Ferraro, Emilia (2004). ‘Owing and being in debt: a contribution from the Northern Andes of Ecuador’, Social Anthropology, 12, pp. 77–94. Gell, Alfred (1992). ‘Inter-tribal commodity barter and reproductive gift exchange in old Melanesia’. In C. Humphrey and S. Hugh-Jones (eds.), Barter, Exchange and Value: An Anthropological Approach (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press), pp. 142–68. Gisbert, Teresa (2001). El paraíso de los pájaros parlantes: la imagen del otro en la cultura andina (La Paz: Plural Editores). —— (2004). Iconografía y mitos indígenas en el arte (La Paz: Editorial Gisbert). —— (2007). La fiesta en el tiempo (La Paz: Unión Latina). Le Goff, Jacques (1980a). Time, Work and Culture in the Middle Ages (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press).

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Hall, Stuart (1997). Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London, Thousand Oaks, CA, and New Delhi: Sage, in association with The Open University). Harris, Olivia (2000). ‘The sources and meanings of money: beyond the market paradigm’. In O. Harris (ed.), Make the Earth Bear Fruits: Ethnographic Essays on Fertility, Work and Gender (London: Institute of Latin American Studies), pp. 51–74. Himpele, Jeff (2003). ‘The Gran Poder parade and the social movement of the Aymara middle class: a video essay’, Visual Anthropology, 16, pp. 207–43. Howard, Rosaleen (2002). Yachay: The Tragedia del fin de Atahuallpa as evidence of the colonisation of knowledge in the Andes’. In H. Stobart and R. Howard (eds.), Knowing and Learning in the Andes: Ethnographic Perspectives. Liverpool Latin American Studies, New Series, 3 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press), pp. 17–39. Keane, Webb (2006). ‘Anxious transcendence’. In F. Cannell (ed.), The Anthropology of Christianity, pp. 308–23. ——  (2007). Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter (Berkeley, CA, and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press). Latour, Bruno (1993). We Have Never Been Modern (Harlow: Pearson Education). Marx, Karl (1990 [1867]). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1, trans. B. Fowkes (London: Penguin Books). Munn Nancy (1986). The Fame of Gawa: A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Nash, June (1979). We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us: Dependency and Exploitation in Bolivian Tin Mines (New York: Columbia University Press). Parry, Jonathan (1986). ‘The gift, the Indian gift and the “Indian gift”’, Man 21, pp. 453–73. ——  and Maurice Bloch (eds.) (1989). Money and the Morality of Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Platt, Tristan (1987). ‘Entre ch’axwa y muxsa: para una historia del pensamiento político aymara’. In O. Harris and T. Bouysse-Cassagne (eds.), Tres reflexiones sobre el pensamiento andino (La Paz: Hisbol), pp. 61–132. —— (1995). ‘Ethnic calendars and market interventions among the Ayllus of Lipes during the nineteenth century’. In O. Harris, B. Larson and E. Tandeter (eds.), Ethnicity, Markets, and Migration in the Andes: At the Crossroads of History and Anthropology (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), pp. 259–98. —— (1996). Los guerreros de Cristo (La Paz: Plural Asur). —— (2009). ‘From the Island’s Point of View. Warfare and transformation in an Andean vertical archipelago’, Journal de la Société des Américanistes 95–2. Randall, Robert (1993). ‘Los dos vasos: Cosmovisión y política de la embriaguez desde el inkanato hasta la colonia’. In Th. Saignes (ed.), Borrachera y Memoria: La Experiencia de lo Sagrado en los Andes (La Paz: Hisbol/Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos), pp. 73–112. Saint Augustine (2006). La Ciudad de Dios (México: Porrúa). Simmel, Georg (1990). The Philosophy of Money (London: Routledge).

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Stobart, Henry (2000). ‘Bodies of sound and landscapes of music: a view from the Bolivian Andes’. In P. Gouk (ed.), Musical Healing in Cultural Contexts (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 26–47. Tassi, Nico (2010a). Cuando la danza mueve montañas: Religion y economía cholomestiza en La Paz, Bolivia (La Paz: Praia). —— (2010b). ‘The postulate of abundance: Cholo market and religion in La Paz, Bolivia’, Social Anthropology, 18/2, pp. 191–209. Taussig, Michael (1980). The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press). —— (1993). Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (New York and London: Routledge). Urton, Gary (1997). The Social Life of Numbers: A Quechua Ontology of Numbers and Philosophy of Arithmetic (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press). Veblen, Thorstein (1994 [1899]). The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Dover). Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo (1998). ‘Cosmological deixis and Amerindian perspectivism’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, NS, 4/3, pp. 469–88. Weber, Max (1958 [1904–5]). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribners).

Chapter 9

Forms of Fetishism in Kinshasa Historical Insights and Contemporary Practices Joe Trapido

Introduction

So moribund is the original anthropological debate about fetishism that few now appreciate its death, having not known it as ever having been alive. As Wyatt MacGaffey noted, as early as 1977 (MacGaffey 1977), use of the terms ‘fetish’ and ‘fetishism’ within the academy now evokes their somewhat subversive employment by Freud or Marx, rather than the prototypical theories of Tylor or Compte which the former subverted. Popular usage in Britain would, likewise, I suspect, show the mark of Freud or Marx – evoking perhaps varieties of sexual deviance or, for the critical theorists on the Clapham omnibus, forms of ‘pathological’ consumerism. It is interesting to note that the one place where ‘fetish’, or ‘fetishism’ might call up concepts that Tylor or Compte would recognise is in Francophone West Central Africa, specifically in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Here the word ‘fetish’ (or rather its French equivalent, fétiche) is used more or less interchangeably with the Lingala1 and Kikongo word, nkisi, to refer to ritual devices which house or ‘tie’ – kanga – spiritual powers. Other terms such as gris-gris or talisman are also employed. In this essay, for the sake of clarity, I will use the English term ‘fetish’, except, of course, when quoting from other sources. As we shall see, West Central African objects and practices lie at the origins of European ideas about the fetish. Given that these nineteenthcentury discourses on the topic embrace, at least in part, derogatory

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fantasies by Europeans about Africans,2 it is perhaps ironic that such terms have come to occupy an important place in contemporary Congolese discussions about the relationship between objects and spiritual power.

Structure of the essay

This essay is in two parts. In the first we consider the fetish in the European imagination, sketching a brief account of the evolution of the term. This section draws on the work of Pietz (Pietz 1985, 1987, 1988), who has examined European interactions with West African fetishes. Pietz’s articles are a brilliant attempt to trace the genealogy of the fetish in European thought but, despite claims to the contrary, they are less successful in giving voice to the African sides of the story. Pietz also draws on examples from the whole of coastal West and West Central Africa, which is perfectly reasonable, given that he is attempting to tell a larger story, but it somewhat dilutes a detailed understanding of the phenomenon. This essay tries to correct these lacunae, drawing on the historical literature about the Kingdom of Kongo. Pietz’s essay is, in part, a story concerning how narratives told about the fetish contributed to a ‘great transformation’ in European cosmology, as a kind of rhetorical armature in the development of modernist ideas regarding causation and the relationship of matter to mind. In the second part we will consider contemporary narratives told about fetishes in Kinshasa today, relating these to historical and ethnographic sources to do with ‘fetishism’ in the region. Attacks on fetishes – and on the wider set of gerontocratic and lineage-based social relations to which ‘the fetish’ was linked – have been a central element of a ‘charismatisation of the public sphere’ (Pype 2006: 299), linked to the growth of Pentecostal churches in the region. It has been a central argument of the recent literature on religion in Africa (e.g. Meyer 1998) that Pentecostal Christianity marks a particular kind of rupture, involving the espousal of an internationalised ‘modernity’ and an aggressive rejection of ‘traditional’ or ‘pagan’ customs. It is intellectually tempting, then, to combine this frame of analysis with the kinds of argument made by Pietz and use it to argue that contemporary Congolese attitudes to fetishes, propagated by Pentecostals, mark a profound shift in attitudes towards ‘objects’ and ‘intentions’. My essay will, however, argue the opposite – that Pentecostal Christianity has indeed caused a kind of Cultural Revolution in the region, profoundly disrupting structures of gerontocracy and the lineage, but the success of this revolution has only been possible precisely because ideologies about ‘the material’ and ‘the spirit’ remain rooted in a Central

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African longue durée. Rejecting theories which regard almost any beliefs the analyst considers extraordinary – for example, ‘occult economies’ as a symptom of a particular millenarian moment happening on the periphery (Worsley 1970; Comaroff and Comaroff 2001) – I look at how, in this longue durée conception, health, wealth, and spiritual flourishing are still connected to an economy of sacrifice (see also Tonda 2005) in which individuals must transact with invisible worlds, from whence they will derive ‘vital substances’ and ‘substantive powers’. In addition to contemporary materials from Kinshasa, used in sections two and three, my account draws throughout on historical and ethnographic material about BaKongo3 peoples from the Lower Congo, a region which forms the locus classicus for debates about fetishism.4 Using this material to illuminate both historical European and contemporary Kinois debates regarding fetishism is, I believe, analytically justifiable. The area of the Lower Congo was a focus for European ideas about the fetish, and as a region the Lower Congo has probably the richest set of historical materials available anywhere on the west coast of Africa. In the contemporary context, people from this region make up one of the most important minorities in Kinshasa today, and, as several authors have argued,5 among the very diverse peoples of the Congo basin there is a shared political tradition which justifies a certain amount of extrapolation from particular populations.

Fetishism in the European mind

As Pietz points out, the word ‘fetish’ comes from the medieval Portuguese feitiçaria. In its original context this meant witchcraft, in particular with reference to the forms of ‘vain observances’ which were intended to produce an effect on the physical world, such as curses and love charms. As the Portuguese extended their trading empire into West Africa, the terms feitiço and feitiçaria were used to refer to the variety of charms and ritual practices which they encountered, and which were sometimes used to mediate trade between Africans and Europeans in the expanding Atlantic commerce (Pietz 1985). Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Portuguese perceptions of Africans saw them as inferior, but only contingently so. In the Kingdom of Kongo, which was a vital indigenous ally for the early Portuguese in Africa, the inhabitants were seen as lacking ‘true religion’, and, until the slave trade got going in earnest in the second decade of the sixteenth century, disappointingly short of the valuables which Europeans sought to acquire through trading. But both Catholicism and literacy were taken up with alacrity by the Kongolese elite, which converted to Christianity

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from the late fifteenth century onwards. While he was perhaps objectively less powerful, the Manikongo (king/chief administrator) was recognised as ‘King of Kongo’ by the Pope, which confirmed his status, for Catholics at least, as God’s anointed ruler in the land (Hilton 1987: 50–104; Thornton 1984). The peasants were, in the view of the Italian Capuchin mission dispatched to Kongo, ‘ignorant of the fundamentals of Christianity’ (ibid: 151), but this was attributed to the lack of priests rather than to any particularly idolatrous or occult orientation among the Kongolese. Thornton considers it significant that Kongolese practices considered irregular by the priests of the Inquisition, who were in Angola through 1596–97, were branded feitiçaria – witchcraft – rather than paganism or the worship of false gods, and very little attention was paid to them. Meanwhile, the same commission devoted considerable energy to investigating ‘an alleged conspiracy of New Christians (i.e. converted Jews) in Kongo to practice the old religion’ (ibid: 156). This resonates with the thesis of Pietz, who considers it significant that, in these early modern interactions, African practices were termed feitiçaria, a rather nebulous and residual category of sin that hovered between superstition and the more serious charge of idolatry (Pietz: 1987: 30). Indeed, the fairly widely circulated Jesuit history of the Kongo kingdom credited the Kongolese with having known of the true God, though not Jesus Christ, before the arrival of the Europeans (Cordoso 1969: 20, cited in Thornton 1984: 152). Unlike in the Americas, local spiritual terms were simply accepted as equivalent to European terms – Nzambi Mpungu 6 for God, Moyo for Holy Spirit. Most significant of all, perhaps, ‘holy’ was translated as nkisi, the Kikongo and Lingala word for an object housing spiritual forces, and the local term for objects denoted as fetishes. Thus the Bible itself was translated as mukanda nkisi, mukanda meaning ‘document’ or ‘letter’, while the Holy Church was nzo a nkisi. The same term was used for ‘grave’ – and graves in Kongo cosmology were technically similar to fetishes (see anon). Priests were nganga nkisi, again, the same term – mostly given simply as nganga – which was, and still is, applied to specialists in ritual who make charms that draw on the power of the dead. Significantly, Catholic priests distributed a very large number of religious medals and iconographic materials (Thornton 1984: 157). As Thornton demonstrates, the Italian Capuchin missionaries spoke Kikongo well, and almost certainly understood the original meaning of these terms. It seems probable that Kongolese Christians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw Christianity in a way which was philosophically similar to the cults of the dead, and which saw objects such as crucifixes and religious medals as technically similar to fetishes. This philosophical

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orientation is particularly striking in the ‘Antonine Movement’ led by Dona Beatriz in the early eighteenth century. She was a minor Kongo aristocrat ‘inhabited’ by Saint Anthony of Padua. As Saint Anthony, she died every Friday, ‘dining with God and pleading the cause of the blacks’ (De Gallo, quoted in Thornton 1998), and rose again every Monday. Such practices are similar to those of various kinds of initiates who are believed to die, or those of nganga who are believed to be in contact with the dead on a regular basis. Most striking of all is that Beatriz’s movement was about Christian renewal, conceived as a campaign against kindoki – ‘witchcraft’ – and the use of occult devices. In this campaign the movement burnt both ‘pagan’ fetishes and the crucifixes distributed by clergy (Hilton 1987: 208–12).7 I am inclined to agree with Thornton that we should not see this as evidence that the Kongolese were insincere or mistaken in their profession of Christianity. In fact there seems to have been an implicit recognition by the Church of a certain philosophical similarity between Kongo beliefs and those of Renaissance Catholicism, which were often themselves fairly heterodox, object-oriented, and instrumental (cf. Muir 1997). While the Kingdom of Kongo was in many respects a special case, the Portuguese do not appear to have thought Africans unusually credulous in their forms of worship; and in any case, as essentially unconquered peoples on whom they relied for the conduct of trade, they were not in a position to subject Africans to the kinds of vigorous interrogations undergone by the natives of the Americas. The Portuguese monopoly of trade in West Central Africa was gradually supplanted by the Protestant Dutch and English, but in many places the intermediaries who conducted trade between Europe and the African interior continued to speak forms of Portuguese, and feitiço or fetisso had become the generalised term for various ritual complexes found in West and Central Africa, often being applied to the administration of the poison ordeal,8 as well as to physical ‘charms’. Protestant traders explicitly compared ‘fetishism’ to the Catholic veneration of saints and relics (Pietz 1987: 39), a view that was no doubt strengthened when the King of Kongo refused to countenance a conversion from Catholicism to Calvinism, and publicly burnt a set of Calvinist tracts which had been specially prepared by the Dutch for him to read (Hilton 1987: 155–6). In this age of ideological conflict the relations between objects, people, ritual and worship became increasingly fraught. The sonnet, ‘On the Late Massacre in Piedmont’, by the great poet of the Calvinist revolution, John Milton, shows that ‘idolatry’ and violent political contestation were closely linked in the seventeenth-century mind.

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Making Spirits Avenge o Lord thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattred on the Alpine mountains cold; Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipt stocks and stones …

This type of Calvinist critique was Janus-faced. In one sense its fierce ideological stance on ‘idolatry’ looked backwards to debates about the role of representation which had occupied Christianity since its inception. But in these Protestant tirades there is something else. In Milton’s sonnet there is an emerging sense of ‘idolatry’ not just as wrong, but as historically prior to non-iconic forms of worship. We may speculate that such rhetoric was part of a more general movement in European thought, not confined to Protestant countries. Based in, or at least exemplified by, the philosophies of Locke and Descartes, this emerging set of world views began to see instrumental rationality, self-interested commerce and material causality as totally separate from and antipathetic to the religious sphere (Parry 1986; Keane 2007). The combination of instrumental motivations, physical objects and spiritual forces found in fetishes, a combination which had not been entirely alien to early modern Europe, now appeared as an exotic conflation of errors. As Pietz argues, by the end of the seventeenth century, Protestant objections to idolatry are shading into proto-Enlightenment critiques. Such critiques dwell on the chance nature of the objects of worship – ‘chance trifles’ and ‘natural curiosities’. Such capricious, gullible and causallymistaken forms of worship made the African particularly incapable of rational government and vulnerable to the manipulation of despots (Pietz 1988: 106). This worship of the material and of chance trifles was to be contrasted with the abstract and universal mind of ‘civilised man’, which was capable of participating in a rational polity. As Pietz shows, this kind of analysis, taken from the accounts of eighteenth-century travellers, was adopted by many of the great minds of the time, including Hume, Linnaeus, Kant and Hegel. One may speculate that the need for such ideologies of inferiority was a product of the contradictions found within the expanding world system. The dominance of the bourgeoisie in much of Europe produced regimes ever more committed to liberal notions of property, justified via concepts of ‘self-ownership’ and the ‘free sale of labour’ (Macpherson 1969), yet at the same time liberal capitalism was creating unprecedented and involuntary appropriations of labour and land, both at home and abroad.9 This stress on the fetish as the mark of a primitive mindset, characterised by the trifling and the particular, and incapable of abstraction, was

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adopted by the scientistic studies of early sociologists and anthropologists, including Tylor. He stresses this random aspect of fetish worship, placing it one step lower than idolatry on the evolutionary ladder: ‘Fetishism will be taken to include the worship of “stocks and stones” and thence passes by imperceptible gradation into idolatry’ (Tylor 2010: 132). Pietz’s development of a post-enlightenment theory of the fetish is a useful guide, but it tells us more about the development of western theories of materiality, than it does about the relationship to objects created by the colonial and post-colonial encounter in West Central Africa. The Colonial regimes of West Central Africa, influenced by the kinds of ideology Pietz examines, instituted a radically new set of power relations which extended beyond physical extraction and forced labour, into demanding strange and unusual forms of ritual sacrifice, for example, the abandonment of protective talismans, and the disruption of forms of offering to the dead (Tonda 2005). At the same time the energy of missionary campaigns against fetishes, combined with the missionaries’ habit of salvaging interesting charms from destruction for personal or ethnographic collections (see Bernault 2006: 222), paradoxically served to re-assert their importance in the local imagination as instruments of personal success. This importance is still found in contemporary ideologies in Central Africa where figures who have managed to arrive at a position of worldly success are, as in the past, widely presumed to have relied on assistance from invisible others, via the use of fetishes. In the next section we will investigate these contemporary ideas about fetishism and personal success, via material I gathered during fieldwork in Kinshasa. Once we have established the outlines of these contemporary ideologies, we will attempt once again to place this in historical perspective, considering the present situation in relation to the longue durée.

Narratives about the fetish in Kinshasa: historical perspectives

Evoloko [a star of Congolese music from the late 1970s and 1980s] goes to see the nganga and asks to be the biggest star in Zaire. The nganga says to him, ‘It can be done, but you will have to sacrifice your father.’ Evoloko baulks at this but when the nganga is adamant, Evoloko agrees and asks how this sacrifice should be arranged. The nganga tells him to watch where his father sets his foot, and to take the earth from his footprint, and bring this to him next week. Evoloko agrees to do this and the consultation ends. The nganga walks Evoloko to the edge of his compound and bids him farewell, before returning to his house. Evoloko hovers

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I tell this narrative, in part, because it is popular in Kinshasa. There is practically no one who does not know the story in some form and, indeed, children who will not go to bed are referred to as ‘Evolokos’. But the story also provides an excellent starting point for a discussion about the nature and status of fetishes in contemporary Kinshasa. The narrative broaches issues about the material composition of the fetish, about the idea of sacrifice – which is considered essential to the working of any fetish – and, in the nganga’s remarks about dreams and the night, it also introduces us to many important ideas about how the worlds of the living and the dead are believed to interact. The second world and the place of the dead Taking the last point first, in the nganga’s dying words we are led into a central aspect of West Central African cosmology. There are few places in the world where one’s social standing is not improved by being dead, and certainly in Kinshasa the dead are thought to exert a great influence on the lives of the living. The dead, but also those who draw power from the dead, such as ndoki (‘witches’), are thought to live in a dimension inaccessible to ordinary mortals. Those who can access the powers of the dead are strong indeed. Just as Dona Beatriz died and regularly spoke to God, so modern figures of success are often said to use death as a strategy for personal empowerment. Pepe Kalle was a popular musician who died of a heart attack in the late

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1990s, according to those close to him. But in many popular versions of the story, Pepe’s death had other causes. Thus, Pepe’s success was due to the fact that he would ‘die’ every day. Locking himself in the bathroom he would die and, in this dead state, he could travel to Europe, record albums and generally partake of the power which the world of the dead can offer. One day, however, Pepe’s corpse was disturbed by his wife while he was in mid-voyage to the other dimension. Her wailing and lamenting disrupted his normal process of revival, and Pepe, unable to return to the world of the living, was obliged to remain permanently dead. In Kikongo, and in many other languages of the region, the land of the dead was known as mpemba – a word that means whiteness, and refers to white chalk or clay, white substances being generally associated with the dead. Nowadays the French term deuxième monde is more likely to be used (see Pype 2006); a term which carries with it a sinister significance related to ‘confessions’ of satanic activities enacted in the capital’s many Pentecostal churches. That said, even in pre-colonial cosmologies the connotations of mpemba were not necessarily positive. Then, as now, the second world was perceived as a site of ndoki as well as ancestors, and despite the efforts of missionary ethnographers to present ancestor worship as the ‘acceptable face’ of African religion, ancestors themselves were most often portrayed as vengeful and jealous of the living (MacGaffey 2000: 222–3). Sometimes the land of the dead is depicted as a far-away town, or across, or under a body of water, such as the Congo River, or the ocean (ibid: 44–50; Laman 1968: 30). Concurrently, the land of the dead is imagined in very different ways. It is a dimension which is present, but visible only to those who possess special powers, such as nganga or ndoki. The most pervasive trope is to see this dimension in a relation of structural opposition to the world of the living. As such, it can operate at a personal level; women who are barren in this world have several children in the other world (MacGaffey 1986: 49), ‘witch children’ ‘confess’ to being adults with husbands and/or families on the other side (De Boeck and Plissart 2005: 151). The land of the dead may be ‘the forest’, which is opposed to the village where the living are found. Likewise, wild animals are often associated with ndoki and the dead. Thus Werrason, a Kinois pop-star, is known as the roi de la forêt (‘king of the forest’) and mokonzi na ba niama (‘chief of the beasts’); names that possess a sinister undertow and are also often associated with the ‘customary chief’. Above all, this other dimension exists at night. Mid-day for the dead and for ndoki is our midnight, and their night is our day. The mists of the morning are the cooking fires of the second

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world. As the poet and musician Simaro Lutumba wrote, Tongo etani, ba ndoki bazonga ndako (Simaro 2000). ‘The day breaks, the witches return home.’ Another material/metaphorical opposition employed is between the land and the water. The dead are often said to be ‘under water’, and those using occult means in search of temporal success are often said to have ‘plunged into water’. Mobutu himself is said by many Pentecostals to have kept Congo ‘under water’, replacing the name ‘Congo’ with the demonic ‘Zaire’ during his rule. Above all, dreams are the space of the dead. Dead people appear to the living in this medium, and the activities of ndoki are also made clear (Laman 1968: 7). Thus we can see that by never sleeping, or by only sleeping during the day, Evoloko may hope to avoid the vengeance of the tricked nganga. This looking-glass world of flesh-eating, river dwelling, night workers is one explanation for the very great popularity of Christian bumper stickers in Kinshasa – ‘Jésus est le seul protecteur de ma véhicule’ (‘Jesus is the only protector of my vehicle’) or ‘Na motoki na yo nde okolia’ (‘By the sweat of your brow only, shall you eat’). Both of these implicitly propose, then reject, a satanic alternative – that is, other ‘occult’ methods of protecting the vehicle, or satanic ways to put food on the table without making an effort. Occult sacrifice A second important aspect of the story concerns the role of sacrifice. The twist in the narrative ­– the substitution of the nganga for Evoloko’s father as the sacrificial victim – both refers to, and breaks one of the ‘rules’11 about sacrifice in West Central Africa. Historically the imagined locus of occult sacrifice has been the lineage,12 or as a Lingala proverb goes, ‘the one who will kill you is the one close to you’. The nganga’s instruction for Evoloko to sacrifice his father is in line with this belief. On many occasions it would appear that the fetish contains, or even traps an individual spirit. Sometimes the sacrifice takes the form of exchanging a particular individual for an abstract power – kindoki (or cognate terms). Kindoki is a vital force derived from the dead and possessed by both ndoki and any powerful individual. Often, however, the fetish is inhabited by a specific spirit. Sometimes the spirit in question is that of the person who has been mystically killed to make the charm efficacious, but more often the idea seems to be that the soul has been traded with the dead in exchange for a spirit from the other side. As in the case of the nganga in Evoloko’s story, there is often a sense that the spirit is trapped or tricked into a fetish and then ‘tied’ there. In these cases the spirit is far from pleased to be trapped, and there is quite often a connotation of anger,

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vindictiveness or extortion about the relations between the ‘patient’ and the fetish. MacGaffey states that the anger of a trapped spirit was sometimes thought to impart a useful energy to a fetish (MacGaffey 1986: 165). Isaki Nsemi, a researcher working for Karl Laman, the great missionary ethnographer of the Lower Congo, records that the fetishes which cured people, had actually caused the illnesses in the first place, and indeed such fetishes could make people sick because they wanted the offerings13 proffered to effect a cure. Continuing the theme of metaphysical extortion, Mami Wata, a siren-like water spirit that can offer wealth or success rather as a fetish does, is sometimes said to be drawn into helping the patient because he is able to steal one of her possessions, often a comb or a mirror, and this allows the patient to exert power over her (Jewseiwicki 2008). The idea of receiving kindoki in exchange for a human life, most often one of the lineage members of the patient, appears as a fairly clear principle in most narratives told about fetishes. A related idea is that of ‘selling the spine’ – koteka mukongo. In Central African theories of the body, the spine is believed to be the site of sperm, and of sexual potency and fertility. Thus to ‘sell the spine’ means to make a sacrifice of your fertility in exchange for a fetish that can secure success in another field (see also De Boeck 1999: 188). Such is the prevalence of this kind of belief, that inferences are very often drawn about those who are wealthy but have no children. Thus, one of the directors of the state diamond-mining company MIBAS, who was known to be both very wealthy and childless, was commonly suggested to have ‘sold his spine’. The idea of a life traded here extends to the unborn, indeed, to the un-conceived, but the principle involved seems similar, in that a (putative) relative’s life is traded for power from the dead. Other sacrifices seem weakly connected to this principle. Successful individuals who are handicapped, or have handicapped relatives, are considered to have offered their own, or their relatives’ physical form in exchange for their success. Likewise, some individuals are said to mutilate themselves, perhaps cutting off a finger – koteka misapi (De Boeck 1999: 189) – as a sacrifice incurred in making a fetish. Perhaps the weakest and most distant kinds of connection to the principle discussed above can be seen in the case of certain individuals said to have sacrificed the mental health of a relative to construct a fetish.14 One family in a neighbourhood I frequented in Kinshasa had accused a relative in Europe of being responsible for the madness of his brother. It was claimed that the family had even refused to accept remittances sent by the ‘guilty’ relative.15 More distantly, the exchange of vital substances like sperm can constitute the sacrifice. Thus one famous pop-star is said to have been instructed by the nganga to sleep

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with his mother (at one time herself a fashionable bar owner and courtesan) in order to become successful, while Filip De Boeck records that among the bana Lunda – the Congolese who migrated to Lunda Norte province in northern Angola to look for diamonds in the 1980s and 1990s – there were stories circulating about an old woman on the Congolese side of the frontier who, in return for sex, was reputed to grant success on the Angolan side of the border.16 Underlying these forms of sacrifice is the idea of transacting with an invisible world. What is obtained from this invisible world in exchange, can variously be described as ‘capacitating substances’ or ‘substantive capacities’. By ‘substantive capacity’ I mean that power gained from invisible worlds is perceived as being ‘given off’ by the person – rather than their power being seen as a relational property, as we tend to perceive these things in the west (see Anderson 1990; Fabian 1990). Linked to this, power is also a ‘capacitating substance’, since ‘power’ obtained from invisible realms is almost always also seen as a physical substance, stored in, or about the body. In this context, debates about ‘materiality’ perhaps lose some purchase. For the cognitive opposition between immaterial forces and material substances appears to hold little sway. ‘Vital forces’ obtained, or dispensed can be material substances such as chalk, white clay, spittle, or sperm, while the forms of power obtained from these substances can be, indiscriminately, ethereal qualities, such as attractiveness, or concrete forms of material abundance, such as cars. Often emotional strength and material wealth seem interchangeable. To take one example, ngenge, a term used to mean ‘attractive force’, can be applied equally to the power to attract women or to attract money. The phrase to ‘blow ngenge’ – kofula ngenge – is frequently employed. The popular musician Papa Wemba uses, as one of his praise titles, mzee fula ngenge – the elder who blows/channels ngenge – and Papa Wemba is depicted on an album cover with puffed cheeks, as if blowing. There is a strong association of ngenge with blowing and, by extension, breath, which is a synonym for life all over Central Africa. In one sense it is important not to ‘fetishise’ the fetish object. The fetish was seen as a container for capacitating substances, and was generally seen as an adjunct to those who, for whatever reason, did not contain sufficient vital substances in their bodies. And fragments of powerful dead bodies were a crucial ingredient in fetishes (see Bernault 2006). During the nineteenth century, pieces of the ‘gland’ – kundu (or cognate terms) – that ndoki were thought to possess, were removed during the autopsies of such individuals and incorporated into fetishes. Pieces of bone, or other fragments from the deceased are also said to be used (Bernault 2006; see also

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Laman 1968: 69). Such beliefs are still current, as can be seen from the story, widely circulated in Kinshasa, that a famous female gospel singer17 had been seen at midnight at the grave of Madilu System. Madilu was one of the country’s greatest musicians, whose death in 2007 occasioned an outpouring of national grief. The clear implication is that the gospel singer was collecting remains from the grave for a fetish to be made powerful by the force of the dead man. This conception is strongly linked to the wider power structures of the region and, as such, has a powerful hierarchical and gerontocratic aspect. Temporal success is granted by the gift of capacitating substances passed from the ancestors via the elders. Elders are like human fetishes (see below), in that they are the containers for such vital ancestral forces.18 Over a wide area of West Central Africa the vital forces of elders are believed to be contained in substances which have emerged from their bodies, the spittle or breath of elders being considered as a form of luck or blessing. Kofula (‘to blow’ in Lingala) also means to boost, or to ‘big up’, while kopambola (‘to bless’) can mean ‘to bless by spitting’. Such blessings – and the transfer of substances they represent – were performative acts which could create important social facts. The slave – mowumbu – could be conceived of as the individual lacking the blessing of the elders. As the popular musician Koffi Olomide has sung (Olomide 1998): Mwana yango mowumbu Babwakeli ye soyi te na bomwana Akola a kobanga

The child is a slave. They (the elders) did not spit on him as a child. He grows up in fear.

Like spittle, the ritual application of chalk could, in earlier periods, be a form of blessing, or good fortune. Thus, in the interweaving of metaphor and materiality contained in the fetish (and in technically similar ‘objects’ such as graves, or the bodies of powerful elders), we see that ‘things’ are not just recipients of beliefs but are powerful tools for the re-conceptualising of spiritual/material domains.

Mobutism and modernity

In Evoloko’s story, as in all contemporary narratives, the fetish is presented as a covert route to personal success. In the pre-colonial period, while private charms were also common, public fetishes were part of the wider cult of the dead. Such cults were crucial to the regulation of society: for example, the costly fines charged for near-inevitable forms of ritual infringement,

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and the high fees for membership of socially advantageous cults. ‘Chiefs’ among the Kongo constituted a form of costly ritual office, gained via the performance of lavish ceremonies involving musical troupes and feasting, through which various forms of fetish could be ‘activated’. This served to enforce the domination of the old over the young, of the rich over the poor, and of the free over slaves; slavery here being conceptualised as a relationship of permanent junior status (see Dupré and Rey 1978; MacGaffey 1986: 24–39). In the contemporary context, however, the set of observable institutional frameworks related to pre-colonial fetish practices has been swept away. This was in large measure caused by colonial rule, which specifically suppressed certain practices and objects related to the cult of the dead and to the administering of the ‘poison ordeal’ in legal disputes. In addition, churches often took over the role of ‘witch-finding’ which was one of the principle objects of pre-colonial juro-therapeutic systems. Above all, colonialism dismantled or took over the commercial networks which had underwritten pre-colonial power structures. Nevertheless, during the rule of Mobutu, the dictator of Congo/Zaire from 1960 until 1997, the use of fetishes, and visits to the nganga re-assumed some of the social importance which they had lost during the colonial period. Put simply, this can be attributed to several interlinked factors. In general terms the dramatic yet mysterious enrichment of a few and the emiseration of many, has lead to a resurgence of witchcraft as a form of political theory in much of Africa (see Rowlands and Warnier 1988; Bayart 1993; Geschiere 1997). Specific to Congo/Zaire was that Mobutu’s regime drew more heavily on a neo-traditional vocabulary than most of his contemporaries. Mobutu cast his person as a (somewhat ersatz) version of the traditional chief (Young and Turner 1985). This idea of leadership, drawn from the Central African longue durée was intrinsically linked to ideas of fetishism and sacrifice (see below). For example, the walking stick carried by Mobutu directly evoked this, since the canes carried by traditional leaders in Central Africa are more than mere emblems of office. They are themselves considered a kind of fetish, containing powerful substances which are believed to underwrite the power of the ‘chief’. Mobutu’s cane clearly carried this kind of significance in the popular imagination, with rumours circulating that it took several men to carry it, or that others would die if they tried to touch it. Another reason for the re-valuation of the fetish was that Mobutu’s campaign of cultural nationalism – authenticité – involved an ostensible rejection of western culture, with the banning suits and the coercing of most Zairians into changing their names to ‘authentic’

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African names, and changing the name of the country itself from Congo to Zaire. While this frequently brought Mobutu into conflict with various Christian authorities, Zaire remained an overwhelmingly Christian country, and one can well see authenticité as the fig-leaf that covered the actions of a ruling class which was in reality asset-stripping the country in league with powerful western allies. Nevertheless, the perception of many in Congo/Zaire was, and remains, that the disasters of Mobutism – the collapse of the formal economy, the growth of a predatory state – were associated with an indigenism which had at its heart a kind of state fetishism. This fetishism was in part clandestine, and in part purely imaginary, but the mystique of power to which it contributed was nevertheless very real. That said, the perception of the Mobutiste state as based in fetishism, was probably bolstered by the fact that elite use of ngangas does seem to have been very widespread at this time. Given that this was a semi-clandestine practice, the sociological effects are somewhat hard to gauge, but there does appear to be evidence that ngangas were, objectively, important mediators of power during the Mobutu era. It has been proposed to me, for example, that visiting a well-known nganga could be an important career move during this period. To have oneself observed consulting a well-known nganga (or having one’s Mercedes observed parked outside), could accentuate the sense that one was a ‘person of weight’ – moto ya kilo. In addition, certain ngangas could themselves command formidable social networks, and they served as one of the ways in which clientelist ties were facilitated in that most clientelist of political systems.

Pentecostalism and Cultural Revolution

The phenomenal growth of Pentecostal churches in Kinshasa during the 1990s has changed many things, and, with regard to the use of fetishes, what was once morally ambiguous is now clear. Visits to the nganga are, by and large, considered proof of demonic intent and fetishes are, in the eyes of most Kinois, quite simply instruments of the devil. While this attack on paganism accords with what others have observed in various parts of Africa (e.g. Engelke 2010; Meyer 1998), it is also clear that part of this represents a way of thinking about the legacy of Mobutisme. I have on numerous occasions heard informants discussing the great number of deaths caused by Mobutu, only to discover that this is not a discussion of the diurnal massacres which might be linked to the dictator by western political analysts – say the murder and mutilation of Pierre Mulele, or the killing of LubaKasai refugees in Shaba – but rather the nocturnal ‘eating’ of which he is believed to have partaken to shore up his vital powers.

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In this context it would appear that fetishism, conceived as a specific set of objects and ritual practices, no longer has any very vibrant presence in Kinshasa. Ngangas are no longer a well-known feature of neighbourhoods and, as far as I can surmise, most people do not visit them, though this is rather hard to judge. Yet from another point of view fetishism is as powerful a presence now as it has ever been. The existence of fetishism as a social fact has always been about an imagined and unseen sphere of violence. It would appear that the presence of such imaginative violence depends very little on the objective existence of practices called fetishism, even though it is fetishes which are imagined to underpin such violence. Even if informants accept the relative decline in ritual practitioners in Kinshasa they will merely take this as an indication of a globalisation of sorcery, and express the belief that more skilled practitioners are operating elsewhere – India and London being favoured locations for this outsourcing of occult practice. One might even suggest that the growth of Pentecostalism has fed the imaginative growth of fetishism and the occult, while suppressing the associated material and physical practices. Does this mean that what Engelke has argued for the Zimbabwean Masowe Church is true here – that is, that ‘the commitment to immateriality makes what things the Masowe do use in religious life all the more important’ (2005: 119)? Almost certainly not. Congolese Pentecostals do not promote or exhibit a sparse material culture, and one of the notable features of Congolese Pentecostalism is its vigorous indigenising of the prosperity gospel. Thus many Pentecostal pastors will participate in forms of potlatch-like behaviour which resembles the behaviour of secular figures of success and has clear links to the Central African political tradition. Followers will unashamedly rank pastors in terms of the size of their church, the presence of air-conditioning, the quality of the pastor’s car, etc. Many celebrity pastors, such as Fernando Kutino, openly display their possessions, above all cars and designer clothes, as signs of Gods blessing, a blessing that can also be conferred on followers. As one senior member of Kutino’s church put it to me, ‘If you have torn shoes, how is God helping you? And how will you help me?’ It is frequently volunteered by Pentecostals that, ‘soki nzambe na yo makasi te, meka nzambe ngai’ – ‘If your god is not strong, try mine’. Now, as in the past, the capacity to induce emotional states or to acquire material goods relies on access to capacitating substances derived from invisible worlds. For Kinshasa’s Pentecostalised public sphere, the moral valence of material goods, and emotional and physical states, relates to the kind of invisible world with

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which one is transacting. Goods, or spirit possession, may come from lola – heaven – or it may come from the demonic deuxième monde (see also Pype 2006). As in the past, other worlds provide certain powerful/ capacitating substances. Often qualities ‘given by heaven’ are known by the same names as those ‘derived from Satan’. Some terms for these substantive powers can be specific to the secular or religious domains – terms like lupemba or ngenge are restricted to the world of ‘mundane’ success, while others – for example, onction (unction) – are restricted to the religious domain. But terms such as mpifo or nguya may be used to describe the substantive powers of high class-prostitutes, wrestlers, gangsters and secular pop-stars, but are also applied to Pentecostal pastors whose wealth, success or emotional impact can be said to have come from the Holy Spirit. And here is a major weakness of the ‘millenarian’ literature, which situates a variety of practices and beliefs that the analyst considers extraordinary (e.g. ‘occult economies’) as produced by a recent moment of extreme stress related to the expansion of capitalism (e.g. Worsley 1970; Comaroff and Comaroff 2001; see Anderson 1990 for critique). While it is, of course, not only appropriate, but crucial to analyse how ideas about ‘invisible powers’ have shaped and been shaped by an interaction with capitalism, such interaction should not be situated at any particular moment of crisis, or be situated exclusively in the present. As we have discussed, the idea of transacting with invisible worlds, and material goods and emotional states whose moral valence is invisible to all but a select group of initiates, is a recurrent feature of the Central African tradition. That said, it would be both glib and inaccurate to conclude that things remain as they have always been. West Central Africa has been a fulcrum of the modern world. Plantation slavery, the globalisation of Christianity, the rise of Atlantic Europe – all are in some important way connected to this region. And in this sense neither colonialism nor independence should be cast as the moment of modernisation. Yet, as authors such as Joseph Tonda or Filip De Boeck (De Boeck and Plissart 2004; Tonda 2005) have argued, the Pentecostal conversion is part of a new stage in the modernity of the region. It is not, as this essay has made abundantly clear, a modernity that implies any kind of ‘disenchanting’ of the world. But it has disrupted the structures of gerontocracy and lineage. Some churches explicitly commend the practice of breaking with the extended family, for example Combat Spirituel. But even in those churches that do not – indeed, among those who are not members of Pentecostal churches – earlier forms of reciprocity have been considerably weakened.

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Crucial to earlier forms of reciprocity was the expectation that money would flow from junior family members to elders in exchange for blessings. This has been dramatically undermined by several changes, all linked to the Pentecostalising of public discourse. First, the idea that elders are a kind of living ancestor (see Kopytoff 1971) whose blessings connect to their links with the world of the dead; this is now far less clearly viewed as a ‘good thing’. The metaphysical sanctions that elders were thought to possess – the power to promise disobedient or ungenerous off-spring a bad destiny, ‘kolaka mabe’ – have been largely removed. To make any such threat in Kinshasa today would be tantamount to declaring oneself a practicing satanist. At the same time, churches have instigated aggressive demands for money, which quite explicitly compete with the demands of the extended family for scarce resources. Central to these demands is the notion that contributions to the pastor are a ‘sowing’ of seeds (semence) (see also De Boeck and Plissart 2005: 198); that God will provide a healthy return on any such investment. I have on several occasions heard stories of relatives who gave large sums of money as semence when their families had very pressing needs which were not being met. And it is here where Pentecostalism seems most strongly to distinguish itself from an earlier tradition. Where, with their practices, ngangas had often seen their role as re-uniting an extended family, attaching blame both to the ‘perpetrator’ and to the ‘provoker’ (see De Boeck and Plissart 2005: 197), contemporary ideologies, heavily influenced by Pentecostalism, preach separation, and cutting free. In a city where a quarter of the population eats only once every two days such ‘cutting free’ is increasingly attractive. And at the extreme end of this cutting free, we see the casting out of family members via accusations of witchcraft against children and the elderly (De Boeck and Plissart 2005: 155–211); accusations which have mushroomed in recent years.

Conclusion

This article has considered the question of fetishism in Kinshasa, drawing on contemporary materials and on various historical sources from the region. In the argument that we have developed here, an analysis of the longue durée has played an important role. We have touched upon two of the most popular themes in contemporary African studies: the rise of Pentecostalism and the apparent re-energising of ideologies of ‘witchcraft’ in contemporary settings. It is striking that in the prominent discussions of these issues, the concept of ‘modernity’ occupies a crucial place (e.g. Meyer 1998; Geschiere 1997; Rowlands and Warnier 1988).

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In many respects this article confirms the theoretical claims made by these earlier discussions. It endorses the view of Kinshasa as a modern society which is nevertheless unaccompanied by any kind of Weberian process of ‘disenchantment’. We have also followed the argument, made by numerous scholars of Pentecostalism in Africa (Meyer 1998; De Boeck and Plissart 2005), that the advance of these churches is associated with a sense of ‘rupture’ in respect of earlier social structures, such as the lineage. As Geschiere has argued, these structures are perceived to have a dark side, imagined as fetishism and occult practice more generally. Because of a general crisis of social reproduction; a crisis linked to poverty and to unemployment for the many and the fantastical enrichment of the wellconnected few (see for example Jordan Smith 2001), such lineage structures, and the flow of goods and sacrifices which underpinned them, are viewed as increasingly problematic (Tonda 2005). At the same time we have asked certain questions concerning these bodies of literature; questions about the notions of temporality employed by the authors of these works, and questions regarding the interrelation of spiritual and material domains. Given that these debates invoke ‘modernity’ so liberally, and given that ‘modernity’ is a temporal category, it is surely rather surprising that the major studies have been largely synchronic in their treatment of these phenomena. Campaigns against a perceived increase in the use of immoral occult devices, conducted in the context of an encroachment of capitalism and of the radical enrichment of a few – these have been the recurrent features of socio-cultural life in the Congo basin since at least the eighteenth century. When does modernity begin? And what is different about it? The essay has also argued that the Pentecostalising of the public debate in Kinshasa has been so dramatic and successful precisely because, unlike that of the established churches, the relationship to material and spiritual domains envisaged by Congolese Pentecostals is so connected to the Central African tradition. Individuals take part in an economy of sacrifice, transacting with invisible worlds to obtain ‘capacitating substances’ or ‘substantive capacities’. In this view, these substance/capacities endow a participant with physical health, charisma and material wealth. Is it the case that Pentecostal ‘rupture’ is linked to deeper kinds of continuity? The rejection of ‘tradition’ by Pentecostal churches can be so much more absolute than that of other denominations, precisely because Pentecostal practice re-capitulates, rather than dismisses, the interweaving of spiritual and material domains which has been so central to this tradition.

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Notes  1 The vehicular language of Kinshasa and much of the western Democratic Republic of Congo.   2 Tylor, in the second volume of Primitive Culture, wrote: ‘Fetishism in the lower civilizations is by no means confined to the West African Negro with whom we specifically associate the term … Yet what with it being extremely prevalent there … the accounts from West Africa are certainly the fullest and most minute on record’ (2010: 144).   3 Following the usage of MacGaffey (1986) and Hilton (1987), I use the term ‘BaKongo’ in discussing peoples speaking related dialects who live in the lower Congo region, between the Malebo Pool and the sea, spread between the modern states of Congo Kinshasa, Angola (including the Cabinda enclave) and Congo Brazzaville. I use the word ‘Kongo’ to refer to peoples who lived in the historical kingdom of Kongo, which lasted between perhaps the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries, and covered some but not all of this territory.   4 See MacGaffey (1977: 172); in part this is surely a consequence of the visually striking nature of the nkondi or nail fetishes produced in the region.   5 The two classics in this regard are Vansina (1990) and MacGaffey (2000).   6 In fact Nzambi Mpungu seems to have been a relative term, meaning ‘highest power’ – the King of Portugal is several times referred to in this way in Kongolese texts; see Hilton (1987: 91).   7 Thornton argues that Beatriz’s movement was about popular discontent at the increasing disorder caused by the incursions of the transatlantic slave trade (1998: 165). She was burnt at the stake in the ancient capital of Kongo, São Salvador/Mbanza Kongo, with her infant son.   8 This involved decoctions of herbs – in the Congo basin most often forms of poisonous nkasa or violently emetic mbondo/mbundu tree bark – which those accused of witchcraft were made to drink. (In many societies of the Congo basin they could be administered instead to slaves of the accused.) The death of the accused (or of the accused’s slave) was held to be proof of a person’s malignant intent. ‘To drink poison for you’ is still used as an expression of faith in someone; for example, in his song Sans Préavis, pop star Kester Emeneya (2008) sings Kinshasa bamwasi bamelelaka mbondo te (‘In Kinshasa you can’t vouch for/ be sure of women’; literally, ‘In Kinshasa you don’t drink poison for women’).   9 In this sense, acts of enclosure in Europe – above all in Britain – can be seen as ideologically continuous with colonial appropriations. Liberal ideologies of the person seem to have unequivocally acted to facilitate the theft of land among non-capitalist peoples – if you failed to put up a fence and invest labour in the (often highly misguided) manner of a colonial, you had no right to land at all. The issue of slavery is more complicated. Clearly a liberal ideology of personhood, and Whig/Liberal politicians, were important factors in ideologies of emancipation, but this is perhaps the point – those wishing to defend slavery within a world-view which assumed ‘possessive individualism’ were forced to propose ever more extreme forms of innate inferiority among Africans to justify depriving them of their rights. 10 Evoloko lived in Europe for several years, including periods in London and Brussels. ‘No, really, he never sleeps,’ informants repeated. ‘He was always the last one up in the nganda [bar].’

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11 Though the notion of rules is clearly a figure of speech in this context. The various ideas, practices and statements of belief which the ethnographer can identify are tendencies which interact and give way to others within a much larger domain of ‘a human community living the drama of its own existence’; Vansina (1990), cited in MacGaffey (1986: 1). 12 Peter Geschiere has well encapsulated this world view, terming the occult the ‘dark side of kinship’ (1997). 13 Laman (1968: 70); the original entry, written by Laman’s researcher Isaki Nsemi, is also quoted in MacGaffey (2000: 135). 14 Laman (1968: 85) also states that in former times when someone died insane, a special fetish ‘nkisi of vengeance’ was constructed, invoking the help of the deceased to hunt down the person who had caused the insanity. 15 It should be noted that living in Europe is in itself perceived as a form of success in Kinshasa: Belgium, the former colonial power, is known as lola – also the Lingala word for paradise. 16 De Boeck (1999: 188) refers to this practice as koteka mukongo, which I am sure is accurate, but whenever I have encountered the term it has been used to mean the more general and permanent sale of fertility referred to above. In the same article De Boeck also gives an example of a diamond miner instructed to sleep with his mother. 17 Often reputed to be a ‘loose woman’ in private. 18 On the elders, see Laman (1968: 44–52); elements of the argument about the body as container can be found at the start of this third volume (ibid: 1), but the idea has been expounded and extended in several recent works; see De Heusch (2000); MacGaffey (2000); and most recently Warnier (2007).

Bibliography

Anderson, Benedict (1990). Language and power: exploring political cultures in Indonesia (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press). Bayart, Jean-François (1993). The state in Africa: the politics of the belly (London: Longman). Bernault, Florence (2006). ‘Body, power and sacrifice in equatorial Africa’, Journal of African History, 47, pp. 207–39. Comaroff, Jean and John L. Comaroff (1993). ‘Introduction’. In J. Comaroff and J. L. Comaroff (eds.), Modernity and its malcontents: ritual and power in postcolonial Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. xi–xxxvii. —— (2001). Millennial capitalism and the culture of neoliberalism (Durham, N.C: Duke University Press). De Boeck, Filip (1994). ‘Of trees and kings: politics and metaphor among the Aluund of southwestern Zaïre’, American Ethnologist, 21/3, pp. 451–73. ——  (1999). ‘Domesticating diamonds and dollars: identity, expenditure and sharing in southwestern Zaïre’. In B. Meyer and P. Geschiere (eds.), Globalization and Identity: Dialectics of Flow and Closure (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 177–210. —— (2008). ‘Dead society in a cemetery city’. In M. Dehaene and L. De Cauter (eds.), Heterotopia and the City; Public Space in a Post-Civil Society (Abingdon: Routledge), pp. 297–308.

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—— and René Devisch (1994). ‘Ndembu, Luunda and Yaka divination compared: from representation and social engineering to embodiment and world-making’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 24, pp. 98–133. ——  and Marie-Françoise Plissart (2005). Kinshasa: récits de la ville invisible (Brussels: La Renaissance du Livre). De Heusch, Luc (1971). Pourquoi l’ épouser? (Paris: Gallimard). —— (2000). Le roi du Kongo et les monstres sacrés: mythes et rites bantous, Vol. 3 (Paris: Gallimard). Devisch, René (1988). ‘From equal to better: investing the chief among the northern Yaka of Zaïre’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 58/3, pp. 261–90. Dupré, Georges and Pierre Rey (1978). ‘Reflections on the relevance of a theory of the history of exchange’. In D. Seddon (ed.), Relations of Production: Marxist Approaches to Anthropology (London: Frank Cass & Co), pp. 171–208. Emeneya, ‘Kester’ Mubiala (1983/2008). Sans préavis. In Les Meilleurs Succès de Victoria Eleison, Vol. 1, CD (Paris). Engelke, Matthew (2005). ‘Sticky subjects, sticky objects: the substance of African Christian healing’. In D. Miller (ed.), Materiality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), pp. 118–39. —— (2010) ‘Past Pentecostalism: notes on rupture, realignment, and everyday life in Pentecostal and African independent churches’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 80/2, pp. 177:99. Fabian, Johannes (1990). Power and performance: ethnographic explorations through proverbial wisdom and theatre in Shaba, Zaire (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press). Geschiere, Peter (1997). The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa, trans. P. Geschiere and J. Roitman (Charlottesville, VA, and London: University of Virginia Press). Hilton, Anne (1987). The Kingdom of Kongo (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Jewseiwicki, Bogomil (2008). ‘Congolese Mami Wata: the charm and delusion of modernity’. In H. J. Drewal (ed.), Sacred Waters: Arts for Mami Wata and Other Divinities in Africa and the Diaspora (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press), pp. 125–40. Jordan Smith, Daniel (2001) ‘Ritual killing, 419, and fast wealth: inequality and the popular imagination in southeastern Nigeria’, American Ethnologist 28/4, pp. 803–826. Kant, Immanuel (2005 [1790]). Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, trans. John T. Goldthwait (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Keane, Webb (2007). Christian Moderns, Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter (Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press). Kopytoff, Igor (1971). ‘Ancestors as elders in Africa’, Africa, 41/2, pp. 129–42. Laman, Karl E. (1968). The Kongo, Vol. 3 (Uppsala and London: Almqvist & Wiksells). MacGaffey, Wyatt (1977). ‘Fetishism revisited: Kongo “nkisi” in sociological perspective’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 47/2, pp. 172–84.

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—— (1983). Modern Kongo Prophets (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). —— (1986). Religion and Society in Central Africa: The BaKongo of Lower Zaïre (Chicago: Chicago University Press). ——  (ed.) (1991). Art and Healing of the Bakongo Commented by Themselves: Minkisi from the Laman Collection, trans. W. MacGaffey (Stockholm: Folkens Museum-Etnografiska). —— (2000). Kongo Political Culture: The Conceptual Challenge of the Particular (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). Macpherson, Crawford B. (1969). The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Meyer, Birgit (2004). ‘“Praise the lord”: popular cinema and pentecostalite style in Ghana’s new public sphere’, American Ethnologist, 31/1, pp. 92–110. —— (1998) ‘“Make a complete break with the past”. Memory and post-colonial modernity in Ghanaian Pentecostalist discourse’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 28/3, pp. 316–349. Muir, Edward (1997). Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Olomide, Koffi (2009). BB gout. In Bour ezanga Kombo, CD (Paris). —— (1998). Synza. In Viva la Musica and Papa Wemba: Ngoyarto NG 0108 CD (Paris). Parry, Jonathan (1986). ‘The gift, the Indian gift and the “Indian gift”’, Man, NS, 21/3, pp. 453–73. Pietz, William (1985). ‘The problem of the fetish, I’, Anthropology and Aesthetics, 9, pp. 5–17. —— (1987). ‘The problem of the fetish, II ’, Anthropology and Aesthetics, 13, pp. 23–45. —— (1988). ‘The problem of the fetish, III a: Bosman’s Guinea and the enlightenment theory of fetishism’, Anthropology and Aesthetics, 16, pp. 105–24. Pype, Kateryn (2006). ‘Dancing for God or the Devil: Pentecostal discourse on popular dance in Kinshasa’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 36/3–4, pp. 296–318. Rowlands, Michael and Jean-Pierre Warnier (1988). ‘Sorcery, power and the modern state in Cameroon’, Man, 23/1, pp. 118–132. Simaro, Lutumba (2000 [1974]). Mabele. In Franco et le T.P. OK Jazz 1972/1973/1974, CD (Paris). Strother, Zoe S. (2000). ‘From performative utterance to performative object: Pende theories of speech, blood sacrifice, and power objects’, Anthropology and Aesthetics, 37, pp. 49–71. Thornton, John (1984). ‘The development of an African catholic church in the kingdom of Kongo, 1491–1750’, Journal of African History, 25/2, pp. 147–67. —— (1998). The Kongolese Saint Anthony Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian movement, 1684–1706 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Tonda, Joseph (2005). Le souverain moderne: le corps du pouvoir en Afrique central (Congo, Gabon) (Paris: Karthala). Trapido, Joe (forthcoming). ‘The political economy of migration and reputation in Kinshasa’, Africa, Journal of the International African Institute. Tylor, Edward B. (2010 [1871]). Primitive Culture, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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Vangu, Ngimbi I. (1997). Jeunesse, funérailles et contestation socio-politique en Afrique: le cas de l’ex-Zaïre (Paris: Harmattan). Vansina, Jan (1990). Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa (Madison, WI, and London: University of Wisconsin Press). Warnier, Jean-Pierre (2007). The Pot-King: The Body and Technologies of Power (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill). Worsley, Peter (1970). The trumpet shall sound: a study of ‘Cargo’ cults in Melanesia (London: Paladin). Young, Crawford and Thomas Turner (1985). The rise and decline of the Zairian state (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press).

Chapter 10

Making Matter Matter The Santo Daime Ritual of Feitio Andrew Dawson

There is a story in the rich oral history of Santo Daime about a man who strove to make an extra-strong dose of the sacramental tea known as ‘daime’. After boasting to fellow members of the potency of his daime, the day finally came when the sacramental tea was to be ritually consumed. Upon drinking the daime, however, the man’s ritual co-participants felt nothing, nothing at all. Despite his best efforts to produce a super-strength brew, and irrespective of its psychoactive constituents, the daime proved wholly ineffectual. The moral of the tale is twofold. On the one hand, this typical ‘pride before a fall’ tale highlights the boastful arrogance of the man as an impediment to the spiritual force of the daime he had made. In so doing, the story points up the centrality of humility and virtue to the successful manufacture ( feitio) of daime – and, by extension, to life in general. On the other hand, the story signals a broader metaphysical truth: daime is more than the sum total of its organic ingredients; it is irreducible to its material parts. As such, it was neither physical weakness nor technical error which let the man down – his failings were moral, not practical. The spiritual force of the daime was impeded by a spiritual fault, not a material one. The Santo Daime religion centres upon the ritual consumption of the psychoactive beverage known generically as ‘ayahuasca’ but called ‘daime’ by adepts (daimistas) who view it as a religious sacrament (Gregorim 1991). Regarded as an entheogenic plant teacher, the spirit of daime materialises

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through the combination of two native Amazonian plants – the vine Banisteriopsis caapi and the leaf of the bush Psychotria viridis. The combination of these two plants occurs at the ritual of the feitio. Drawing on sustained practical engagement with Santo Daime, this chapter focuses on the feitio ritual and explores the processes involved in the materialisation of the spirit of daime through the combination of its constituent parts. In addition to detailing the practical dynamics at play, this chapter engages the beliefs and values of daimistas, not least with respect, first, to the belief that one’s psychological and physical disposition during the feitio has a direct impact upon the character of the daime produced; and second, to the conviction that ritual participation produces a qualitatively new kind of self. The most fundamental of daimista practices, the feitio involves the reciprocal transformation of plant and person in such a way that the spiritual efficacy of each is implicated in their material embroilment and ritual co-production. What follows opens with a brief historical overview of the emergence, national spread and subsequent internationalisation of Santo Daime. The intention of this section is to highlight the various spiritual-moral strands which have been woven together to form Santo Daime’s highly variegated religious repertoire. The main section of the chapter treats the ritual of feitio through which the sacramental tea of daime is produced. Building upon preceding discussions and drawing on first-hand experience of a number of feitios, this section engages the practical processes and symbolic dynamics at play by situating them within the overarching cosmovision of the Santo Daime religion.1 The chapter concludes by further exploring the act of ritual co-production at the heart of the feitio, and its mutual implication of ceremonial object (i.e. daime), ritual subject and communal context.

Santo Daime: religiosity and ritual

Santo Daime is the oldest of Brazil’s ayahuasca religions and the most internationally widespread. The word ‘ayahuasca’ derives from the Quechua language and means ‘soul vine’ or ‘vine of the dead’ (Luna 1986). When applied to the ayahuasca religions of Brazil (i.e. Barquinha, Santo Daime and the Union of the Vegetable), the generic term ‘ayahuasca’ denotes the combination of vine and shrub leaves mentioned above (Dawson 2007 67–98). Ayahuasca is a psychoactive substance traditionally consumed by indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon which passed to non-indigenous peoples through its use among mixed-race communities and rubbertappers in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Known emically as ‘daime’, ayahuasca is regarded by daimistas as an ‘entheogen’

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whose properties facilitate the interaction of humankind with supernatural agents or forces (Polari 1999). Lauded by the hymns of Santo Daime, ayahuasca is celebrated as a ‘teacher’ and ‘Holy Light’ whose consumption engenders ‘truth’, ‘love’, ‘wisdom’, ‘understanding’, ‘force’, ‘power’, ‘cure’ and ‘cleansing’.2 The religious repertoire of Santo Daime is an amalgam of popular Catholic, indigenous, esoteric, Spiritist, Afro-Brazilian and New Age beliefs and practices. Of a highly variegated and transformative nature, the daimista repertoire is a living palimpsest whose originary components are overlaid, but never wholly erased, by subsequent additions and developments. Santo Daime was founded among the mixed-race, semi-rural peasantry of the Brazilian Amazonian state of Acre by Raimundo Irineu Serra (1892–1971). Known commonly as ‘Master Irineu’, Irineu Serra is held by many to be the reincarnation of the spirit of Jesus. Based at the community of Alto Santo, Santo Daime emerged as a recognisably distinct religious movement in the early part of the mid-twentieth century.3 Throughout the first phase of its existence under Master Irineu, the beliefs and practices of north-west ‘caboclo’ culture (notably, popular Catholicism and Afro-Amazonian religiosity) shaped the formative religious repertoire of the nascent daimista community.4 Influenced principally by the Esoteric Circle of the Communion of Thought, these foundational components were progressively overlaid with an esoteric worldview whose religio-moral preoccupations reflected the typically modern aspirations of its formative European traditions of Anthroposophy, Rosicrucianism and Theosophy (see Moura da Silva 2006: 225–40). More displaced than erased, the foundational cosmovision populated by saints and spirits was incrementally subsumed within an overlay of rational-ethical concerns for the ‘higher self’ and its evolutionary nurture. Subsequent to Irineu Serra’s death an offshoot organisation known as Cefluris (Eclectic Centre of the Universal Flowing Light Raimundo Irineu Serra) was founded by Sebastião Mota de Melo (1920–90).5 Known as ‘Padrinho Sebastião’, Mota de Melo was a disciple of Master Irineu who was unsuccessful in securing the leadership of Alto Santo after its founder’s death. Padrinho Sebastião is believed by Cefluris members to be the reincarnation of the spirit of John the Baptist. Cefluris is today headquartered at Céu do Mapiá in the state of Amazonas. On the back of the organisational expansion of Cefluris, Santo Daime reached Brazil’s major conurbations (e.g. Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo) in the early 1980s, before spreading abroad. Embroiled in the formation of Cefluris and reflecting the mediumistic inclinations of its founder, spirit-orientated activities

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were reactivated as important components of the daimista repertoire. Rather than the formative influences of popular Catholicism and afroAmazonian religiosities, the primary driver was now that of Kardecist Spiritism (MacRae 1992). Towards the end of Padrinho Sebastião’s life, however, the prominence of Spiritism was incrementally complemented by elements appropriated from the Afro-Brazilian religion of Umbanda (Groisman 1999). Cefluris is led today by Alfredo Gregório de Melo (son of Padrinho Sebastião) and Alex Polari, who are regarded by some as the respective reincarnations of the biblical kings Solomon and David. Thanks mainly to Cefluris, Santo Daime has a presence throughout the American continent, in many of Europe’s capitals, in the most urban-industrialised regions of Australasia, in parts of the Middle East and in South Africa. Consolidated under the leadership of Padrinhos Alfredo and Alex, Umbandist influences enjoy an established repertorial prominence (Dawson, forthcoming). They are, though, being increasingly complemented through the ongoing appropriation of discourse and practice from a range of traditional (e.g. Candomblé) repertoires and alternative (e.g. new-age) worldviews (Arruda et al 2006). Reflecting its progressively international character, and relative to the particular domestic scene, established Brazilian components increasingly sit alongside discursive and practical ingredients culled from the native cosmovisions, alternative paradigms and prevailing traditions of national contexts across a growing portion of the globe. Lauded by Santo Daime’s extensive range of hymns, the Catholic saints and nature spirits of its earliest period today sit alongside the later arrivals of Kardecist notaries and Umbandist entities who, in turn, continue to find new ritual companions in the spiritual beings and supernatural agencies native to Australasia, Europe and North America. Visible within individual rites and manifest through its diversifying ceremonial portfolio, the palimpsestic and fast evolving character of the Santo Daime repertoire makes for a variegated ritual terrain. Attempting to encapsulate the deep-seated variegation of its discourse and practice, I have elsewhere adapted Besnier’s use of Bakhtin to describe the ritual repertoire of Santo Daime Cefluris as ‘hyper-heteroglossic’ in character (2011: 149). Within the same piece I trace the growing appearance of nontraditional forms of spirit-orientated activity which I ground in the now dominant influence of urban-professional classes, whose demographic profile and existential preoccupations are markedly different from Santo Daime’s formative generations. By way of illustration I cite both the ongoing transformation of Santo Daime’s traditional ritual practices and

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the addition of new ceremonial forms to the movement’s established repertoire. The growing prevalence of ‘interactive possession’ within traditional ritual contexts is the key transformation tracked by this earlier piece, while the appearance of new rites (e.g. Mesa Branca and São Miguel) within the ceremonial calendar and employment of extra-calendrical practices (e.g. giras) combine to evidence ongoing changes to the daimista repertoire (ibid: 143–61). Although a miscellany of established and ad hoc ceremonies are practised by contemporary daimistas, the mainstay of Santo Daime’s religious repertoire is almost universally recognised as consisting of the four traditional rituals of the ‘Dance’, ‘Mass’, ‘Concentration’ and feitio (Cemin 2004: 347–82). Whether in respect of their scheduling, of their internal character or in comparison with each other, these rituals again reflect the palimpsestic nature of the daimista worldview. From the practices employed, through the material objects mobilised, to the respective articulation of beliefs, each of these rituals evidences the variegated formation of the Santo Daime repertoire. Such variegation is further reinforced as different communities across the movement employ, mobilise and articulate Santo Daime’s repertorial components in ways which reflect local dynamics as much as – sometimes more than – they adhere to established conventions and traditions. For example, in a community heavily influenced by AfroBrazilian (e.g. Candomblé and Umbanda) traditions, symbols and practices appropriated from these ritual repertoires impact upon the practical and interpretative experiences of daimistas whose engagement with Santo Daime is mediated by or interspersed with them. In the same vein, daimista communities of a traditional esoteric (e.g. Theosophy) or New Age bent likewise refract the established motifs and inherited rituals of Santo Daime in ways which engender variations in both objective corporate practice and subjective religious experience. In respect of the increasingly popular appearance of the practice and experience of spirit possession (incorporação) across Santo Daime communities, for example, some daimistas employ Afro-Brazilian tropes to describe possession as an event involving suppression of the conscious self and an inability to remember anything from the point of actual possession to the moment of ‘despatch’. Others, however, adopt a typically Spiritist line to describe themselves as remaining conscious throughout the possession episode. Here, some regard their subjective presence as integral to directing the possessing spirit; whereas others talk of the self as an interested but passive third-party looking on to what the spirit is doing through their body. Evincing traditional esoteric influences, some daimistas articulate possession

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as an ecstatic process of ‘astral flight’ comprising both the dislocation of the self from its physical moorings and the taking of disembodied trips across the globe or visits to different historical periods. Indigenous shamanistic and popular folk motifs of soul-flight are likewise employed to describe disincarnate journeys to assorted spiritual realms populated by supernatural agents of both a human and non-human kind. Others, however, eschew both enstatic and ecstatic conceptualisations of spirit-orientated activity. Instead, New Age notions of expanded consciousness or broadened spiritual vision are employed to articulate interaction with the world of spirits. At the same time, some daimistas use psycho-spiritual tropes to describe the ‘spirits’ with whom they interact as psychical counterparts of multifaceted aspects of the material self (see Dawson 2011: 143–61). Prior to treating the feitio, and by way of furnishing a broader repertorial context within which this ritual might be situated, a few brief comments on the Dance, Mass and Concentration may prove fruitful. Inherited from its popular Catholic legacy, Santo Daime’s liturgical calendar maps closely onto the festival periods and feast days of Brazil’s Luso-Christian heritage (Goulart 2004b: 277–301). Celebrated at other points of the year (e.g. anniversaries), the Dance (bailado) rituals, at which Santo Daime sings its most important hymnals (hinários), are scheduled relative to the traditional Catholic calendar. As Labate and Pacheco observe, not only the scheduling but significant portions of the festive content and liturgical structure of the bailado owe much to the popular Catholic paradigm from which they were appropriated (2004: 303–44). Although very much a modified version thereof, the daimista ritual of the Mass (missa) likewise exhibits explicit derivation from its popular Catholic counterpart. Such derivation, however, is embellished by narrative and practical components borrowed from esoteric and Spiritist repertoires. Unlike the bailado and missa, the ritual of Concentration (concentração) owes little to the popular Catholic heritage of its creators. Instead, both the scheduling and intellective preoccupations of the Concentration reflect the patterns and processes of the esoteric paradigm. As if further to underscore its contrasting provenance, the Concentration has little by way of festive ethos and is, unlike the Dance, undertaken in a seated position conducive to the esoteric disciplines of introspection and self-scrutiny. Although prayers are said and hymns may be sung in parts of the ritual, the majority of the Concentration is spent in silent meditation which, as if to reinforce its introspective intent, is undertaken with the lights turned down. While tied to different calendrical schedules, each of these rituals usually commences after sunset and is generally executed indoors. Unlike

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the Concentration and Mass, the Dance is performed standing up, with little if any recourse to seating. With a single break in the middle, the bailado may last anything up to 14 hours. The missa is the shortest ritual of these three, but may still take three or four hours to perform. Although I have attended Concentrations which have lasted little over three hours, I have also known this ritual to extend to five or six. Regimented according to sex, age, seniority and (sometimes) height, participants in each of these rituals face inward towards a central table nearest to which the most senior members are located.6 Although actual paraphernalia differs from group to group and ritual to ritual, the central table is usually laid with a wooden two-sparred cross (cruzeiro) draped by a rosary, statuettes of Mary and Jesus, and photographs of Master Irineu and – relative to the group – other authority figures (e.g. Padrinho Sebastião and Padrinhos Alfredo and Alex). Candles, flowers, water and incense sticks are also among the most common items to adorn the central table. In addition, some communities may add statuettes of Catholic saints and a Bible, while others might have representations of Afro-Brazilian entities or native spirits along with crystals, oriental icons and miscellaneous revered scriptures. While each of these rituals has its own particular rationale, they share the common concern to generate a positive spiritual current which binds participants vertically to the supernatural plane and horizontally with each other. Once generated, the spiritual current is then harnessed for the benefit of both ritual participants (material and spiritual) and those at a distance for whom this astral energy is likewise mobilised. Nuanced relative to the ritual in question, the generation of the spiritual current at all times requires the generic correlation of collective effort and individual focus. In so doing, the collective generation of the spiritual current is made reliant upon the sustained and focused contribution of individual ritual actors, while the individual participant is understood to be woven within a web of corporate obligation which both delimits autonomous action and corrects, if not censures, individual behaviour relative to the wider dynamics of communal ceremonial practice. Again reflective of its palimpsestic character, daimista ritual practice comprises a form of communal individualism which combines corporate responsibility and individualistic focus in a manner which seemingly does injury to neither. Employed by older generations of daimistas, the designation of rituals as ‘trials’ (provas) reflects their often arduous and demanding nature. The now commoner term ‘work’ (trabalho) holds similar connotations. On the one hand, the psychoactive effects and physiological impact of daime engender a range of challenges and discomforts for the individual which

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require vigilance and, at times, careful management. Corporal control in an altered state of consciousness is a skill in itself. On the other hand, and in combination with these factors, the physical demands of often prolonged ritual participation which is predicated on sustained co-ordination with collective ritual dynamics makes for a doubly demanding experience. The daimista ritual space is no place for the faint-hearted. In addition to notions of trial and work, ritual practice is discursively framed by the virtues of discipline and steadfastness (firmeza). In combination, discipline and steadfastness enable participants to remain in their place (ficar em seu lugar) and so meet the collective responsibilities of ceremonial participation while reaping the subjective rewards of individual focus and application.

Making matter matter

The feitio Although the official beginnings of Santo Daime are often traced to an early form of Concentration held in 1930, the already well-established use of ayahuasca by this date makes the feitio the oldest daimista ritual (Couto 2004: 385–411). The fact that this ritual involves the production of Santo Daime’s sacramental tea also makes it the most important. Although the most important of daimista rituals, the feitio has not been immune to innovations wrought by successive generations or different branches of the movement. While the basic format of conjoining vine and leaf has remained relatively unaltered across daimista groups, a variety of practice is employed in respect of, for example, scheduling, tools, corporal regimes, participatory restrictions and sexual divisions of space and labour. Once tied to the lunar cycle, the feitio is now practised by many groups relative to stock levels and variations in demand. Although manual labour remains the only means by which some communities will practise this ritual, for others (and for various reasons) mechanical aids are regarded as a now common component of the process. In the same vein, some groups restrict participation to full members, or practise strict dietary and sexual regimes around the time of feitio, while others do not. At the same time, while certain communities operate inflexible restrictions in respect of sexual divisions of labour and space, others are more pragmatic in the manner of their application. The importance of the feitio to the Santo Daime community goes beyond the literal production of its sacramental tea. The fact that many Santo Daime churches rely upon others for the provision of their sacrament gives the feitio a strategic importance. In addition to bestowing a certain status upon those communities with sufficient resources to stage it, the

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feitio plays an important part in the establishment of alliances, along with their inherent hierarchies and dependencies. When the Cefluris movement first spread beyond its traditional home of the Amazon region, for example, the reliance of newly established groups on Amazonian supplies of daime played a key role in underwriting the spiritual and organisational authority of the mother community in Mapiá. Over time, however, the transplanting of vine and leaf to other parts of Brazil has undermined traditional dependencies, which in turn is eroding established hierarchies, along with their implications for organisational identity and cohesion. In its current phase, the international spread of Santo Daime has replicated the ongoing strategic importance of the feitio. On the one hand, hostile environmental conditions serve to limit the number of places in which vine and leaf can be successfully cultivated outside of South America. To my knowledge, and despite numerous attempts, vine and leaf have only been successfully transplanted to two other regions of the globe.7 Despite their successful cultivation, however, the relative scarcity and immaturity of these plants continues to limit their ability to provision domestic ayahuasca production. On the other hand, the precarious legal status or clandestine character of ayahuasca consumption outside of Brazil places severe restrictions on the ability to cultivate and process its constituent parts. The primary active agent of ayahuasca is n,n-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) which has been classified as a Schedule 1 substance by a number of international conventions (Tupper 2008: 297–303, 2009: 117–36). Even in those jurisdictions where the ritual consumption of ayahuasca is protected by law, such juridical protections do not extend to the actual manufacture and distribution of ayahuasca (Labate 2005: 397–457). Consequently, the overwhelming majority of Santo Daime communities around the world continue to rely on supplies of daime furnished by feitios undertaken in Brazil.8 And, in parallel with the earliest years of the movement’s spread beyond the Amazon, such reliance is managed through strategic alliances and accompanied by organisational dependencies which continue to underwrite established institutional hierarchies. In addition to being the oldest and most important ritual of the Santo Daime repertoire, the feitio is the longest and, at points, the most arduous. In terms of duration, and unlike the other rituals mentioned above, the feitio has little by way of a definitive format, with consecutive phases forming a lineal progression from beginning to end. In effect, the feitio lasts as long as its organisers wish, with the length of the ritual usually determined by the amount of daime the feitores wish to produce or, conversely, the amount of time it takes to process the materials harvested. While I have been involved

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in feitios lasting no more than two days, I have also known them to last anything up to and beyond two weeks. At the same time, I have participated in feitios which have run according to schedule and, as noted below, in rituals which have not. Irrespective of the labour involved or the inconvenience caused, the general rule of thumb is that, once harvested, all the materials must be used. While the constituent components of ayahuasca and the concrete processes of its manufacture differ among native Amazonian tribes, they remain more or less constant across Brazil’s three ayahuasca religions and throughout the Santo Daime movement as a whole. Once harvested, the vine is cleaned of debris and then macerated. The vine does not come into contact with water until, in its macerated state, it is combined with the leaf. Leaves are picked whole from the shrub and then cleaned by hand. Once clean, the leaves are washed and then, still whole, combined with the macerated vine as consecutive layers in a pan. Water is added, the layered pan is placed on a fire and the mixture is boiled until the liquid content reduces to the desired amount. The reduced liquid is then set aside and subsequently added, along with other such reductions, to a fresh batch of vine and leaf for further boiling and reduction. The combination and re-boiling of reductions may continue for a number of cycles, the precise amount which is determined by the strength of daime sought. At the same time, the boiled mash of vine and leaf may be re-cooked with a new infusion of fresh water (a later innovation) or, as is more traditional, disposed of after a single cooking cycle. In combination with stocking and managing a wood-fuelled fire and an often rudimentary oven system, as well as ensuring that sufficient stocks of vine and leaf are ready for use and that pans are cleaned and appropriately prepared between cooking cycles, the re-use of cooked mash and re-boiling of reductions make for a highly complex process. Such complexity naturally increases relative to the number and sizes of pan being used. While I have participated in a feitio involving no more than two ten-litre pans, I have worked in a ritual using nine pans each holding well in excess of 50 litres. Furthermore, once the process of cooking has gone through its first cycle, different pans may require different amounts of heat and differing lengths of time on the fire. At all times, then, feitores must be aware of what stage of the cooking cycle they have reached and what kind of reduction they are working with. The intense and sustained concentration necessary to the successful management of this process is applied within an often bustling environment in which axes are wielded to chop wood, knives are used to clean the vine, red-hot pans are moved between different points

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of the oven, boiling liquid is decanted or transferred between pans, and steaming mash is prepared for reuse or disposed of. The division of manual labour and the use of ritual space within the feitio is a material mirroring of the sacred plants’ metaphysical properties. To remodel a term of Pierre Bourdieu (1992: 139), ritual space can here be understood as a ‘structured structure’ whose frame and contents are determined relative to an overarching supernatural reference. Following traditional gendered distinctions, the vine is held to comprise typically masculine characteristics such as strength and power.9 Composed of ‘masculine force’, the vine is an organic embodiment of the ‘Eternal Father’ (Pai eterno). In contrast, the leaf comprises gentleness and subtlety. By virtue of its physical embodiment of the ‘Divine Mother’ (Mãe divina), the leaf is believed to be infused with ‘feminine light’. As an organic manifestation of female cosmic energies, the leaf is harvested and given its first (usually dry) cleaning by women. Once picked clean of debris, the leaves are then taken to the casa de feitio (lit. ‘ feitio house’) where they are combined and boiled with the vine. In keeping with its masculine force, the vine is harvested and cleaned only by men. The cleaning and subsequent maceration of the vine usually occurs at the casa de feitio which is, except in very particular circumstances, a male-only space. Although the physical demands of daime production are sometimes cited as a rationale for the masculinisation of the casa de feitio, as with other daimista rites the belief that the ceremonial mixing of sexual energies should be minimised plays a key role in this gendered division of ritual space. At the same time, the female management of domestic space and collective production of meals during the feitio is held to provide something of a ritual balance to the male-only space of the casa de feitio.10 The fusion of cosmic energies effected by the eventual combination of vine and leaf is thereby paralleled by the productive mutuality of the gendered, but complementary, labours of the casa de feitio and communal canteen. The sexual division of labour and ritual space is more, though, than a passive mirroring of universal metaphysical referents. In addition to being a ‘structured structure’, the ritual of feitio may also be understood – again appropriating Bourdieu – as a ‘structuring structure’. As noted above, the spiritual efficacy of daime is held to be influenced by the subjective demeanour of those involved in its production. By restricting the harvesting and cleaning of the leaf to women, the feitio ritual allows for the concentrated interplay of feminine energies. In effect, the female-only processing of the leaf engenders a recursive dynamic in which the feminine energies of both parties are intensified and refined through their prolonged ritual interaction. Likewise, the male-only processing of the vine generates

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a mutually reinforcing dynamic within which the masculine forces of each are strengthened and purified. While vine and leaf are primed for the ritual consummation of their union, man and woman are disposed to benefit optimally from the fruits of this union. For both men and women, focused and, at times, prolonged interaction with the organic constituents of daime comprises an act of ritual co-production through which the material and transcendent dimensions of each undergo an all-embracing transformation. The ritual format of the feitio engenders a distinctive mode of generating and maintaining the spiritual current essential to the efficacy of all daimista rites. While hymns may be sung in parts of the ritual, the overall atmosphere of quiet, sustained contemplation entails the spiritual current being generated and maintained not through song but through concentrated subjective intent and individual application, orchestrated through collective routine and corporate practice. At the same time, the timings and processes involved, the degree of interactive cooperation and the extent of physical labour required magnify the collective consequences of otherwise individual failings. As with the daimista ritual repertoire in general, but less obvious to the untrained eye, the particular processes of the feitio are regulated by a hierarchical dynamic which apportions roles relative to status and experience – with the former not always determined by the latter. That there are no ritual bystanders in daimista ceremonial practice is a fact writ large by the rite of feitio. An archetypal rite of passage, the feitio is regarded by daimistas as a spiritual ‘trial’ par excellence. In combination with these dynamics, the extent of the discipline and steadfastness involved makes the feitio a ritual microcosm of the religious life of Santo Daime as a whole; it is an apprenticeship within an apprenticeship. The feitio is a paradigmatic ritual in that it exemplifies all that the narrative and practice of Santo Daime revere as integral to its spiritual efficacy. On the one hand, Santo Daime’s spiritual efficacy may be understood as, in part, constituted by the ritual efficacy of its collective ceremonial practice. Such is the case because ritual space (as ‘structuring structure’) provides an arena in which corporate ceremonial practice generates the collective spiritual current whose force and focus magnifies individual exertion through its catalyzing and dynamic affect. As a consequence, collective ceremonial practice furnishes a return on subjective ritual action which is far greater than that ordinarily available to an individual working in ritual isolation. As noted above, the different rituals of the Santo Daime repertoire each have their own ceremonial rationale which determines both the mode of spiritual current to be generated and the particular manner of its manufacture. This, in turn, dictates the kinds of ritual efficacy available for subjective

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appropriation. Directly indebted to its origins in popular Catholic festivals, for example, the Dance ritual generates a festive and celebratory spiritual current whose character is both subjectively joyful and uplifting. Given its typically ‘light’ nature, however, the spiritual force generated by the Dance cannot be expected to support the more demanding processes of self-scrutiny, purification and intercessory healing which rely upon the kinds of current engendered by the ‘heavier’ rituals of, for example, Concentration, Mass and Cure. In addition to the manufacture of daime, and as a mixture of Amazonian caboclo and esoteric elements, the spiritual efficacy of the feitio is held to reside chiefly in the opportunity it provides for individual purification which is achieved as much through physical as mental exertion. The ritual efficacy of collective ceremonial practice is complemented by the religio-moral efficacy experienced by the individual subject. Indeed, such is the mutually implicating relationship between these two facets of Santo Daime’s spiritual efficacy that neither is possible without the other. On the one hand, the collective generation of the spiritual current which is central to ritual efficacy is reliant upon the ceremonial exertion of individual participants. On the other, the ritual benefits (e.g. purification, healing, edification) experienced by individual participants are only available thanks to the spiritual current manufactured, harnessed and focussed by the corporate ceremonial context. In addition to the benefits of collective ritual action, the subjective experience of religio-moral efficacy relies also upon individual application in all walks of life. Grounded both in the popular Amazonian religio-cultural complex and the religious moralism of Spiritism, the concept of ‘vigilance’ informs daimistas of the need to be constantly alert to the ethical pitfalls and spiritual dangers of everyday life. In such a way are strong parallels drawn between the disciplines and exertions employed within the formal ritual arena and those to be used within the everyday course of daily living. As with corporate ceremonial practice, the benefits accrued in everyday life rest ultimately upon the continued alertness and disciplined application of individual religio-moral action. As with the ritual efficacy of collective ceremonial practice, the religiomoral benefits accrued by individual action are underwritten by a mechanistic causal dynamic which is jointly derived from popular religious and esoteric milieus. Articulated today through the esoteric concept of ‘reciprocity’ (e.g. law of return), the spiritual efficacy of daimista practice is underpinned by a direct (i.e. mechanistic) correlation between the amount of effort expended and the extent of the reward returned (in this life or the next).11 In respect of its subjective benefits, the most common expressions of Santo Daime’s spiritual efficacy relate to individual experiences

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of healing. In almost every daimista community I’ve been to I have been told accounts of healing which stretch from leg sores that wouldn’t close, through addictions to drink and drugs, to cancers which conventional medicine had diagnosed as terminal. In many cases, healing occurred soon after the individual had commenced participation in Santo Daime. At the same time, many of these accounts included episodes of relapse brought on by breaks in ritual attendance (‘moving away from the daime’) or failures of vigilance and the ensuing erosion of everyday religio-moral regimes.12 Owing to its unique combination of sacramental production and psychophysical exertion, the ritual of feitio is regarded as highly efficacious in respect of the spiritual, moral and material benefits which ensue from ceremonial participation. Ritual co-production P: I was there yesterday and I saw them kicking the vine [jagube] to move it into a pile, stepping on it also. It’s sacred, a sacred thing. You just don’t do that. There should always be respect. I learnt to collect the vine from people taught by Padrinho Sebastião. I learnt that you don’t tread on the vine, you treat it with respect. It’s a sacred thing! You don’t throw it either, you respect it. If you want to put it somewhere, you walk over to that spot and you place it there. Yes, I was taught that there are times when you might have to tread on it. If there’s a mass of vine fallen down on a [forest] path and you have to clear it, then you have to walk on it as you cut a path through and clear it out of the way. But even then, it’s still a sacred thing; you must treat it with respect. I remember a man from Acre, a shaman; he was Kaxinawá [an Amazonian tribe]. He said that during the feitio, when they’re making ayahuasca, his people tread on the vine, throw it around, laugh and joke, and things like that. He told me that he learnt respect when he did feitio the daimista way. Now, he does things differently. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with showing happiness when doing feitio. Happiness [alegria] is a very powerful force and can add to the power of the daime. But, happiness must be tempered with respect. You must respect the vine. Did you see how they were kicking the vine and walking all over it? J: Yes, they were in a hurry as it was getting dark. P: I was going to say something but decided against it. Did you see what I did, though? Did you see me tip-toe through the vine; like this [exaggerated tip-toeing]? J: Yes, I did.

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P: Well, I did that to show how it should be done. I did it so it would register in his [i.e. M’s] head and he would learn and know for next time. Now, I’m not saying that this is the reason for the accident [to M’s hand]. But it’s all part and parcel of a lack of respect; a carelessness which has you cutting in a slapdash way [exaggerated slashing and stomping]. That’s not the way it should be done. Respect in all things. It’s a sacred thing [coisa sagrada].13 Occasioned by a machete wound to M’s hand incurred while harvesting the vine (i.e. Banisteriopsis caapi), known emically as jagube or cipó, this narrative encapsulates two complementary truths. First, and as with the leaf (i.e. Psychotria viridis) – known emically as rainha, folha or chacrona – daimistas regard the vine as a ‘sacred thing’. To the Amazonian peoples from whom the psychoactive properties of ayahuasca were first learnt, both leaf and vine are believed to be plant spirits whose primary function – at least from a human perspective – is pedagogical. Known also as ‘power plants’ by virtue of their psychoactive effects, the knowledge of the ‘plant teachers’ is accessed through their processing and subsequent ingestion (Luna 1986). By consuming the plant one is both implicated in its power and instructed in its teachings. Within the contemporary daimista movement, talk of daime as literally containing or embodying a plant spirit is generally restricted to the more traditional communities located in or near the Amazonian region. Certainly, daimistas around the world continue to use the terms ‘plant spirit’ and ‘plant teacher’. When asked to explain what they mean by these terms, however, the responses given indicate their metaphorical employment as tropes whose usage is grounded more in a nostalgic reference to Amazonian origins than it is in a metaphysical reference to given ontological realities. In actuality, most daimistas conceive of daime in a way which owes more to esoteric and New Age holistic paradigms than to traditional Amazonian worldviews. As such, daime is regarded as a substance in which the sacred, universal and all-embracing cosmic life-force is found in an especially (but not exclusively) concentrated form. In so being, daime is understood as a privileged medium whose concentration of cosmic spiritual energy allows it to serve as a ‘catalyst’ which both facilitates and enhances human interaction with the universal life-force variously interpreted as the ‘sacred’, ‘supernatural’, ‘divine’ and ‘holy’. The santo of Santo Daime can thereby be understood in a dual, but complementary, sense which alludes both to subjective religio-moral dynamics traditionally rendered by the term ‘holiness’ and to an objective metaphysical dimension traditionally

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named as ‘the holy’. Irrespective of the symbols or nomenclature employed, however, the underlying dynamics remain the same: the power experienced and instruction gained through their ingestion are what the combination of these plants bestows. The force and knowledge engendered by daime are gifts and, as such, can be withheld as well as granted. Second, the sacredness of which P speaks throughout the above extract applies not only to the organic constituents of daime but also to the manner of their processing and eventual consumption. As he says, ‘Respect in all things’. Embroiled within the reflexively nurtured ritualism of the feitio, the sacredness of daime is reflected in the ordered sacrality of its manufacture. Whether harvesting, cleaning and processing, or cooking and bottling, the manufacture of daime demands of those involved a particular demeanour which commences, as an esteemed feitor once told me, ‘with having the mind and heart in the right place’. The objective force of the daime and its constituent parts is thereby complemented by the subjective disposition of those responsible for its manufacture. As noted above, this subjective disposition has implications for the spiritual potency of the daime produced and, by extension, the ritual experiences of those who subsequently consume it. A direct correlate of daime’s objective power, the subjective condition of its makers is considered a constituent force in its spiritual efficacy. In some daimista communities the production of daime is regarded as a work of alchemic science in which the four elements of earth, water, air and fire are fused to magical effect. In others in which I have worked, the process of manufacture is understood to combine the celestial powers of sun, moon and stars. Either way, the creation of daime is just that, a creation. Through their combination and boiling, the vine and leaf – along with their inherent powers – are transmuted into something which is exponentially more than the sum total of its parts and the productive processes to which they have been subjected. Daime is, in effect, an emergent property whose spiritual efficacy is nevertheless implicated by the material nature of its constitutive elements and the physical character of its manufacture. As noted above, the transmutation of vine and leaf is paralleled by the transformation of those involved in the production of daime. The metaphysical transmutation of the sacrament and the religiomoral transformation of the self are mutually implicated through the act of ritual co-production. As with other parts of the daimista repertoire, notions of subjective transformation through participation in the feitio are allied with understandings of ritual as a ‘trial’ (prova) which both tests one’s mettle and, through the

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act of testing, purifies those involved. Likewise in keeping with standard repertorial practice, daime is consumed at regular intervals throughout the entire feitio.14 While temperament and demeanour are valorised as contributing to the spiritual efficacy of daime, they are also regarded as subject to trial and testing – which, by implication, means that they may also be found wanting. At one time necessary to the constitutive processes of producing daime, the real value of subjective disposition remains at all times contingent on its ability to meet the demands of ritual participation. In keeping with the meritocratic ethos of the daimista repertoire in general, participation in the ritual of feitio is a privileged opportunity in which the benefits of success are constantly measured against the costs of failure and the consequent loss of spiritual efficacy and the subjective transformation it enables. Undertaken with the Cefluris branch of Santo Daime, the first feitio I was involved in took place in 2005 with a community whose daime serviced a number of churches in the border regions of the states of Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. The feitio commenced with a sixhour ritual comprising an extended Concentration the latter part of which included the singing of a local hinário (hymnal). Performed in the church and ending shortly after 2.00am, the ritual allowed for less than four hours’ sleep before the commencement of harvesting at first light. It is the tradition of this particular daime community that, once lit, the fires of the oven (fornalha) should burn continuously throughout the entire feitio. In addition to maximising production, this requirement considerably increases the demands upon those working at the casa de feitio. In so doing, this requirement also maximises opportunity for personal transformation made possible by the additional challenges involved. Originally planned as a three-day feitio, the ritual was extended by a day and a half due to the accidental harvesting of too many leaves. As all leaf or vine should be used subsequent to harvesting, it proved necessary to collect more vine to complement the leaf and chop more wood to feed the, now extended, firing of the oven. Due to the unplanned nature of the ritual’s extension, a good number of those involved in the feitio had to leave on the third evening to be home in time to meet prior engagements or prepare for the impending working week. This exodus left a diminished group whose reduced size and circumstances soon leant themselves to the self-designation of ‘righteous remnant’. Although the demands of the feitio had increased considerably relative to the size of the group now present, so too had the opportunity for ritual trial and all that it entails by way of personal transformation and spiritual merit.

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Up until this time the casa de feitio had been manned by a small cadre whose almost constant attendance was complemented by alternate shifts, who snatched light meals and some small sleep when not on duty. Among those in attendance virtually around the clock was the community leader (Padrinho) who, by way of illustrating the need for perpetual vigilance in all things, informed me that: ‘Jesus slept for only half an hour at night and even then he did so sitting up, never lying down.’ The much reduced nature of the group negated the possibility of alternate shifts, and thereby required that all those still present stay at the casa de feitio for the remainder of the ritual. Having had little sleep over the past two nights, for me and my fellow shift workers the third day of the feitio commenced at 6.00am on Sunday and finished at 3.00pm on Monday.15 As Sunday evening passed into early Monday morning, and the cold mountain air seemed to gnaw at every extremity, talk among those present turned to Jesus’s experiences shortly before and after his arrest. With the Jerusalem authorities closing in on him and his followers, Jesus found himself abandoned and alone as his inner circle of disciples fled in fear of their lives, slept when they had been asked to remain alert and, when approached, ultimately denied association with him. Recapitulating traditional daimista notions of trial, steadfastness and discipline, we, like Jesus’s disciples, were now charged with loyalty and vigilance. Were we, like his first earthly followers, to fail this test, abandon the ‘cosmic Christ’ (Christo cósmico) and thereby fall short in our duties both to the daime and our own ‘higher self’ (eu superior)? Though implicit, the moral lesson of this comparison was clear. While we, as individuals, were being tested, the consequences of our actions were collective. As at other points of the feitio, the Padrinho and other prominent members of the community moved among us, their fellow workers, sharing stories of prior feitios and of their experiences with the daime. They also complemented the technical aspects of daime production with reminders of the need for an attitude of meditative reflection, prayerfulness, patience and love. If the daime is to embody the ‘spirit of God’, we, its makers, must do likewise. The spiritual transformation engendered through the meeting of our responsibilities was a moral correlate of the metaphysical transmutation of base matter into the holy sacrament of daime. And just as this transmutation involves an act of ritual co-production through which daime and feitor are mutually constituted, so too are the trials and responsibilities of the individual self met and discharged through the aid and support of collective effort and corporate will.

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As noted above, the Santo Daime worldview employs a metaphysical holism which treats every aspect of material existence as infused by an all-embracing, universal life-force whose transformative energies may be harnessed through the mutually complementary dynamics of collective ritual practice and individual religio-moral action. An important outworking of Santo Daime’s holistic worldview is the experiential fusion of the realms traditionally designated the ‘material’ and the ‘spiritual’ – spheres commonly regarded by secular modernity as otherwise discrete. No longer regarded as categorically distinct, each sphere is held to be internally related to the other such that what belongs to the material pertains to the spiritual and what pertains to the spiritual belongs to the material. In effect, Santo Daime’s collapsing of the material and the spiritual constitutes an act of re-enchantment through which the ‘things of this world’ are appropriated as an expression of and, thereby, a means to an overarching (as well as underlying and inherent) metaphysical reality. As the material realm is sacralised so the spiritual arena is materialised. As a consequence, the spiritual sphere is immanentised by its grounding in material processes while the material realm is valorised as a means to spiritual realisation. Founded upon the unproblematical transposition of material and spiritual dynamics, the mutually implicating processes of ritual co-production which lie at the heart of the feitio may be described as a duality without dualism. The complementarity of agency involved in the feitio thereby transcends simplistic binary distinctions such as those between material and spiritual, subject and object, self and other. In the first instance, and as with the daimista repertoire in general, ritual participation in the feitio is more about transformation than transcendence. Paralleled by the transmutation of leaf and vine into the holy sacrament of daime, the spiritual transformation of self comprises the religio-moral refashioning of individual materiality. Certainly, the religious transformation sought involves elements of transcendence through which lower (inferior) aspects of the self – including its base animalism – are superseded through the disciplined application of a hybrid spiritual-physical regime. To this extent, the higher self emerges like a butterfly from its chrysalis, leaving behind the detritus of a former and altogether baser existence. The overall dynamic, however, is one in which spiritual transformation is achieved through the ritual transfiguration of the entire psychophysical unit, understood generically as mind, body and soul. Religious vitality is achieved through and not despite the body. Manifested through notions of bodily management rather than physical suppression, the aforementioned themes of trial, discipline and

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steadfastness inform the feitio’s ritual inscription of a corporeal regime orientated more to the transformation of matter than its straightforward transcendence. Again in keeping with the overarching repertorial paradigm within which it sits, the feitio negates simplistic subject-object distinctions. Here, the processes of ritual co-production embroil the objective power of the daime with the subjective dynamics of individual demeanour. While impacting upon the spiritual efficacy of the daime it creates, individual subjectivity is, in turn, transformed through its participation in the metaphysical transmutation of vine and leaf. At the same time, the consumption of daime throughout the feitio blurs discrimination between ritual subject and ceremonial object. Dynamised by the spiritual force of daime, ritual practitioners are infused by an objective metaphysical power through which psychophysical energies are transfigured into something more than they normally are. The alchemic fusion of leaf and vine enacted by ritual practitioners is a process achieved under the very influence of the daime itself. Mediated by human labour, daime’s reproduction of itself comprises a self-originary act of auto-poieisis. The ritual co-production of human subject and sacramental object which sits at the heart of the feitio is, like all daimista rituals, mediated by the corporate dynamics of communal practice. Fed by the daime and reinforced through individual endeavour, a collective spiritual current both pervades and makes possible all that the feitio achieves by way of material transmutation and religio-moral transformation. Me and you, self and other, are distinctions which make little sense against the collectivist backdrop of daimista ritual practice. Realised in and through the power of the daime, the mutually implicating dynamics of collective achievement and individual application are writ large by the extended complexity and collaborative demands of the feitio. Daime, self and community: each ritually co-produced; each mutually implicated; each – combined with the others – more than the sum total of its material parts. Notes 1 Fieldwork with Santo Daime commenced in 2005, and has since been funded by the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust. Fieldwork has included participant observation with and visits to communities in Brazil, Europe and the United States. 2 Whereas daimistas believe the consumption of ayahuasca helps to generate the ‘power’ ( força) of their rituals, the singing of hymns is the principal means by which this ‘astral force’ is engaged, appropriated and channelled to form the ‘spiritual current’ essential to ceremonial efficacy.

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 3 Master Irineu is credited with inventing the term ‘Santo Daime’ which is understood as a petitionary phrase most commonly translated as ‘give me holiness’.   4 A useful overview of caboclo culture is provided by Parker (1985), while the different elements of the caboclo religio-moral worldview are treated by Furuya (1994), Galvão (1955) and Maués and Villacorta (2004).   5 The vast majority of my experience of Santo Daime pertains to the organisational context of Cefluris. Although a range of similarities exist between the various branches of Santo Daime, there are also notable differences – not least between the founding community of Alto Santo and the extended movement of Cefluris (see Goulart 2004a). While overlaps occur, what follows relates principally to Cefluris.   6 The millenarian worldview informing this regimentation is treated in Dawson (2008).   7 As far as I am aware, such transplantation has been undertaken clandestinely, thereby bypassing national restrictions and global conventions governing the international transportation of wild flora and particular plant species.   8 Despite repeated and ongoing attempts by representatives of Santo Daime and the Union of the Vegetable, international agreements have yet to be established in respect of regulating the transportation of ayahuasca from Brazil (as a legitimate export) to other countries (as a licit import). Consequently, the majority of ayahuasca ‘imported’ from Brazil is done so clandestinely. As I write there is a pending prosecution of a Santo Daime leader in the UK for ‘dealing in’ and ‘living off the proceeds of ’ a Class A substance.   9 Clearly, there is a range of traditional patriarchal dynamics in force within Santo Daime’s gendered division of ritual labour and space. While these traditional divisions are being increasingly tested and reworked as a result of the movement’s progressive domination by the urban middle classes, it is not my intention here to offer a normative critique of the gendered processes at play and the unequal power relations implicated within them. 10 The gendered division of ritual space is further reflected in the contrasts between the hymns sung by those preparing the leaves and those processing the vine. 11 Santo Daime’s belief in reincarnation allows for the deferral of rewards earned in this life to be enjoyed by the subject in future incarnations. In the same vein, the benefits of ‘cosmic merit’ (karma) accrued in past incarnations are held to be accessible in this life. 12 Instances in which healing does not occur or its cure proves ultimately to be temporary are typically accounted for by one or a number of elements which form part of Santo Daime’s overarching ‘theodicy’ (see Weber, 1991: 270–6). Here, ‘bad karma’ inherited from past lives may be regarded both as the real cause of illness and of too great an amount to be worked off in this life alone. In addition, the ‘will of the daime’ might be cited to indicate that a greater plan precludes individual healing in this life. Individual moral failings and religious weaknesses are also seen as a common source of an individual’s failure to participate fully in the fruits of Santo Daime’s spiritual efficacy. 13 Fieldnote extract, 17 July 2008.

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14 Given the physical demands and prolonged nature of the feitio, the daime served is often weaker (i.e. of a ‘lower grade’) and at intervals greater than the servings despatched during rituals such as the Dance and Concentration. 15 Fieldnotes (written up on the evening of 3 May 2005) record that during this time I had a ‘light meal of pasta at 2.00pm’ on Sunday and ‘snatched a 20- or 30-minute nap sat on logs close to the furnace entrance’ at some point during early Monday morning.

Bibliography

Arruda, Carolina, Fernanda Lapietra and Ricardo J. Santana (2006). Centro Livre: Ecletismo Cultural no Santo Daime (São Paulo: All Print Editora). Bourdieu, Pierre and Loïc J.D. Wacquant (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Cambridge: Polity). Cemin, Ameide B. (2nd edn. 2004). ‘Os rituais do Santo Daime: “sistemas de montagens simbólicas”’. In B.C. Labate and W.S. Araújo (eds.), O Uso Ritual da Ayahuasca (Campinas: Mercado de Letras), pp. 347–82. Couto, Fernando de La Roque (2004). ‘Santo Daime: rito da ordem’. In B. Labate and W. Araújo (eds.), O Uso Ritual, pp. 385–411. Dawson, Andrew (2007). New Era – New Religions: Religious Transformation in Contemporary Brazil (Aldershot: Ashgate). —— (2008). ‘Religious identity and millenarian belief in Santo Daime’. In A. Day (ed.), Religion and the Individual: Belief, Practice, Identity (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 183–95. —— (2011). ‘Spirit, self and society in the Brazilian new religion of Santo Daime’. In A. Dawson (ed.), Summoning the Spirits: Possession and Invocation in Contemporary Religion (London: I.B.Tauris), pp. 143–61. —— (forthcoming). ‘Spirit possession in a new religious context: the Umbandization of Santo Daime’, Nova Religio, 15/4. Furuya, Yoshiaki (1994). ‘Umbandização dos cultos populares na Amazônia: a integração ao Brasil?’. In H. Nakamaki and A.P. Filho (eds.), Possessão e Procissão: Religiosidade Popular no Brasil (Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology), pp. 11–59. Galvão, Eduardo E. (1955). Santos e Visagens: Um Estudo da Vida Religiosa de Itá, Amazonas (São São Paulo: Companhia Editôra Nacional). Goulart, Sandra (2004a). Contrastes e Continuidades em uma Tradição Amazônica: As Religiões da Ayahuasca. Unpublished PhD thesis, State University of Campinas. —— (2004b). ‘O contexto de surgimento do culto do Santo Daime: formação da comunidade e do calendário ritual’. In B. Labate and W. Araújo (eds.), O Uso Ritual da Ayahuasca, pp. 277–301. Gregorim, Gilberto (1991). Santo Daime: Estudos sobre Simbolismo, Doutrina e Povo de Juramidam (São Paulo: Ícone). Groisman, Alberto (1999). Eu Venho da Floresta: Um Estudo sobre o Contexto Simbólico do Uso do Santo Daime (Florianópolis: Editora da UFSC Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina).

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Labate, Beatriz C. (2005). ‘Dimensões legais, éticas e políticas da expansão do consumo da ayahuasca’. In B. Labate and S.L. Goulart (eds.), O Uso Ritual das Plantas de Poder (Campinas: Mercado de Letras), pp. 397–457. —— and Gustavo Pacheco (2004). ‘Matrizes maranhenses do Santo Daime’. In B. Labate and W. Araújo (eds.), O Uso Ritual, pp. 303–44. Luna, Luis E. (1986). Vegetalismo: Shamanism among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International). MacRae, Edward (1992). Guiado pela Lua: Xamanismo e Uso Ritual da Ayahuasca no Culto do Santo Daime (São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense). Maués, Raymundo H. and Gisela M. Villacorta (2004). ‘Pajelança e encantaria Amazônica’. In R. Prandi (ed.), Encantaria Brasileira: O Livro dos Mestres, Caboclos e Encantados (Rio de Janeiro: Pallas), pp. 11–58. Moura da Silva, Eliane (2006). ‘Similaridades e diferenças entre estilos de espiritualidade metafísica: o caso do Círculo Esotérico da Comunhão do Pensamento (1908–1943)’. In A.C. Isaia (ed.), Orixás e Espíritos: O Debate Interdisciplinar na Pesquisa Contemporânea (Uberlândia: Editora da Universidade Federal de Uberlândia) pp. 225–40. Parker, Eugene (1985). ‘The Amazon caboclo: an introduction and overview’. In E. Parker (ed.), The Amazon Caboclo: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Williamsburg, VA: Department of Anthropology, College of William and Mary), pp. xvii–li. Polari, Alex de Alverga (1999). Forest of Visions: Ayahuasca, Amazonian Spirituality and the Santo Daime Tradition (Rochester, NY: Park Street). Tupper, Kenneth (2008). ‘The globalization of Ayahuasca: harm reduction or benefit maximization?’, International Journal of Drug Policy, 19, pp. 297–303. Weber, Max (1991). ‘The Social Psychology of the World Religions’. In H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, new edn, (London: Routledge), pp. 129–56. Wright Mills, Charles and H. Gerth (eds.) (1991). From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, new edn (London: Routledge), pp. 129–56.

Index

Entries in italics refer to images. Abelam 105–26 abundance 189, 193–7 acercamiento (closeness) 51 aché 34, 40, 48, 49 ‘actor network theory’ (ANT) 65, 119, 121 affiliation, religious, as pragmatic 35 affordance dérivée 148 ‘affordances’ 68, 147–8 Africa 9, 49, 91 Afro-Amazonian religions 231, 232 Afro-Brazilian religions 81–100, 135, 231, 232, 233; approach to Candomblé 81–2; Caboclo 89–91; fetishism 94–7; inkita 91–2; origins 83–5; participation 85–9; water 92–4 Afro-Creole religions 33 Afro-Cuban religions 22, 33–54; materiality 38–42; representation 42–6; spirits 33–8 agriculture, Abelam 118–24 Aguilar, Daniel 181, 182, 195 alabanzas (songs) 63 All Souls (Day of the Dead) 59, 64, 74 Allen, Catherine 196 altars (bóvedas espirituales) 41, 50–1, 60, 67 amasí ceremony 142, 143

Amerindianism 13 Anata festival 192 ancestors (eguns) 136 Andes 181, 183, 186, 187 Angola 90, 208, 216 anima (soul) 63, 65 animas conquistadores 64, 69 animism 4, 13, 64, 86, 181 animu 183–4 Aninha, Máe 81, 82, 85 ANT (‘actor network theory’) 65, 119, 121 anthropomorphism 43, 58 Anthroposophy 231 ‘Antonine Movement’ 209 Appadurai, Arjun 16, 17, 69 Arnold, Denise 200n12 art, anthropology of 12, 108, 109, 113 artefacts, religious 6–8 Asad, Talal 5, 57 ascetism, Christian 15 assentamento 136–8, 142 Atran, S. 151, 152 authenticité (cultural nationalism) 218 axé (force) 84, 86, 88, 91, 145, 149, 150 ayahuasca (daime) 229–48; preparation 236–46; ritual 230–6 Aymara 192

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Aztecs 62, 72–3, 74 babalawos (divination priests) 36 Badiou, Alain 94, 95 Bahia 83, 90 BaKongo 207 bana Lunda 216 Barber, Karin 40, 49 Bastide, Roger 86, 135 Bastien, Joseph 183 Beatriz, Dona 209, 212 Binnon-Cossard, Gisèle 91 Bittremieux, Leo 91 Bloch, Maurice 134 blood, sacrificial 34, 39, 92, 143, 145, 146, 149 Bolivia 179–99; abundance 193–7; communication with spirits 183–7 Bosman, William 95 Bourdieu, Pierre 239 bóvedas espirituales (altars) 41, 50–1, 60, 67 Boyer, Pascal 151 Brazil 81–98, 133–52, 230–48; Caboclo 89–91; Candomblé 83–9; Santo Daime 230–46; Xangô cult 135–50 ‘bricolage’ 25, 122 Buc, Philippe 171 Busby, Cecilia 15, 16 Caboclo Oxossi 89–91 Cachoeira 83 Calvinism 20, 209–10 Cameroon 18 caminos (pathways) 184 candles 42, 58, 60, 63, 64–5, 71, 77n24 Candomblé 81–98; Caboclo 89–91; hierarchy 84, 87; initiation 84–5, 87–9; inkita 91–2; origins 83; participation 85–9; ‘reafricanisation’ 90 Cannell, Fennella 4, 5, 15, 21, 200n9 capitalism 23, 96, 165, 180, 191, 198, 210, 221

Carnival 192 Cartesian philosophy 37 Castellanos, Isabel 34, 35 Castellanos, Jorge 34, 35 Catholicism: attitude to ‘abundance’ 196; as ‘incomplete’ 180–1; and Kingdom of Kongo 207–8; miracles 93–4; ritual accumulation 34, 136, 184, 241; and Santo Daime 231, 234; veneration of saints and relics 58, 60, 188, 208, 209 Cefluris 231–2, 237 Céu do Mapiá 231 chaîne opératoire 109, 116, 119–21 chalk 213, 217 charms 209 cholo-mestizos 179–99; and abundance 193–7; market economy 189–93 Christianity: and anthropology 4–6, 15; conversion by Kongolese elite 207; and the Fall 1; modernity 1–2; sacraments 15; and transcendence 21; Word of Life group 19 see also Catholicism; Pentecostalism cloning 122–3 closeness (acercamiento) 51 clothing, ritual 194 Coleman, Simon 19 ‘collective representations’ 5 colonialism 18, 91, 93, 188, 211, 218, 221 commodities 23, 96, 179, 180, 189–93, 196–9 communication 20–6, 183–7 Concentration ritual (concentração) 234, 236, 245 concha 60, 63, 66, 67–73 Concheros 59–74; rituals 62–5 concomitance 146–7, 149, 193 contagion, magical 144 contas finas (‘fine necklaces’) 142 contiguity 144–5 cordón espiritual 49, 51 coriscos (‘fire stones’) 140–1 ‘creolisation’ 21

Index Cuba 22–3, 33–54; cultural nationalism (authenticité) 218; materiality 38–42; representation 42–6 daime (ayahuasca) 229–48; preparation 236–46; ritual 230–6 damadharma 24 dance 58, 59–60, 62, 64, 68, 183, 194–5 Daniel, Don 185, 187 Davis, Winston 168 Day of the Dead (All Souls) 59, 64, 74 De Boeck, Filip 216 de Carvalho, José Jorge 146 de Melo, Alfredo Gregório 232 decoration 105, 108, 112, 125, 186, 194, 196 Deleuze, Gilles 94, 95 Democratic Republic of Congo 205 Deren, M. 67 Descartes, René 52 Descola, P. 86 deuxième monde 213 Dewey, John 167, 168 Dilthey, Wilhelm 160 Dinka 162–3 divination priests (babalawos) 36 ‘Divine Mother’ 239 divinity, as concept 10, 21, 162–4 Divinity and Experience (Lienhardt) 162 DMT (active agent, ayahuasca) 237 dolls 35, 42–3, 45–7 dreams 35, 90, 140, 212, 214 dualism 6, 7, 20, 47–8, 65, 183, 247 Durkheim, Émile 5 ‘economy of salvation’ 190 eguns (ancestors) 136 embodied knowledge 107, 117, 124 ‘embodiment’ 22 enchantment 117 Engelke, Matthew 17–18 ‘entrainment’ 68

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epistemic shifts 114 erê 91, 92 Ereko 188, 189 Esoteric Circle of the Community of Thought 231 espiritismo (spirit mediumship) 22–3, 33, 37, 41–2, 45–8, 50 espiritismo científico 42 espiritismo cruzado 42 espiritistas 23, 33, 41, 43 ‘essentialisation’ 149 ‘Eternal Father’ 239 Evoloko (musician) 211–12, 214 exchange 19–26, 184, 185 ‘experimental metaphysics’ 169 exteriorisation 50 The Fall 1 famílias-de-santo (‘saint families’) 135–6 Faulkner, J. 151 feitiçaria (witchcraft) 207, 208, 209, 218, 222 feitio 236–46; and alliances 237 feitura (initiation) 91, 142, 143 femaleness 239 ferramentas 91, 136–8, 141–9 fertility 183, 215 fetishism 95–7, 205–23; African 92; Candomblé 95–7; and cure of illness 215; European concept 205, 207–11; and individual spirit 214; and leadership 218; as natural 81; and ‘Other’ 14; and sacrifice 215–16; state 219 Fleck, L. 99n9 flower forms 61, 63, 64, 67, 72 flowers 60, 62–4, 75n6, 192 fluido 48, 49, 51 Forge, Anthony 108, 112, 113, 125 four winds 62, 63, 68, 69, 73, 74 fraternidades (religious fraternities) 180 Frazer, James 52, 144 functionalist analysis 116 fundamento (foundation) 85, 87

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Gell, Alfred 12, 64, 134 gender divisions 118, 239–40 gerontocracy 217 Geschiere, Peter 223 The Gift (Mauss) 24 Goldman, Marcio 49, 85, 86–7, 89, 95, 96, 98 Graeber, David 96 Gran Poder 179, 180, 186, 194, 195, 196 grau (gra) (force of nature) 92 Guerra de Orixá (Maggie) 98n3 Hacking, Ian 163 Hall, Stuart 187 Harris, Olivia 189 Haudricourt, André-Georges 122, 123 Havana 38, 42, 43 healing 23, 48, 241, 242 Hegel, Georg 45 Heidegger, Martin 171 Henare, Amiria 6, 7, 8, 25, 36 henka (changes) 170 hermeneutics 11, 160–2, 169 Hilton, Anne 224n4 Hinduism 16, 24 Holbraad, Martin 6, 7, 8, 19, 25, 36 Holy Communion, Catholic 181–2 homage 33, 43, 44, 53 Hornborg, Alf 13 Howard, Rosaleen 184 humanism 3 Ifá 19, 36 Ilê Axé Opó Afonjá 81 illas (talismans) 188–9 ‘immateriality’ 18 incense 58, 62, 65, 68, 71, 77n24, 235 incompleteness 181 India 15–16, 220 Indonesia 18, 19 initiation 59, 91–2, 109–14, 121, 136–9, 142–4

Inquisition, Spanish 208 interest, monetary 190–1 ‘interpretative drift’ 169 ‘invert isomorphism’ 149, 151 Irineu Serra, Raimundo (‘Master Irineu’) 231 isomorphism 84, 147–50, 151 Jackson, Michael 50 Japan 159–72; Mahikari 164–6; purification 166–9 Jeje 92 Jesus Christ 181 Kaagu dance 111 Kalle, Pepe 212 Kantian philosophy 37 Kardec, Allan 41, 48, 49 Kardecism 47, 232 karma 165, 249n11, 249n12 Kawano, Satsuki 167 Keane, Webb 14, 19, 20, 43, 59 Kikongo 91, 94, 205, 208, 213 kindoki (witchcraft) 209, 214, 215 Kinois 207, 219 Kinshasa 205–25; and death rituals 212–14; Mobutism 217–19; Pentecostalism 219–22; sacrifice 214–17 Knappett, C. 65 Kongo, Kingdom of 93, 205–7, 209 Kopytoff, Igor 16 kotodama (‘word-spirits’) 167 La Paz 179–99; abundance 193–7; communication with spirits 183–7 Labate, B.C. 234 Laman, Karl 92, 215 Lambek, Michael 38 Latour, Bruno 11, 12, 64, 87, 95, 169 Laws of Similarity and Contagion 52 Leach, Edmund 163 Leroi-Gourhan, André 119 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 25 Lewis, Gilbert 109, 125

Index Liénard, Pierre 134, 148 Lienhardt, Godfrey 162, 163 lineage 18, 206, 214, 215, 221, 223 literacy 207 Losche, Diane 113, 114 Lovejoy, Arthur O. 86 Luhrmann, Tanya 168, 169 Lyotard, Jean-François 160 Maambutap 106, 116, 118 MacGaffey, Wyatt 205, 215, 224n4 Madilu System (musician) 217 Maggie, Yvonne 98n3 magic 2, 34, 49, 126n6, 133, 168, 169 Mahikari (Sûkyô Mahikari) 164–6, 168 ‘Mahikari Technique’ (okiyome) 165–7, 168, 170, 171 maionga 92 Malafouris, L. 65, 68, 70 Malinowski, Bronislaw 116 Mami Wata (water spirit) 215 Manikongo 208 marriage ritual 190–1 Marx, Karl 9 Marxism 14, 96, 118 Masowe Friday Apostolics 17–18 Mass, Catholic 181, 182, 199n4, 234 ‘material agency’ 65 ‘materialisation’ 34, 38–40, 125, 230 materiality 2–5, 13–20, 22–3, 38–46, 57–8, 141, 147, 160 Materiality (Miller ed.) 18, 45 Mauss, Marcel 24, 115, 116, 117, 144 Mayotte religion 38 MCI (minimally counter-intuitive concepts) 151 McVeigh, Brian J. 168 ‘mediation’ 13–20, 38 meditation 234 The Mediums’ Book (Kardec) 48 Melanesia 87, 107, 115, 122 mesa (ritual offerings) 24, 84, 136–7, 140, 184–5, 195, 215 metempsychosis 47

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Mexica 72, 73 Mexico 58–74; Catholicism 60; music 67–73; rituals 62–5 Meyer, Birgit 14, 15, 67 Milagre de Santa Barbara 93 Milagre de São Roque 93 Miller, Danny 17, 45 Milton, John 209, 210 mimesis 11, 52 miracles 92–4 misa espiritual (spiritual mass) 33, 48, 53 Mitchell, W.J.T. 8 Mobutu Sese Seko 214, 218–19 modernity 1–2, 9, 13, 206, 217–19, 223 Moisseeff, Marika 145 Morgan, David 45, 57, 67 Mota de Melo, Sebastião (‘Padrinho Sebastião’) 231, 232 mpemba 213 muertos (spirits of the dead) 33, 38, 42, 45, 47, 49–51, 53 music 59, 60, 67–73, 76n18, 183, 192 Nahuatl 73 networks 193 New Age movements 22, 52, 168, 231, 233, 234, 243 nganga 34, 53–4, 209, 211–12, 214, 218–19, 220, 222 nkita (‘nature spirits’) 91, 94 non-verbal communication 107, 108, 109, 114, 117 Norenzayan, Ara 151 Nsemi Isaki 215 numbers 47 Obbatalá 44 ‘object-gods’ 150 objectification 17, 18 objects 133–52; connection to bodies 142–4; connection to gods 139–42; as enactors 60, 65; power 137–8 obrigação (sacrifice ceremony) 83, 90, 142, 143

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Ochoa, Todd Ramón 22–3 Ochún 39 Okada Kôtama 164, 165 okiyome (Mahikari Technique) 165–7, 168, 170, 171 Olomide, Koffi 217 ‘On the Late Massacre in Piedmont’ (Milton) 209 ‘ontological instability’ 187 ‘ontological matrix’ 83 oracles 36, 91, 139, 140, 142, 146, 149 oral traditions, changes to 73 orichas 40, 41, 49 Orientalism 11 Orixa 81, 83–9, 91, 136 Orula 36 otãs (stones) 136–43, 145–9 Otomi 72 Pachamama 183, 185–6, 188, 192 Pacheco, G. 234 paintings, ceremonial 113 palimpsesticism 232, 233, 235 Palmié, Stephan 54 Palo Monte 22, 34, 41, 52, 53 Papa Wemba 216 Papua New Guinea 105–26; initiations 109–14; rituals 114–16; yam ceremonies 109–12, 116–18 Parry, Jonathan 24 pathways (caminos) 84 pedidos 184, 185 Pentecostalism 137, 206, 213, 219–23 ‘perispirit’ 48–9 petición de permiso 63 Pfeiffer, William Sanborn 168 Pietz, William 95, 97, 206, 207, 208, 210, 211 pilgrimage (romaria) 89, 93, 94, 190 plants, human interaction with 122 Platt, Tristan 199n7 poison ordeal 209 Polari, Alex 232 Portugal 207, 209

positivism 41 possession 23, 44, 84, 135–6, 143, 149, 221, 233 post-structuralism 11 pragmatism 16, 19, 35, 49, 167, 168, 236 pre-colonial period 92, 213, 217, 218 Protestantism 10, 209–10 provas (‘trials’) 235, 244 Puerto Rico 23 purification 90, 164, 165–71, 241 ‘qualisigns’ 36 Randall, Robert 186 Recife 135 Religion and Material Culture (Morgan) 57 representation 9–13, 38–46, 162, 187–9 Ricoeur, Paul 1 ritual framing 109 ritual offerings (mesa) 24, 84, 136–7, 140, 184–5, 195, 215 rituals: accumulation 34–5; and exchange 19; gender division 239–40; importance of 58; and performance 11; as symbolic 5, 163; techniques 114–16 romaria (pilgrimage) 89, 93, 94, 190 Romberg, Raquel 23 Rosicrucianism 231 Rowlands, Michael 18 Sacred Heart of Jesus 15, 16 sacrifice 92, 136, 143, 149, 211, 214–17, 218 sahumadora 61, 62–3, 68, 69, 72 Said, Edward 11 ‘saint families’ ( famílias-de-santo) 135–6 saints, Catholic 60, 64 Salvador 83 salvation, and religious gifts 24 Sansi-Roca, Roger 139, 141

Index Santería 24, 34, 40, 41, 42 Santiago (St James) 62 santo bruto (brute saint) 89 Santo Daime religion 229–248; feitio 236–42 Sat (Tío) 187 Saussurean linguistics 12 Schaller, M. 151 Schwimmer, Eric 109 scientific materialism 2 The Secret (Byrne) 52 secularisation 1–4 ‘selfhood’ 36, 45, 50, 52 semiotics 10, 12, 65 sensory captures 146–7 sertão 89, 90 shakti (religious power) 16 Shinto 164 ‘signified’ 10, 12, 187, 188, 189 Simaro Lutumba 214 slavery 46, 50, 207, 218, 221 ‘somatic signature’ 147 songs (alabanzas) 63 soul (anima) 63, 65 spirit mediumship (espiritismo) 22–3, 33, 37, 41–2, 45–8, 50 spiritism, ‘syncretic’ 33 St James (Santiago) 62 Stengers, Isabelle 161 Stoller, Paul 91 Stolow, Jeremy 161 stones (otãs) 136–43, 145–9 Strathern, Marilyn 87, 95, 121 symbolic captures 146–7 symbolic properties 39 symbolism 37, 141, 145–6 Symbolism of Evil (Ricoeur) 1 talismans (illas) 188–9 Taussig, Michael 11, 159 Taylor, Charles 3 Tebêcis, Andris 166, 167 techniques, analysis of 114–16 Theosophy 231

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Thinking Through Things (Henare, Holbraad and Wastell) 6 Thornton, John 93, 208, 209 Tío (Sat) 187 Tomasello, Michael 148 toxic energy 165 trance 76n18, 89, 92, 146, 149 transcendence 21, 63, 67, 183–9, 197, 247 transformation 8, 12, 114, 142, 163, 170–1, 186 ‘trials’ (provas) 235, 244 Turner, Victor 11 Tylor, E. 144 Tzeltal 58 Umbanda religion 42, 232 van de Port, Mattijs 94 vigil 59, 60, 62, 64–5, 67, 71–4 Virgin of Caridad del Cobre 39 Virgin of Guadalupe 59 Virgin of Regla 47 ‘vital forces’ 216, 217 vitalism 85–9 Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo 13, 164 waapi (long yams) 105–26; ceremonies and initiations 109–14, 116–18; cultivation techniques 118–21 Waapi Saaki 105, 109–14, 116–18 wapinyan 121 Wastell, Sari 6, 7, 8, 25, 36 water 92–4 water spirit (Mami Wata) 215 weaving 188 weChishanu 17–18 Werrason (pop singer) 213 Willserlev, Rane 52 witchcraft 49, 52, 207, 208, 209, 218, 222 Wolf, Fred Alan 36 Word of Life group 19

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words 18–20 ‘word-spirits’ (kotodama) 167 Xangô cult 84, 134–52; objects 136–9; objects and bodies 142–4; objects and gods 139–42; objects and power 144–50 yams, long (waapi) 105–26; ceremonies and initiations 109–114,

116–18; cultivation techniques 118–121 Yamki, Pachakuti 186 ‘Yang-light agriculture’ 167 Yemayá 47 Yoruba 40, 44, 135, 136, 143, 146 Zaire 211, 214, 218–19 zeladora 88 Zimbabwe 17–18