Passages and Afterworlds: Anthropological Perspectives on Death in the Caribbean 9781478002130

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Passages & Afterworlds

RELIGIOUS CULTURES OF AFRIC AN AND AFRIC AN DIASPORA ­P EOPLE

Series editors: Jacob K. Olupona, Harvard University Dianne M. Stewart, Emory University and Terrence L. Johnson, Georgetown University The book series examines the religious, cultural, and po­liti­cal expressions of African, African American, and African Ca­rib­bean traditions. Through transnational, cross-­cultural, and multidisciplinary approaches to the study of religion, the series investigates the epistemic bound­aries of continental and diasporic religious practices and thought and explores the diverse and distinct ways African-­derived religions inform culture and politics. The series aims to establish a forum for imagining the centrality of Black religions in the formation of the “New World.”

PA SSAGES & AFTERWORLDS Anthropological Perspectives on Death in the Ca­rib­be­an

maarit forde & yanique hume, editors Duke University Press  Durham and London  2018

© 2018 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca on acid-­free paper ∞ Typeset in Quadraat Pro by Westchester Publishing Services Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Forde, Maarit, [date] editor. | Hume, Yanique, editor. Title: Passages and afterworlds : anthropological perspectives on death in the Ca­rib­bean / Maarit Forde and Yanique Hume, editors. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2018. | Series: Religious cultures of African and African diaspora ­people | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2018021940 (print) lccn 2018027040 (ebook) isbn 9781478002130 (ebook) isbn 9781478000310 (hardcover : alk. paper) isbn 9781478000143 (pbk.) Subjects: lcsh: Funeral rites and ceremonies—­ Caribbean Area—­History. | Ca­rib­bean Area—­ Religious life and customs. | Death—­Religious aspects. | Death—­Social aspects—­Caribbean Area. | Death—­Political aspects—­Caribbean Area. Classification: lcc gt3223 (ebook) | lcc gt3223 .p37 2018 (print) | ddc 306.909729—­dc23 lc rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2018021940 Cover art: Frantz Zephirin, The Resurrection of the Dead, 2007. Acrylic on canvas. Collection of Bill Bollendorf, Pittsburgh, PA. Used by permission of Bill Bollendorf and Frantz Zephirin.

To Ineke van Wetering and Barry Chevannes

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Contents

ix

acknowl­e dgments

1 introduction Maarit Forde I . R E L AT I O N S

31 chapter 1 “The Dead ­Don’t Come Back Like the Mi­grant Comes Back”: Many Returns in the Garifuna Dügü

Paul Christopher Johnson 54 chapter 2 Of Vital Spirit and Precarious Bodies in Amerindian Socialities

George Mentore 80 chapter 3 The Making of Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Society

Ineke (Wilhelmina) van Wetering and Bonno (H. U. E.) Thoden van Velzen 109 chapter 4 Death and the Construction of Social Space: Land, Kinship, and Identity in the Jamaican Mortuary Cycle

Yanique Hume

139 chapter 5 Mortuary Rites and Social Dramas in Léogâne, Haiti

Karen Richman I I . T R A N S F O R M AT I O N S

159 chapter 6 From Zonbi to Samdi: Late Transformations in Haitian Eschatology

Donald Cosentino 176 chapter 7 Governing Death in Trinidad and Tobago

Maarit Forde 199 chapter 8 Death and the Prob­lem of Orthopraxy in Ca­rib­bean Hinduism: Reconsidering the Politics and Poetics of Indo-­Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual

Keith E. McNeal 225 chapter 9 Chasing Death’s Left Hand: Personal Encounters with Death and Its Rituals in the Ca­rib­be­an

Richard Price 243 afterword Life and Postlife in Ca­rib­bean Religious Traditions

Aisha Khan 261 references 283 contributors 287 index

Acknowl­edgments

The chapters of this book w ­ ere first discussed at a three-­day workshop in Barbados in June 2011. Funded by the Wenner-­Gren Foundation and or­ga­ nized by the editors of this book, the workshop took place at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, and drew together anthropologists from dif­ fer­ent parts of the Ca­rib­bean and the US. Todd Ramón Ochoa, Keith McNeal, Claudine Michel, Marta Moreno Vega, Maarit Forde, Yanique Hume, Paul Christopher Johnson, Kean Gibson, Sally Price, Travis Weekes, Patrick Bellegarde-­Smith, Donald Cosentino, Jean-­Pierre Sainton, Allison Ramsay, and George Mentore presented papers and discussed each ­others’ work. Members of the audience who are also specialists on the region—­such as Gina Athena Ulysse, Katherine Smith and Kamala Kempadoo—­took part in the conversation and offered impor­tant comments and critique. Richard Price’s chapter in this book is based on the keynote address he gave as part of the workshop. Aisha Khan, in her role as discussant, made an invaluable contribution to the workshop and the development of the papers; her afterword concludes the book. The editors are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers at Duke University Press for their encouraging and insightful comments on the manuscript. Their critique and suggestions have helped to clarify the central arguments and make the collection more coherent. Bonno Thoden van Velzen and Ineke van Wetering ­were scheduled to pres­ent at the workshop but ­were not able to attend. Ineke was diagnosed with a serious illness a few months before the workshop and passed away in October 2011. She continued to work with Bonno on their chapter, “The Making of Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Society,” throughout her illness. The chapter is the last coauthored publication in Ineke and Bonno’s fifty-­year-­long collaboration in the anthropology of Ndyuka culture and society, and we are deeply honored to include it in this volume.

We are indebted to the UWI Cave Hill campus and especially Alison Johnson for administrative support for the workshop. The Campus Research and Publications Fund at UWI St. Augustine has supported the research that went into the writing of the introduction and funded the indexing of the book, and for this we are grateful. Many colleagues have offered valuable critiques and guided us ­toward impor­tant lit­er­a­ture, and we’d like to give special thanks to Rawle Gibbons, Paul Christopher Johnson, Aisha Khan, Diana Paton, and the two anonymous readers whose comments have helped improve the depth, clarity, and coherence of the volume.

x  Acknowl­e dgments

Introduction Maarit Forde

Derek Walcott’s famous poem “The Schooner Flight” evokes haunting phantasmagoria of ancestors lost in the Ca­rib­be­an’s violent past. Sailing t­ oward Dominica, Shabine, the narrator, has a vivid nightmare of the genocide of Caribs, and diving amid the corals, he sees the “dead men,” the enslaved Africans who perished in the ­Middle Passage: I ­couldn’t shake the sea noise out of my head, the shell of my ears sang Maria Concepcion, so I start salvage diving with a crazy Mick, name O’Shaughnessy, and a limey named Head; but this Ca­rib­bean so choke with the dead that when I would melt in emerald ­water, whose ceiling rippled like a silk tent, I saw them corals: brain, fire, sea fans, dead-­men’s-­fingers, and then, the dead men. I saw that the powdery sand was their bones ground white from Senegal to San Salvador —­from Derek Walcott, “The Schooner Flight,” 2: The raptures of the deep

Personal and po­liti­cal strug­gles in Shabine’s life are entangled with memories of massacres in a region “choke with the dead.” Like Walcott, many writers and artists have fathomed the ruptures, dislocations, and death in the colonial past of the Ca­rib­bean, often through maritime meta­phors of sea as the grave of history. In historical and anthropological origin stories as well as nationalist mythologies, lost ancestors are at the core of the “inaugural events”—­massacres of First ­Peoples, slavery, indentureship—­fundamental

to the making of plantation socie­ties (Scott 1991, 261). Vincent Brown, whose work on the history of death in the Ca­rib­bean has inspired many of the writers in this volume, argues that in the violent, dehumanizing regimes of conquest and plantation, “death structured society and s­ haped its most consequential strug­gles,” and socie­ties ­were reproduced in the continued presence of the dead (Brown 2008, 4). In the con­temporary Ca­rib­bean, socio­ economic in­equality and the extraregional power relations b ­ ehind the ongoing war on drugs have resulted in soaring murder rates in countries such as Honduras, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago. State, gang, and domestic vio­lence have led to what to many Ca­rib­bean ­people experience as a painful banality of violent and at times, spectacular death. Whereas trauma and loss experienced during war or natu­ral disasters underpin cultural approaches to death in many other parts of the world (e.g., Kwon 2008; Nelson 2008; Robben 2004a), Ca­rib­bean socie­ties have been built on collective loss and disjuncture: persecution of the First Nations, slavery, indentureship, and plantation economy w ­ ere constitutive of the region, rather than singular, traumatic events (Mintz 1996). This history of exploitative encounters and violent deaths frames the ethnographic and theoretical concerns of this book, and its chapters speak to the anthropology of death from this specifically Ca­rib­bean foundation. However, b ­ ecause of its unusual ethnographic range, the collection explores cultural spheres of death from perspectives that are not often brought together in studies of Ca­rib­bean cosmologies or rituals. The authors investigate deathways in postplantation socie­ties in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Haiti, but also in Amerindian socie­ties in Guyana, among the Saamaka and Ndyuka in Suriname, and the Garifuna in Honduras. This ethnographic scope complicates notions of the ­peoples, histories, and migrations that comprise the Ca­rib­bean. In the fringes or outside of the plantation regime, Amerindians, Maroons, and the Garifuna relate to their ancestral past with culturally specific understandings of temporality, continuity, and rupture. The role of dominant discourses, such as Chris­tian­ity, has been dif­ fer­ent in and outside of the plantation, which has led to a variety of ways of understanding the relationship between materiality, temporality, and spirituality. The comparative potential of the book is further complicated by the cosmological and ontological plurality revealed in ethnographies of the mortuary culture of heterodox and orthodox Hinduism, Protestant Chris­tian­ity, Vodou, Orisha, Spiritual Baptist and other religious groups, and historical contexts ranging from slavery to early twentieth-­century and con­temporary socie­ties.1 2  Maarit Forde

By bringing together discussions of socie­ties and cosmologies that have been very differently s­ haped by the empire and the agency of local p ­ eople, this collection invites us to think of transformations in the culture and government of death that do not align with a s­ imple transition from “tradition” to “modern.” ­Here the volume resonates with central arguments in Ca­rib­ be­anist debates on modernity. From this decidedly regional vantage point, the book welcomes an epistemological reconsideration of anthropological concepts and models that seek to make sense of the interplay of pasts and pres­ents, the tangible and the invisible. The regional specificities aside, the main theoretical concerns of the book are not limited to the Ca­rib­bean. The first set of essays, “Relations,” charts cosmological and ontological terrain where the dead share the world, and sometimes the bodies, of the living (Johnson, Mentore, van Wetering and Thoden van Velzen, Hume, Richman). T ­ hese chapters question the relationship between living bodies and the spirits of the dead, encouraging us to consider culturally specific understandings of sacrifice, possession and divination, but also ontological premises of personhood, agency, and relations. Looking beyond the ritual pro­cess of mortuary cycles t­ oward intangible entities and their relations in the material world, t­ hese chapters connect the anthropology of death to recent lit­er­a­ture on spirits and their social lives (Blanes and Espírito Santo 2013; Holbraad 2012; Johnson 2014; Ochoa 2010). The second, in many ways related, cluster of anthropological questions in the latter half of the book, “Transformations,” addresses changes in cosmologies and rituals in the cultural sphere of death informed by po­liti­cal developments, state vio­lence, legislation, policing, natu­ral disasters, and identity politics (Cosentino, Forde, McNeal, Price). T ­ hese chapters speak to questions of alterity, difference, and hierarchy, showing how racialized, cultural, and class differences have been deployed in ritual practice, and how such rituals—­and by extension, difference—­have been governed in the colonial and postcolonial Ca­rib­bean. ­These discussions bring the anthropology of death in conversation with lit­er­a­ture on the government of religion in (neo) colonial contexts (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999; Geschiere 1997; Paton 2015; Paton and Forde 2012; Ramsey 2011; Román 2007; Romberg 2003; Vaughan 1991). Considered as a ­whole, the collection expands our understanding of death and the dead in the formation of dif­fer­ent selves and communities, and in the power relations that regulate such formations. In this sense, the ontological and cosmological implications of death on personhood and society, as discussed in the first part of the book, are integral to the analyses of the politics of death in the second section. Introduction  3

Theoretical Legacies: Anthropology of Death in the Ca­rib­be­an

The multitude of Ca­rib­bean mortuary rituals and the per­sis­tent involvement of spirits in the lives of the living have captured the attention of travel writers, colonial officials, historians, and anthropologists in a region that was long considered not “native” enough for serious anthropological inquiry (Trouillot 1992, 20). While this research tradition reflects the ubiquity of death in the Ca­rib­bean, it also reveals another fundamental commonality in the extremely heterogeneous region: the unavoidable proximity of the other (Mintz 1996). Living with cultural and socioeconomic difference marked Ca­rib­bean existence from the onset of colonial socie­ties—­socie­ties that ­were not simply diverse but also extremely stratified. The colonial proj­ ect and, by extension, the Eu­ro­pean modern relied on the reproduction of otherness and the perceived inferiority of racialized ­others (Trouillot 2002, 2003; Wynter 2003). Written in shifting epistemological conditions, the research tradition on “how ­others die” (Fabian 1972, 549) was first guided by social evolutionary notions of barbarism and civilization, followed by more sympathetic, Boasian depictions, which approached Ca­rib­bean deathways with an interest in cultural continuities and traditions in “folk” culture.2 In both paradigms, repre­sen­ta­tions of ritualizing o ­ thers produced a temporal distance between them and the time-­space of Enlightenment modernity (Trouillot 2003, 38; Wynter 2003). ­Here the early ethnography of Ca­rib­bean mortuary rituals resonated with a disciplinary legacy that Johannes Fabian has identified as an “intent . . . ​to keep the Other outside the Time of anthropology” (2002, xli). In result, much of what we know of mortuary culture in the colonial Ca­ rib­bean has been observed through a distancing lens. Con­temporary analyses of the relationship between the tangible and intangible in mortuary culture, such as the essays in this book, try to avoid the othering strategies of previous paradigms. They seek to portray ritual prac­ti­ tion­ers as “coevals” (Fabian 2002) rather than barbarians or tradition-­bearers, contemplate questions of repre­sen­ta­tion, and consider the socioeconomic and po­liti­cal contexts in which Ca­rib­bean ­people mourn, remember, and communicate with their dead. And yet, the chapters depict relations to the dead that reveal radically dif­fer­ent notions of selfhood and time: con­ temporary ­people occupying ancestral pasts, or entertaining spirits from dif­fer­ent space and time in their bodies. The authors have to make sense of such alterity with vocabularies and concepts deeply rooted in the discursive 4  Maarit Forde

legacy of their discipline, an anthropology that distanced the deathways of ­others from the pres­ent tense of the ethnographer. The second half of the book, “Transformations,” engages further with the theoretical legacy (or baggage) of alterity and in­equality. The writers consider the development of cosmological ideas and ritual practices around death within the long history of structural and physical vio­lence in racially stratified socie­ties, starting from the public torture and executions of enslaved Africans in eighteenth-­ century Suriname to the immea­sur­able, cosmologically perplexing tragedy of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. They show that colonial and postcolonial states’ attempts to govern death and mortuary rituals have also been attempts to govern difference and perpetuate racialized hierarchies. To elucidate the epistemological trajectories along—­and against—­which the chapters in this book are written, I continue by reviewing main arguments in the early anthropology of death in the Ca­rib­bean with a specific emphasis on the conceptualization of pasts and pres­ents, and through them, temporally distant ­others. The Sacrificing Other

Mortuary culture around “bad deaths” attracted early ethnographers with a promise of radical cultural difference. The unfamiliarity of such rituals and beliefs to observers from dif­fer­ent social classes or socie­ties left space for theoretical considerations of o ­ thers, and thereby selves; tradition, and thereby modernity. Early ethnographers’ fascination with sacrifice and cannibalism was, of course, not limited to the Ca­rib­bean, as foundational theory in the anthropology of death—­James George Frazer, Émile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss—­often referenced uncommon deaths; but the evolutionary paradigm in Ca­rib­be­anist lit­er­a­ture left a lasting legacy of racist misconceptions of Vodou, obeah, and other religions or worldviews. The trope of ­human sacrifice emerged in Ca­rib­bean travel writing and ethnography in the late nineteenth ­century, notably in Spencer St. John’s 1884 Hayti; or, the Black Republic.3 The vari­ous second­hand accounts of child sacrifice and cannibalism in “Vaudoux” rituals contribute to a particularly hostile depiction of Haitian p ­ eople and their religious lives ([1884] 1889, chap. 5 and 6; see also Froude 1888, 162; and Udal 1915, 257–260, 267–268, and 286–295). Gruesome stories of ritual child murders ­were widely circulated in sensationalist newspaper reports of brujería and obeah across the region in the first de­cades of the twentieth ­century.4 Fernando Ortiz, the Cuban ­lawyer and Introduction  5

anthropologist, situated ­human sacrifice within the conceptual framework of criminology and evolutionary anthropology in Los negros brujos ([1906] 1973). Ortiz worked with the criminological arguments and vocabularies of Cesare Lombroso, Armand Corre, and Raimundo Nina Rodrigues as well as Edward Burnett Tylor’s anthropology (which had also influenced Nina Rodrigues). Drawing on methods not unlike ­those of nineteenth-­century armchair anthropologists, Ortiz analyzed illegitimate rituals as fetishism (el fetichismo africano), witchcraft (hechicería, brujería) and sacrifice (sacrificio) (1973, 26–27 and passim).5 He cited Tylor, Frazer, and missionaries’ accounts of late nineteenth-­century Africa for comparative examples of rituals and beliefs, evoking the then popu­lar anthropological notion of primitive society as a universal stage in cultural evolution.6 The theoretical frame of evolutionary anthropology helped Ortiz to create a temporal distance between working-­class beliefs and ritual practice—­including alleged rituals of ­human sacrifice—­and the postin­de­pen­dence pres­ent in Cuba.7 ­Human sacrifice was a recurrent theme in Frazer’s opus magnum, The Golden Bough. Frazer’s comparative study of religion and my­thol­ogy, like evolutionary anthropology more generally, contributed to the reproduction of alterity in modern North Atlantic. H ­ uman sacrifice served as the ultimate marker of otherness, an undisputable indicator of savagery that belonged to the lower stages of cultural evolution. Reading Frazer in light of Franz Hinkelammert’s work on Western imaginaries of the other “as the one still sacrificing,” Patricia Lorenzoni suggests that depictions of the savage as violent and capable of ­human sacrifice served to justify colonial vio­lence and expansion (2009; see also Dirks 2001, chap. 9). In Ortiz’s discussion of ­human sacrifice, the production of alterity and the notions of primitive and savage did not rely on spatial distance: Cuban brujos occupied the same physical space as the nonsavage and, to Ortiz’s initial distress, could be in close communication with middle-­class and elite Cubans (Palmié 2002, 216). This proximity had informed much of the protoethnography of the region. Written from within the plantation, early historians’, like Edward Long’s, accounts of the rituals of the enslaved ­were not exoticizing sketches of faraway tribes, but conveyed a genuine sense of threat, a fear of the oppressed majority and its rituals, especially night burials where the enslaved w ­ ere thought to plan rebellions (V. Brown 2008, 212–214). Ortiz’s early work promoted the notion and politics of alterity by representing the sacrificing savage as temporally remote, inhabiting a primitive past rather than a civilized pres­ent.

6  Maarit Forde

Mortuary Rituals as Folk Culture

The 1920s and ’30s saw a paradigm shift away from racist and evolutionary perspectives in the anthropology of death in the Ca­rib­be­an.8 Franz Boas’s antievolutionist position, together with Jean Price-­Mars and Ortiz’s ­later work, influenced much of the ethnographic writing on death in the twentieth ­century and brought about a long-­lasting interest in African Ca­rib­bean folk culture and religion in Ca­rib­bean anthropology. The generally benevolent ethnographies of rural and folk customs that followed, however, tended to downplay the coevalness of the peasant culture they described. As Ortiz’s theoretical interests, politics, and research methods developed in the first de­cades of the twentieth ­century, he published more appreciative accounts of Afro-­Cuban culture as the foundation for Cuban national culture (Arnedo 2001; Palmié 2002, 2014, chap. 2). Moving further from physical and evolutionary anthropology, Ortiz’s l­ ater oeuvre explored cultural merging or transculturation, laying the foundation for a national ideological and artistic movement, afrocubanismo. Similarly, indigénisme emerged in the US-­ occupied Haiti in the 1920s, largely inspired by Jean Price-­Mars’s Ainsi parla l’oncle ([1928] 1973).9 Price-­Mars’s ethnography of rural Haitian culture made a strong argument for the valorization of popu­lar or folk culture and religion as a basis for national culture in Haiti, echoing the promotion of folk culture in nationalist proj­ects in Eu­rope and elsewhere.10 Drawing on Durkheim, Price-­Mars presented Vodou as a religion rather than superstition, fetishism, sorcery, or witchcraft ([1928] 1973, 82–83; see also Magloire-­Danton 2005; Magloire and Yelvington 2005; and Joseph 2012).11 His comparative, Durk­ heimian approach allowed Price-­Mars to bring ethnographic and historical accounts of Vodou into anthropological conversations of rituals of sacrifice, ancestral veneration, syncretism and possession, not as examples of a par­ tic­u­lar evolutionary stage but as a potential resource for national unity and pride. Price-­Mars discredited foreign writers’ sensationalist stories of ­human sacrifice in Vodou as “abjectly stupid” and turned their discursive strategy against themselves: the obsession with h ­ uman sacrifice resembled Père Labat’s eighteenth-­century fantasies, and so it was the genre, not Vodou, that belonged to the past ([1928] 1973, 220–222). Using a mortuary ritual to illustrate ritual change, Price-­Mars cited Antoine Innocent’s 1906 description of a ser­vice mortuaire, a sacrifice to appease an ancestral spirit. The discussion conveys the central role of ancestors in Vodou, but also locates Haitian ritual practice in a wider analytical framework for rituals of sacrifice. Contrasting Haitian with Dahomean ritual Introduction  7

practice, Price-­Mars built an argument about ritual transformation or syncretism in Haiti and foregrounded the interest in cultural continuities or retentions that was to drive Ca­rib­bean anthropology, including anthropology of death, for years to come (Price-­Mars [1928] 1973, 212–216). His ideas influenced Herskovits and his students, but also a number of other ethnographers and ethnomusicologists (Magloire and Yelvington 2005).12 In 1928, Melville and Frances Herskovits found themselves in the ­middle of a mortuary cycle of a recently deceased man on their first night among the “Bush Negroes” (Saamaka) in Suriname, then Dutch Guiana. They discussed the ritual proceedings as well as the kunu, an ancestral spirit of retribution and vengeance in some detail in Rebel Destiny ([1934] 1971) and Suriname Folk-­Lore (1936), arguing that death and kunu “dominate the foreground of the spiritual life of the bush” ([1934] 1971, 70; 1936, 69). Mortuary rituals and ancestral spirits ­were an integral part of their subsequent ethnographies of Haiti ([1937] 1975) and Trinidad (Herskovits [1947] 1964). The Herskovitses’ ethnographic research methods and writing style allowed, for the first time in the research tradition on death in the Ca­rib­bean, for Saamaka, Haitian and Trinidadian voices to be included in the analy­sis: they cited elders’ and ritual specialists’ responses and expressions, and the field recordings in Toco in 1939 (“Peter Was a Fisherman”) featured vari­ous songs of local mortuary and ancestral rituals, reel and bongo. The agency that emerged in ­these ethnographies moved the repre­sen­ta­ tion of African Ca­rib­bean ritual prac­ti­tion­ers away from the illogical and savage brujo or obeahman and ­toward knowledgeable and articulate, if somewhat anonymous or generalized, folk.13 Sympathetic repre­sen­ta­tions of rural African Ca­rib­bean ­people and their cultural ideas and practices around death and the dead explored the discursive space opened by Anténor Firmin in his De l’égalité des races humaines: Anthropologie positive (1885) and further expanded by Price-­Mars (Jackson 1986, 95; Magloire and Yelvington 2005, 3). In Herskovits’s and his students’ work, ritual specialists and participants reproduced ancestral traditions, their practice legitimized by historical continuity to an African past. The spirits in Ca­rib­bean cosmologies ­were seen as African retentions, ontological links to a past of which the enslaved ­people ­were deprived. Herskovits saw a connection between the concept of a multiple soul in West Africa and Congo, and the concepts of soul, spirit, shadow, and jumby [sic] in Trinidad ([1947] 1964, 302); suggested that the “cult of the dead” in Haiti was distinctly African, though modified by Catholicism ([1937] 1975, 205); and considered ancestor veneration, burial practices, and the use of the spirits of the dead in magic in Ca­rib­bean socie­ties as “purely 8  Maarit Forde

African” (1941, 236–242).14 In Life in a Haitian Valley, Herskovits pres­ents the “ancestral cult” as an area in which Africanisms ­were most clearly marked.15 The themes of re­sis­tance and vio­lence, prevalent in the exoticizing protoethnography of Ca­rib­bean rituals and religious practices, w ­ ere no longer in the forefront in the Herskovitsian lit­er­a­ture: while ritual prac­ti­tion­ers ­were logical and had a degree of agency, they w ­ ere not to be considered a threat to the social order.16 In the same vein, the policing of Spiritual Baptists in Trinidad and Tobago or the anti-­Vodou legislation and campaigns in Haiti did not inform Herskovits’ or his students’ approaches to ­these religions. Instead of looking into the socially transformative potential of ritual practice with its implications of non-­European power or insurgency, anthropologists wrote less threatening and therefore, differently othering descriptions of folk culture guided by theoretical interests in cultural retentions and social integration.

I have followed early developments in repre­sen­ta­tions of mortuary culture, showing how anthropologists’ approaches to time and the other have served to distance “barbaric” or “folk” rituals from the realm of the con­temporary and modern. In deeply stratified socie­ties, this kind of discursive ­labor has for its part served to cement racialized and class difference. At the same time, t­ here is much of value in the early and mid-­t wentieth-­century ethnographies, and the chapters in this collection build on some of the concepts, arguments, and ethnographic evidence of this research tradition. In the following sections of the Introduction, I introduce the chapters of this volume in more detail, embedding them in thematically relevant areas in the anthropology of death. Beginning with questions of social reproduction, the discussion proceeds to debates of social relations between the living and the dead; personhood; commemorialization; and the government of death. Death and Reproduction

While Herskovits did not refer to Durkheim, Robert Hertz, or Arnold van Gennep in his work, the theme of social integration underpins his analyses of death rituals in Suriname, Haiti and Trinidad: death rituals restored and sustained social cohesion ­after the loss of a loved one.17 In Life in a Haitian Valley, he draws attention to a commemorative ritual called mangé mort, a sacrificial offering of a dinner with vari­ous dishes served for deceased ­family members, which marked the anniversary of death in the ­family along with a Introduction  9

Catholic Mass (Herskovits [1937] 1975, 212, 259). He describes the activation of kinship roles in mourning (216–218) and the importance of ­family land as the abode of the ancestors (132). The Haitian kinship system—­including the institution of plaçage (common law marriage), polygyny, and ­family land cultivated to support ancestral rituals—­was reproduced and legitimated in the mortuary cycle and ancestor veneration (116, 132). The central authority of elders among the Saamaka in Suriname and in Toco, Trinidad, was reinforced in death rituals (M. and F. Herskovits [1934] 1971, chap. 1; and [1947] 1964, 134; see also Hurston [1938] 1990, 41 on Haiti, and Breinburg 2001, 35 on ancestors in the African Surinamese Winti tradition). For Herskovits, death rituals in Trinidad functioned as a “stabilizing, moral force” ([1947] 1964, 134). Spirits of the dead supported and sustained social institutions and cohesion in Toco, ­because they enforced ethical and moral codes and sanctioned marriages. Herskovits grounded his interpretation of the stabilizing effect of mortuary rituals and ancestral veneration to a similar function in African socie­ties: “This complex of beliefs is to be regarded as a retention of the African ancestral cult which in Africa is the most impor­tant single sanctioning force for the social system and the codes of behaviour that underlie it” ([1947] 1964, 300). Ineke (Wilhelmina) Van Wetering and Bonno (H. U. E.) Thoden van Velzen’s chapter in this volume discusses gerontocracy in the Ndyuka society, legitimized by the daily consultations with the ancestors by middle-­aged and older Ndyuka men and their predominance in mortuary rituals. In a dramatic turn of events, this patriarchal power structure was challenged by a demon-­fighting campaign that resembled witchcraft eradication movements in African socie­ties (e.g., Auslander 1993; Geschiere 1997). In addition to their role in reproducing moral communities, ancestors’ tangible connection to the living at burial sites helped to establish proto­ peasant and peasant communities in and outside of the plantation, especially in the institution of ­family land. Jean Besson’s work on kinship and land tenure in rural Jamaica shows how f­ amily land, which functions partly as a private burial ground, has been owned and transmitted by descent groups within a cognatic system created by enslaved Africans. Ancestral presence, concretized in ­family tombs, legitimizes the descent group’s owner­ship of the land and links con­temporary generations to enslaved or newly emancipated ancestors (Besson 2002; Horst 2004; see also Richman 2005 on the institution of eritaj in Haiti). Yanique Hume’s chapter in this volume adds to this lit­er­a­ture by exploring the cultural reproduction of space and kinship in mortuary rituals in rural Jamaica, where last rites on f­ amily land solidify a 10  Maarit Forde

sense of belonging both to the homestead and to the extended f­ amily. Hume shows how collective ritual ­labor in the mortuary cycle reaffirms kinship ties and identity. Rituals of divination have also been considered to have a stabilizing function in the mortuary cycle: by gauging agency and motives ­behind death, including witchcraft, laying out unresolved conflicts and eventually leading ­toward resolution and possibly reconciliation, divination drew on the authority of the dead to help communities maintain stasis. Coffin divination was a spectacular ele­ment of the funerals of the enslaved in colonial Jamaica and Grenada as well as Saamaka and Ndyuka mortuary cycles (Beckwith 1929; Bell 1893, 146; Brown 2008, 66–69; Thoden van Velzen and van Wetering 2004, 79–86 and this volume; Williams [1934] 1979, 190–193). The spirit of the deceased, guiding the coffin ­bearers, made them stop in front of the abodes of t­ hose members of the community who might have contributed to the death, or with whom the dead had unresolved business. Andrew Pearse’s team of ethnographers in Tobago in 1954 describe other ways of consulting the dead about pos­si­ble wrongdoings leading to their demise: “Relatives may make requests [of the corpse] for favours, give messages to the dead for other relatives ‘gone before’ or command the dead one to come “back back” and “tell ah we who kill you.”18 Karen Richman’s chapter in this volume questions the neatly integrating function assigned to divination and other rituals: looking into the moral authority of the dead in Haitian rites of commemoration and divination, Richman suggests that although mortuary rituals allow descent groups in con­temporary Haiti to air out social dramas, they do not always lead to closure and resolution for the bereaved.19 Although few refer directly to Hertz and van Gennep’s work, many anthropological accounts of funerary rituals in Ca­rib­bean socie­ties explore the ritual production of death as a pro­cess rather than a single event, often with a par­tic­u­lar focus on the liminal stage of wake, bongo, or other mortuary rituals during which the spirit of the deceased lingers among the living. Martha Beckwith (1929), Jacob Elder (1955), Herskovits ([1937] 1975, 208–209 and [1947] 1964, 301), Zora Neale Hurston ([1938] 1990, chap. 4), Alfred Métraux (1960, 100–102), and Simpson (1957 and 1965, 56–58), but also more con­temporary authors such as Stephen Glazier (2006, 179), Jocelyne Guilbault (1987), Karen Fog Olwig (2009), Rawle Titus (2008), and Huon Wardle (2000) describe the communal ritualizing and merrymaking of the wake in vari­ous parts of the Ca­rib­bean and its diaspora, including Indian Trinidadian wakes (Klass 1961, 129; Niehoff and Niehoff 1960, 132; Vertovec 1992, 206), and contribute to a general argument on the effects of death on social Introduction  11

cohesion and continuity.20 They emphasize the importance of the community’s active participation in funerary wakes and make mention of drinking, games, and obscenity, but also the singing of hymns. A successful wake manages to “amuse the dead . . . ​and thus send him away in good humor” (Herskovits [1937] 1975, 209), but also relies on “neighbourly hosting and reciprocity” and “the connections that individuals form through wakes to dif­fer­ent ­people and places, including relationships formed and reinforced between the countryside and town” (Wardle 2000, 143). In the United Kingdom, where Ca­rib­bean mi­grants’ mortuary rituals have had to be adjusted b ­ ecause of dif­fer­ent living arrangements, communities and regulations, funerals may have subsumed some of the features of the nocturnal wake. Karen Fog Olwig writes of a funeral of a Nevisian man in London attended by other Ca­rib­bean mi­grants based in Leeds. The day trip to London on a chartered a bus produced a sentiment of belonging and togetherness: “with their self-­conscious display of support and solidarity, ­these funerals would thus serve to demarcate the Ca­rib­bean immigrants as a community of caring p ­ eople who assume responsibility for the proper burial of their loved ones and are prepared to travel far to show their last re­spects to a bereaved ­family” (2009, 525). Annie Paul describes the “bling” funerals of gang leaders and dancehall artists in Jamaica and shows how elaborately decorated designer caskets, motorcades of luxury vehicles, and other displays of con­spic­u­ous consumption help to perpetuate the power of “community leaders” and the links between gangs and po­liti­cal parties (2007). Debbora Battaglia’s perceptive analy­sis of death and personhood in Papua New Guinea speaks to ­these Ca­rib­bean examples of community building at death: Battaglia sees segaiya, a series of mortuary feasts, as an “act of restoration” wherein the bereaved reconstitute, “symbolically and collectively, the relationship they have lost as a part of their own historically situated identities; collectivities of persons are being restored to themselves” (1990, 155). The restoration of collective selves in the face of ever-­present death and vio­lence, if not what Orlando Patterson ([1968] 1985) called “social death” in the plantation, has been a major mechanism for society building in the Ca­rib­bean. Keith McNeal adds to the research tradition on mortuary rituals and the reproduction of community in his chapter on the development of Hindu funerals in Trinidad and Tobago. Taking the analy­sis beyond kin groups and communities, he looks into the consolidation of Hinduism in the course of the twentieth c­ entury and argues that the discursive, legislative, and ritual production of orthodox mortuary culture helped to solidify Indian Trinidadian ethnicity in the ethnically and religiously diverse society. 12  Maarit Forde

Replacing burial, cremation became increasingly common and eventually orthopraxic among Trinidadian Hindus. As a strong and deeply meaningful resource in the production of ethnic identity, cremation has also been embraced by Indian Trinidadians who belong to Christian denominations. In the introduction to their edited volume Death and the Regeneration of Life (1982), Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry explore connections between the Hertzian focus on reproducing the social order in the face of loss and bereavement and the Frazerian interest in symbols of sexuality and fertility in death rituals. While Ca­rib­bean anthropology includes numerous discussions of sexual symbolism in funerary wakes as well as analyses of the simultaneity and symbiotic rapport between death and sexuality in the Vodou pantheon, especially in the lwa Gede, and while t­hese discussions in many ways contribute to our understanding of the reproduction of social order, they also show how symbols of sexuality and death are culturally constructed and culturally specific, universal as sex and death themselves might be. Obscene jokes and sexually explicit dancing recur in wakes across the region (e.g., Métraux [1958] 1960 on Haiti; Price and Price 1991 on Saamaka wakes in Suriname; and Guilbault 1987, 289, and Weekes 2014, 37–38, on kont dances in St. Lucia). Elder describes bongo songs performed in Tobagonian wake cycles as “openly erotic” and the accompanying dances as “mimes upon copulative acts spontaneously choreographed by ‘specialists’ ” (1971, 20). In Anglo-­Caribbean socie­ties such as Tobago, where per­for­mances of sexuality are guided by colonially inherited value complexes coined by anthropologists as reputation and respectability, the liminal space of mortuary rituals allows for exaggerated portrayals of heteronormative masculinity and female sexuality that are rarely acceptable in everyday social life. T ­ hese subversive per­for­mances within the “anti-­structure” of the liminal space of the wake (Turner [1969] 1995) challenge and negate the strict moral norms of Protestant Chris­tian­ity. But like carnival, wakes are always followed by the “structure” of normal society where “the ludic is absorbed and neutralized by the established order” (Burton 1997, 173).21 Working with the Dead

Instead of dwelling in a neatly demarcated afterworld, the dead in the Ca­rib­ bean have been “uncontainable” (Taussig 2001, 307). Afterworlds entangle with the world of the living, as spirits linger in, or traverse, the communities they used to be part of—in spite of the substantial amount of energy and resources invested in some mortuary rituals to guarantee them a safe passage Introduction  13

to the hereafter. Spirits of the dead have long attracted attention in Ca­rib­ bean ethnography, not only in the context of mortuary rituals but as ancestral spirits, jumbies, duppies, evil spirits, or entities invoked in Espiritismo and kabbalah rituals. Anthropologists have studied the relations between the dead and the living in Ca­rib­bean socie­ties from vari­ous perspectives, looking at spirits as a source of suffering; as a resource in ritual work such as healing; as agents of possession that work as performative histories, or mouthpieces that allow the subaltern to speak; and as aspects of complex personhoods. The figure of the anonymous, potentially malevolent spirit lingering in the world of the living intrigued early observers such as Beckwith (1929), Hesketh Bell (1893), Williams ([1934] 1979), and J. S. Udal (1915).22 Much of the ritual practice defined as obeah in Ca­rib­bean courtrooms and media in the nineteenth ­century and early twentieth aimed at getting rid of malevolent spirits or alleviating suffering caused by them (Bilby and Handler 2004; Forde 2012; Paton 2015, chap. 6). Spirits of the dead ­were firmly incorporated in the cosmologies of Hindu sugar workers and peasants by the time Arthur and Juanita Niehoff did their fieldwork in Penal and Debe in southern Trinidad in 1957. “The Indian in the Oropouche area is surrounded by a mysteriously shadowy world of spirits, which become particularly active at night,” they wrote, and described identifiable spirits such as Dumphries Baba, a white overseer of a sugar estate, or Lamont Sahib, a white plantation own­er; and the jumbies that emerged at a drilling site abandoned by an American oil com­pany. Anonymous, dangerous spirits of suicides could cause illness and death, and ritual specialists, obeahmen, w ­ ere regularly consulted in order to c­ ounter possessions by malevolent spirits (1960, 161–165; see also Klass 1961, 183). A more proactive relationship between the living and the dead emerges in recent ethnographies of ritual practice, especially rituals of healing and divination, based on communication and collaboration with the dead. In Raquel Romberg’s work with Espiritistas (who self-­identify as brujos and brujas, taking owner­ship of the previously derogatory label), Puerto Rican ­women and men describe their lives with los muertos, spirits of their f­ amily members and other close ones, and ritual specialists work with a diverse cavalcade of spirits to heal and help their clients (2003, 2012). Todd Ramón Ochoa writes of similar relationships between Cuban paleros, ritual specialists in the Palo tradition, and their muertos or Kalunga, the dead with whom they communicate on a daily basis. Ochoa defines the Kalunga as “the ambient dead” to convey their “saturating yet barely discernable 14  Maarit Forde

influence,” more like a climate or an atmosphere than a static pantheon of spirits (2010, 37). While the dead often appear as an anonymous mass of spirits, paleros and paleras can communicate and work with responsive dead: prendas, cauldrons or urns filled with symbolic materials, are ritual agents rather than objects in that they enable paleros to harness the potential of the Kalunga. “Prenda rules the dead,” explained Teodoro, Ochoa’s teacher in Palo (11–12, 72). Ritual specialists can also use firmas, compacts or inscriptions, to “establish the ­will of the living over the dead” (154). The relationship between paleros and muertos develops over time, as visions, ritual acts, and exchanges can lead to greater intimacy between the living and the dead, improve communication and increase the efficacy of the pact with the dead (Panagiotopoulos 2011, 86–87). In the context of Vodou, Richman’s ethnography has been instrumental in unveiling the cultural logic b ­ ehind serving the spirits and on the other hand, making spirits serve p ­ eople (2005; see also McAlister 2012 and 2002, chap. 3, on zonbi as forced ­labor). Like in Cuba and Haiti, the idea of the dead as serving the living is a long-­ standing one in the Anglophone Ca­rib­bean. J. S. Udal (1915, 281) quotes a British medical officer’s report on the widely circulated trope of obeahmen “catching” spirits or jumbies, who ­were then set to perform endless, impossible tasks, or to cause harm on another person (see also Beckwith 1929, 136–137, on paying duppies for their ser­vices). Kabbalah work in Trinidad depends on exchange between ritual participants and spirits, which can be used in work related to healing, court cases, and “cases of emergency” (Houk 1999, 300; Simpson 1965, 23). Steven Vertovec, who conducted his doctoral fieldwork in Trinidad in the mid-1980s, notes the prevalent discourse on jumbies and ritual specialists who can manipulate them among rural Trinidadians, “­whether Hindu, Muslim or Christian—­African or Indian” (1992, 216). Personhood and Remembering

Some of the spirits in t­hese “huge cosmic armies,” to borrow Romberg’s expression (2003, 155), are recently deceased loved ones, ­family members, and friends. The ritual and symbolic manipulation of the personhood and memories of recently dead members of the community has received much anthropological attention. Ritualized mourning can aim at eradicating the personhood of the deceased from the life-­world of the living, like in Beth A. Conklin’s work on Wari’ funerary practices in Amazonia, including ritual cannibalism, that gradually detach the deceased from the web of relations with the bereaved (2001). The Manuš, a Roma community in France, annihilate Introduction  15

the possessions of deceased members of the group shortly a­ fter death and stop uttering their name or evoking their memory. Similar princi­ples of ritualized detachment can be found in the Kagwahiv and Waiwai per­for­mances of grief and loss discussed in George Mentore’s chapter. Ca­rib­bean mortuary rituals include less dramatic practices of disconnecting the social relations and reciprocal obligations between the dead and the bereaved and making sure that the dead do not return to harm the living. Colin [Joan] Dayan explains the rationale ­behind serving the dead in Haiti: ­unless they are ritually fed and remembered, the dead “can become evil and unpredictable” (1995, 264). Indian Trinidadian Hindus “facilitate the potentially lingering spirit’s departure” by rearranging the ­house of the deceased: curtains are taken down, pictures and mirrors are turned to face the wall, and ceramic candles, deyas, are lit in the bedroom (Vertovec 1992, 206). In the same vein, Hume’s chapter in this volume describes the laborious cleansing rituals required to “turn out” the spirit of the dead in rural Jamaica. In addition to ritual manipulation of space, the deceased can be separated from the living through narratives. The practice of “memorializing” the dead in Jamaican wakes by reciting their life stories as reported by Simpson (1957, 330) resembles Mapuche funerals in Chile, where oratories serve to complete or finish the personhood of the deceased. The oratories, amapüllün, pres­ent the life of the deceased person as a meaningful ­whole, as if leading ­toward a conclusion, and thus enable him or her to move across to the afterworld (Course 2007, 94). A similar rationale underpins the material culture of tombs, their construction, maintenance, and eventual disintegration in Jamaica. Heather Horst (2004) argues that the pro­cess of commemorating the deceased by “tombing,” building a h ­ ouse for the dead, and then allowing it to fade into the landscape at the mercy of sun and rain facilitates the transformation of the deceased into an ancestor. Ancestral history is an integral ele­ment of many rituals and narratives in the Ca­rib­bean. Cele­bration and invocation of African ancestors are institutionalized in the Big Drum ritual in Carriacou (McDaniel 1998) and in Jamaican Kumina (Bilby and Bunseki 1983; Stewart 2005), and narratives of ancestors maintain First-­Time ideology, a historical corpus that is central to cultural and social reproduction, as a “living force” in con­temporary Saamaka society (Price [1983] 2002, 12). Paul Christopher Johnson’s chapter in this volume speaks to the ritual per­for­mances of the ancestral past as a tableau vivant, in which the Garifuna “act ancestrally,” bringing the past to the pres­ent. 16  Maarit Forde

Notions of personhood under­lying mortuary rituals that ensure the spirit of the dead does not linger among the living, and on the other hand, rituals of commemoration, remain undertheorized in Ca­rib­bean anthropology.23 We also know ­little about the cultural norms and politics of remembering and forgetting that determine which dead are commemorated and reanimated in public and private rituals, or which deaths become part of collective memory. Equally deserving of further anthropological attention in the region are emotional responses to death. Experiences and per­for­mances of grief and loss at death—­including “bad” or untimely death caused by state, gang, and domestic vio­lence—­would merit careful analy­sis that could increase our understanding of the cultural contexts of affect, but also lead to more sensitive and complex repre­sen­ta­tions of Ca­rib­bean ­people.24 In this volume, Hume and Richman pay attention to emotional responses to death in Jamaica and Haiti, and affect is at the forefront of Mentore’s discussion of certain Amerindian experiences and expressions of grief and loneliness and the cultural logics of retaliatory death, parawa. This focus on affect has deep theoretical and repre­sen­ta­tional implications. Valorizing what he calls the emotional base of embodied lived experience, Mentore writes of affective action in humanistic terms, approaching Amerindian “life lived as poetry.” Spirits and Selves

This review of the anthropology of death in the Ca­rib­bean has moved from early studies of how ­others—­antimodern savages or atavistic folk—­ ritualized death and associated with the spirits of the dead ­toward approaches that do not hesitate to think of the cultural production of death as part of modern and evolving socie­ties. This does not mean that cultural difference and dif­fer­ent sources of cultural knowledge have become muted in anthropological discussions of the dead. As shown below, recent work has revealed ontological premises in Ca­rib­bean cosmologies that differ radically from ideas of being in Chris­tian­ity or the version of modernity informed by the Enlightenment. But instead of presenting ­these differences as “mentalities” that belong to other times and places, or simply as ancestral continuums of cultural heritage, anthropologists discuss them as part of complex and changing socie­ties. Alterity becomes a research prob­lem rather than an ethnographic by-­product; careful studies of power relations in the cultural sphere of death challenge inherent, and unquestioned, hierarchies in knowledge production. Introduction  17

The cosmologies and ontologies unfolding in the first part of the book complicate and expand anthropological understandings of selves and personhood, relations and intersubjectivity in relation to the dead.25 Mentore’s chapter on spirits, bodies, and socialities in Amerindian cosmologies in Guyana is particularly critical of modernist anthropology in this regard. The per­sis­tence of Enlightenment ideas in anthropological vocabularies and models limit the ways in which we can write, and think, about selfhood and time. Mentore shows how Waiwai relations between the spiritual vitality of the dead and the bodies, emotions, and memories of the living undermine notions of linear time and being that have informed much anthropological theorizing on death and mortuary culture. For t­ hese Amerindians, death is not a “passage” to an “afterworld”; it is not the end of a modern, embodied self. According to Mentore, “the Amerindian self cannot be considered as possessing any au­then­tic original singularity.” Instead, he explores the intersubjective construction of selves by caring, caretaking o ­ thers. Central to this “intimate alterity” is the sharing and exchanging of spirit vitality, a source of unintentional power that invigorates the body, keeps it alive, and provides it with ­will and power. What Sylvia Wynter might call the “ontological sovereignty” (Scott 2000, 136) of Amerindian ideas has not been compromised by colonialism, slavery, and the plantation in the same way as African Ca­rib­bean cosmologies. Mentore describes an unintentional spirit vitality, which implies a dif­ fer­ent approach to individuals, spirits, and agency than the Ndyuka concept of ancestors (van Wetering and Thoden van Velzen), Trinidadian jumbies (Forde) or Haitian mò (Richman). Nevertheless, neither the Amerindian nor the African-­inspired (to borrow Todd Ramón Ochoa’s term) cosmologies discussed in the chapters make a clear distinction between life and afterlife as autonomous spheres. The realm of the dead is not clearly distinct from that of the living; t­ here is no ontological rupture between the conditions of being and no longer being (Espírito Santo 2015; Goldman 2007; Holbraad 2012). Relations to the dead materialize when the Garifuna “act ancestrally” (Johnson); when the dead, mò, return to declare the true reasons for their passing (Richman); when the Ndyuka bring their daily worries and prob­ lems to the ancestors’ attention a­ fter offering them a drink (van Wetering and Thoden van Velzen); or when a dutiful kinsman avenges the death of a Waiwai with the aid of a contracted spirit (Mentore). The “ambient dead” (Ochoa 2010)—­such as ancestors, kabbalah spirits, orishas, or the lwa—­call into question notions of selfhood that have become normative in biomedicine as well as much of the lit­er­a­ture on identity politics in the Ca­rib­be­an. 18  Maarit Forde

Porous or penetrable selves, bodies that can be occupied by dif­fer­ent entities, resemble the concept of dividual, partible, or composite personhood discussed in the body of lit­er­a­ture that has become known as New Melanesian Ethnography. Dividually conceived selves, writes Marilyn Strathern, “are constructed as the plural and composite site of the relationships that produce them” (1988, 13; see also Herner 2013; LiPuma 1998, 2000; and Mosko 2010). The participants in misas blancas, Spiritist rituals in a Cuban community in Chicago, construct their relatedness to the spirits of the dead through mimesis, sympathetic impersonation of the spirits, for example, through clothing, accessories, and gestures. The blurred or porous bound­ aries between ritual prac­ti­tion­ers and their spirit guides, the prac­ti­tion­ers’ acquiescence to the w ­ ill of the spirits, and the impact of patron orishas on the destiny of their “­children” problematize the idea of an autonomous, individual self (Pérez 2012, 368–370).26 In a similar vein, Diana Espírito Santo writes about the development and expansion of selfhood through Cuban mediums’ connections to multiple muertos (2015). Orishas, ancestral spirits, and other entities are “recognized as being on, around, and within prac­ ti­tion­ers’ bodies” in Santería, more like “copresences” than otherworldly entities mediated through the body (Beliso-­De Jesús 2014, 504). In ­these accounts of Cuban religious practice, relations between the living and the dead are characterized by movement, proximity, and distance rather than a divide between h ­ ere and hereafter, or possession of a ritual practitioner by an external deity.27 In some Ca­rib­bean cosmologies discussed in this volume and elsewhere, the dead are ritually and conceptually separated from other, “higher” spiritual entities such as orishas or the lwa. Possession by the dead is ritually and discursively distanced from possession by higher spirits. Johnson describes negotiations over this separation in Brazil and Cuba in his chapter. Garifuna ancestors, he argues, do not possess their living descendants in spectacular possession-­performances, like ­those of orishas or the lwa, and although possession-­trance may take place during the lengthy ritual of ancestor veneration, dügü, it is not the climax or the purpose of the ritual. The ancestors’ presence manifests through “acting ancestrally” or “becoming ancestral” by performing tasks and chores associated with ancestors. This mimetic or sympathetic practice can be understood as a tableau vivant produced by ritual participants rather than momentarily visiting, external spirits. A dif­fer­ent, though related, perspective on the reproduction of ancestral presence underpins Richard Price’s ethnography of Saamaka history and remembering. Price’s emphasis on stories allows for a nuanced understanding Introduction  19

of the agency of ritual specialists as well as ancestors and shifts the focus from the dancing, drumming, or possessed body t­ oward narrating, remembering subjectivity. Tooy, a Saamaka healer in Cayenne, French Guiana, shares his profound historical and ritual knowledge with the Prices, but also with other Saamaka, circulating stories about ancestors such as Antamá, a warrior who fought for the liberty of his ­people in the 1760s. Ancestors and their acts become relevant and con­temporary in Tooy’s rhe­toric, so that his narration is closer to time traveling than remembering, and they participate in Tooy’s social world “just as f­ amily members and other p ­ eople do” (Price 2008, 150–157, 288; see also Herskovits and Herskovits 1936, chap. 13). Mentore points ­toward the disparity between Waiwai and other Amerindian experiences and anthropological models based on binary, dialectical thought. He questions anthropology’s ability or willingness to truthfully represent radically dif­fer­ent subjectivities such as Amerindian perceptions of selfhood (see also Viveiros de Castro 2013 and Johnson 2011).28 Fathoming similar prob­lems in epistemology and repre­sen­ta­tion in Melanesian anthropology, Edward LiPuma cautions against excessive relativism, which renders the dividual other so incommensurable to Western notions of personhood that anthropological repre­sen­ta­tion becomes impossible. Impor­tant for the discussions of the spirits of the dead in this volume, LiPuma argues that a singular emphasis on dividuality obscures the increasing role of individual aspects of personhood in modern Melanesia (2000, 151). Modernity and modern subjectivity have, of course, a dif­fer­ent history in the insular Ca­rib­ bean than in Melanesia or Amazonia, and the possibly composite personhoods discussed in much of Ca­rib­bean ethnography are informed by modern modes of production and cosmopolitan sensibilities. Transforming Death

In making sense of death in highly diverse, stratified and often violent socie­ ties, the writers in the second half of this book advance anthropological understandings of death in the nexus of state power, social stratification, and alterity politics.29 Since the paradigm shift in Ca­rib­bean anthropology influenced by The Birth of African-­American Culture (Mintz and Price 1992), the historical conditions in which Ca­rib­bean ­people relate to the spirits of the dead have received more attention. Communication with the dead as well as rituals of commemoration have been ­shaped by the logic of capitalism in plantation and postplantation socie­ties (Richman 2005; Romberg 2003), migration and transnational mobility (Johnson 2007; Rey and Stepick 2013; Richman 2005), 20  Maarit Forde

materiality and technology (Espírito Santo 2010; Palmié 2014; Paul 2007), and natu­ral as well as po­liti­cal catastrophes or state vio­lence (Dayan 1995, 263–267; James 2012; Pichler 2011; Price 1995; Richman 2012; Scott 2014; Thomas 2011). Richard Price’s chapter contrasts Saamaka justice and executions with the violent punishments of the enslaved within the plantation regime. Price argues that public corporeal punishment in Saamaka society appropriated ele­ments of plantocratic cruelty, so that punishments and executions considered unjust and defied by the enslaved w ­ ere accepted as legitimate when implemented by the Saamaka themselves. Thus the fundamentally violent social order of the plantation served as a resource for cultural reproduction in a Maroon society, guiding the development of the Saamaka justice system.30 Donald Cosentino looks into transformations in Vodou cosmology in the context of po­liti­cal upheavals from the Duvalier dynasty to Aristide, and fi­nally, the devastating 2010 earthquake and the subsequent cholera epidemic in Haiti. Exploring artistic repre­sen­ta­tions of death, he describes the changing relations between Bawon Samdi, Gede, and zonbi in what he calls a “revolution in Haitian mythological thought regarding death and afterlife arrangements over the last generation.” The ­family of spirits linked to death and sexuality, the Gedes, have evolved along with social and po­liti­ cal transformations.31 While Bawon, the sinister paterfamilias of the spirits of death in Vodou, and zonbi w ­ ere emblematic of state terror and vio­lence ­under the Duvaliers, ritual and artistic repre­sen­ta­tions of Gede proliferated in the years that followed. However, the chain of catastrophes beginning with President Aristide’s overthrow and leading to the 2010 earthquake and the subsequent cholera epidemic brought so much death to Haiti that the Bawon receded and Gede’s raucous mix of the lethal and lascivious became irrelevant in Haitian eschatology. Whereas the eschatological shifts in Haiti are based on ­people’s relationships to lwa in contexts of insecurity and uncontrollable change, the ritual transformation of Indian Trinidadian funerals as described by McNeal appears to have been a more teleological pro­cess. Hindu funerals, and especially the treatment and fate of the body of the deceased, have changed substantially since the period of indentureship, and meanings attached to cremation have transformed accordingly. Hindu activists have used cremation as a point of reference in debates over religious orthopraxy, but it has also served more general Indian Trinidadian identity politics—­“postcolonial ‘Indian Re­nais­sance,’ ” as McNeal puts it. The appropriation of cremation as a marker of ethnic identity in a multicultural society has empowered Indian Trinidadians to subvert oppressive structures and articulate identity claims. Introduction  21

Not only has praxis transformed; the symbolism of cremation has become more potent and experiences of the ritual more power­ful. McNeal’s and my own chapter look at the colonial state’s attempts to govern mortuary rituals in Trinidad and Tobago, but while McNeal emphasizes religious activists’ roles, in my chapter the focus is on legislative and discursive mea­sures aimed at shaping working-­class mortuary culture. I argue that relationships to spirits as performed in mortuary rituals threatened the colonial proj­ect of “civilization,” but also the notion of a rational and autonomous individual who was central to protonationalist thought. Radically dif­fer­ent cosmological and ontological perspectives unsettled po­ liti­cal proj­ects aimed at producing civilized colonial subjects or, alternatively, citizens capable of self-­government, and the government of death in the late nineteenth ­century and early twentieth sought to alleviate t­ hese concerns. It has, for its part, contributed to the sedimentation of class difference and in­equality in Trinidad and Tobago. This lit­er­a­ture that examines mortuary culture in its sociohistorical, po­ liti­cal, and economic contexts is not disputing the symbolic weight placed on origins and the past in anthropological and historical theorizing on Ca­ rib­bean mortuary culture. The past is, however, approached as a symbolic referent that performs impor­tant conceptual and po­liti­cal work in the pres­ ent rather than a historical trajectory ­toward cultural origins (Scott 1991). Whereas studies focusing on the African background of Ca­rib­bean death culture have shown how history—or at times, the authors’ ideological projection of history—­have influenced con­temporary ideas and ritual practice and how the past lives on in the rural or working-­class pres­ent, lit­er­a­ture on the changing historical contexts of death invites us to ask how sociocultural transformations and po­liti­cal economy affect the ways in which Ca­ rib­bean ­people conceptualize the dead and the ancestral past. Spirits of the dead can inspire anthropological inquiry into the “social framework[s] of memory” or the employment of the past in con­temporary construction of history, identities and po­liti­cal rhe­toric, rather than the search for origins (Scott 2014, 126; 1991, 279). Unlike the early, evolutionist accounts that situated African Ca­rib­bean rituals on the other side of the temporal juncture separating primitive from modern, or the nationalist and Herskovitsian interest in relics of an ideologically preferred past that validated folk culture, anthropology of death that takes seriously con­temporary politics and social and economic contexts does not distance its subjects from the pres­ent, the historical moment they share with the authors and readers of ethnography. Historically sensitive anthropology of the dead and the living can therefore 22  Maarit Forde

seek and approach coevalness in its repre­sen­ta­tion of ritual participants, and treat difference and alterity as subjects of analy­sis rather than a guiding princi­ple in the ethnographic pro­cess.

In her afterword, Aisha Khan probes a question that underpins this introduction and shapes the essays that follow: how to write about ­others’ rituals and cosmological understandings of death—­passages and afterworlds—­ while ­doing justice to multiple truths and temporalities? Art, she suggests, can help bridge the realities of the observer and the observed. Khan’s account of Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol shows how fiction can expose the binaries of Western epistemology and help us see beyond the “cognitive strug­gle” between sense and sensibility that encounters with death can produce. In the poem that opens this introduction, Walcott’s verse conveys Shabine’s immersion in the sea where the dead and the past flow into his, and perhaps our, sensory pres­ent. The meta­phorical potential that draws us out of our epistemological and ontological comfort zones can be particularly compelling in visual art. Haitian artist Frantz Zephirin’s painting The Resurrection of the Dead (2007) on the cover of this book invites the viewer to a ­family’s impending reunion with a deceased member. In this ritual of “retrieving” the dead, beautifully described in Richman’s chapter in this book, the bereaved pay a ritual specialist to summon the dead from anba dlo, ­under the ­water, where the deceased has dwelled in “liquid oblivion” for at least a year and a day. We do not see the living; instead, myriad individual f­aces of the dead look on as the one who has been summoned returns to the mourning f­ amily in a casket ebbing in the waves. Bawon Samdi, Grann Brijit, and other lwa of death guard the transition and open a door to a dark, cobwebbed passageway that connects the subterranean ­waters to the everyday world of the bereaved, out of sight. The viewer swims in the w ­ aters of the afterworld, looking into the forbidding passage that leads back to the world of the living, perhaps reluctant to enter. Lacking the imaginative space offered by symbolic ambiguity and burdened by its conceptual baggage, ethnographic prose can only strive to evoke equally power­ful questions, sentiments, and memories of the “ultimate unknown” as poetry or art. But having shared their interlocutors’ losses, participated in their send-­offs and commemorations, and witnessed their encounters with the dead, ethnographers—­including ­those writing in this volume—­can deepen our understanding of dif­f er­ent ways of knowing about death as well as our shared humanity in the face of ends, exits, and returns. Introduction  23

Notes I am grateful to Paul Christopher Johnson, Aisha Khan, and the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive comments that helped me restructure and clarify this introduction. 1. Although this collection of essays does not have the encyclopedic ambition of presenting a comprehensive account of mortuary culture across Ca­rib­bean socie­ties and religious communities, the exclusion of the Spanish-­speaking Ca­rib­bean is unfortunate, ­because much of the con­temporary lit­er­a­ture on the spirits of the dead focuses on Cuba and Puerto Rico (e.g., Beliso-­De Jesús 2014; Espírito Santo 2015; Holbraad 2012; Ochoa 2010; Panagiotopoulos 2011; Román 2007; Romberg 2003; Wirtz 2014). Todd Ramón Ochoa and Marta Moreno Vega, who work on Cuban and Puerto Rican religions, ­were part of the workshop that initiated this book proj­ect, and their contributions to the conversations at the workshop have informed many of the chapters. The introduction attempts to bring the chapters of this book into conversation with some of the arguments in the lit­er­a­ture on the Spanish-­speaking Ca­rib­bean and other areas of the region. 2. The changing epistemological conditions (which have often been muted in the lit­ er­a­ture) coincided with strug­gles for enfranchisement and citizenship, nationalism and Eu­ro­pean as well as US imperialism in highly unequal socie­ties. The research tradition on death in the Ca­rib­bean reflects anthropologists’ changing understandings of the positions, rights, and needs of rural and working-­class ­people as well as Maroon and Amerindian communities. 3. Suspicions of cannibalism ­were widely circulated in early travel writing on indige­ nous populations in the New World, such as the Tupinambá and other groups in Brazil (Léry [1578] 1990; Staden 2008) and in the Ca­rib­bean (Boucher 1992; Hulme and Whitehead 1992). Eighteenth-­century observers of plantation socie­ties, such as the planter historians Edward Long and Bryan Edwards, did not include speculation on cannibalism or ­human sacrifice in their descriptions of Jamaica. Moreau de Saint-­Méry (1797–1798) briefly mentions fears of cannibalism on a plantation in Saint-­Domingue, but does not elaborate on ­these or link them to “Vaudoux.” 4. A well-­known example of an obeah-­related murder or sacrifice that received media attention across the British Ca­rib­bean was the notorious Monchy murder case in St. Lucia in 1904. Three men ­were sentenced to death by hanging for murdering a twelve-­year-­old Barbadian boy, Rupert Mapp, “for purposes of obeah.” Reports of the murder, the search for the perpetrators, the court proceedings, and the execution w ­ ere published in St. Lucia Voice, but also in the Kingston Daily Gleaner, the Dominican, Antigua Standard, Limón Weekly News and Port of Spain Gazette, and possibly other newspapers in the region, in October–­December 1904. On the media coverage of obeah-­related murder cases, see Lara Putnam (2012); Reinaldo Román (2007, chap. 3). 5. In Tylor’s 1871 Primitive Culture, animism or belief in spiritual beings as the original form of religion emanates from ­people’s attempts to understand what ­causes death and the difference between life and death, as well as anthropomorphic visions in dreams (387). 6. See Palmié (2002, 216) on Ortiz’s use of Tylor in building an argument about the degenerative effect of Afro-­Cuban brujos on the Cuban society as a ­whole. 24  Maarit Forde

7. Ortiz’s account of the sacrifice of white ­children by Afro-­Cuban brujos reflected and fueled a moral panic that developed in Cuba and spread around the region a­ fter the 1904 murder of a ­little girl who came to be known as la niña Zoila (Helg 1995; Ortiz [1906] 1973, 102–107; Palmié 2002, chap. 3; 2013, 87). White elites’ unease with universal male suffrage in the newly in­de­pen­dent Cuba ­shaped the intellectual climate of Ortiz’s early work, and social sciences, including his publications, contributed to the discursive production of brujos and by extension, Afro-­Cubans as primitive savages, unsuited for the rights and responsibilities that came along with citizenship (e.g., Bronfman 2004; Cooper 2012; Palmié 2002; Román 2007, chap. 3). 8. This shift was preceded by Anténor Firmin, John Jacob Thomas, and other Haitian and West Indian writers’ “vindicationist” responses to racist historians, ethnographers and travel writers; the Empire “writing back” (e.g., Smith 2002). 9. Kate Ramsey (2011, 180) proposes that Price-­Mars’s work may have influenced Ortiz’s new perspective on Afro-­Cuban culture and religion; see also Stephan Palmié (2002, 248–254) on the influence of Cuban ritual specialists and especially Fernando Guerra on Ortiz’s thought. 10. In Ca­rib­bean cultural politics, the growing body of lit­er­a­ture on “folk” religion informed nationalist and protonationalist movements and institution building (Ramsey 1995; Thomas 2004). The appropriation of ethnographic knowledge of “folk” rituals and religion took an exceptionally sinister turn in Haiti, where the f­ uture dictator-­for-­life, François Duvalier, studied “national Vodou” ­under Price-­Mars. During his brutal regime from 1957 to 1971, Duvalier tactically deployed symbols and per­for­mances of Vodou, drawing on the power vested in the secrecy of its rituals to entrench his position and to discipline and punish the same “folk” whose religious beliefs and practices w ­ ere understood as the foundation of national culture (P. C. Johnson 2006; Trouillot 1990). 11. The argument and its po­liti­cal implications for Afro-­Haitian culture challenged social Darwinist approaches to “primitive” thought and racist depictions of Haiti and Vodou. Ainsi parla l’oncle preceded much of the sensationalist lit­er­a­ture on Haiti that presented Haitian society as primitive and premodern (and served to justify the American occupation of the country), such as William Seabrook’s The Magic Island (1929). In his ­later publications, Price-­Mars challenged some of ­these hostile but widely read accounts of Haiti and Vodou (Magloire-­Danton 2005, 6). 12. Price-­Mars corresponded with Melville Herskovits since 1928 and hosted Melville and Frances Herskovits during their 1934 field trip to Haiti, assisting them in the arrangements and providing them with expert advice (Fluehr-­Lobban 2005). The aftermath of the US occupation was a moment of intense ethnographic interest in Haiti: Alan Lomax recorded over 1,500 songs in the country in 1936–1937; Harold Courlander visited Haiti for the first time in 1932 and returned over twenty times; Katherine Dunham made her first field trip to Haiti in 1936; George Eaton Simpson did fieldwork in Léogâne in 1937, and like Dunham, met Price-­Mars several times during his stay; and Zora Neale Hurston worked in Haiti in 1936–1937. 13. In Rebel Destiny, which reads more as a popu­lar travel journal than an ethnography, the Herskovitses portray several Saamaka elders and ritual specialists, identifying them by name and including many direct quotes of their ideas and explanations. Katherine Dunham’s Island Possessed ([1969] 1994) includes similar depictions of ritual participants in Haiti. Introduction  25

14. On African retentions in death culture, see also Leonard Barrett (1976, 108–109); Roger Bastide ([1960] 1978, 60–61); Alfred Mendes (1950); and George Simpson (1965, 102). 15. Joseph J. Williams, whose Psychic Phenomena of Jamaica was published in 1934, connects Jamaican mortuary rituals “back to their origins in distant Africa” and cites vari­ous reports on the mortuary culture of West African socie­ties, including Rattray on Ashanti funerals. He concludes that Jamaican “revivalism differs l­ ittle from the ancient Ashanti paganism and is necessarily antagonistic to ­every form of Chris­tian­ity” ([1934] 1979, 180–186, 216). Unlike Herskovits, he does not develop the notion of retention; nor does he pres­ent rural Jamaica in very favorable light. For a more recent take on African retentions in Jamaican mortuary rituals, see Marjorie Brown (1985). 16. On connections between obeah and revolts during slavery, see, for example, Edward Long ([1774] 1970); Bryan Edwards (1796); Diana Paton (2012, 2015); on Vodou and the Haitian Revolution, see, for example, David Geggus (2002). 17. This is not to say that Herskovits’s approach aligned with structural functionalist models—he was always primarily focused on the question of African retentions and cultural change, dismissing Bronisław Malinowski’s work as ahistorical and ignoring con­temporary contributions to the study of religion in Africanist anthropology, such as E. E. Evans-­Pritchard’s 1937 Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Walter Jackson (1986, 110–111) discusses Herskovits’s relationship to functionalism and especially Malinowski, whom he brought to Northwestern as a visiting lecturer in 1933. 18. Death Customs of Tobago, Andrew Pearse Collection, Box 1, Folder 6, 19, West Indiana, uwi St. Augustine. Herskovits and Herskovits (1936, 107) explain how the Ndyuka used to bury ­those who died in suspicious circumstances face down. The deceased would not be able to rest before revealing who had caused the death by sorcery. 19. On the sequence of mortuary rites, see also Colin [Joan] Dayan (1995, 264) and Alfred Métraux (1960, 102). 20. Jocelyne Guilbault (1987) and Wardle (2000) also make a point of the substantial variation in the ritual content of wakes in St. Lucia and Jamaica, respectively, and draw attention to the agency of individual participants, including musicians. 21. For a critique of reputation and respectability, see Besson (1993) and Carla Freeman (2014); the original model was introduced by Peter Wilson (1973). 22. Jumbies or duppies have also been discussed by Barrett (1976, 41–44); Dobben (1986); Elder (1971, 31); Kean Gibson (2001); Herskovits and Herskovits (1936, chap. 13); Melville Herskovits’s Trinidad field diary, mg 261, Box 15, Folder 88 , in Melville J. and Frances S. Herskovits Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division, New York Public Library; Zora Neale Hurston (1990, 43–56); Aisha Khan (2004, chap. 4); and Simpson (1965, 24–25, 76–78). 23. On ritual production of forgetting in dif­fer­ent socie­ties, see, for example, Course (2007); James Green (2008); Heonik Kwon (2008); Cecilia McCallum (1999); João José Reis ([1991] 2007); Nancy Scheper-­Hughes (1992); Bilinda Straight (2006); and Paul Ricoeur (2006). 24. The anthropology of grief and mourning can be traced back to Radcliffe-­Brown’s work on the Andaman Islands. See also Renato Rosaldo ([1989] 2004); Scheper-­Hughes (1992); and Shepard (2002). On “good” and “bad” death, see Maurice Bloch and Jona-

26  Maarit Forde

than Parry (1982); Dorothy and David Counts (2004); and the special issue of Curare (Alex and Heald, eds. 2008). 25. On culturally specific understandings of personhood and relations to the dead, see for example Battaglia (1990) on Sabarl Island society in Melanesia; Beliso-­De Jesús (2014) on Santería; Beth Conklin (2001) on the Wari’ in Amazonia, Western Brazil; Desjarlais (2003) on Nepal’s Yolmo Buddhists; Goldman 2007 on Candomblé; McCallum (1999) on the Cashinahua of Western Amazonia; Todd Ramón Ochoa (2010) on Palo; Anastasios Panagiotopoulos (2011) on Afro-­Cuban divination; Sharp (2006) on memory work and mourning among families of American organ donors; or Bilinda Straight (2006) on the relationships between the deceased and the bereaved in K ­ enya. 26. See also Johnson (2011) for an insightful discussion of the development of the concept of “spirit possession” along with early modern notions of personhood and property. 27. Drawing on Roger Bastide’s work on Candomblé, Marcio Goldman shows how initiates and orishas are mutually constructed in ritual practice, as a generic substrate, or ache, is made into a “saint” while the initiate is made into a “head.” The resulting embodiment or coexistence of the initiate and the orisha means that the relationship between them should not be reduced to possession in the sense of a temporary occupation of an individual by an external deity, nor as a transformation of h ­ uman “heads” into orishas, but a becoming, or movement, in which a relation of affect is established to the divine (112–113). Martin Holbraad’s discussion of communication between divinities and babalawos in Ifà cosmology in Cuba is based on a similar ontological princi­ple of movement between transcendent and immanent relations, in which babalawos elicit transcendent deities into immanence in ritual practice, including the incantation of moyubbas for the spirits of the dead. The movement, or flow, between conditions should not be understood as rupture as in the Judeo-­Christian tradition, but rather as “motile” practice, in which divinities and the dead move closer and further from ritual prac­ti­ tion­ers and objects (2012, chap. 5). 28. Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (e.g., 1998, 2013) has made impor­tant contributions to anthropological debates of selfhood and subjectivity in Amazonian socialities. 29. Since the foundational work of Bloch (1971) and Peter Metcalf and Richard Huntington (1991, chaps. 6 and 7), anthropological theory on death, the state, and the biopo­liti­cal management of death has been advanced, for example, by Agamben (1998); Bern­stein (2012); Firth (2001); Franklin and Lock (2003); Jean Langford (2009); Christopher Nelson (2008); Richard Price (1995); Antonious Robben (2004b); and Scheper-­ Hughes (1992, 2015). 30. The vio­lence of slavery and the plantation has been analyzed as a resource for cultural reproduction in discussions of the petwo side of Vodou (Apter 2002; Deren [1953] 1983, 62; McCarthy Brown [1991] 2001, 101), zonbi (McAlister 2002, 107–109), and palo in Cuba (Palmié 2002, 176–181). 31. Katherine Smith has suggested that Gede’s phallocentric antics and bravado have in the past three de­cades have begun to reference young, transgressive, urban masculinities, vagabondaj, in the impoverished neighborhoods of Port-­au-­Prince (2012; see also Deren [1953] 1983 and McCarthy Brown [1991] 2001).

Introduction  27

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chapter 1

“The Dead ­Don’t Come Back Like the Mi­grant Comes Back” MANY RETURNS IN THE GARIFUNA DÜGÜ

Paul Christopher Johnson

Death is ever pres­ent in Garifuna villages in Honduras such as Corozal. Not a week passes without a funeral or a ninth-­night vigil nearby. F­ amily are obligated to attend t­ hese events that propel the dead in their proper pro­gress—­ from the status of a lingering ghost to a beneficial ancestor, and from earth to Sairi, land of the dead. Shirking attendance w ­ ill expose the laggard to f­ uture consequences, not only from resentful kin but also from the scorned departed. Since kinship is reckoned bilaterally, and since it is not uncommon for men to have progeny with multiple ­women, “­family” is expansive, wide ranging and plastic, such that ­every other death in the village has a reasonable chance of being a f­ amily duty. This means that dealing with death soaks up a good part of leisure time, especially on weekends, yet the obligation mostly ­isn’t seen as onerous. On the contrary, death is a festival, to follow João Reis’s (2003) title, making for lively social calendars with plenty of chances to dance punta and drink guaro and herb-­infused gifiti on the cheap. The constant rhythm of death and its rituals are the form of village sociality that most constitute “­family.”1 As a wide social network frequently reaffirmed, it is rivaled only by the regularity of cristiano (evangelical) church gatherings, where notions of ­family based on blood or ritual kinship are replaced with the brotherhood and sisterhood of all in Christ. T ­ here, in voices booming over loudspeakers, ancestors and their ritual needs are dismissed as the primitive and diabolical past in need of reform and redemption. The fierce enmity with which Garifuna evangelicals verbally firebomb their ancestral spirits, somewhat paradoxically, only vivifies and supercharges t­ hese spirits. Through what Joel Robbins (2004) has called “ontological preservation,” even new evangelical

converts retain the ancestors as power­ful actors in the world, precisely by demonizing them. Yet evangelicals sometimes hasten ancestors’ returns simply by avoiding them. When evangelical ­family members are deliberately derelict in their attendance of funerals and other events, the dead are lonelier and more impatient than ever. No ritual ever comes off quite right anymore. With all the missing mi­grants and evangélicos, “the ­family” is riddled with holes. That’s one of the main reasons additional and stronger rites to assuage the ancestors ­will inevitably be needed, and soon. In this chapter, I pres­ent and compare two modes of rendering ancestors pres­ent, and perceptible, in Afro-­Atlantic religions. I w ­ ill call the first of ­these, rendering ancestors pres­ent in spirit possession rites, the “transmissive” mode; and the second, the per­for­mance of the work and crafts of the ancestors in such a way as to create an ancestral tableau vivant, the “emissive” mode. I argue that the modes not only mediate ancestrality differently, but they even produce dif­fer­ent ancestors. Modes of Ancestral Return

In the village, death is ever pres­ent, yet the ancestors are only sometimes around. The lingering but inconsistent com­pany of the relevant dead—­which for the Garifuna includes all of the recently dead, and a few of the distantly moribund—­poses a question as impor­tant for scholars as it is for Garifuna ritualizers themselves. That question is, how do the dead return? ­After all, the dead ­don’t come back like the mi­grant comes back, to crib from Beatriz Melendez’s punta lyric that appears in my title. Mi­grants who live in the US—­ and almost ­every ­family has some—­often come back yearly, their pockets full, ready to give and play the cosmopolitan tycoon. Ancestors, by contrast, visit rarely. They have to be begged and cajoled, and then they come with empty hands. Getting the ancestors back to their alma mater village takes work, and once arrived, they just ask and ask. Another difference between mi­grants and ancestors is that while the former are encountered routinely and according to a fairly predictable calendar, the latter are not always as perceptible, nor so readily at hand. Ancestors have a more specific ubiety, a where and when of their tangible being. What are the conditions and tools of their appearance? What are their modes of return? How do you know when they have arrived? First, since ancestors cannot linger in their previous terrestrial form, they need material ­things in which they or their effects can be perceived: a ceiba tree whose roots twist in a certain way, or a hammock that swings unexpectedly, or that one ­woman’s body that, during dügü and chugu rituals, suddenly is 32  Paul Christopher Johnson

able to use expressions that old Martino Amaya used to say, and drink like him too. Ancestors need ­things in which to become perceptibly pres­ent. Second, presence requires living perceivers with the right hermeneutic skills, capable of taking note of the signs presented by t­ hings and reading them in the correct fashion. Ancestors need descendants a­ dept at “perceptive regimes,” or forms of attunement (Wirtz 2014; see also Irvine 1982), able to discern the difference between, for example, a vague tingling along the spine from one that signals a special presence. Third, reading the ancestors’ presence correctly requires translation. The dead cannot appear in their familiar former body, but yet must appear in some body, or some ­thing that mediates and instantiates their presence. This means that their being has to be reconverted from the new guise back into the remembered figure of the dead. Only through such complex semiotic conversions can a slight, el­derly ­woman dancing in the t­ emple be taken to be a robust deceased fisherman, now returned. Fourth, the presence of ancestors requires a se­lection of the relevant dead, since many, even most of the departed, a­ ren’t remembered or ritually recalled at all, plus a means of discerning the specific locations of t­ hose relevant dead. Webb Keane (2013) notes that the conversions of form involved in materializing immaterial forces (or dematerializing material ­things), and the shifts from one form to another, which he calls transduction, are a key part of what makes spirits legibly returned. Their transforming effects in the world are read in such a way as to infer spirit-­presence. “Spirit possession” has perhaps been the most commonly documented form of transduction in the ethnographic rec­ord. Similarly, Michael Lambek (1988, 2010) highlights how tromba Malagasy spirits are most apparent through their mobility, their entrances and exits from bodies whereby materializations (as incarnations) are especially marked. We could also add that the skill of translating transductions into ancestral effects, or even better, ancestral messages of specific content instead of mere mute presence, helps determine the relative skill level, not to mention market value, of vari­ous sorts of spirit professionals.2 Despite the routine banality of work with the ancestors in many socie­ties, then, it turns out that the conditions of ancestors’ returns are quite complex, requiring developed expertise. No won­der, then, that the spirits ­don’t abide always and everywhere, at least not in the sense of special presences of the more dramatic sort, the sort conventionally gathered ­under the awning “spirit possession” or other transductions. I find ­these leads useful b ­ ecause of how they give bound­aries to other­ wise elusive descriptive phrases such as “return of the ancestors.” At the same time, however, we can refine t­hese ideas on the arts of rendering Many Returns in the Garifuna Dügü  33

pres­ent to take account of differences among Afro-­Caribbean groups, rather than assuming a relative universality of the mode of “return” through trance or possession as their key unifying distinction.3 For example, the transductive idea mentioned above seems most fitting for the interpretation of Afro-­ Caribbean and Afro-­Brazilian religions in which the materials and actions employed in ritual events are clearly distinguished from ­those used in everyday life, in part b ­ ecause of contexts of racialization that criminalized some religions and rituals, segmenting African diasporic religions off into secrecy,4 or onto the margins (Johnson 2002; Matory 2005; Price 2007, 306), such that the sphere of expected transductions is marked and readily apparent. Also, in ­these religions spirit possession takes center stage as the performative crescendo of ancestral presence, made not only vis­i­ble but insistent and unavoidable through the metamorphosis of familiar persons into demanding long-­deceased ones. ­Under ­these conditions, transduction, or sudden material conversions of form, is relied upon by prac­ti­tion­ers as the main resource for rendering the ancestors pres­ent. The stars of that group of religions, Cuban Santería and Brazilian Candomblé, especially in their Yoruba-­centric derivations, fit this analy­sis of how spirits’ presence happens fairly well, ­because the markings of arrival and departure, or the transduction from a regular to an “ancestral” mode, are typically clearly marked in the ritual format, in bodily comportment, in the clothes donned when a god is pres­ent, and in drum rhythms.5 The spirits’ locations are even carefully marked in the ritual space, where spirit-­ holding dishes or vases are cordoned off in restricted rooms or cabinets. You know exactly when you are entering a place where gods or ancestors live. Many other African diasporic religions, though, among them the practices of the Garifuna, are less benefitted by a focus on transduction or spirit possession as the signal mark of the ancestors’ return. The differences between Garifuna ancestor rites and the stars of African diasporic religions such as Santería and Candomblé, and the reasons for t­hose differences, are worth considering. Richard Price (2007, 306–307) has offered suggestive leads related to ­those African diasporic religions developed in the context of plantation slavery and racial oppression versus t­hose that, like the Saramaka, developed out a relatively autonomous inter-­African-­American exchanges, creating ritual forms that are less spectacular and theatrical than the orixá forms, and more contiguous with everyday life. In this chapter I hope to add to the conversation by considering the Garifuna—­who share certain features with the Saramaka—an African American society that successfully resisted enslavement (and even, in a few Garifuna cases, owned slaves), with 34  Paul Christopher Johnson

a degree of autonomy maintained by an indigenous language and a series of villages along the Central American coast of the Ca­rib­bean and which, despite their long history in transnational trade, maintained a relatively separate cultural life ­until quite recently. In the Garifuna dügü, the largest, longest and most spectacular ritual event of reverence and appeal to ancestral spirits (ahari, in beneficial form; gubida, in malevolent form), we encounter a dif­fer­ent repertory of rendering the ancestors pres­ent than that of, say, Candomblé. Though spirit possession enters into the dügü, possession is not the primary or climactic event, nor is it clearly marked where and when it w ­ ill occur. It is rarely the center of attention. In fact it is not essential w ­ hether it occurs or not, b ­ ecause it is not the key marker of the ancestors’ presence. “Catching a trance” serves to amplify the sense of ancestral presence, but it does not decide ancestors’ presence in a forensic sense. That is an impor­tant difference from Candomblé, Santería, or Vodou. As Eduardo Estero, a Garifuna of Livingston, Guatemala, put it, “It’s not just about possession. . . . ​One honors the ancestors by inviting them into one’s life. One does that by living according to tradition—­cooking, playing ­music, planting in the traditional ways. When y­ ou’re cooking the cassava, ­you’re reenacting their lives, using the tools they gave us” (in Barnett). Ancestors’ presence happens in the Garifuna dügü by acting ancestrally, even becoming ancestral, in myriad routine, practical tasks—­from building a shelter (dabuyaba) in traditional mud-­and-­wattle style, to fishing the cays from large wood canoes, to grinding cassava on a mahogany board pocked with stones, from ­dying clothes with annatto-­seed, to weaving baskets, to, of course, song and dance. Yet none of t­ hese activities are foreign from daily life before and ­after the dügü, in the way that grinding manioc by hand, stringing palm fronds, dancing to the drums, or being possessed by orixás are specifically and strictly Candomblé terreiro (­temple) sorts of activities for devotees in Rio, São Paulo, or Bahia. In the Garifuna dügü, ancestral presence is composed through a choreography of everyday traditional movements, a harmony of accumulating layers of d ­ oing ancestral sorts of t­ hings, over a week’s time. This choreography is what ultimately invites the ancestors’ marked return, in spirit possession, but the choreography is also the return itself. The techne of rendering ancestors pres­ent is one of conscious, deliberate building of a tableau vivant that effects a territorial occupation, the seeping infiltration of the village’s habits for a given period of time. This is quite unlike spirit possession or trance in their conventional use of the penetration of, and loss of consciousness of, a par­tic­u­lar body.6 Through the attention to ancestral practices, spirit possession recedes in import as but one of many, and not even the Many Returns in the Garifuna Dügü  35

primary, signature of ancestors’ return, as I ­will describe. When possession does occur, it is as though it arrives not from beyond, but as an aftereffect of hours of “traditional” practice itself; from an interwoven sensory load that is named, when done according to code, a spirit. The dead return in this case not so much through transduction, the conversion of forms producing the experience of special presence, as through the dogged, selective per­for­mance of everyday ­labor (albeit a purified idea of the traditional everyday).7 The ancestors return in the collective per­for­mance of this vivid tableau vivant, one with no spectators but the participants themselves. ­These are two distinct modes of rendering ancestors pres­ent. The mode of the tableau vivant and the mode of spirit possession are both forms of mimesis, broadly conceived—­representations enacted to cause the perceived presence of the viscerally absent.8 But they are not the same. The former is mimesis via personation, approximating the ancestral by playing its roles persuasively over time, as opposed to a possession mode, that of becoming the ancestor through abrupt metamorphosis. The former is, we might say, epideictic—­it’s goal is not to prove or persuade anyone of anything, so much as it is to amplify something, a vague but valued sensibility of ancestral virtue. The technique of rendering pres­ent with spirit possession, by contrast, pres­ ents an almost forensic claim—­here in this w ­ oman’s body is Martino Amaya again, now returned—­which may be disputed or even rejected (“she’s had too much to drink again!”)—­but, more impor­tant for my purpose h ­ ere, may allow for the surprising appearance of new, heretofore unknown ancestors that even shift the idea of ­family, or “the ­people,” or history.9 To be sure, ­these ideal-­t ype modes are far from mutually exclusive.10 As mentioned, the Garifuna dügü includes spirit possession in its repertoire, and Brazilian Candomblé marshals plenty of material l­ abor to mounting its compelling ritual aesthetic. The question is the mode of spirits’ return that takes the fore in a given ritual event. I suggest that Garifuna ritual privileges ancestral returns via attentive, conscientious practice—in some ways the opposite of spirit possession—­whereas Candomblé ritual privileges spirit returns via the spectacle of possession.

On Aristotle and Flat-­Screen TVs ­ here exists a wide range of theoretical materials to which we could apT peal to help clarify t­ hese two modes. Since ­there is no space ­here for their summary review, I w ­ ill simply point to two sources—an unlikely pair, to be sure—­that have been helpful to me in thinking through the argument. 36  Paul Christopher Johnson

In the Poetics, Aristotle described art, like ritual, as the craft of imitation or repre­sen­ta­tion. The mode can be fairly direct, as in the imitation of a character with one’s own voice, or impersonation, or even becoming another personality (Section I: Part 3). But it can also be more subtle, and this is noteworthy for my purposes. In place of a direct repre­sen­ta­tion of a character, the object of mediation can be created through a harmony of parts, or even a synesthetic conversion, as when rhythmic dance with the feet is felt as an emotion of longing for return (Section I: Part 1), or when foods are coded to represent dif­fer­ent places and times such that one eats, as well as dances, a history. We might think of the difference of modes in rendering ancestors pres­ent as two of Aristotle’s possibilities of theatrical imitation: In one, the spirits are presented by becoming them through their incarnations in persons, in possession. In the other, a sensibility of ancestral presence emerges gradually but progressively from a harmony of diverse actions executed well; performed, that is, “ancestrally.” It persuades through display rather than through argument or direct evidence (Rhe­toric I, 9).11 Perhaps a better source for explaining the distinction between the two modes comes from an even more unlikely place, descriptions of flat-­screen tele­vi­sion technologies. ­After all, the technical challenges faced in rituals of the ancestors and by engineers of flat-­screen tele­vi­sions are not wholly incomparable: Ritualists work to produce an experience of temporal depth out of a three-­dimensional spatial per­for­mance carried out in the here-­and-­now; or, to create the experience of four dimensions with only three that are readily apparent. Tele­vi­sion engineers’ challenge is to conjure three-­dimensional depth from a two-­dimensional flat surface; that is, three dimensions out of two. To gain this added dimension, so-­called liquid-­crystal-­display (lcd) tele­vi­sions use a transmissive technology: a light source ­behind the liquid crystal display is shined through the display board, and certain cells open while ­others close to produce contrasts of light and dark that make the illusion of depth images that appear on the screen. “Plasma” tele­vi­sions, by contrast, use an emissive technology: light is produced out of many individual subpixel cells themselves. The alternations of illumination and shading are distributed across all the cells, and the work is distributed evenly across the entire screen, unlike the focused brightness of lcd light projection. ­There are advantages to each type of projection. The lcd model of image projection is much more energy efficient than the plasma model, since the light requires only a single source refracted through a board of mediating cells. This gives that single source signal importance, since any change in its function can dramatically alter the image produced. The plasma model of Many Returns in the Garifuna Dügü  37

distributed image-­projection, on the other hand is energy intensive b ­ ecause it requires ­every cell to take part in producing light through its own ionic conversion.12 The images it produces are relatively stable, however, since they do not depend on any one site of projection, but rather on myriad image particles that coalesce from a dispersed collection of cells, each one projecting a part of the total picture. ­Whether conceived canonically, through Aristotle and the habitus lit­er­a­ ture or more recklessly, in the terms of flat-­screen technologies, what I wish to call attention to ­here is the distinction between two ideal types of rendering ancestors pres­ent in African diasporic worlds. One is the mode of emissive collective ancestral practice, especially favored in Garifuna ritual. It features many cells together producing a dynamic experience of ancestral return. The other mode is the transmissive technique, relying on the more focused spectacle of spirit possession. Such a transmissive mode is especially favored in Brazilian Candomblé, among other related religions. It is analogous to an external “light” projected through a living ­human body, an image then interpolated by all pres­ent through their own interpretive colorings.13 In the conclusion, I’ll say more about why this mimetic difference makes a difference. The mode privileged indexes kinds of socie­ties, with distinct configurations of the place of ancestor rituals and their relation to society-­ at-­large. What is impor­tant is that the transmissive mode, in par­tic­u­lar, often produces new ancestors, with new historical horizons, in abrupt shifts of the pasts projected in events centered on spirit possession. The emissive mode is, by comparison, based on a diverse variety of practices among which possession is only one part. This dispersed ritual form is relatively more protective of an evenly distributed and enacted past, producing a more stable picture of ancestors and, through them, a history. To display this distinction rather than just declaring it, I next pres­ent a condensed description of the main Garifuna ritual in which the ancestors return, the dügü. Dügü

The most elaborate of Garifuna rituals, the dügü, is called for usually only ­after lesser interventions with a troubling ancestor have been performed. ­These can include the initial funeral, burial, and ninth-­night party and vigil (veluria); the recitation of a “mass” (lemesi) for the dead a year a­ fter their demise; the “bathing” of the dead from six months to a few years a­ fter (amuida38  Paul Christopher Johnson

hani); or the chugu, a one-­day event of feeding and fêting the deceased, led by a ritual specialist called a buyei. All of ­these help mediate the passage of a deceased ­family member from lingering ghost to the prestigious status of ancestor.14 This is also a spatial passage, at once from earth to the land of the ancestors (Sairi), and from Honduras to the mythohistorical land of Yurumein, or St.  Vincent, the island where the Garifuna ­were born and, according to oral histories, lived their golden age during much of the eigh­teenth ­century, ­until their 1797 deportation to the Central American coast. In this sense of a performed history of spatial passage, the dügü is related to other commemorative ceremonies, most notably reenactment cele­brations in November that mark the passage of the original ancestors from St. Vincent to Honduras and Belize. The difference is that in the dügü this performed history is framed as sacred history, in the bodily return of ancestors in the bodies of the living. The dügü is ancestral enactment, not only a commemorative re-­enactment. A dügü is called for when a f­ amily member falls gravely ill, or f­ aces other­ wise inexplicable obstacles that call for intervention. She or he consults a buyei, who in turn divines the message of the spirits: the buyei sees that the afflicting spirit of the dead, a gubida, has been neglected. A dügü is required to call the dead back to be honored, properly respected, and appeased.15 The ritual proper, radically simplified, entails a re-­created tableau of traditional life that both honors the ancestors—­creating the conditions for their arrival—­and bodily enacts them.16 T ­ here is in the dügü a certain theatrical quality, in the sense of actors’ conscious and critical attentiveness to the persuasiveness of the ancestral sensibility being generated. The self-­observing distance from the ancestral mode appears in songs that seem to observe the per­for­mance of ancestrality, even as it is being performed: “Now we are making the baskets,” “now we are dyeing the clothes,” “now we are traveling by canoe.” “The c­ hildren are all h ­ ere lined up, one is still on the way.”17 The audience for this objectification is threefold: the ancestors in general, the specific afflicting spirit, and the ritual group itself. Once a dügü has been set in motion by a buyei’s divination, a ceremonial ­house (dabuyaba, gayunere) is constructed in “traditional” style on the beach; this begins as much as a year in advance. While most h ­ ouses ­today are constructed with cinder blocks and tin roofs, the dügü t­ emple must adhere to the old style, using fitted saplings and palm thatch bound together in twine for the roof and walls. Fishermen head to sea in canoes to catch fish in the old way for the feast to come (idugihatinu). Clothes are dyed in the color of ancestors made with achiote, orange-­red annatto-­seed dye. Loose-­woven Many Returns in the Garifuna Dügü  39

baskets of palm sheaves (guagai) are crafted or commissioned to be suspended from the t­ emple walls. Hiu, the old-­time cassava beer, is brewed in tubs, and a long menu of other ancestral favorites are prepared, such as fish and coconut soup (hudutu), and coco bread, keke, and cassava bread (ereba), as well as roasted chicken and beef. The fishermen return ­after three days, and then the dügü proper begins. The buyei and his assistants craft the mua, tablets of earth using grave dirt and representing male and female progenitors, to be laid at the very center of the ­temple.18 The three drums begin to beat in slow, ponderous rhythm, during which participants dance side to side or, more rarely, in a circle, singing dügü songs. The songs are often about travel, the ancestors’ long traverse to return, and the mi­grants’ travels too. ­Here’s a song Oliver Greene collected in Belize: Diseti nageira buwanei —­My birthplace is far away from you, Turuturina tinya wagei wabu —­Our traveling vessel has been stopping along with us, O diseti nageira buwanei —­Oh, my birthplace is far away from you, Turuturina tinya wagei wabu —­Our traveling vessel has been stopping along with us, Bareina waya tinya wasanigu —­We are bringing along our ­children (our offspring), Waluwan heinayein Martin tabu Aseluma gayu —­We are looking for Martin and Aseluma, A walu heinayan wamaduduina hamu —­We are looking for food from you (our offspring), A walu heinayan wamaduduina hamu —­We are looking for food from you, A waluwan heinayein Martin tabu Aseluma gayu —­We are looking for Martin and Aseluma. (in Greene 1998, 171–172)

Occasionally, at dif­fer­ent moments during the after­noon, several ancestors arrive in spirit possession (onwehani), including the afflicting gubida, to be honored, praised in song and dance, consulted, and, above all, plied with cigarettes and rum and laid in hammocks to rest. ­Later they are fed in an orgy of culinary abundance. The feast is prepared on long ­t ables in the ­temple for the ancestors to eat while they are serenaded by “­women’s 40  Paul Christopher Johnson

songs” (abeimahani) and then, usually much more weakly rendered “men’s songs” (amalahani). Once the ancestors eat, the ­people eat too. While the gubida spirits “eat,” their descendants entertain them, not to mention each other, with songs. The songs please the ancestors and the living equally. Their musical tastes are the same. A w ­ omen’s chorus lines up on each side of the long ­table to sing. ­Women’s songs are often about the fear of ­dying alone; men’s songs frequently treat themes of being forced to travel, or being betrayed. ­Here is an example of a ­women’s song: In the ­house of my relatives in Chalacha, that’s where I’ll be. In the ­house my relatives in Chalacha, that’s where I grew zacate (algae sprouts). I always see them. Who ­will bathe me, ­really? O, who ­will bathe me on the day that I lay down to die, my ­children? It ­will be sad around me, perhaps. It ­will be sad all around me on the day that I die, perhaps . . . ­Here is a men’s song: Yunisi, come see me. Yunisi, come see me. ­Sister of my ­brother, come, my relative. The sun burns hot on me, ­woman. The sun is truly too hot. I’m packing my bag. Did I kill his ­mother or something? Why is he clawing at me all year long? The sun burns hot on me, ­woman. The sun is truly too hot. I’m packing my bag. ­Those are the ­orders of my ­uncle. I knew he would force me. Man, the sun burns hot on me. The sun is truly too hot. I’m packing my bag. The ­women sing in a line formation, linked by their ­little fin­gers. They thrust their arms forward in time with the songs, in the motion of work, like the motions used to grate cassava. The foods, like the songs, are not very dif­f er­ ent from t­ hose used routinely, merely in much greater abundance, a per­for­ mance of a golden age past of plenty. This feasting part in itself lasts for two days. Death is a festival! While ancestors arrived to possess the bodies of some dancers on the second and third days of the event, this is not the main event of the dügü. Just as Many Returns in the Garifuna Dügü  41

the spatial heart of the dügü beat in the mua tablets, composed of natal dirt and representing the original progenitors, the temporal heart of the event lay in the amalahani (or mali for short), the “placation” songs presented to the ancestors exactly eight times over two days.

The Mali, Heart of the Dügü The mali dances, which have no spirit possession, are the climactic part of the dügü. ­Women grab their roosters from where they ­were tethered ­behind the benches along the walls. Instead of remaining seated as usual, the three drummers stand and carry the weight of the big wood drums on shoulder straps. The chief buyei and two assistants face the drummers, maracas in hand. The drummers and the crowd follow the buyei’s lead in a counterclockwise circular rotation. The drummers dance out of the door and back in the next, in a three-­man weave and twirl, pounding the rhythm throughout in a dazzling display that leads the congregation to an exuberant emotional pitch. At each pause in the rotation, the buyei directs the group to dance closer and closer to the ground ­until, crouched down low for a prolonged, ex­pec­tant second, every­one leaps into the air, waving their roosters into the air and calling the gubida with a song “­Here is your rooster, look! This is for you. Sing, gayu (rooster)!” Mali (amalahani) songs emphasize travel, both the travel of distant relatives ­toward the ­temple, and the travel of ancestors to rejoin the living. The living mi­grants become like the ancestors by voyaging from afar: Hey, hey, hey, ­we’re traveling by boat, ­We’re sailing, ­little grand­daughter. I’ve broken the pole on my canoe, I’ve broken the pole on my canoe. ­Women are my companions in the canoe, ­Until we get to the ­temple. I’ll gather what we need for the dügü. At the conclusion of the last mali dance of each of the two days, in the ­ iddle of the night, each dancer brings forward her rooster and pres­ents m him to one of the drummers, now released from their musical duties. The men swing them one at a time to snap their necks as they hit the dirt. The next morning the fowl reappear on a ­grand buffet to welcome, honor, and feed the spirits. 42  Paul Christopher Johnson

Throughout the structured but chaotic jubilance of the mali, at the center of the ­temple sit two elders, a man and a w ­ oman, implacable through the sound and fury. They keep watch over the mua tablets, the natal soil, the spatial center of the dügü. But in another way, they play the role of the progenitors, founding man and ­woman of the ­family. On the last day of the dügü, the satisfaction of the ancestors is confirmed when the mua are turned without fragmenting, and when the shaman’s ­table burns evenly with flaming rum on all sides, even down to the ground. “­Family” groups celebrate by bathing together in the sea, joining hands or together grasping a long cloth to show their refurbished unity. A more profane atmosphere of relief and revelry takes over: punta dancing, pranks, rum, joking around, recollecting the highlights, happy exhaustion. Kin groups run to splash and play together in the sea, unity at least momentarily superseding the usual division and conflicts. Not only do recognized families celebrate together, the fact of reaching the end of the ritual together generates membership in a large extended f­ amily. Leonardo García of Orinoco summed up the dügü as a cele­bration of all Garífunas as a ­family. The ­whole race meets with the gubida spirits. ­There we feel among ­brothers. If ­you’re fighting with a ­brother or a relative and ­aren’t speaking to each other, the friendship returns ­there. ­There’s no hate, no fighting in that moment. The annoyances and angers are forgotten. ­There the spirits of the deceased are joyous. All of us Garífunas are helping the ill person. Relatives of the person, who ­were perhaps away for many years, come from other places. The impor­ tant ­thing is that we all collaborate and that the sick person have a lot of faith. (In Idiáquez 1993)

The Ritual Split: Rendering the Ancestors Pres­ent, Registering the Ancestors Pres­ent Out of this very cursory description of the dügü tout court, I wish to draw attention to one key feature of per­for­mance, namely, its iterations of ritual splits between a subgroup who momentarily play the ancestors and the larger group attuned to their presence. In the mali dance just mentioned, for example, the ancestors are presented by an elder man and ­woman who sit over the mua tablets formed from grave dirt. But during the “sending out” and the return of the fishermen who spend three days at the cays harvesting seafood for the weeklong dügü, the fishermen are cast as the ancestors. They dress in palm-­woven, Carib helmets and paddle specially decorated Many Returns in the Garifuna Dügü  43

Carib canoes. When they arrive, they are heralded as ancestor-­heroes; they are presented with cigarettes and rum and laid in hammocks to rest. ­There is no spirit possession involved, yet the ancestors are intensely pres­ent, their virtues amplified. On the day a­ fter the fishermen’s return, ­there is a part of the dügü during which the ancestors regain their youth. A dozen or more kids and adolescents are dressed with achiote-­dyed clothes and prepared to receive the spirits of the departed. Adults regale them with w ­ omen’s and men’s songs. A few of them actually are possessed, falling into trance and dancing in the line of elders, propped up by strong arms on each side, but many of the youth are not possessed at all. They become ancestors by being cast in the role, and being carefully dressed, and fed, and sung to as such. The larger ­family of ritualizers variously bifurcates into ancestors and the living who register and appreciate their presence. The split happens in all dif­fer­ent ways though: the fishermen become ancestors; the ­children become ancestors; two elders become the ancestors; and occasionally the possessed become ancestors. Remember, I am not claiming that spirit possession never occurs in the dügü or that it is insignificant, merely that it is only one instance in a larger class of technologies of rendering pres­ ent. The ritual split between t­ hose momentarily rendering pres­ent and t­ hose registering the special presence is demo­cratically distributed across many dif­fer­ent actors, and spatially distributed too, in constant motion: One second it is on the beach; now it is in the cays; now in the dibasen, the shelter strung with hammocks adjacent to the main t­emple; now in the gulei, the shaman’s altar-­room; now at the center of the ­temple itself; now again out in the cays . . .

Why the Mode ­Matters While Candomblé is focused on the per­for­mances of one or several dancers who are possessed by the orixás, transmissively represented to all, Garifuna rituals, especially the masterpiece of the dügü, f­ avor an emissive and plasmatic version of ancestral return. It requires a long-­enduring harmony of kinds of work, no single one of which is especially unusual, spectacular or dramatic, and then a series of ritual splits between a group playing the ancestors and an audience attuned to their cues. The choreography of “traditional” everyday actions, like Aristotle’s example of rhythmic dance, or like the distributed light cells of the plasma screen, produces—or better, is—­the ancestors’ return. 44  Paul Christopher Johnson

The dügü evokes the return of the dead through densely layered and cross-­referenced routine traditional actions, ­after which the event of spirit possession is inevitable and banal, a nonevent, merely one more piece of the tableau vivant. Yet producing the conditions of that banal inevitability is no small ­matter and requires an enormous amount of skill, resources, and time. And it is that peculiar capacity of producing the conditions of ancestral inevitability that gives Garifuna homeland villages their special status in comparison to mi­grant communities in large cities abroad, for example, in the Bronx, and in comparison to other African diaspora religions as well, compared to which it has an especially rustic and au­then­tic allure. The organicity of ritual practice is a point of enormous pride in the village. Compared to the Bronx community, in Corozal ­there are a large number of p ­ eople who know how to do all the tasks a dügü requires. They know the ritual work in their very bones, without needing special instruction. Most of the needed foods and herbs, boats and building materials are ready at hand too. Nevertheless, this kind of habitual ritual knowledge is not an essential feature of Garifuna-­ness. We see this in the fact that Garifuna ritualists working in New York have begun to resemble santeros and Candomblé folk in certain re­spects. They cannot perform the full-­blown dügü, and instead opt for quicker rituals of ancestral return that can be done in an eve­ning. Bronx ritual gatherings become compartmentalized “cultural” events that are an impor­tant tool for maintaining Garifuna “identity” in the face of US-­ style racialization, ­under which regime the Garifuna are often reduced to being simply Black, or Afro-­Latin, or some other rubric in which the specificity of their ancestors is absorbed, and dis­appears. ­Under ­these conditions in New York, though the ritual event of the return of the ancestors remains familiar from the homeland village, the object and manner of rendering ancestors pres­ent shifts. The object becomes an encounter with “the ancestors” in general, rather than with a specific troubled gubida with whom a ­family relationship must be restored. Also, the manner of repre­sen­ta­tion hews ­toward the spectacle of spirit possession. Instead of days passing before an ancestor shows her face, in New York ­there are frequent visitations in the possessed bodies of dancers, all achieved in the short space of several hours. Where time and space are in short supply, as they are in a rented hall or junior-­high-­school gymnasium borrowed on a Sunday from the city; and where the requirements of producing a distributed, plasmatic ancestral return are difficult or impossible to achieve, spirit possession provides a wonderfully efficient manner and medium of communion with the dead. The liquid crystal flat-­screen, ­after all, requires much less energy to run than does the Many Returns in the Garifuna Dügü  45

plasma edition. Its light source is focused and singular, easier to generate, just as its more efficient to get the ancestors back in the spectacular form of a few possessed dancers than in the form of building, fishing, weaving, cooking, dyeing, hammock-­reposing, dancing, and other ritual actions carried out across weeks of laboring to become ancestral. The power of the homeland dügü is such that even Garifuna who are ritually active in New York make an effort to get back to their Honduran villages periodically, to recharge their ritual powers and reputations “on the land.” The dügü songs of travel noted earlier apply equally well in this case to the deceased ancestors and the living mi­grants, traveling si­mul­ta­neously from New York and from Sairi, the land of the dead. This is the dügü’s double return. By pointing to the relative efficiency of spirit possession as a mode of ancestral return a few paragraphs ago, I do not mean to imply a rational choice made by Garifuna living in New York for how to render the ancestors pres­ent in the easiest way pos­si­ble, nor do I think New York ritual events are lesser or in any sense worse or weaker, or less au­then­tic, than the way ancestors return in the dügü of the homeland village. Instead, a word such as “efficiency” calls attention to the ways religious cultures are inseparable from the social and spatial conditions of their per­for­mance, to the question of what is ritually pos­si­ble in a given place. The content of ritual depends, in part, on the relation of ritual to the rest of life, and on the relation of a given social group to the society that encompasses it (e.g., Price 2007, 306–307). An open comparative question is w ­ hether ­these dif­fer­ent modes of the mimesis of the dead—­the transmissive mode of possession, the emissive mode of tableau vivant—­produce dif­f er­ent ideas of ancestrality, even dif­fer­ent ancestors, a new set of the relevant dead. In the Garifuna case, this sometimes occurs. Garifuna in New York summon the return of African ancestors, while homeland Garifuna hail “Carib” ancestors from St. Vincent. The New Yorkers have produced striking historical revisions with the spirits that possess them, even shifted bound­aries of “the ­people,” with this fresh diasporic horizon (Johnson 2007). The homeland dügü resists this shift. Working in the plasmatic mode, it requires not just the idea or word or possessing spirit of “tradition” but a ­whole host of body techniques to pull off the event, to persuasively display ancestrality through materials, discipline, and craft. The idea of spirit possession as a local, subaltern form of history making has been extraordinarily impor­tant (e.g., Lambek 2003b; Leiris 1958; Métraux 1958; Shaw 2002; Stoller 1995). In the big city, though, not all ancestral returns are about tradition, history, or the past at all. Rather, they are 46  Paul Christopher Johnson

sometimes assertions of cosmopolitanism, riffing on the image of the Other (Taussig 1992). The possession model is extraordinarily flexible ­toward this end, as the Angolan and Caboclo nations of Candomblé affirm ­every day with their cast of cowboys, harlots, race-­car ­drivers and “turks” (e.g., Boyer 1999; Dianteill 2008), as do the spiritists with their pantheon of impressionist paint­ers, scientists, and presidents (Aubrée and Laplantine 1990; Hess 1991).19 In ­these cases, maybe it ­isn’t worth arguing for the Africanness, or Afro-­Brazilianness, of Candomblé that the ancestors-­as-­lived-­history idea seems to require. Half of the prac­ti­tion­ers of Candomblé, a­ fter all, are not of African descent at all, or at least do not identify themselves that way in any context other than in the terreiro (Prandi 1991; Sansone 2003).20 Clara Saraiva (2010), describing Candomblé in Portugal, describes its constituency as mostly middle-­class Portuguese, while most Brazilian immigrants in Portugal are busy embracing Pentecostalism. When Portuguese are possessed by an African king, presumably it is not an ancestor so much as a scripted part with a historically distant relation between the god and the body possessed (though one could, I suppose, argue for a postcolonial inversion, the return-­of-­the-­repressed, as Portugal is possessed by Africa). The ancestor god is a point of reference, meaning, and interpersonal communication—­a way of reading and talking about the self, of defining one’s tastes, hopes and motivations, a reference for naming the obstacles of life and making plans to surmount them. “Ancestral” in t­ hese cases works as a placeholder for something impor­tant, but it is not tradition, or memory, or history, or the past. It shifts to mean something more like “fundamental,” the sense of g ­ oing deep, of getting to the root of ­things. The pos­si­ble meanings attributed to ­these ancestral spirits are broad and open ended, brilliantly creative by virtue of being unburdened of any past whatsoever. As Mattijs van de Port put it, “­Mother Africa is one such source of authentication. The world of tv is another” (2006, 448), noting the way many terreiros videotape their ceremonies and give them as telegenic a look as pos­si­ble. The quest for the telegenic look increases the import of the moment of possession, the authenticating moment of the ceremony, since, much like a good telenovela, a Candomblé ritual needs a strong narrative structure, a beginning, m ­ iddle, and end, a clear climax followed by a denouement. Possession provides ­those fireworks (indeed in Candomblé it is often accompanied by fireworks, alerting all the neighborhood of the exact moment when the gods arrive). Characters in Brazilian telenovelas, watched nightly in high-­definition, exert a similar narrative force on their followers, and of course the orixás even occasionally are such characters, opening their Many Returns in the Garifuna Dügü  47

use to a mass audience of enormous diversity. This is not a bad ­thing, necessarily, though Candomblé priestesses, who have an understandable stake in defending their mono­poly over the “au­then­tic” Afro-­Brazilian powers, grumble and complain. That said, it seems worth noting that this version of “ancestral return” looks less like a rendering of the past for the needs of the pres­ent—­the spirits-­as-­subaltern-­history idea—­and more like a remaking of the pres­ent for the needs of the past, a giddy “Brazil-­is-­Afrobrazil,” samba-­futbol-­ and-­feijoada trompe l’oeil that hides slavery’s body count and wreckage. What I am suggesting is that this new telegenic requirement of ritual events complicates their relation to history as a subaltern archive, or a performative history-­from-­below. As “the past” is increasingly redacted for ritual values of aesthetic satisfaction, the visual pleasures of a carnivalesque cast of spirits cause the history of slavery and con­temporary issues of racism, traditional concerns of “traditional” ­houses of Candomblé, to recede from view. ­Those shows have been canceled, due to poor ratings. The relative ease of cancellation or changing the channel with possession per­for­mances, at least in certain nations of Candomblé, provides an illustration of my point: The mode of ancestral return that relies on the transductions of spirit possession as the crucible and proof of presence opens the possibility of quickly shifting one’s identity, one’s f­ amily of salient dead, and through them one’s historical horizon. The possessed body can work like a portal opening to a previously unexplored matrix. The Garifuna in New York became African, or joined the African diaspora, in just this way, at least in part: Certain key leaders, influenced by Santería especially, began to be possessed by Yoruba spirits instead of ancestors from Honduras or St. Vincent. This successfully took hold in New York. But the change has not been embraced in Honduran Garifuna villages. ­There, the distributed, plasmatic mode of ancestral return, like the one built in the dügü, clamps down on ­those who would rewrite the group’s history, or at least slows the pace of change. In the dügü, the sensibility of ancestral return allows no forensic moment of decision, of determining the ancestors “real” return or not, or the precise place of their origin.21 The forensic determination of ancestral presence is underdetermined; it says nothing about the content of what ancestors say; and is in this sense often ironic more than legalistic (Lambek 2003a). Instead, or so it seems to me, the presence of the ancestors is epideictic, a set of characteristics and virtues amplified through a thousand daily tasks carried out about by two hundred hands, during a week-­long jamboree. That sort of many-­pixeled ancestral return can be turned on or off, or its contrast 48  Paul Christopher Johnson

or depth adjusted, and it can break down from time to time. One t­ hing it does not easily allow is changing the channel to bring a dif­f er­ent story into focus. That is the dügü’s power, stringing a line across the vortices of blackness and African diaspora-­ness into which—at least some Garifuna feel—­their ancestors might fall and be lost into the crowded sea of generic ­human dead. So the ancestors, like the mi­grants, take up their paddles to push the canoes home. Notes 1. In place of the idea that all ­family must attend the funeral, within certain limits one might almost say that every­one who attends the funeral must be ­family. 2. Keane argues that spirits may even exist as a way of accounting for the ways materials in the world change form. Transduction not only serves as spirit evidence; it marshals spirits into language, as the narrated experience for material transformations whose ­causes are unseen. 3. Constituting a field of Afro-­Caribbean religions via an alleged shared use of possession trance, even nominatively as “possession cults,” is extremely common, perhaps even hard to avoid given the long history of special attribution of “spirit possession” to Africa and the African Amer­i­cas (Johnson 2011). ­Here is just one prominent example, taken from the work of Roger Bastide (1953, 30): “E os fieis que assim são possuídos tomam o nome de ‘cavalos dos santos.’ Este termo não é peculiar às religiões afro-­ brasileiras; é encontrado em quasi todas as seitas de negros da América, na Guiana, nas Antilhas e, ultrapassando a América, no próprio continente africano. Os negros em transe místico, tornam-se os cavalos dos deuses.” (“Possessed devotees are called ‘horses of the saints.’ This term is not unique to Afro-­Brazilian religions; it is encountered in nearly all the black sects of Amer­i­ca, Guiana, the Antilles and, beyond the Amer­i­cas, on the continent of Africa proper. Through mystical trance, blacks turn themselves into ­horses of the gods” [my translation]). See also Herskovits ([1941] 1990, 125, 221, 246), where spirit possession is cast as providing a fundamental link between all religions of African descent. 4. I define African diasporic religions as “­those sets of religious discourses and practices that invoke Africa as a horizon of memory, authenticity, and sacred authority—­ whether Africa is physically known, ­imagined, or ritually created. . . . ​African diasporic religions can be, and are, performed by ­those not of African descent” (Johnson 2007, 53–54). 5. I am aware that one cannot straightforwardly compare Garifuna gubida and Candomblé orixás, since the orixás, as distributors of life (axé) are strictly divided from the dead (eguns) and the ancestors (egunguns). In funeral rituals of Candomblé (axexé), for example, the orixás never possess their sons and ­daughters. The anomaly is Iansã, female deity of wind and storms, whose my­thol­ogy depicts her as the ­mother of Egun and so gives her a unique proximity to, and power over, forces of potential death such as the egunguns. Iansã possessions occurring during the axexé reveal that t­ here are exceptions to the “no mixing of gods and the dead” rule, and cue us to take account of Many Returns in the Garifuna Dügü  49

other variations too. For example, Palmié (2014a, 2014b) documented the emergence over the last few de­cades of rituals in Cuba called cajon pa’ los muertos, in which spirits of the dead and orichás are at times si­mul­ta­neously danced in a given ritual event, though not without conflict. While Kristina Wirtz did not find this in Santiago, she describes how oricha rituals suspected of including spirits of muertos are discussed (Wirtz 2007), contravening the idea of absolute ontological separation between the categories. In Umbanda practice, meanwhile, orixás are revered as leaders of phalanxes of the dead, merely more power­ful spirits of the dead than most. It might also be argued that in the Yoruba and Yoruba-­influenced traditions, orixás are ancestors too, merely exceptional ones—­divinized ancestors. This is attested in Pierre Verger’s extended proj­ect of tracing orixás to par­tic­u­lar West African city-­states and their ruling families. For Verger, orisha and vodun rites have as their aim, “the periodic reactualization of the ties that bind living ­people and their ancestors” (1969, 50). Andrew Apter (1992) describes the contests between Shango-­centric practice and Odudua-­centric practice as indexical of periods of Oyo or Ife influence, a po­liti­cal drama in which orixás act as former ­people, merely ones who underwent rare and intense transformations. Next, while most of the dead in Candomblé are relinquished of individual identity and return to a state of disintegrated mass out of which new lives ­will be generated, certain spirits of the dead retain their individuality, namely, key progenitors of a given terreiro or lineage. Their altars remain in the ­house, and their pictures on the wall, and they are routinely named at the beginning of orixá rituals. Fi­nally, Richard Price’s depiction of the Saramaka diviner Tooy describes his namesake and role model Pobôsi, who carried thirteen dif­f er­ent “­things in his head” (2007, 115), in another example of the fluidity between possession gods and possessing ancestors, albeit in a quite dif­fer­ent context. In an earlier period, the first years of the twentieth ­century, Nina Rodrigues reported that a Candomblé funeral, preceded by a Catholic mass, might summon ­either the spirit of the deceased, a morto, or his/her orixá, but that in ­either case the ritual would proceed in similar fashion ([1932] 2008, 216). When Bastide (1953, 46) asserts that the possessions caused by a spirit of the dead, during, say, an axexe, or funerary rite, are not to be understood as “mystical trance” like that of an orixá, but rather via other terms like “obsession,” or encostar (to lean against) or rodear (circle around), one is tempted to accept this as a valid articulation of the theology of Candomblé but be slightly suspicious from an ethnographic perspective that the differences are as clear as he makes them out to be, and to view this as part of Bastide’s effort to create a purified edition of Yoruba-­derived Candomblé vis-­à-­vis Umbanda, Spiritism, or even other “nations” of Candomblé such as Angola or Caboclo. One might, in sum, argue that strict distinctions dividing gods from ancestral spirits are (1) often relatively recent purifications rather than representative of Black Atlantic religious “tradition” tout court, or even of Yoruba-­derived religions in the New World; (2) discursive claims used by priests and priestesses to bolster their own authority through such attempted purifications rather than actually typical of ritual practice, which is often much more ambiguous. A more common, and analytically defensible distinction is between the potentially malevolent recent dead and the often-­benevolent distant dead, or the ancestors. Despite this long disclaimer, my essay depends on the basic hypothesis that the ancestors for the Garifuna, and the orixás for Candomblé participants, play a structur50  Paul Christopher Johnson

ally analogous role, “returning” on select occasions as ­bearers of au­then­tic ancestral presence (variously conceived) to improve the lives of devotees. 6. I am also aware that spirit possession and trance are not technically the same, though they are often used interchangeably. Erika Bourguignon (1991) most notoriously distinguished them: trance as a phenomenological description, spirit possession as a par­tic­u­lar emic interpretation of that phenomenon. Keith McNeal (2011) creatively rethinks the issue. ­These distinctions are not at stake in this par­tic­u­lar chapter, though it is noteworthy that “possession” and “trance” are both occasionally referred to as terms of practice by Garifuna ritualizers. Disentangling their emic uses, and discovering w ­ hether and how it makes a difference which term is used, would be an in­ter­est­ing proj­ect. 7. It is radicalized in the sense of the question of “the traditional” becoming a constant ideological concern, in the surveillance and evaluation of participants’ acts; purified in the sense of the active removal or intensification of certain t­ hings, persons, and acts in relation to ­others designated as problematically “modern.” As I have written elsewhere, ­there is no shortage of modern technologies that enter into the dügü u ­ nder the guise of being “tradition” accelerators—­the outboard motor that powers the fishermen, the electric light bulbs that light the dügü at night, the refrigerators that keep food for the ancestors cool . . . ​( Johnson 2007, 182). 8. Mimesis has been fulsomely invoked from Plato to Theodor Adorno to Homi Bhabha and Helen Taussig. ­Here I hew closely to its appearance in Aristotle’s Poetics. 9. On this score, Price (2007, 294–297) has analyzed how divination (including that of spirit possession) in the hands of a specialist such as Tooy, efficiently focuses and sometimes shifts historical horizons for the Saramaka. 10. Recall that in Weber’s notion of ideal types, no ­actual society or history ever fully conforms to a given type; all socie­ties combine them in dif­f er­ent ways, sometimes at the same time, though they may ­favor one over another as a preferred style. Ideal types are not empirical descriptions so much as analytical tools for thinking about cultural action and difference (Weber 1978, 90, 101, 263). 11. Saba Mahmood (2005) appealed to Aristotle for a related purpose, namely to theorize an approach to religion that emphasizes disciplined practice (habitus). In her study, practice creates religious knowledge, convictions, and sentiments, rather than the inverse idea that such practices follow as mere expressions of already-­extant inner states. 12. No doubt this sounds far-­fetched, but recall Plato’s detailed description of a par­tic­u­lar light-­and-­projection technology that produced a culture of imitation, in the allegory of the cave (Republic, chapter 7). Durkheim also presented a picture of culture as a set of repre­sen­ta­tions altered by the techniques applied to their lighting, in his pioneering 1898 article on collective repre­sen­ta­tions: “Les objets ne sont pas les mêmes et n’ont pas la même action selon qu’ils sont éclairés ou non; leurs caractères mêmes peuvent être altérés par la lumière qu’ils reçoivent” (Durkheim 1898, 4). (Objects are not the same and do not have the same effect, depending on ­whether or not they are lit. Even their character can be altered by the light they receive [my translation]). And Bruno Latour summoned the meta­phor of the flat computer screen’s light to redescribe the image of Candomblé prac­ti­tion­ers making their own gods: “Our eyes rapidly get used to the phosphorescent light that seems to emanate from the entities themselves, as it does from the active matrices of flat computer screens that nothing illuminates from the outside” (2010, 47). Many Returns in the Garifuna Dügü  51

The question begged ­here is of course what Plato took as obvious, namely, what is the light source in ­these analogies; is it best viewed as charisma, as collective effervescence, as electricity or fluids or ectoplasm, or force, or nature? And of course, our inability to answer that question is what allows religion to proliferate so well. My question ­here, thankfully, is not about origins but rather only mediations of light. Latour proposes abolishing the distinction between light sources and screens onto which light is projected—­subjects and objects—in ­favor of hybrids, as a means of restoring the agency of materials. 13. Some spectator/participants of the orixá possession ­will take it in religiously conventional terms; ­others may find it not quite right, and spread rumors of faked possession, a potential ritual misfire, or may, contrariwise, find it to be a particularly riveting enunciation of a given orixá. ­These more critical consumers of orixá or gubida presences are like so-­called active-­matrix lcd tele­vi­sions, playing an active part in modifying the light source; less critical consumers are like standard-­issue liquid-­ crystal-­display boards, interpolating orixá presences in more predictable, orthodox, and replicable ways. 14. In practice, the ancestors are divided into two groups: the ahari (also called hiyuruha), “higher” spirits or “­people,” who are the aids and guides to shamans, and the gubida. ­These latter are more recently deceased ancestors who have material needs and demands, and who may afflict their descendants when not remembered and commemorated. Foster (1994) read the dügü as the transformation of dangerous grave-­dirt spirits (gubida) into beneficial cosmic ancestors (ahari), indexed by the many movements in the ritual between the ground and the air. In general I agree with Foster’s interpretation despite his somewhat idealized description. 15. While this is a common scenario, ­there are other situations that call for the dügü too. Shamans’ vocations are legitimized by performing at least four dügüs during their lifetime—­four matching the number of their grandparents. For this reason, some dügüs are initiated by a buyei himself in honor of one of his patron ancestors. Then too, many families consider it obligatory to offer a dügü periodically, at least once in a lifetime, and to use the rite as a kind of ­family reunion that extends beyond the pale of the living to include the dead. 16. This tableau can sometimes take on a theatrical tone. By “theatrical” h ­ ere I ­don’t mean this tableau is made for an external audience, but rather that it is carried out with a constant accompanying objectification or alterity, as Michael Taussig (1993) called it, though only occasionally in Taussig’s sense of the alterity produced by the imitation of the Other. That is, ritual participants watch themselves becoming ancestral, and comment on it, even sing about it. Moreover, as Richard Schechner (1977) and Victor Turner (1982) noted, the “theatrical” quality of ritual implies a tension between scriptedness and improvisation, and a quality of entertainment, both in the common sense of enjoyment and in the etymological sense of being liminal or “liminoid” (“to hold between,” from Old French entre and tenir [Turner 1982, 121]). 17. Some songs take the perspective of disgruntled ancestors: “Two grandchildren are missing, why ­don’t they arrive?” or “My gulei (altar) is empty, no one is ­there. Put on your sundara (shaman’s sash), grand­child, and go take care of it!” 18. The earth tablets’ significance is richly ambiguous. One buyei’s assistant confessed that she ­didn’t know. Another suggested that it referred to “ancestors of two 52  Paul Christopher Johnson

families.” The lead buyei clarified that the dirt for the tablets must come from where the patron ancestor’s umbilical cord was buried. The second tablet is for the patron’s wife or husband, as the case may be. This natal earth must then be animated or “heated up” by liquor of at least five dif­fer­ent kinds, “balancing the male and female forces.” In Conzemius’s description from a 1920s dügü, a mound of earth was placed at the center of the ­temple and called its “heart” (lanigi) (1928, 203, 205). Byron Foster (1994, 45) reports that oral histories in Belize remember the earth mound as coffin s­ haped, an analogue of the grave whence derived the voices of the ancestors. It is pos­si­ble, then, that the con­temporary dual earth tablets are an elaboration of what was previously a single earth mound. Dominga Velásquez offered a dif­f er­ent explanation of why ­there are two earth mounds: “One represents the place that belongs to the gubida spirits and the other would be the place where the sick person would go if he or she dies. So the suquia [or buyei] has to defend the mound of earth where the sick person would go. He blows bubé smoke with his pipe to keep the evil spirits away from ­those earth mounds. He has to expel the evil spirits from the dibasen. They can cause death ­because they have disobeyed God. And every­one dances around where the earth is and the evil spirits go away. We only want the spirits of our relatives! We must expel the bad spirits” (in Idiáquez 1993). 19. The scholarship on Candomblé has long cast Candomblé de Caboclo as inventive and personalized in relation to spirit possession and its cast of characters, compared to “traditional” (i.e., nagô) Candomblé, which is taken to be conservative, even monotonous (e.g., Carneiro [1948] 1961). This suggests that the opposition I am indicating between Garifuna practice and Candomblé is replicated at a lower level within Candomblé as well. 20. Sansone’s work has been attentive to zones of selective “Africanness” in Brazil, and that desirability engaging selective Africanness in varying contexts. Not surprisingly, Candomblé is the domain where Africanness is most valued, emphasized, and embraced even by ­those who reject that framing of identity in other contexts. Aisha Khan’s work (2004) also helpfully opens up the consideration of zones and degrees of blackness in the Ca­rib­bean, and its uneven relation to ethnic identifications. 21. Though, as noted earlier, ­there are several key tests in the ritual that decide ­whether or not the ancestors ­were satisfied with the event.

Many Returns in the Garifuna Dügü  53

chapter 2

Of  Vital Spirit and Precarious Bodies in Amerindian Socialities George Mentore

What can be more alive now in this very moment, than you reading ­these words What more dead than the words on this page words you now bring to life in the reading From “its instant and heat” the body “shouldered out” by distant words yet alive again, by proximate text

Introductions: Or Equivocations

This chapter pres­ents a few brief anthropological thoughts on Amerindian death and memory. It does so in response to a very generous invitation from scholars specializing in the Ca­rib­bean region. Respecting their collegiate call, my focus upon the Amerindian and the anthropological is cognizant of the vast scholarship directed at the region’s many histories. From plantation socialities, chattel slavery, indentured servitude, manumission, peasantries, colonialism, and national in­de­pen­dence to postcolonialities and current-­day global capitalism, the historical forces of the region have taken center stage in a good deal of Ca­rib­bean studies.1 The stated topics of my

attention do not seek, therefore, to minimize or avoid the claimed facts of such forces, but attempts rather to provide—­from the uncertain purview of anthropology—­a sense of the successful resilience still evident among the dif­fer­ent ways of being ­human in the modern Antilles and Amer­i­cas. Yet if any well-­crafted anthropological description of such resilience did actually pursue something more than just simply paying lip ser­vice to an indigenous re­sis­tance of being, it would have to do so in rupture of the very terms by which the historical “truths” of the Ca­rib­bean have so far been configured— at least by dominant Western intellectual thought. And ­here then resides the equivocation. An anthropology of traditional Amerindian concepts might not, for example, provide any definitive point of “origin” or fixed “causal determinant” for contact with the “Eu­ro­pean,” “African,” or “Asian” and, hence, no rigid explanatory site for or moment of becoming, presencing, or ending of Caribbean-­ ness. From the perspective of any such anthropology, the objectification of self and otherness might not even be situated within an ethnohistorical or ethnogeo­graph­i­cal interpretation of something called the Ca­rib­bean. Indigenous thought might not at all be reliant, for example, upon Western rationalist notions of diachronic, irreversible, lineal, and quantifiable temporality; of Euro-­American po­liti­cal notions of population; or even of modernist economic notions about land, ­labor, and production. In other words, ­there lurks a suspicion that neither the fixed sites of origins nor the pro­cess of binary dialectical thinking seem to serve well the indigenous experience of bringing to being the same inviolable identity of t­ hings as we in modernity appear to demand. Our world continues to require dissension and the existence of immobile forms pre­ce­dent to the external work of contingencies. Hence when we write and read about the vagaries and va­ri­e­ties of formed histories we tend to presume an irreducible and generalized ­human subjectivity beyond the capriciousness of events. So it is that within our regimes of thought we fully expect to situate a firm and continuous Amerindian presence, not only within the histories and geographies of the region, but also within the imaginings of an au­then­tic Ca­rib­bean existence. Historicized in terms of the biopolitics of “extinction,” “miscegenation,” “acculturation,” and/or as “racialized” citizenry, the Amerindian remains an inextricable part of the modern Ca­rib­bean. Such a category repre­sen­ta­tion, built right into the very name of the region, cannot escape its constructed sites of origin nor its constant deaths and rebirths pressganged, as they so often are, for the rejuvenation of the geopolitics of Ca­rib­bean identity. And Vital Spirit in Amerindian Socialities  55

yet, thankfully, being or becoming ­human by the real­ity of embodied lives (rather than by that of any modernist thought pro­cess) still remains subject to alternative, equally legitimate, cultural ways of thinking. Stimulated mostly by the Waiwai p ­ eople who live in the deep southern forests of Guyana, I turn indulgently in this chapter to some of t­ hese Amerindian cultural ways of thinking. My main argument begins with presuming that generally in Amerindian reasoning, interpretations elude the notion of death as a “decisive moment” and “indivisible event” (Deleuze 1999, 79). Instead of living life anticipating death, indigenous subjectivities concern themselves primarily with life in the now; in a presence of being which does not flatline into descriptive prose exiling all but an objectified absolute truth. They remain less interested in the contingencies of the world than in the embracement of their own multifarious makings of selves lived lyrically. On the other hand, anthropological thought has traditionally trained its prac­ti­tion­ers to seek out and describe the hard facts of life, t­ hose reasoned truths unpolluted by the irrationality of emotions. It is as if, to discover such truths, we purposely ignore all that serves to bring the thinking of truth into its site of discovery—to its point of origin, to its center as it w ­ ere, from which all ­else departs as but copies of the original. Preoccupied with the flat singularity of the dispassionate absolute, most of anthropology (as with most if not all modern Western rationalism) would prefer to absence all the historically and culturally produced “copies”—­the “fakes” or, more accurately, the meta­phors which actually function to bring “truth” into being. Even as it unconsciously depends upon them as aspects for description, anthropology nonetheless alienates the meta­phors (or what I am referring to as the lyrical or the poetics) of life. Hence, for example, rather than concentration upon the so-­often-­featured embodied feelings associated with what the discipline constantly calls “ritual life,” we instead encounter the cold hard rigor of an algorithmic code, one that, interestingly enough, pres­ents the ritual pro­ cess as a passage from life to death and again from death to rebirth—­the deployed meta­phor or poetry disguised or masked by what it is not. In this chapter I describe how and why, for Amerindian logic and its deployed interpretations of felt experience, death does not end life in any singular definitive moment nor, indeed, does it extinguish its own vitality within the material space of the body. The life of the dead does not simply live on inside the memories of t­ hose still living nor does it merely substantiate itself within the objects once used by the deceased. For even within the surviving ambience in which the deceased once lived, t­ here lingers particles of spiri56  George Mentore

tual vitality constitutive of the dead, vital forces strong enough to continue instilling the memory/knowledge of the dead and for stimulating felt grief in ­ ill be argued that it is this felt experience of grief for the dead the living.2 It w that serves to make necessary the moral act of retaliation, as well as the need for the allurement of an acoustic masking. Accordingly, the retaliatory act and the alluring mask both aid in accomplishing the necessary duty for and return to the social and emotional balance denied to t­ hose infused with an excess of grief triggered by their loving memory/knowledge of the deceased. It ­will be concluded that compulsory retaliatory killing evokes the mask of life, transforming the shock and anguish of death into the semblance of an ideal conviviality. Ultimately what I would like to demonstrate with my descriptions is just how, for indigenous thought, memory/knowledge operates (not as flat dispassionate prose about some original site of real­ity elsewhere in the world, but rather) as an in-­and-­of-­itself emotional base of embodied lived experience. In this latter regard, my advocacy would be for an anthropology far more attuned to life lived as poetry. Additionally, in this chapter, I ask (with hopeful provocation) if anthropology can actually achieve any persuasive descriptions of alternative “vocabularies” about ipseity (à la Rorty 1989). In other words, can the discipline ever produce convincing truths from the repre­sen­ta­tions of the world crafted in and by the discourses of alternative subjectivities and still remain unthreatened by them?3 The restrictive ­factor appears to be not the descriptions made by ­others of themselves, but rather the specific cultural limits anthropology has historically in­ven­ted for itself and in which it currently lives. ­These limits, I argue, have a good deal to do with the kinds of rational thought pro­ cesses the discipline deploys in order to interpret and make meaningful the world in which we live. Now particularly with regard to ethnographic descriptions used for analyzing death and mortuary practices, the principal constraint appears to be the degree to which we anthropologists find it difficult if not impossible to extract and leave ­behind our own ever-­encroaching thoughts about the originating sites of essential being, the irreversibility of lineal temporality, and the embodied possession of mea­sured terminal time. Such views certainly appear influenced by our own cultural presumptions about “life lived as destiny” (Malraux [1953] 1978). Thus from the poetic uses of “passages” and “pathways” through mea­sur­able time to “completion” and “lack” of life as inevitable destiny, anthropological theorizing can no more be innocent of serving up truths already deeply embedded within its concepts about being and temporality than that of any other imaginings from the very same cultural history in which Vital Spirit in Amerindian Socialities  57

it operates. We appear to need ­these truths in order to make effective claims about our most trea­sured values. Let me offer one brief example from out of that frequently deployed anthropological precept of “social death.” In the most poetic of descriptions, our author/ethnographer introduces us to the corpse of what he calls a Guayaki homosexual: ­ here was no sweetness in the air that day; the corpse they had been eating T gave off a terrible stench. The man had been dead for only a l­ittle while, but the briku had opened his belly, which accelerated the pro­cess of putrefaction, attracting numerous swarms of flies, and the flies had become drunk with every­thing oozing and flowing from the gashes. T ­ here ­were blood-­splattered holes in place of the eyes. He had died all alone and no doubt had seen the vultures gather in the sky above then swoop down on him one by one. The birds ­were motionless; bloody slivers of meat hung from their beaks. The place was quiet. Hundreds of ­little yellow butterflies dryly beat their wings around Krembegi’s corpse. (Clastres 2000, 277) In this description Krembegi cannot avoid the true originating site of an essential identity. Our ethnographer gives Krembegi an irreducible sex. Presumably by observed height and genital, our ethnographer knows Krembegi to be, in truth, r­ eally a man. From this truth to the additionally observed fact that Krembegi refused to adopt the principal social role of a man and become a bow-­carrying hunter, instead voluntarily taking on the role of a basket-­carrying gatherer ­woman, our ethnographer declares Krembegi to be a homosexual. As a homosexual, Krembegi represents “a complete inversion of the sexual and social order” (Clastres 2000, 296). Yet, actually, Krembegi is not the only so-­called homosexual among the Guayaki observed by our ethnographer; Chachubutawachugi has also been given this identity of an inverter of the social order. In addition to being prescribed the identity of a so-­called homosexual, however, Chachubutawachugi serves to depict the state of one socially dead. While Krembegi logically represents the Guayaki world “upside down,” this reversed order does not negate the norms of its sociality; ­these continue on in binary logic. Chachubutawachugi, however, by not succumbing to the stated roles for e­ ither man or ­woman (and perhaps even suggesting that “absurd” possibility of a third category), occupies the social space of death which “made him ‘invisible’; he was elsewhere, he was nowhere, he was everywhere. Chachubutawachugi’s existence was unthinkable. He was walking in place. He could not dream of turning back, and he was afraid to go ahead” ( Clastres 2000, 293). 58  George Mentore

Like Krembegi, Chachubutawachugi receives the social identity of a so-­ called homosexual from first being given an origin site of “real” biological sex. In other words, without once inquiring as to what an indigenous experience of being sexed might be within the confines of Amerindian thought, our ethnographer carries over into indigenous logic his own well-­ingrained cultural truths about real­ity. In our author/ethnographer’s descriptions and for his analy­sis, Chachubutawachugi might as well be as dead as the vulture-­ picked corpse of Krembegi. Both deaths and lives cannot erase the biological truth of their sexed identities. Regardless of Guayaki thoughts and experiences, from the point of view of our rationalist interpretations, the dead bodies of Krembegi and Chachubutawachugi remain truly t­ hose of biologically determined men. In offering this ethnographic example, I am not attempting to denigrate the exceptionally satisfying work of a highly revered anthropologist. On the contrary, I am ­doing so to point out—­from the honesty of his descriptions—­ exactly what is at stake within the limits of current anthropological explanation. What, indeed, would happen to some of our most trea­sured modern values (say, for example, about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) if the rational thoughts we hold about embodiment and the very order upon which they are built ­were to be seriously undermined by Guayaki alternative truths? To be the source of inalienable rights and the justification for the exercise of modern governmental power, we appear to demand the universal presence of an autonomous cellular identity, perpetually rendered by the power of an axial visibility (Foucault 1995), even from within the well-­ meaning intellectual pursuits of anthropology. Deemed to have arrived severed from its birth ­mother, to exist “naturally” in its singularity, the body of the modern autonomous individual invariably infiltrates and influences the interpretations we anthropologists make of so-­called nonmodern and marginal socialities. So that when it comes to interpreting death, we frequently tend to do so with the implicit understanding that it is indeed embodied, reduced to a massive inert materiality, and serves life as the necessary means not only for referring to its ends, but also for its continuances and rebirths (Robben 2011).4 All e­ lse remains uncertain. Thus the hopeful outcome of this chapter might well be an anthropological discourse on Amerindian death that stays constantly vigilant of its hubris for needing to “discover” all that ­there is to know or the conceit to locate the “theory of every­thing.” Such discourse ­will not produce the same understandings of realities for cultural o ­ thers as it does for us, b ­ ecause our Vital Spirit in Amerindian Socialities  59

remarkably dif­fer­ent subjective frames for ­doing so set up distinct modernist comprehensions about life and all that we think and say about its ends. This applies particularly in the case of the mourning experience when anthropology deploys its most illustrious (at least since the demise of kinship studies) heuristic device of “ritual analy­sis.” In describing the mourning experience of grief for a deceased loved one, the ethnographer more often than not adopts the formal dispassionate discourse of ritualization: algorithms about passage rather than the pos­si­ble howling, blazing, rageful poetry of ­those who feel the heavy pain of bereavement.5 For this chapter, then, I would like to incite the notion that the concept of the modern embodied self and the consequence of its presence have no location in traditional collective Amerindian thought. I would like to hold steady to the view that when registered in the living body with the most vibrant of memories, the diffuse existence of the Amerindian self cannot be considered as possessing any au­then­tic original singularity nor, indeed, be the quin­tes­sen­tial inalienable site of a private property. Thus my additional cautionary mea­sure for anthropology to remain profoundly equivocal as to its own Euro-­American notions about subjectivity when attempting to interpret indigenous concepts of felt experience—in this case specifically about death and grief. The presumption is that secured equivocation may perhaps better aid us in our suspension of disbelief so apparently necessary when seeking to engage the real­ity of the lives of other ­people. Anthropological Integrity

Consider ­these two relatively recent introductions to the topic of subjectivity from the anthropology of Amerindian socialities. Wari’ shamans say that during their pro­cess of initiation their eyes become strange. Walking in the forest, they see a peccary. Suddenly it transforms into a deer, then into an agouti, then into a paca. They explain that this oscillation is due to the fact t­ hese animals are all h ­ uman and hence similar to each other. (Vilaça 2005, 454) Among the Matsigenka: To become accepted by spirits, a necessary initial step is the establishment of personal relations with one of them, who subsequently becomes the shaman’s auxiliary spirit, inetsáane, literally “he with whom I converse.” (Rosengren 2006, 808) 60  George Mentore

All such interpretations of dif­fer­ent indigenous presentments of the world presumably address the same world. Or should it be the same planet, but dif­ fer­ent worlds? Each statement seeks to say something about the world even though, through their cultural differences, the world no longer can be said to be the same. From the dominant viewpoint of our Western traditional beliefs, the world cannot on its own provide statements about itself.6 It cannot interpret itself. Only ­humans in the world make interpretative statements about the world. Only culturally produced vocabularies contain the pos­si­ble means of discerning truth from falsehood about the world. By this logic, the world cannot be true or false; rather it is the dif­fer­ent vocabularies or, indeed, cultures, that produce the possibilities of truth and falsehood (Rorty 1989; Urban 1996; Wagner 1975). Thus, when reading the interpretations of indigenous presentments, even with the most empathetic of minds, resisting the temptation to disbelieve the truth statements contained within and conveyed by indigenous act often appears disingenuous. (This occurs even for the anthropologist who by definition should be subject to the same effects from the forces of literacy as do all modern readers.) Yet ­because nowhere does knowledge arrive uncoupled from its relation to power, before the claim can be made about the world having no a priori truth about itself, the truth statements made by indigenous interpreters frequently undergo immediate disqualification. In our case, when the dominant rationalist vocabulary speaks the world, it does so assuming it actually reflects the world, as the world would, if it could, indeed, speak. What, then, must be thought by the influential reader untrained in the history of anthropological thinking when confronted with a text describing not merely the cosmological precepts but the beliefs and experiences firmly held to be true by their indigenous interpreters? The readers who immediately come to mind h ­ ere would be t­ hose state officials, ngos, or members of international funding agencies who currently claim some influence over the lives of indigenous p ­ eoples. Anyone who believes in transformative bodies and claims to be able to communicate with spirits must sorely test even ­those Western rationalist thinkers who momentarily would be willing to suspend their incredulity. Consider this additional yet honest ethnographic disclosure on the Guayaki. The wild animal was not in the least frightened and prepared to pounce. . . . ​Tokangi knew what had happened; he immediately recognized his ­mother, who had been dead so long. . . . ​She had not yet managed to forget her son, even though he was now an old man. She had tried Vital Spirit in Amerindian Socialities  61

to kill him so that she would not be alone in the beeru prana, the savanna of dead souls. And to do this she had assumed the guise of a large jaguar. (Clastres 2000, 245) It is not enough simply to pres­ent convincing descriptions about, for example, “chronically unstable [Wari’] bodies” oscillating from one anatomical form into another, about [Matsigenka] “transdimensional relations” between ­humans and spirits, or even about long dead lonely Guayaki ­mothers pining in jaguar form for their sons. Any reasonable achievement of convincing descriptions requires additional knowledge and critical evaluation of the faith we hold in the vocabularies that determine our very own Western notions of truth. This requires comparative work, and is, I think, what we attempt to do best in anthropology. To help create a candid empathy with ­others who may appear so remarkably dif­fer­ent from us demands producing credible vocabularies informed by knowledge about both self and other. But it also requires recognition of the self actively engaged in the work of intersubjectivity. Anthropology, in other words, must first and foremost take into account not only its own active presence in the ethnographic describing of the other, but also its own active presence to become a topic of description. It cannot, for example, ignore the fact that it too is subject to culture.7 Spirit and the Body, ­Will and Power

Even without that seemingly necessary component of interrogation, Amerindian thought appears just as interested as our Euro-­American philosophies in the critical question of what actually c­ auses effects in the world. A crucial difference persists, however, in that when it comes to applying their conclusions on the topic of ­human existence, and left alone to trace the lines of argument leading to such ultimate conclusions, Amerindian philosophies consistently proclaim no in­de­pen­dent ­will to power. In­de­pen­dent ­will might well be ascertained for the body, but not necessarily for the spirit, which vitalizes the body and which, in many cases, provides the body with its capacity for memories, thoughts, and sense of being. ­Here the force of power is in spirit. ­Here, when with spirit, the body is, indeed, with power. Hence when having been initially invigorated then permanently denied the vitality of spirit, the body dies. And yet in t­hese Amerindian doctrines, while spirit in its pure form clearly is the source of all power, it is a power without intent, that is, an unadulterated power without any in­de­pen­dent ­will of its 62  George Mentore

own. Only embodiment provides spirit with intentionality. Only spirit vitalizes the body with the force of power. Thus, in this logic, the ultimate cause of all effects in the world begins with the power of spirit vitality. This does not rule out the influence of h ­ uman ­will. Indeed, b ­ ecause the source of all intent exists in the physicality of embodiment, h ­ uman ­will (while not the direct cause of effects) is, nonetheless, always thought of as somehow involved with deploying the power of spirit. This frequently opens up the possibility of a scenario found in many indigenous Amerindian socialities whereby, for example, h ­ uman perpetrators—­ who have had their ill w ­ ill fulfilled by spirit power—­cannot be punished by any direct ­human force. Consequently, the only credible accounting for achieved retaliation is through an appliance of the consistent logic in the use of spirit power. When Amerindian socialities are researched by rigorously applying their indigenous logic, it transpires that l­ ittle or no presumption of power appears to exist in the physicality of ­human embodiment and intent. In other words, in Amerindian regimes, physical vio­lence seems to have ­little or no essential correlative to power. Take, for example, the action of projecting an arrow, spear, or dart ­toward its target. ­Here the combined interdependent ­factors of material embodiment and omnipresent spirit depend entirely upon the successful merging of h ­ uman intent and spirit force. Even with the best w ­ ill (or skill) in the world, no amount of intent can achieve on its own the result of hitting the target. The contingencies of spirit and its power bring about the effect of actually hitting or not hitting the target (a contingency that we might explain in our Euro-­American terms as having to do, for example, with chance, or the changing direction and/or velocity of wind, or the intensity and/or dimming of light). In this par­tic­u­lar Amerindian case, the effect of wounding or death belongs principally to the arrow, spear, or dart. Having acquired the vitality of spirit into its material form, drawn into it by h ­ uman knowledge and intent, the projectile becomes the power-­determined ­factor in the hurting or killing. But ­because spirit vitality possesses no intent and ­because the Amerindian moral world relies upon intentionality for the explanation of all harm and death, the indirect cause for the hurting and killing always belongs to the vio­lence of ­human ­will. The direct effect of harm and death is that of spirit. The initial indirect cause of the very same harm or death, which directly results from the spirit in the projectile, is that of the vio­lence of ­human intent. ­Here one can analytically disarticulate power from vio­lence. ­Here the power to kill, hurt, and humiliate belongs to spirit-­without-­intentionality. Vital Spirit in Amerindian Socialities  63

The vio­lence in killing and being killed, hurting and being hurt, humiliating and being humiliated exists in the properties of the willful body. To fulfill any ­will to power, the agenda might well be the articulation of power with vio­lence, but no original site exists for an essential coalescence of both. A merger must be attempted and, in the attempt, power is not always able to produce the desired effect of vio­lence ­because, in Amerindian logic, such power has no intrinsic ­will of its own (see Clastres 2000; Deleuze and Guattari 1987; Gil 1998). Affect and ­Will, Sociality and Memory

Substantive corporality provides the deep surface mass for intent and emotions through which the contingent actions of effects take place. In Amerindian belief systems, ­human intent—­filled as it often is with sentiment—­ can and does initiate the pro­cesses of affective action, but faith does not give credence to h ­ uman ­will and emotion for accomplishing any act without the vitality of spirit. And yet, even when understood as the very essence of h ­ uman life, spirit vitality is hardly ever thought of as belonging inherently to the individual body it occupies. That is, it is never considered to be intrinsic to the body in the same sense that we in the Western tradition understand our bodies as owning—by some form of natu­ral or divine right—­their autonomous souls and identities as a kind of private property. Even in ­those specific regimes of collective Amerindian thought where and when vital spirit is believed to retain a separate mindfulness, consciousness, or purposefulness deemed its own—­that is, beyond the body—­this occurs, it could be argued, precisely in consequence of a once-­sustained occupancy by spirit vitality in a par­tic­u­lar individual body. The source of mindfulness or consciousness or purposefulness derives directly from the felt sentiments experienced intimately through the lived body in its shared social relations with ­others. Now it has been well argued that in Amerindian concepts, “The vis­i­ble shape of the body is a power­ful sign of . . . ​differences in affect” (Viveiros de Castro 1998, 478) and that the body is not a “distinctive substance or fixed shape” but rather “an assemblage of affects or ways of being that constitute a habitus” (Viveiros de Castro 1998, 478). It could, however, just as equally be claimed that the affective differences signified by bodily form need to be kept reasonably unchanged, or made stable enough, simply in order to permit the predictable be­hav­ior and expectations required for any proper social life. In this latter regard, the emphasis should be placed not on the negative 64  George Mentore

precarious instability of the body but on the more positive efforts to keep it in constant conviviality. If indeed a “general uncertainty over forms is a key f­ actor in understanding the concept of body found in the Amazonian region” (Vilaça 2005, 446), it should be argued that this derives not from knowledge about the transformational condition of corporality, but rather from an absolute assuredness that the body serves as the assemblage point for spirit vitality, affect, intent, and the formation of self. Uncertainty about bodily form appears distinct ­because of the unpredictability of ­these vari­ous aspects of embodiment. ­Here the effects upon embodied subjectivity from the contingent world demands that the heavy work of dealing with h ­ uman well-­being falls, not upon the causal force of the world, but rather upon the making and remaking of the self. Given the known connectedness between bodily form and its affective capacities, we would thus fully expect the work of sociality to bear directly upon the purposeful affects keeping the body set in its outward appearance of safe and familiar being. In this way the known and certainly well believedin precarious instability of the individual body serves directly to exact the general cultural ethos of “Amerindian conviviality” (Overing and Passes 2000). Given such theoretical foundations, some factions in the anthropology of indigenous Amerindian socialities might possibly determine that the source of ­human ­will derives from the affective body when uninfluenced by or unattached to spirit. It is thus deemed pos­si­ble for somatic sentiments to stir intent provocatively from the interiority or from within the “fold” of the body.8 But, to reiterate, in Amerindian logic the power of spirit remains the only explanatory form for direct causality. It is, nonetheless, the collective ­human effort of ­others, conjoined with the necessary life-­giving vitality of spirit, that allows the individual bodies with whom one lives to possess an intent stirred by affect. And this is pos­si­ble precisely b ­ ecause (through coresidence and the consequence of intimate everyday face-­to-­face relations) ­others are, or have been made into, the presence of self: t­ here is (as Western thought would claim) an achieved intersubjectivity. It has, in addition, been proposed that “repre­sen­ta­tions are a property of the mind or spirit” (Viveiros de Castro 1998, 478) and not, strictly speaking, of the body. This proposition appears deliberately employed to grant the body the predominant capacity of a point of view—­a crucial precept claimed for Amerindian ontologies. Somatic perspectivism takes priority ­here ­because the body first pres­ents itself as an object of repre­sen­ta­tion: it is Vital Spirit in Amerindian Socialities  65

“that which is presented to the sight of the other” (Viveiros de Castro 1998, 480). Interestingly enough in such theories the transformative capabilities of the body tend to mimic ­those of the sartorial. Hence bodies can be worn as if they ­were masks or garments.9 Bodies, like clothing, represent themselves to the viewer in ways the viewer often cannot predict or control. To make ­matters more intriguing, some principal nonhuman entities—­“­those which perform a key symbolic and practical role” (Viveiros de Castro 1998, 471)—­can also display the very h ­ uman qualities of conscious intentionality and agency. They do so not by first being attributed with the ability to form repre­sen­ta­tions, and through them be filled with memory, but rather by being extended the very h ­ uman capacity of embodied subjectivity and, thus, a point of view (Viveiros de Castro 1998, 476). Reconciling the fact that repre­sen­ta­tions belong to the image-­producing self or spirit vitality and that they need the projected body to pres­ent its images, somatic perspectivism honors the point of view of the body before the repre­sen­ta­tional properties of the spirit/self. Nonetheless the intersubjective state of Being and its resulting “suffuse memory” (Taylor 1993, 206) still rely upon the critical conjoined intimacy of spirit and body, power and ­will. The pro­cess of relying upon the intersubjective state has been documented as one where spirit vitality must first gain embodiment, which has variously been described in the lit­er­a­ture ­under the rubric of the “couvade” (Rival 1998; Rivière 1974; ­Sullivan 1988). It is from this amalgam of spirit and body that the conjoined power-­intent-­affect of being proceeds to craft the self-­image for the individual. It does so through refractions and by intimate alterities. Thus the care of the self ­here belongs to ­others. It is caring ­others who manage the repre­sen­ta­tion of the self. In this scenario, the other succeeds as the moral custodian and caretaker of self-­image. At least as it is understood as suffuse memory, Amerindian subjectivity can therefore be said to be the accumulation of recalled images, which the self remembers of itself while in the custody of ­others. It follows that in such instances the ­will to power cannot be exercised through or over the self ­because no differentiation can be assumed to the self: all beings share in the same subjectivity. The ­will to power might, however, be exercised through and over bodies differentiated by their points of view. What evidence could provide the guiding clues supportive of this assumption? The answer could be unfolded by following how sociality and memory play their part in identifying the vital spirit constitutive of Amerindian selfhood. 66  George Mentore

Grief and the Memories of the Dead

It has been reported for many traditional Amerindian ­peoples that not only do they physically remove the body of a dead loved one from the sight of the living by burying, burning, or eating it, but they also destroy and/or give away its property. Among the Kagwahiv, for example, as an explicit means of dealing with the initial shock and the subsequent response of grief expressed through importuned wailing, they bury the corpse in the floor of the long­house. “Immediately ­after the burial steps are taken to distance the memory of the dead person” (Kracke 1988, 213). The mbateruéra (former possessions) of the deceased, if not already with the corpse in the grave, w ­ ill then be given away to affines or destroyed. The emphasis for the Kagwahiv rests firmly upon suppressing the emotions of grief and anger felt at the loss of the loved one. To assist them in this regard ­after the initial “acute stage of mourning” (Kracke 1988, 213), they purposely mute any memory of the death. With the corpse and its property go the grief and, with the grief, goes the memory of the body in death. As with the Kagwahiv mbateruéra so too with the Cashinahua mabu (property of the deceased) which “must be thrown away or destroyed” (McCallum 1999, 454). The Cashinahua once practiced endocannibalism, so their cooking and eating of the body of the deceased might have functioned as their means for coping with grief and the memory of the death of a loved one. H ­ ere, however, an additional hesitant proposal seems formable, that is, to destroy or dispose properly of the body and its properties works to suppress or raze the memories and desires they stimulate not only in the living, but also in the residual spirit of the dead. Sharpened by the separation of death, an acute longing for each other continues to draw the dead and the living to each other. This occurs b ­ ecause, in the complicated Cashinahua setting of the self, the memory of residing together in convivial sociality still lingers in both the living and the dead. The act of eating the body makes it very difficult for the still-­present spirit of the dead to return to its assemblage point of affects. If kept unused or destroyed, not even its once possessed properties, can provide the spirit with ave­nues of return. The Cashinahua remain clear, however, on one point at least: “a person can waste away through grief and longing” (McCallum 1999, 454). Corroborated by what we know from other Amerindian concepts of death (particularly from the sensitive descriptions of Warí grieving by Conklin 2001), this dictum suggests that sickness, or any form of discomfort, analogues Vital Spirit in Amerindian Socialities  67

as a kind of small death. Too much grieving for long-­lost kinsfolk promotes a morose and unhealthy existence similar in kind to living-­death. To eliminate the grief, one must eliminate its cause. It is not so much that close relatives forget their dead, but rather that the investment the living have already placed each other’s well-­being must continue. Amerindian sociality deems it necessary to establish a clear means for the collective suppression of painful emotions. For social relations to return to their principal concern of cultivating and maintaining goodwill and tranquility, grief must depart. Some aspect of shared spirit vitality pertaining to the living inevitably departs with the deceased and its disposed property. All individuals who feel the pangs of grief at the death of a loved one do so ­because they once shared spirit vitality with the one now dead. The constituted totality of this mutual spirit amounts to the suffuse memory accumulated and shared between the living and the corpse. Any prospect of a prolonged absence by the immediate dead brings on a physical sense of loss for the living, one that threatens their very own earthly existence. The ele­ments of spirit vitality, which depart with the dead, permit both the dead to continue longing for the living and the living to long for the dead. The living want their particles of memories of the dead to go with the dead. To keep them would be tantamount to keeping the ghostly form of the recent dead lingering around, unsatisfied in its desire for bodily intimacy. But as we have seen, from the above mentioned Guayaki case, where the long dead ­mother of Tokangi still grieved for her son, memories and emotions might never actually completely dis­appear. All it takes is a contingent event by the world to trigger the memory and infuse the body with the lived real­ity of felt emotions. Certainly for Tokangi all it took was the attack upon his life, long ­after his ­mother had died, for him to recognize it was her in the form of his jaguar assailant. He immediately attributed the cause for the attack to their separation in death and to the loneliness felt by his ­mother. In other words, ­after the trauma of his attack, he instantly began the remaking of self using the poetics of suffuse memories about his dead m ­ other. Thus for the living to keep their memories of the dead in any sustained manner preserves the presence of the spirit vitality of the deceased. For this to continue unattenuated, however, would result in the sapping of vitality from the bodies of the living. It is, indeed, the stronger continuing duties of care for living ­others that function for the living to ­counter the pos­si­ble total loss of their vitality through the dead. It is the absolute moral ground of Amerindian sociality for the living to be constantly confirming with their spirit vitality the existence of living ­others. The principal concern for the 68  George Mentore

living, therefore, is to make sure that in the quotidian realities of their social life, they practice stronger and more overlapping thoughts of each other than ­those observed by the deceased. It is in this regard and in its performative pro­cesses that Amerindian mourning practices deal specifically with the emotions and memories of corporal ­will and the power of spirit. The Institutional Care of Self

Consider that among the Bororo “a h ­ uman being only comes into social existence when he or she is named: babies who die before being given a name do not receive a funeral ‘for they have no aroe’ ” (Crocker 1983, 168).10 The aroe or spirit vitality of the embodied individual has a personal and intricate relation with its name-­giving clan of the opposite moiety. Its named vitality, as well as the ceremonial clothes representative of its expressive existence, conscript the custodial care of opposite clan members throughout its social lifetime. The opposite clan’s custodians invariably bare their moral responsibilities to each other in the role of consanguine, but as affine to the named individual for whose spirit vitality they have been conscripted to care. At death and contracted from the clan of the ­father of the deceased, a “new” spirit vitality (aroe maiwu) replaces the departed one. It is this person with the replacement vitality who, during the funeral, destroys the property of the deceased. This “new” embodied spirit vitality burns the painful memory of the dead and at the same time rekindles fresh joyful ones for the living parents of the deceased. From thence onward, the new embodied spirit vitality “must address ­these persons as i-­muga and i-­ogwa (‘­mother’ and ‘­father’); they in return term him i-­tunarigedu (‘my true child’)” ( Crocker 1983, 168). The replacement child presumably eases the departure of the dead and the grief of the living. But by implication it also reveals and confirms, for my interpretation, the Bororo view that anyone without a spirit-­name amounts to a being outside social repre­sen­ta­tion. Within the moral tenets of Bororo sociality, ­mental images of the unnamed do not conjure up any bases for social inclusion. In the case of the early death of a child, not enough overlapping memories of shared selfhood have been cultivated in its short-­lived life. Not enough memories have been brought into the realm of repre­sen­ta­tion. In the case of the death of a spirit-­ named individual, however, an overflow of memory exists. H ­ ere shared subjectivity has to deal with the lost raka (animated energy) of the body as well as its departed spirit vitality. The long drawn-­out pro­cesses of the funeral deal both with the corpse and its spirit essence. But ­here the replacement child Vital Spirit in Amerindian Socialities  69

clearly serves to emphasize the need for an ongoing convivial sociality obviously stated in the relations between parent and child. This appears even while deemphasizing the necessary affinal relations between moieties. In other words, while the body provides for the possibility of adopting a point of view, it is only by being combined with its spirit self and by extending the care of the self to o ­ thers similarly sanctioned that it can become not just ­human but very specifically a proper social person. An additional lesson can also be learned from the Bororo ethnography, one suggesting a formidable pretense at play, not unlike that which dances around in Western forms of rationality (De Certeau 1988). It pirouettes as the question of why patently false knowledge conspires and often succeeds, at least publicly, to be believed as truth (Crocker 1983). If as it has been suggested by the Bororo ethnography that not only do their funeral ceremonies provide individual participants with the opportunity to wear liturgical masks, but also that they serve intellectually as an overall technique of masking (Crocker 1983, 170), then they apparently do so as a rather odd disguise. In addition, if it can be reasonably argued from an Amerindian eschatological point of view that the sick and d ­ ying occupy a space of death between the final cessation and the ­actual disposal of the body, it can just as convincingly be maintained that the corpse takes up occupancy in a space of life during the mortuary stages of mourning. During this “chronic stage of mourning” (Kracke 1988, 213), when the corpse occupies spaces of life and death at the same time, it animates the totality of the per­for­mance. The corpse draws the living participants into active engagement with their memory of its once breathing body. Meanwhile, in their own right, the performative pro­cesses of the funeral operate to mask the departure of the deceased (Conklin 2001). A dramatic two-­way princi­ple seems thus to be in effect, yet the oddity of the disguise persists. It is of course all a masquerade that fools no one: so why then allow the masking of such patently untrue knowledge about the prolonging of life to persist as if it ­were true? ­There is, to begin with, the per­sis­tence of the historical image of the deceased understood as true and real in the living. The very image of the deceased in the living has no grounds for differentiation between the body it represents while alive and when dead. Its ethereal quality remains the same long ­after the body has died. In this re­spect it would seem questionable to continue referring to the cultivated image as a form of “remembering” when in fact it is the constituted presence of the thought-of individual. The vibrant and vitalized body of the living, known to be formed by the power of spirit, 70  George Mentore

and constituted as an image cared for by o ­ thers, is experienced as a folded interior real­ity. With the death of its body, its image continues within the living. The self of the other actually exists in the thoughts and memories of ­those with whom it resides. No surprise, therefore, that when the body represents and pres­ents subjectivity in ­these Amerindian ontologies, truth gains not the body as object but the self as subject in the other.11 This perhaps explains why the anthropological lit­er­a­ture frequently claims that the body “masks” or “clothes” the true vitality of spirit constituting the self. To mask or clothe the corpse with the life of a living per­for­mance continues, then, the social existence of the deceased beyond the end of its lived real­ity. As we have seen, this time of existence for the corpse immediately becomes appropriated by the bereaved in order to ease emotional suffering but, additionally, to confirm the truth about spirit vitality actually counting as the real source of life. ­Here, then, it can be reiterated that “the ­human imagination does something more than demonstrate its fertility: it makes the masks into what they represent rather than what they are” (Crocker 1983, 175).12 What the recent scholarship on masking (and adornment in general) has disclosed is that, like for example with our public secret about the falsehood of movies, the donned garment (or “second skin” or, in the case of Amerindian perspectivism, the body itself ) partitions off the inner self from the exterior gaze of the viewer while at the same time enabling with confidence the presentment of the former to the latter as the gained confirmation of subjectivity (Cavallaro and Warwick 1998; Gell 1996; Ingold 2000; Simmel 1950). In other words, the mask not only conceals; it also reveals as its ­actual modus operandi that which it seeks to adorn. Adorned subjectivity appears to incite this par­tic­u­lar technique of the mask. So through its partitioning capabilities, the mask stimulates its double-­ sidedness for both the individual and the context in which the individual performs. By si­mul­ta­neously provoking the interior and the exterior existence of their repre­sen­ta­tions, masks provoke their dramatic and strategic effects of bound­aries and double-­sidedness for the body and its per­for­mances. As mentioned, in Amerindian ontologies, ­unless the mirror of otherness succeeds in reflecting the ­whole image of the embodied self, subjectivity cannot in­de­pen­dently witness its own coherence. When it looks directly upon its body and does not find it ­whole (as the subject invariably does ­after it sees and becomes conscious of its body in the gaze of ­others), the ensuing sense of partialness makes any thoughts about absence meaningfully available. The double-­sided confessional aspects of masks further incite this presence Vital Spirit in Amerindian Socialities  71

of an absence and, at the same time, the obvious reference to the vulnerable physicality of the body. They foreground the fact that when masked, the materiality of the body contrives to presence the a­ ctual condition of its absence. ­Here, additionally, the partition and double-­sided effects of masking tend to take on the meta­phoric and thus poetic force of quotidian social relations indicative of Amerindian socialities. It is with the convivial sociality of everyday living that the presence of the absence of the vulnerable physicality of the body can most often be seen on parade. Death brings on hurt for the living. A strategic use of indigenous power frequently implements social knowledge to set and keep in pro­cess the convivial sociality necessary for muting or erasing such grief. Pain and plea­sure both can only be experienced by the body. The body cannot, however, experience forever a life of plea­sure or indeed a life of pain: its sentient physicality carries with it this knowledge of its own temporary existence. Yet such implemented knowledge about the temporary existence of embodied conscious life can be generally found masked by an equally implemented joy of living. Amerindian sociality frequently treats h ­ uman mortality as knowledge in abeyance—as knowledge suspended for the immediate pleasures of life in the now. This “false” knowledge or the propagated understandings of what counts as a true social being covers the “truth” about the inevitability of death. It appears the mask of life has, in Amerindian philosophies, this rather odd game to play with repre­sen­ta­tion. Waiwai Death and Memory/Knowledge

The Cariban-­speaking Waiwai of southern Guyana imply, in the specific morphology of tïno, a homonym between “memory” and “knowledge.” “Woh tïno yasï” (I remember) and “Woh tïno ñero” (I know), built upon the same root word, intuit a tacit princi­ple that draws memory and knowledge into the same intellectual and affective frames. In the use of the adverb tïnotopo (or kese-­tïnotopo), Waiwai logic additionally appears to conflate the procedures of remembering and thinking, of which neither can reasonably be experienced beyond felt vitality. To be remembering is to be pro­cessing knowledge as a living entity. To be thinking is to be pro­cessing memories as a socially constituted being. The essential ele­ment in the production of memory/knowledge begins and ends with ekatï, or spirit vitality. Once spirit vitality has been introduced and settled in a child so as to be shared and exchanged frequently between the vitalities of ­others with whom the child lives and interacts, tïno, or memory/knowledge, circulates and 72  George Mentore

makes, in the pro­cess, a proper social person. In the case of an infant whose vitality cannot be seduced by its prospective parents to leave the spirit world, its premature death does not initiate enough sorrow and does not require the usual act of vengeance on the part of the ex­pec­tant living relatives. Not enough memory/knowledge has passed into and been retained by the ekatï of the deceased child to consider it a proper social being. Determined by the extent and depth of its memory/knowledge, the too-­short social existence of the infant cannot instill the strong display of necessary grief and the accompanying moral compliance to seek a compensatory death by the living. It is also the case, however, that on the other side of the life cycle, death similarly does not precipitate im­mense grief and a commensurate act of retaliation. When the aged body withers and increasingly can no longer offer its corporeal mass for the circuiting of memory/knowledge, its spirit vitality thins and fi­nally exits in death. For the aged, life has been filled with the weight of memory/knowledge but, during the final years leading up to death, their memory/knowledge has been gradually thinning and dissipating out among coresident community members and close relatives in the generations below. Their own weak bodies cannot retain the memory/knowledge of ­others. When it can no longer be the site of such memory/knowledge, the body of the el­derly becomes a trace of where life once was; its vitality fi­nally vacates its temporary mortal abode and returns to its original spiritual home of kapu (the three upper strata of the cosmos). For all adults who do not make it into old age, their spirit vitality and its consequent memory/knowledge show no such negotiations with death. Except for the very young and old, therefore, all deaths result from a coupling between malevolent ­human intent and the contingencies of spirit vitality. This violent ruination of the strong and mature memory/knowledge of proper social beings sets in motion deep widespread grief as well as the kindred duty to initiate parawa—­retaliatory death. Parawa should be considered part of the overall Waiwai pro­cess of bereavement. For the grieving relatives, it takes place at the end of the cremation or burial ceremony and in countermea­sure to the murder of the deceased. In its obvious absence of life, the corpse brazenly displays the fact of its violent demise. It is the vis­i­ble victim of tono (predatory death). Someone possessed with ill w ­ ill and driven by an excessive and deviant oral desire for raw meat has killed a toto (­human). This is the only way to explain the death of any proper social being. From the point of view of the relatives of the deceased, the killer was roma (hungry) for woto (the meat of principally Vital Spirit in Amerindian Socialities  73

land-­dwelling beings). Only someone filled with animosity and the pangs of hunger could have had rïwo (anger) enough to hunt, kill, and seek to eat uncooked a beloved close relative. ­Because no individual can be denied direct access to vio­lence in Waiwai sociality, no one deems the taking of life to be the special domain of anyone in par­tic­u­lar. Anyone can be a killer. And, indeed, the raw physical impact of vio­lence is not a virtual or unusual event. E ­ very day the result of vio­lence can be witnessed. ­Every day wotowaparï (practiced killers) bring bodies into the village from the forest. E ­ very day ­women gut, clean, and cook t­ hese bodies for h ­ ouse­hold and communal meals. When cooked, ­these bodies reveal the only truly logical use for lethal force—­killing in order to eat. In the face of all death, the undeniable presence of the corpse logically leads to thoughts about it serving as an object for feeding ­those who might want to eat its flesh. At this point the purposeful mask of life responds with the necessary sociality for keeping the sorrow felt by the bereaved, if not at bay, then at least within the thick surface of their grieving, from whence the sadness w ­ ill be shared out, thinned out, and made bearable through other empathetic mourners. The corpse of a loved one painfully reveals the cessation of any further means of new memories by the deceased. The bereaved can no longer depend upon the once-­vital agency of the now deceased to provide them with the necessary memory/knowledge they thrive on to remain alive as proper social beings. In fact, in order not to drain their own vitality and its contribution to ­those other kinsfolk still alive, the mourners must avoid being overwhelmed by their sadness. To do so might indeed result in their own deaths, as well as threaten the lives of ­those ­others with whom they live. A return to the balanced norms of conviviality must be obtained. Meanwhile, on the other side of the equation, the evidential fact of the corpse also aids in the making of fresh memories for the still-­at-­large murderer and his or her kinsfolk. The corpse becomes the substantive content of the murderer’s memory/knowledge. It secures for the murderer an identity of successful killer, a character worthy of shared memory/knowledge between the kinsfolk of the murderer, not a secret and certainly not the source of any boastful broadcasting. Many exist as regular killers in the moral terrain of sociality. The event of the killer and what the killer produces in the body of the dead “feeds” the kinsfolk of the killer, providing them with additional memory/knowledge for their social agency. For ­those who have lived with the deceased, however, having shared spirit vitality and memory/knowledge with them, the immediate tasks at hand 74  George Mentore

bear first upon erasing any pos­si­ble suspicion of violating the princi­ples of conviviality (by having played a part in the murder); and second, upon subsequently removing the still-­at-­large means of memory making for the relatives of the murderer. In other words, the bereaved must grieve publicly for the victim and seek privately a balance in the compensatory death of the murderer whose kinsfolk continue to benefit from his or her presence as their source of fed memory/knowledge. Like other Amerindian p ­ eoples, “when a Waiwai dies it is customary to destroy all his personal property with the cremation (or burial). According to the Waiwai, this is done primarily ‘in anger’ at the painful loss” (Fock 1963, 19). They also once used to burn down the communal ­house and move the entire community (to another nearby site if farms w ­ ere still in full crop). Not just the immediate property of the deceased but also the ambience in which he or she lived, still contained enough lingering particles of ekatï and hence enough memory/knowledge of the deceased to stimulate grief in the living. For the mourners during the funeral, wailing drains out and thigh rubbing kneads out their ñeřewá (physical pain). ­Children must be kept away from the ceremony, and ­those closely related to the deceased w ­ ill shave their heads. Distant female relatives cut their hair short, and while the men ­today no longer grow their hair long, when they did, theirs too would be cut. All this display of emotion and shearing of hair make it obvious to all pres­ent that a person of some social standing has just died and that he or she has left b ­ ehind kinsfolk who not only cared enough about them to demonstrate publicly their etïshe (love) but also cared enough not to have desired his or her death in the first place. As an extension to t­ hese sentiments and quite deliberately to demonstrate that only a parana (stranger) could possibly be motivated to murder their kinsfolk, a grieving relative takes on the duty of parawa. The early Waiwai ethnography rec­ords that ­after the cremation or burial the “avenging” relative retrieves “some selected bones” (Fock 1963, 107) from the pyre or grave. The avenger cuts a hollow bamboo tube, lines it with the leaves of a red grass actually called “blood leaves,” and places the bones inside this now new cerement of the dead. The avenger can at this stage reheat the bones first then place them in the tube and, on a raised platform over a slow open fire (as when normally drying meat to preserve it), “barbecue” the new bamboo body of the dead. If the bamboo does not burst (as all well-­dried meat should when using this pro­cess of cooking), “it means that revenge ­will be unsuccessful” (1963, 107). The bamboo tube with its encased bones, qua newly wrapped body, is then interred or given its secondary burial. Alternatively, the bamboo body can be additionally wrapped Vital Spirit in Amerindian Socialities  75

and further protected with lethal thorny leaves, then given its interment or secondary burial with “a fire built up over it” (107). A ­ fter this, the central act in the per­for­mance of retaliation can take place. The dutiful avenging relative sings in private the secret songs of erem and sends his or her vital breath on the dangerous quest of delivering retaliatory death. The short repeated phrases, when sung, belong to the language of spirit. Between the avenger and the contracted spirit aid, negotiations seal a pact to lure the murderer into a trap baited to attract the deviant oral greed of the latter. A ­ fter the singing, the avenger mimics the call of a highly desired hunted animal. From the point of view of its intended victim, this convincing acoustic mask does not appear as a decoy. Thus the intended victim sets out not in pursuit of a deception, but of the “real” animal—­made so by the indistinguishability between the original and the copy. To orientate and send the mimicked call to its target, the avenger blows or puffs twice ­after each alluring animal sound. The acoustic spirit has no intent, certainly no purpose other than that given to it by the avenger. Indeed if a mishap occurs during the pro­cess the sign of this calamity would be the dramatic inversion of intent, b ­ ecause the stomach of the avenger w ­ ill swell up and in effect unmask the decoy and spring an empty trap. Carried out correctly, however, the lure w ­ ill entice the anonymous murderer to reveal his identity through his oral desires and fi­nally, into his very own demise. The ekatï of the intended victim ­will be lured away from its body by the acoustic mask of the avenger. Enticed never to return, the ekatï of the murderer leaves its body to perish. Throughout the period of pursuit, the avenger has followed a strict diet of no meat, indeed, living a liminal existence tantamount to life in the spirit world. When the death of the anonymous murderer has been announced, the avenger returns to the quotidian of social life by means of a purifying bath of steam. Duty has been accomplished and (at least for one side) a balance achieved for ­those who had been denied the revitalizing cir­cuit of memory/knowledge by the dead. The living relatives of the deceased can now continue to strengthen their overlapping thoughts of each other and, in the pro­cess, unremember their suffuse memories of the departed loved one. Conclusion: Moral Consciousness and “More” Knowledge

“Lies stink” designates, in Waiwai, a strong meta­phor for falsehood. The stench of lies draws its olfactory analogy from rotting flesh, but also, more revealingly from the telltale fart eaters of meat expel ­after a meal. One eats 76  George Mentore

what has died. What has died has been killed. Killing and death satisfy the desires of life. False memory/knowledge smells bad b ­ ecause, like killing and death, it pres­ents itself masked as truth. From the point of view of the parawa avenger, the acoustic mask of the animal-­lure carries the stench of death ­because it acts on behalf of the deceased. For the intended parawa victim, however, who (by proven greed as a tono killer) deceives themself into believing the lie, the mask pres­ents a convincing truth. Taking what was not given, the murdering tono killer had used illegitimate vio­lence to kill. Short-­ circuiting the memory/knowledge shared between intersubjective beings, the tono killer disrupted a central tenet of Waiwai sociality and redirected the substantive content of individual spirit vitality from its open exchange between relatives to the anonymity of kapu. The parawa avenger, by enticing the tono killer to kill again, led the latter into a trap whose success of enticement ultimately stabilized the overcharged emotions of the deceased’s kindred. The allurement of the acoustic mask cannot succeed without the embodied desire of subjectivity. Conscious intentionality, when provided with the corporal substance to make memory/knowledge, depends upon having its desires fulfilled by ­those with whom it shares spirit vitality. When subjectivity gives its lived body willingly to the hunter, the exercise of this act as a ­will to power does not belong to the hunter but to the body he has been given to kill. To say that shared subjectivities exercise any ­will to or for each other, would be to misrepresent Waiwai logic about the self and power. On the other hand, the illegitimate death the tono murderer c­ auses, while not the direct result of an autonomous w ­ ill, nevertheless, reveals an antisocial ele­ment at the opposite extreme of Amerindian sociality. ­Here, as in other Amerindian thought schemes, Waiwai logic takes hold of the inevitable recurrence of death and turns it to the ser­vice of social existence. The death of all proper social beings points to the clear incident of a desire left to itself. Tono murders take away from the relatives of the deceased their ability to generate social exchanges t­ oward the maintenance of balance. In this regard, the Waiwai tono killer resembles the “perverse child” among the Piro of the Bajo Urubamba who, by eating dirt, horrifies its community into thinking it wants “to build a world in which its desires m ­ atter only to itself ” (Gow 1989, 581). The parawa killer transforms this imbalance of desire, restoring it to the proper ideal of social life. Indeed like the Bororo “replacement child,” parawa evokes the mask of life in order to turn the horror and anguish of death into the semblance of an ideal conviviality. Vital Spirit in Amerindian Socialities  77

The deep repre­sen­ta­tional surface of the mask offers us guidance not only for an understanding of the performative pro­cess of funerals but also, and more significantly, for imagining what it might be like for an Amerindian ­people to bear the burden of bereavement. Certainly the comparative work of interpreting dif­fer­ent socialities takes many forms, all of which are not necessarily informed by concerns to arrive at empathy for o ­ thers through descriptions of their suffering. Numerous persuasive narratives of this kind already fill the shelves of our austere libraries. To give any veracity to the repre­sen­t a­t ions of the world made by discourses of alternative subjects we, in the Western tradition, must first acknowledge that all such other repre­ sen­ta­tions are actually meaningfully operative in the world and not just the result of descriptions about the world. A more empathetic anthropology can do no better or more useful work than keep on providing subtle renditions of ­these alternative repre­sen­ta­tions. Perhaps, however, in being lured by the sweet aroma of truth, it may also be enticed by its own moral consciousness and not just its desire for more knowledge. Notes Epigraph: The last stanza of this poem by the author refers to Cora Diamond’s analy­sis of Ted Hughes’s poem “Six Young Men” (Diamond 2008, 1). The quotations in the first and second lines of the stanza are from Diamond 2008, 45. 1. ­After many years of scholarship within the school of Social Anthropology and of testing the hypothesis about the concept of “society,” I am now convinced by the greater honesty and effectiveness to be found in the term “sociality” (but see Ingold 1996; Strathern 1988). 2. My generalizing discourse on “the Amerindian” and “the Euro-­American” derives from the many years I have been intimately involved in the teaching and studying of ­these social categories. I have spent the majority of my professional c­ areer working as an ethnographer of Waiwai social being. Recently, however, my research has drawn me properly into the anthropology (or cross-­cultural comparison) not only of Amazonian but also of Euro-­American socialities. I consider it my principal focus and perhaps even my duty (given the moral obligation to pres­ent in re­sis­tance the knowledge I learned from my in­for­mants) to be now constantly alert to the self-­taught fact that anthropology possesses its own cultural limits that often hinder rather than help in the interpretation of its research materials. A frequently practiced limit could be encountered (with poised reflective thought) in the way we Euro-­American readers reasonably accept that anthropological ­others do use culture to make their world meaningful to them, but that in contrast we use the “truth” to do so, with the result that we do not also see how we deploy the limits of cultural understanding to our very own statements. 3. By “convincing” I mean the truths that, in their relation to power, achieve compelling status. 78  George Mentore

4. In regard to the latter, note how the deployment of diffuse deaths frequently functions as a crucial strategy, if not for defeating then certainly for claiming some control over the end of life (Barthes 1978; Foucault 1993). 5. See the now frequently cited discussion by Renato Rosaldo on the distinction in ethnographies between considering death “­under the rubric of ritual rather than bereavement” (Rosaldo [1989] 2004, 172). 6. What I mean quite specifically ­here by “Western traditions” refers to all ­those “scientific” efforts or, more generally, to ­those modernist desires to know every­thing by the supposedly most efficient rationalist means available and with the intent to pres­ent this knowledge as if it was the “Truth.” With relevance to the theme of “death,” this manifests in the thought technique of seeking to know all ­there is to know about the end of life by constantly referencing it and yet having no self-­experiential bases for confirming its real­ity. Hence the “truth” of such knowledge has no ­human experiential bases other than in its reference or repre­sen­ta­tion of an absence. 7. I would like immediately to draw attention to the metarelevance and obvious irony in, for example, my own use ­here of the doubling technique of the mask for the proj­ect of anthropology. For I contend that, like the mask, anthropology purports to pres­ent the face of ­others while, at the same time and in the same space, scrupulously hiding its own culturally fabricated countenance ­behind its rationalist disguise. 8. Another in­ter­est­ing way to think of the interior life of Being has been offered by Gilles Deleuze (1993, 1999), wherein the inside and outside dichotomy appears released from its binary restrictions and the “gap” between by allowing the exterior influences of the social world—­attached to the surface of the body—to become an intimate part of individual subjectivity by folding or doubling (like the mask) the surface back upon itself to form an interiority. 9. ­Because of my intent to extend its heuristic possibilities, I have deliberately stayed away from the obvious association of masks with ­faces. This would have tempted me to include (where, unfortunately, I had ­little space to do so) an even wider se­lection of evocative ethnography—­particularly from the Jivaroan scholarship. 10. Simply to know and experience the temporary continuance of life as the living relative of the dead can be a formidable pedagogical function of the funeral rite, just as, it could be added, the inverse knowledge from the couvade informs with some certainty not just the transitional pro­cess of status from spouse to parent, but also, with the birth and establishment of the child, the absolute truth to the inevitability of death. 11. As far as I know, nowhere in the lit­er­a­ture is ­there a rec­ord of any ­peoples of this region not having a name for this spirit vitality. Curiously it is the one consistently named ethnographic fact. 12. Think ­here anthropologically of how a symbol, over time and with constant use, turns into a sign; when the copy becomes what it copies and continues its life as an original; when, indeed, real­ity itself can be revealed as suspiciously made up and fictitious.

Vital Spirit in Amerindian Socialities  79

chapter 3

The Making of Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Society Ineke (Wilhelmina) van Wetering and Bonno (H. U. E.) Thoden van Velzen

Maroons

Since the late seventeenth ­century hundreds of enslaved Africans escaping from plantations in Suriname’s coastal zone found refuge in the colony’s expansive rainforest. The Maroons who had fled to the southeast became known as the Okanisi or Ndyuka.1 Most of them built their villages on islands in the river Tapanahoni. The planters or­ga­nized numerous military expeditions against ­these “eastern” Maroons but with ­little success. ­After several de­cades of guerrilla warfare, peace feelers from t­ hese Maroons got an ­eager and positive response at the planters’ headquarters, where fear and panic ruled. In 1760 negotiations ­were concluded with a peace treaty that gave the eastern Maroons considerable autonomy. In 1762 the Dutch authorities also concluded a treaty with the Saramaka, the other large group of Maroons (Price 1973). The Saramaka had built their villages along the upper reaches of rivers in central Suriname. Although this chapter deals with the Ndyuka, in some instances we w ­ ill quote from the ethnography of the culturally related Saramaka Maroons. The Tapanahoni River basin is considered an integral part of the Republic of Suriname, both by the authorities in the capital city and by the Ndyuka themselves. However, during colonial times government officials complained that the Ndyuka formed a “state within the state.” The Maroons, Ndyuka, and Saramaka controlled public space and to a very large extent continue to do so. Significant cultural expressions occurred and occur without the colonial or postcolonial state being in a position to suppress or influ-

ence them. Even ­today, Ndyuka Maroons fully enjoy their cultural freedom in Suriname’s interior with l­ ittle or no state surveillance. For example, with no police or government officials pres­ent in Tapanahoni villages, Ndyuka elders feel completely ­free to negotiate with Brazilian gold miners about fees to be paid for excavation rights in the areas they consider their territory. Large-­scale pilgrimages from one religious cult center to another occur unnoticed by the national authorities or the Paramaribo-­based press. The ancestral cult rites are the concern of a small number of nearby villages and attract no attention from outsiders. Often the authorities in the capital, Paramaribo, are not even aware that ­these cultural events take place. Unfortunately, religiously motivated vio­lence may occasionally lead to death ­because the national police e­ ither ­doesn’t know about it, or deliberately stay away from it (see the Gangáa episode discussed below). Our account deals exclusively with the Ndyuka, who inhabit some thirty villages located on islands in the Tapanahoni or along its banks. Practically all Ndyukas, males and most females, have lived and worked in Paramaribo. Many have settled in the city permanently. But most Ndyuka keep in contact with their relatives in the interior. During an antiwitchcraft campaign in the villages in 2006, city-­based Ndyuka hired boats and chartered planes to follow the events in the tribal area. The Ancestor Cults

Ancestor cults are the very center of Maroon culture. Ndyuka Maroons live in a two-­tiered world where h ­ umans are in daily contact with their ancestors. Most days begin with village elders congregating around the ancestral altars to offer libations and votive cloths, and say a few prayers, often commenting upon recent developments in their villages. An impor­tant purpose of ­these meetings is to check the daily be­hav­ior in the village, and see if ­there is any departure from the moral code. Only ­after such calibrations ­will they leave for their gardens, or go hunting or fishing. At the altars the elders discuss and interpret cases of illness and other misfortunes in the community from a moral point of view. Such sessions at the ancestral altars (faakatiki, or flagpole) are usually short, seldom more than half an hour, but on many of ­these occasions the elders arrive at “definitions of the situation” relevant to the village community as a ­whole. ­These Maroon elders at the ancestor shrines are males, and almost always over forty. Although Ndyuka society is matrilineal, the elders assembling at the shrines are more likely to represent the bilateral group ( famii) of relatives Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Societ y  81

figure 3.1  ​Ndyuka elders honoring the Illustrious Ancestors with a food

offer (towenyanyan), part of the begi libi. Photo by W. van Wetering, 1962.

residing in the village. W ­ omen only join the elders when they, or their nearest kin, are directly involved in a case ­under scrutiny. While the elders are at work at the ancestral shrines, w ­ omen nearby the altars, as elsewhere in the village, can be seen cleaning their ­houses and the sandy area around it, and preparing themselves and their ­children for a trip to the horticultural gardens, or to a favorite spot for angling. Very few ­women appear to show any interest at all in the goings-on at the shrines. Young men on their way to work are as unconcerned as w ­ omen about the proceedings at the shrines. The most significant pronouncements on the moral stature of a fellow Ndyuka are reached immediately ­after death. It is then that the elders, all of them males, test the spirit of the deceased to find out ­whether he or she is an upright person (leti-­opu sama), a sinner (misiman), or a witch (wisiman). Only 82  van wetering and van vel zen

the first category ­will in the ­future be included in the ranks of the honorable ancestors. The other categories are denied a place in the ancestral forum. All mortuary rites demand the presence and cooperation of a ­great number of p ­ eople, nearly always older men. Considerable sums of money and ­great quantities of food are involved in t­hese rites, which often take more than a year to complete. The burial itself may take anything between one day and several weeks, depending on the status of the deceased and the posthumous verdict on his moral stature. For the honorable spirits, a long series of mortuary rites with libations and food offerings follows, culminating ­after a year in the bookode,2 the g ­ reat festive closing ceremony. For the evil shades, a truncated set of rites is considered suitable. The relatives of all deceased must undergo the puubaaka (“pull away the mourning”) ritual. We ­will discuss three aspects of ancestor worship: the daily prayers at the shrines; the inquest, a set of tests to determine the moral character of the deceased; and fi­nally the counterpoint, the underground culture that usually hides some of the most ­bitter emotions engendered by the ancestor cult, the inquest, and the mortuary rites.

At the Altar for the Ancestors Hardly a day begins in a Ndyuka village without some homage being paid to the ancestors, while their support is requested at the same time. H ­ ere follows an example of one of the more ­simple forms of veneration, and a plea for help, a ritual event that can be observed in Ndyuka villages practically ­every day. It took place in February 2007 in the village of Mainsi, situated on an island in the Tapanahoni River of southeast Suriname. Shortly ­after sunrise, a group of elders assembled around the shrine for the ancestors (faakatiki), a pole about three meters high with a small, cordoned-­off area around it. Maliya, a ­woman in her early thirties, was sitting on a stool a few meters away, a piece of her stola (putukule) drawn over her head. She was suffering from a toothache. A few older ­women ­were sitting next to her. Her m ­ other’s ­brother (tiyu), started the discussion with a diatribe against headstrong young ­women in general, and Maliya in par­tic­u­lar. She had been so insolent as to tell her tiyu to mind his own business. The dozen elders pres­ent this morning voiced their disapproval loudly. To insult one’s ­mother’s ­brother in such an abusive way is a serious ­matter in this matrilineal culture. ­After vari­ous elders had voiced their disapproval of Maliya’s be­ hav­ior, the village headman (kabiten) opined that although Maliya had erred grievously, her matrilineage and all other ­family members should allow her Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Societ y  83

to ask for forgiveness. This met with general approval, though qualified with remarks such as “What can one expect ­these days? All ­these young ­people are so ill-­behaved. But we live in one village, life goes on; we c­ an’t let this conflict spoil our relationships.” Maliya’s toothache was mentioned only once, at the beginning of the ritual. To all pres­ent it seemed a peripheral m ­ atter. Her defiance of the village elders appeared to be the key issue. The kabiten was asked to beg for the ancestors’ forgiveness for Maliya’s rudeness on behalf of all villa­gers. He consented and stepped forward into the small space next to the pole. A calabash with w ­ ater was handed to him. He prayed: “Ancestors, let this cool w ­ ater soothe your anger. You have heard this story, forgive her.” ­After some further pious remarks, his assistant (basiya) handed him a calabash with rum. He continued the libation by calling the names of all the ancestresses, beginning by afo (ancestress) Sua, who was the first one to give birth to a child in freedom. The headman prayed: “Afo Sua, ­here comes your rum; you ­were the first to see our river; we still live ­here, thanks to your help.” Next in line was ma Akuba, her d ­ aughter, who 3 was the first ancestress to ­settle in the village of Mainsi. Seven other names ­were mentioned, ­until he concluded the roll call with his own (deceased) ­mother.4 With the matrilineal line thus firmly established, the kabiten called one of the other elders to continue the libation. The second officiant mentioned a number of deceased men, several of whom we had known personally from earlier fieldwork. Our impression was that with the exception of the matrilineal line of g ­ reat historical depth, the male ancestors now mentioned w ­ ere generally persons of an earlier generation remembered by ­those pres­ent. They said ­things such as “­Father So-­and-so, during your lifetime you have known this w ­ oman; you know how headstrong she can be, but please forgive her. H ­ uman beings are our trea­sure. It could be the wish of God that she would bear more ­children. ­Children are every­thing; they are the most impor­tant ­thing in this world.” General approval was expressed by a rhythmical clapping of hands. Maliya was urged to step forward and embrace the pole. Two men tied a large white piece of cloth, prob­ably a bed sheet (siibikoosi) to the pole; it was a payment from her relatives. “Please help us, ancestors,” a few of the assembled elders prayed; ­others began to engage in a lively conversation that had nothing to do with the purpose of this meeting. But it was equally plain that all pres­ent considered the ritual essential. Village elders perform prayers like this almost e­ very day at the ancestor pole, usually early in the morning, before p ­ eople leave for their fields. 84  van wetering and van vel zen

They are often of an improvised character. Life in Ndyuka Maroon villages is unthinkable without regular prayers at the altars of the ancestors. In the example just presented, it was clearly a village affair. When the help of the ancestors is needed for more serious ­matters, elders from vari­ous villages, usually from ­those nearby, from “one stretch of river” (wan pisi wataa), a regional unit, collectively execute the rites. Negotiating with the ancestors is a key ele­ment in Ndyuka religious life. The elders mentioned Maliya’s rudeness while begging the ancestors to forgive her. The elders prayed: “You who know the folly of h ­ uman beings, please accept her gifts and forgive her. If t­here ­were to be complications, dear ancestors, and she would die, she would never bring gifts to your altar again. We beg you to forgive us, ­human beings, but may we humbly remind you that if you ­were to withdraw your support from us, ­there would be no one around to take care of your altar.”5 In view of such complicated interactions, ancestor worship is not the right term for ­these ritual events. Surely, the ancestors guard the ­human community against misfortunes, and in return they expect deference and regular offerings. Maintaining positive and strategic relations with the ancestors would better describe the aims and actions of the elders. But, as we ­will soon see, not ­every spirit is entitled to become an honorable ancestor. Grave Priests

Nearly all funerary and mortuary rites are executed by the grave priests (oloman) ­under the supervision of elders (lanti) from a cluster of nearby villages. The grave priests form a predominantly male association. Membership is restricted to ­those initiated. Relationships within this sodality are hierarchical. Its leaders are called kelépisi or basi fu olo, “bosses.” When in function, they act in a demonstratively authoritarian way, shouting their o ­ rders at ordinary p ­ eople or at the spirit of the deceased (yooka). Their first task is to oversee the inquest (see below). Second, they give instructions about the proper ritual preparation of the corpse, and they direct the mourners. Third, all work at the graveyard is done u ­ nder their supervision. The bosses select an appropriate site for the grave and oversee its digging. On their way to the graveyard, all other river traffic is stopped. Fines are inflicted on ­those who do not follow ­these ­orders. Only men have the courage to h ­ andle the corpse and bring it to the graveyard, ­women are wont to say. But that view has to be put in perspective by looking at the play-­acting in which ­women take part as eagerly as men. On Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Societ y  85

the day or days the grave is being dug, w ­ omen bring the food for the grave priests right to where the grave is. For a short time, ribald h ­ orse­play enlivens the boredom of the day at the graveyard. When the grave priests return to the village, w ­ omen wait for them at the boat landings, taunting them, throwing ­water at them, and shouting in mock fear; “you evil p ­ eople, stay away.” On the final day, the day of the burial, nothing like this is bound to happen: silently and furtively the grave priests return, each ­going to his own ­house keen to avoid attracting attention. The inquest and burial or disposal of the corpse (see below) mark the beginning of a set of mortuary rites. The second stage of rites is the more impor­tant one: through a long string of solemnities it calibrates the relations of the living with the dead. Both the inquest and the mourning rites are conducted ­under the joint supervision of the association of grave priests and the elders. It is only the burial itself that is the sole responsibility of the association of grave priests. Three Sets of Ancestors

­ fter a death, the first task for Ndyuka elders is to examine the spirit’s moral A stature. Each death is seen as belonging to one of three categories: a decent person’s death (yooka dede), a sinner’s death (misi dede), and a witch’s death (wisi dede). The categories misi dede and wisi dede are often grouped together as “a death caused by God” (gadu dede). The spirit of a respectable person is entitled to a decent burial and full mortuary rites. A sinner would only get a shallow grave, whereas the mortal remains of a witch are left in an unholy spot in the forest. In addition to ­these, ­there is yet another category of ancestors, the illustrious ones (den gaanwan). Most of ­these ancestors earned their position in the eigh­teenth ­century during the years of war and the building of a new society. ­These spirits are all of the highest moral caliber. The question asked by the ad hoc committees of grave priests and elders is this: has the deceased lived a decent life, ­free of witchcraft and other crimes? Can the spirit, ­after the completion of appropriate rites, be included among the respected ancestors, ­those who watch over the interests of the ­human community? If the examination yields unsatisfactory results, the ghost ­will be excluded from the respectable ancestors, but ­will still remain a force to be reckoned with. Once the interrogation is brought to a successful end, and the conclusion is reached that the deceased had lived an honorable life, a second group of specialists begin their work, the coffin makers (kisiman). The grave priests 86  van wetering and van vel zen

figure 3.2  ​A meeting of lanti, overseeing an offering to the shades of the evil ancestors. Photo by H. Thoden van Velzen, 2004.

and coffin makers perform their duties u ­ nder the supervision of a collectivity of Ndyuka elders (lanti) who, for practical reasons, are recruited from a group of neighboring villages. Should a village headman or other elders from more distant places be visiting the affected village, they ­will be included in the council as full members. E ­ very death and its long aftermath are occasions for the mobilization of all adults of the affected group of villages who ­will spend a considerable part of their time and resources on the death rites.6 Males perform all ritual tasks; w ­ omen take responsibility for the huge quantities of food required when the deceased is declared to have lived a decent life. We ­will continue by looking at the examples of coffin divination and t­ hese differently classified spirits, starting with the funeral of a man who passed all the tests successfully and could from then on be revered as a respectable ancestor. At a ­later stage we ­will pres­ent an example of a ghost who failed all tests. Da (­father) Yoyee died of a brain tumor on a Wednesday. We happened to be at the mission hospital on the day of his demise. On that same day the bereaved brought the corpse back to Benanu, Yoyee’s village in the lower part of the Tapanahoni River. We had deci­ded to accompany the stricken f­ amily. We knew the inquest was to start that same day. Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Societ y  87

Within two hours ­after our arrival, many elders from all neighboring villages ­were pres­ent and the investigation could commence. Whereas Maliya’s toothache, or rather her dressing down, could be handled by a few elders from her village, death was a serious ­matter that demanded the presence of elders from all neighboring villages. The sign that the examination was to begin was the so-­called Makonkon alarm, the sound produced when a man starts knocking two wooden sticks against one another. The corpse, tied to a litter (papai),7 was brought to the ­ ouse than the usual ones, but village mortuary (kee-­osu), a somewhat bigger h open at the front and rear ends. A ­ fter the alarm had sounded a number of times, the litter was raised and put on the heads of two men selected by the grave priests.8 The first was from Yoyee’s own village and the second came from a neighboring village; neither of them belonged to Yoyee’s matrilineage. While the two men with their heavy load had moved to the ­middle of the gathering, a boss of the grave priests poured ­water and rum in the sand in front of the b ­ earers, a libation (tyai wataa [carry w ­ ater] or dede wataa [death ­water]) to the ancestors to assure that every­thing would move smoothly. The grave priests ­were clearly in charge of the investigation, but their work was closely supervised by the council of elders (lanti). A headman from a neighboring village ordered the spirit to pick some p ­ eople from among the bystanders who ­were to hide themselves somewhere in the village, but out of sight of the b ­ earers. Once ­these ­people had dis­appeared from sight, the ghost started to move its ­bearers in a fairly random way, which prompted an impatient and rather unfriendly response from the elders: “Come on spirit, ­there are enough ­people ­here to pick from, get moving; we ­can’t wait all day.” The spirit then became more responsive, and selected four men and three ­women.9 Thereupon, the grave priests’ bosses ordered the spirit to push his ­bearers all the way to the other side of the village. Immediately the b ­ earers carried their heavy burden away, out of sight and earshot from the meeting. ­After some discussions, the elders agreed upon a ­house where the seven persons selected for the hide-­and-­seek ritual w ­ ere to wait for Yoyee’s corpse to return. When the seven, the kiibiman (­those who ­were ordered to secrete themselves in an empty ­house) had closed the door, a basiya, assistant to a village headman, shouted “yuuuu!” alarming the spirit that the moment had come for the crucial test. Within two minutes the ­bearers, sweating ­under their heavy load, ran directly for the ­house where the seven ­were in hiding. “You got it wrong (spirit), try again!” some elders shouted to test the spirit. Then the spirit forced its ­bearers back to the same ­house with so much power that they almost broke through the door. That deci­ded the 88  van wetering and van vel zen

issue. Yoyee’s spirit had successfully passed the test; he was definitely an ancestor to be revered in years to come. As the test had been completed, only the cause of death had to be ascertained. A new team of ­bearers took over. First, responses to questions suggested that witchcraft was a likely cause: from the movements of the bier some elders concluded that an evil person had killed Yoyee. Only minutes ­later, new thoughts ­were formulated and presented to the spirit. That line of questioning proved to be the right one. Yoyee had used his Kumanti medicines to cure a s­ ister’s child,10 disregarding the fact that the wrathful ancestors had sought to kill the child as punishment for the evildoings of Yoyee’s ­brother. The fact that Yoyee had dared to intervene in a case of divine justice had become his undoing; the spirit then immediately admitted he had made a serious m ­ istake. Yoyee’s spirit was blamed for having been careless, but he was judged not to have been an evil person. Hence, Yoyee had died the death of a respectable person (yooka dede), which entitled him to the full funerary and mortuary honors, so that in due time he could join the ranks of the respected ancestors. The next day, a Thursday, a coffin was made by the kisiman, an all-­male association whose only task is to make coffins. The following day, the corpse could be placed in it. From a heap of bed sheets, the grave priests took one sheet ­after another, always announcing the name of the giver, before lowering it on the corpse. We counted more than fifty sheets. When all the donations had been placed in Yoyee’s coffin, two of the kisiman came forward to nail the top to the coffin, but not before having successfully claimed a b ­ ottle of rum as their remuneration. All the work done during the funerary rites has to be paid for.11 A cock was then tied to the coffin as payment for the coffin makers’ work. Like the grave priests, coffin makers are recruited from the affected village and from all neighboring ones, and may also include men from faraway villages who happen to be passing along. Oloman n’ á kondee, “Grave priests have no village,” p ­ eople explain. The same can be said for the coffin makers. On Friday, the grave was dug in Yoyee’s clan’s graveyard, just opposite the village, on the right bank of the Tapanahoni River. On Saturday Yoyee’s coffin was placed before the mortuary. P ­ eople came to say goodbye. I counted some forty ­women who ­were bringing manioc, handing it over to a boss who loudly announced, “So and so is bringing you manioc. She is paying for your ­ ere thrown trip’ (a bai pasi gi you).” A l­ittle of the contents of each plate w over the coffin; the bulk of it was confiscated by the grave priests as payment for their work. The grave priests colored the coffin with white, red, Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Societ y  89

figure 3.3  ​A Ndyuka man cries at the coffin of his departed ­brother. Photo by W. van Wetering, 1987.

and black stripes. Kaolin clay was used for the white stripes; kusuwee,12 a red dye, for the red stripes; and charcoal for the black streaks. And in between, in an irregular manner, brown smears. But what looked like brown from a distance was the blood of a cock, smeared at several places on the coffin. The killing of the cock (kii foo) by the bosses, just moments before the painting of the coffin, was and still is considered one of the most sacred moments of Ndyuka culture. The chief of the grave priests prayed: “Ancestors, a life has gone, this blood runs into the sand, we offer it to you. Take it.” The coffin was then loaded on a boat, and several other boats filled with grave priests escorted it along the river. During the trip to the graveyard all other river traffic was stopped. ­Those who dared to come near to the boat carry­ing the coffin could expect a hefty fine. At the end of the trip, on a stone in the river, near the boat landing from where the graveyard could easily be reached, the grave priests boiled and ate the cock. A ­ fter their meal they picked up the coffin and climbed up the hill to the graveyard. It was not a ­simple or straightforward trip. At several points the coffin ­bearers, sweating ­under their heavy load, stopped, or made unexpected movements. An immediate response from the bosses could then be expected. We heard remarks such as “Yes, the spirit is right; something untoward took place ­here not so long ago. We the bosses of the grave priests order you, spirit, to proceed. It is not ­here that you ­will be buried.” When we fi­nally reached 90  van wetering and van vel zen

the newly dug grave, the coffin was lowered into it with some prayers and shouts from the bosses in ritual languages. Most of it was in the Kumanti ritual language, but some words or phrases from other esoteric languages ­were used as well.13

A String of Rites The “river community”—­a group of neighboring villages—­has to do a good deal of work before a spirit can be installed as an ancestor. First in the string of rites following the burial is a ceremony called the diideinyanyan,14 the food offering on the third day. Three months l­ater followed a diimunnyanyan, ­another food offering. Both ­these food offerings ­were presented at the side of the mortuary (a bansa osu). The offerings to the ancestors are deposited on a small makeshift altar demarcated with sticks and leaves. Fi­nally, ­after many months, the “river community” arranged a bookode, a ­great mortuary feast for the recently deceased. It is usually or­ga­nized for half-­a-­dozen adults who have died between four months to two years prior to the feast. Through this cele­bration, the spirits of the deceased fi­nally became revered ancestors. Yoyee, who had died only four months earlier, was included in a group of six deceased villa­gers, some of whom had died as long as eigh­teenth months ago. The families of the deceased had to provide the necessary foodstuffs, including two or more demijohns of rum, and above all impressive quantities of fish and venison (switimofu). The last requirement usually delayed a spirit’s inclusion in the bookode cele­brations, as hunters had to spend weeks in areas far upstream from Maroon villages before they succeeded in collecting and roasting the required quantities of meat and fish. Obviously the male relatives of Yoyee had been lucky when fishing and hunting; other­wise he would never have been included in the feast so shortly ­after his death. The cele­brations began with r­ifle shots, followed by the collective and rhythmical pounding of sugarcane in a wooden vessel, then a food offering (towenyanyan) at the mortuary’s altar by the grave priests, and the public exhibition of all the goods collected (food, soda pop, rum, and packages of dried meat and fish). The chief of the grave priests invited the ancestors to pick some of the goodies, if they so wished. A dozen boats with festively dressed young men and ­women crossed the river to collect enough dry branches and kindling for the all-­night traditional dances that ­were to follow. The following morning, when the younger villa­gers and their guests ­were still resting a­ fter the all-­night festivities, the village oracle was consulted. Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Societ y  91

The procedure resembled the consultation of a spirit. Two men carried a plank to which a bundle was fastened. The elders of Yoyee’s village, but also ­those from surrounding ones, asked the oracle w ­ hether every­thing was executed in the proper manner and ­whether they ­were allowed to proceed in the way it had been done since the ancestors escaped from the plantations to reach the safety of the Tapanahoni River. The answer was positive. All the elders pres­ent (grave priests, coffin makers, village headmen) assembled at the mortuary’s altar. It was decorated with palm leaves and ­little flags. The way was now ­free for the second kiifoo (literally “to kill a chicken”) ritual that would turn the spirits of all six deceased into revered ancestors. In one of the most sacred of ceremonies, a boss cuts a cock’s neck, and the blood streamed onto the altar. The boss of the grave priests prayed: “We return this blood to you ­today so that so-­and-so may make take his place among you ancestors.” For the spirits of ­women, the blood of tortoises was used. ­Later that day the ceremonial food offering (towenyanyan) was held. We counted some fifty dishes. From each dish one or two spoonfuls w ­ ere cut and placed on the leaves of the altar. A ­ fter a minute, time enough for the ancestors to consume an invisible share, the ­children, at a sign of the boss, threw themselves on the food, dishes in hand to secure a good portion. The next day was reserved for the puubaaka, the “remove (pull away black) mourning” ritual. It was done for five of the six mourners, but not for Yoyee. His two ­widows would have to wear mourning clothes for many more months, and remain amenable to what­ever a supervisor from Yoyee’s lineage ordered them to do. But Yoyee’s spirit was now among the revered ancestors, ­people could pray to him at the ancestor shrine to request his help.

Interrogating Da Yeso’s Ghost Let us now have a look at an inquest where every­thing went wrong. Da Yeso, a man of about sixty years of age, died at noon. This death took place in Pikinkondee, a small village in the Upstream region (Opu) of the Tapanahoni, without an outboard motor a full day’s travel from Yoyee’s village of Benanu. ­Here too “the carry­ing of the corpse” (tyaidede) was to be the decisive test guiding the mortuary ritual. The examination started almost immediately a­ fter numerous elders from neighboring villages had arrived, and a prominent headman performed a solemn libation (lanti wataa), asking the gods and the ancestors to overlook the proceedings and see to it that every­thing would be done properly. The 92  van wetering and van vel zen

corpse, wrapped in bed sheets and tied to a litter, was raised and placed on the heads of two ­bearers. ­After a few minutes of hesitation, the b ­ earers walked away, out of earshot from the assembled elders. This was generally considered a sign that something was wrong. The bosses followed the corpse to start a stern interrogation, firing questions at the spirit and pressing it to confess its sins. While they asked ­these questions, the ­bearers’ movements ­were closely watched. A forward movement meant confirmation, sideways was considered a negative response. Movements that did not fit in one of ­these categories ­were unfavorably judged as the spirit’s unwillingness to be questioned. In the meantime, three persons, ordered by the bosses to do so, withdrew to a nearby h ­ ouse. The bosses deci­ded to confront the spirit with the decisive test without further ado: could the spirit indicate the ­house where the three persons ­were hiding? The phrasing went like this: “Gaaman [the paramount chief ] had lost three persons, all good ­people, could the spirit please help him find ­these ­people so that Gaaman’s mind would be at ease?” This request was flatly refused by Yeso’s spirit, whereupon the bosses told the three men to leave the ­house where they had secreted themselves. To all pres­ent it was clear that the spirit had failed the crucial test. The interrogators ­were now convinced Yeso had a criminal rec­ord. The spirit of an honorable person would have directed the bier, without any hesitation, to the h ­ ouse where the three ­were hiding. The interrogation resumed: “The Chief ordered you to find his missing subjects; why did you not comply with his request?” The spirit replied that he was incapable of d ­ oing that. “Pray, tell us, is something troubling you?” the bosses asked. That question provoked an immediate response: the ­bearers ran forward, a move interpreted as a confession of sinful be­hav­ior. The interrogators reacted by making a suggestion: “Was that which killed you perhaps the same t­hing that killed your wife?” A second affirmative response, another forward move, followed. ­After a few more specific questions the committee returned to the meeting with the following communiqué: “As we all know his wife who died a year ago was a witch by her own admission. Yeso should have resisted her evil suggestions, but he d ­ idn’t. Already during her life, she taught him evil tricks. He was a weak man who ­couldn’t resist the temptation to have recourse to witchcraft himself.” When that sentence was pronounced the corpse ­bearers, sweating profusely, ran to the riverside, which was a sign for all concerned that the spirit felt deeply ashamed, no longer at ease in the presence of decent p ­ eople. The bosses jumped forward, imperiously demanding that the spirit should not Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Societ y  93

figure 3.4  ​“Flagpole” for the evil shades. In the back they carry the oracle of Sweli Gadu, the

prominent deity when dealing with evil ancestors. Photo by H. Thoden van Velzen, 2004.

endanger his ­bearers on the slippery river bank by his hastened departure. “We w ­ ill take care of you in a proper way,” the chiefs of the grave priests ordained. Half an hour l­ ater the corpse, without any ceremony, was dumped in a boat to be transported to Santigoon, the site of an abandoned eigh­teenthcentury village, nowadays an unholy patch of forest, where it was left on the banks of a creek, covered by only a few branches. No expressions of grief ­were allowed, not even by the closest relatives. We noticed the silence in the village and the absence of publicly expressed reminiscences by Yeso’s ­family.

Ritual for an Evil Spirit A modest ritual called diideiwataa, “the libation on the third day,” was held for Yeso’s spirit on the third day ­after his death. A food offering was out of the question; only the yooka dede are entitled to it. The elders prayed at the ancestral shrine, begging the ancestors not to vent their anger on the villa­ gers who had been unaware of the evil in their midst. A similar modest ceremony, diimunwataa, or the libation at the beginning of the third month, was held three months ­after Yeso’s death. The prayers to the ancestors very much 94  van wetering and van vel zen

resembled the supplications at the earlier ceremony. No food offerings ­were made. Approximately a year l­ater the villa­gers conducted the puubaaka ritual, which concludes the severe restrictions on the freedom of the mourners. For most ­people of the Opu region, the freeing of the relatives from the restrictions of a gadu dede required soliciting the assistance of Da Labi Gumasaka (ca. 1820–1914), a priest who played a prominent role in the reshaping of a tribal cult to become an organ­ization geared to confront and solve the mounting prob­lems of witchcraft in the Tapanahoni region around 1900 (Thoden van Velzen and van Wetering 2004, 74–92). The bereaved pour libations at Labi’s altar, asking this power­ful ancestor to keep the evil spirit u ­ nder his control. Yeso, like other evil spirits, became part of Labi’s following. Evil Ancestors ­Don’t Just Fade Away

The respected ancestors (yooka dede) are honored almost e­ very day at the ancestral altar of the village. E ­ very prob­lem, ­great or small, is brought to their attention, but not without first giving them some cool w ­ ater and then rum. If sugarcane juice is available it ­will be included in the libation. It is one of the main ritual locations for the community, and when more impor­tant ­matters need to be discussed, it serves as the regional meeting point for elders from nearby villages. In cases of gadu dede, one would be inclined to think that ­after their shameful departure from their village, they are completely forgotten, and indeed discussions about t­ hese ancestors are strongly discouraged. Yet their immediate relatives, and certainly their spouses, are brought u ­ nder the constant supervision of the evildoer’s matrilineage, just as would happen with a yooka dede, a respectable death. ­Widows and widowers of both classes of spirits are monitored for many months by a specially appointed warden (baakabasi) from the lineage of the deceased. If the report on the mourner’s conduct turns out favorable, the last rites (puubaaka) can be or­ga­nized and the restrictions on the movements of the remaining spouse are lifted. But this comes at a price. The spouse and his or her direct ­family ­will have to provide the wherewithal for ­these last rites. The much maligned deceased is now begged during libations to cease from anger. When a w ­ idow of a gadu dede wishes to marry again, the relatives on both sides are confronted with a serious challenge. The wrath of the evil shade is even more feared than the jealousy of an honest ancestor. A bakanyanyan (last meal) is needed to secure the evil spirit’s cooperation, begging him to receive the food in good spirit and to look upon the upcoming marriage Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Societ y  95

favorably. Quite considerable quantities of food, soft drinks, and rum have to be set aside for this ritual. If this “last meal” is forgotten, any ­later misfortune w ­ ill be blamed on the negligence and even insensitivity of the newly married ­toward the feelings of this spirit. As mentioned earlier, such “last meals” are also required when the deceased is counted among the respected and revered ancestors. Fi­nally, the ­human community acknowledges a responsibility ­toward all ­those whose mortal remains are so unceremoniously ferried away as witches. Surprisingly, drinks are periodically offered to ­these spirits at the mouth of the creek. This custom was explained to us in the following way: When you bring your c­ hildren to a boarding school, the responsibility is handed over to the head teacher. But that ­doesn’t release you from the obligation of paying a contribution to their upkeep. That’s why we ­every now and then travel to Santigoon with sugarcane, soft drinks, and rum. Then we pray to all ­those who died in a disreputable manner: “Look, ­here is something for you. Enjoy your drinks. D ­ on’t forget that this place where you are now is your new home. So take this juice, take this rum. ­Every now and then we ­will return. You have acted in a grievous manner, but we have not completely forgotten you. But pray, ­don’t return to your old village.”

The Illustrious Ancestors ­ here is a third class of ancestors, ­those who led their ­people to freedom and T ­those who occupied strategic positions in the new society that developed ­after the peace treaty of 1760. For t­hese illustrious ancestors shrines have been built at the village of Diitabiki, residence of the paramount chief, at Puketi, the old capital from 1770 to circa 1835, and again at Kiyookondee, the site of an abandoned village of that name, believed to be the place where the Ndyuka p ­ eople first reached the Tapanahoni River, long before the Peace Treaty of 1760. In all ­these places a special ancestor shrine (faakatiki) and a mortuary have been given prominent places. In Diitabiki ­there is also a small inconspicuous building, simply called the “spirit ­house” (yooka osu) where the Ndyuka store the remains (tuffs of hair, nails) of a few prominent ancestors. Of other illustrious ancestors no material objects remain: no one knows where their graves are, or even if they had a grave. The Ndyuka say that one famous eighteenth-­century leader “was too impor­tant to be buried. He just walked into the forest, and dis­appeared forever.” In the village of Diitabiki the mortuary (gaanwan osu) for t­ hese illustrious ancestors is a size bigger than an ordinary village mortuary, and the same 96  van wetering and van vel zen

holds true for the shrine dedicated to this class of ancestors (lantifaakatiki). When a paramount chief dies his corpse is kept for a c­ ouple of months in the gaanwan osu.15 Ritual veneration of this special class of ancestors takes place on a regular basis. The ritual is called the begi libi, literally “begging for life.” When a few years ago gaanman Gazon (term of office 1966–2011) suggested that it was about time to pray to the illustrious ancestors, and noticed a general lack of enthusiasm, he reprimanded his elders: “Let us never forget why we are h ­ ere; why we are now the masters of this river and all the forests surrounding it, it is ­because of their courage and endurance, escaping from brutal plantation life and, when trekking south, facing the dark forest, full of unknown dangers to discover this place ­here, which we now call “our river.” The begi libi has the ritual structure of a towenyanyan. It begins with a libation poured this time at the altar at the side of the mortuary for the illustrious ancestors; the following day, t­ here is a food offering of cocks and tortoises. This shedding of blood for prominent ancestors brings maximum solemnity to the ritual. In the m ­ iddle of the night, morsels of the food offerings are deposited in the small and sacred “house of the spirits” (yooka osu). The proper execution of the begi libi ritual is the responsibility of the paramount chief (gaaman). Priests from the tribal cults and a few prominent grave priests ­will assist him in his ritual tasks. Although oral history accounts give a prominent place to some eighteenth-­century ancestresses (Thoden van Velzen and Hoogbergen 2011, 202–206), we ­haven’t heard them mentioned in the begi libi prayers. However, the offering of the blood of tortoises points to a veneration of ancestresses as well. Prayer of the Paramount Chief, Akontu Velanti

I direct my prayers to you, ­Great Ancestors ­Here is our libation It is all for a good purpose ­Father Oseyse, why do I mention your name?16 ­Because I knew you as a child It was your dedicated ­labor as a servant of the gods that kept us alive You passed your knowledge on to us, miserable ones ­Father Kanapé, ­father Amatodya, what happened then should better not be mentioned17 We ­human beings love this life more than anything ­else When somebody claims he is willing to die That person is not far from his grave We are begging you to keep us alive [all pres­ent start a rhythmical clapping] Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Societ y  97

But without your help ­there is no life worth living ­Children cause us a ­great deal of trou­ble ­every day But without them, we would be in a hopeless situation That’s why we beg you to continue helping us stay alive Since I became gaanman, I never had any trou­ble with the Bakaa [outsiders, foreigners; Native ­Peoples and other Maroons not included] Three or four years have passed since I last visited the city [he refers to Paramaribo, capital of Suriname] The Bakaa [outsiders] may think that I am deceiving them You have to help us It is only ­because of ­those Bakaa that we may earn some money I ­don’t wish to quarrel with the Bakaa But it is hard to understand their thinking We beg you to help us ­Father Labi Gumasaka, I am begging you, Let the gods reconcile themselves with us Most prominent ancestors [den gaanwan], I know far too few names to honor you all I pray for us black ­people But also for the Bakaa and all the other nations of this world We are in mortal danger We know that ­there are persons who travel to our villages They notice someone has made a perfect boat The witches kill him They meet yet another person who has built a beautiful ­house The witches kill him Please, ­don’t let that happen to us [loud acclaim] By praying we can harvest good crops Only you, prominent, illustrious ancestors can help us [loud and general acclaim, rhythmical clapping of hands] In the world of the Ndyuka, h ­ umans and ancestors form one community. When ­humans make ­mistakes, the ancestors are quick to remind them of their wrongdoing by punishing them. As we have seen, contacts between ­these two layers of the Ndyuka universe can be businesslike: “Look, ancestors, we have offered you rum and votive cloths, surely to go on punishing us would mean that soon ­there would be no ­people around to bring you ­these offerings.” But such mundane, if not commercial, views can quickly be re98  van wetering and van vel zen

placed by a dif­f er­ent type of relationship, an almost mystical u ­ nion. ­These moments take place when the blood of cocks or tortoises is offered to the ancestors at the day of a burial or when solemn prayers are said during the bookode at the makeshift altar at the mortuary’s side (a bansa osu).18 When blood seeps into the ground, the ancestors are alerted to the fact that a new member is joining their ranks, fully qualified for membership.19 A Male Bulwark

The mortuary rites of the Ndyuka or Okanisi Maroons are the responsibility and the prerogatives of men; w ­ omen play an extremely limited role. The ancestor cult is monopolized by male elders. The case of Maliya, the girl with the toothache, exemplifies this male dominance in ritual practice. As usual, the prayers ­were said by village elders, almost always older than forty. The moral framing, “­here is a girl with no re­spect for her elder male kinsmen,” is common to Ndyuka understandings of causality and hierarchy. The fact that the toothache was mentioned only once, at the very beginning, is typical. The elders consider this discomfort a surface phenomenon: they see it as their task to proceed to the root c­ auses of the trou­ble; disrespect for elder male kinsmen. In­ter­est­ing too is that although older ­women ­were pres­ent, they spoke only when invited and took their places at the meeting’s periphery. All rites by the grave priests are almost totally a male prerogative. We know of only two exceptions to this rule: ­women—­young ­women—­are expected to bring food to the grave priests. It is an occasion for some modest sexual license. Younger grave priests consider it their prerogative to embrace the young ladies and make saucy remarks to the giggling food providers. And secondly, older ­women, beyond menopause, are given small tasks such as keeping flies away from the coffin with a brush. When a death occurs, w ­ omen are supposed to come together close to the h ­ ouse of the deceased and start the traditional wailing. Men are supposed to proceed immediately to the ­house of the deceased and start preparing the corpse for divination. As we have seen, that ritual is firmly dominated by men, especially by older men, namely, grave priests and elders from the “river region.” This may look like a traditional division of ­labor, a cultural arrangement without further consequences for the relations between the sexes. But let us look again at the inquests of Yoyee and Yeso. Yoyee’s spirit was seen as an honorable one; during his life he had made some misjudgments, but clearly his was an honorable spirit (yooka dede). Yeso was killed by the gods Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Societ y  99

­ ecause he c­ ouldn’t resist the temptations of witchcraft (wisi dede). But, as b was pointed emphatically, it was his wife who seduced him into becoming a witch. And this brings us to a cardinal point: Yeso’s wife was not exceptional. To quote from our fieldwork data from the early 1960s: “In the period between October 1961 and October 1962, the Paramount Chief in Diitabiki was notified of thirty-­t wo deaths of adults in the Tapanahoni villages, and in thirty of ­these cases the super­natural cause of death was clearly stated: No less than twenty-­one of the deceased w ­ ere condemned as witches (thirteen of the fifteen ­women and eight of the fifteen men)” (Van Wetering [1979] 1996, 371). The early sixties was not an exceptional period in this regard. Even in the closing de­cades of the last ­century, we noticed how unusual it was for a ­woman to escape the verdict of witchcraft (wisi dede) ­after her death. The question of who passes such unfavorable verdicts on females is easily answered—­the grave priests, supported by the men who dominate the village or regional councils: village headmen (kabiten) and their assistants. As mortuary rites take such a prominent place in the life of the Ndyuka Maroons, one is sometimes tempted to speak of a “death industry.” Females have no role to play in this industry, and they know what ­will happen ­after their death: most of them w ­ on’t stand a chance to escape the verdict of witchcraft. Their corpses w ­ ill be left in the forest for wild animals to devour; their material possessions ­will be confiscated. During their lifetime, their be­hav­ior ­will be judged by the ad hoc committees of older men who control access to the ancestor shrines. We have seen what happened to Maliya, ­after she had told the meeting a toothache caused her discomfort. Once the discussion about this complaint had started, it was immediately shifted to her be­hav­ior ­toward older and usually male relatives. We selected Maliya’s case b ­ ecause it is so ste­reo­typical. Any visitor, who spends more than one or two days in a Maroon village, w ­ ill have a chance to witness such events. Subterranean Grievances

Men ­will see to it that their wives have horticultural gardens, a boat, and a ­house. ­Women are the main food producers: they do the planting, weeding, and harvesting. When the pressure of work in the gardens is high, men often join their wives in ­these tasks. The burdens of assuring a livelihood appear well shared in Ndyuka society. Men—­older men—­are arbiters in questions of morality. As we have seen, access to the ancestors and control over corpse divination are both firmly in 100  van wetering and van vel zen

their hands. U ­ nder ordinary circumstances, the grievances and the grumbling of ­women ­doesn’t come to the surface of everyday life. But with a large majority of ­women being accused of witchcraft upon their death, and the constant insinuations against the moral stature of females when they are still alive, one can reasonably assume that ­there is a lot of bad blood between ­women and particularly older men. ­Under normal circumstances, ­these ill feelings are carefully hidden. But when the ordinary course of events is disrupted, they may come to the surface. Four examples may lay bare the under­ lying pattern of pent-up feelings of hostility. The Gerontocratic Apparatus ­under Assault The 1970s: A Frontal Assault on Corpse Divination and the Long Mourning Period

Earlier we called the funerary and mortuary rites of the Ndyuka a veritable “death industry,” involving the cooperation and ­labor of a few hundred persons and the outlay of considerable funds. Dissatisfaction with the ­great cost of the traditional mortuary rites was hard to perceive for the anthropologists. It became vis­i­ble during the 1970s, when a prophetic movement shook Ndyuka society (Thoden van Velzen and van Wetering 1988, 331–386). Right from the start, p ­ eople reacted with g ­ reat enthusiasm when the prophet announced that corpse divination was tantamount to swindle. The Ndyuka ­people ­were equally animated when the prophet condemned the long mourning period, and ordered that it should be no longer than six months. For a few years the prophet was successful. Corpse divination was no longer practiced, and the mortuary rites w ­ ere curtailed.20 ­After a few years, in about half of all Ndyuka villages, corpse divination returned as a legitimate form of testing the moral stature of the deceased. The prophet’s dictum that the mourning period was to be reduced to six months was soon forgotten.

Revolt of a Younger Generation In August 2006, a Ndyuka man of about thirty by the name of Gangáa announced that his divine mission was to scourge the Ndyuka of their demon masters (Bakuu basi). ­These demon masters had enslaved other ­people, nearly all of them young w ­ omen, by sending them a demon (Bakuu). The demons would then do evil t­ hings, use coarse language, insult older p ­ eople, and damage their property. But the w ­ omen also revealed that the demons had prepared them for the task of committing murder. Public opinion held that the demon masters ­were fully responsible; the demon mediums, Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Societ y  101

however, ­were considered innocent victims of their perfidious masters. Many of t­ hose accused of being demon masters w ­ ere older men, some of them village headmen, nearly all of them “regulars” at the daily prayers at village shrines. Gangáa built his headquarters in a small village on the Tapanahoni River, not far from the residence of the Paramount Chief. He ordered the demon mediums to appear before his court, a group of relatively young w ­ omen. ­Here the demons w ­ ere encharged with their f­ uture task: to reveal the identity of their masters and lay bare their evil plans. Soon Gangáa’s daily meetings ­were enlivened by the per­for­mances of some twenty ­women, nearly all of them younger than thirty, who would run around wildly while shouting abuse at their masters, accusing them of training them as killers. Soon the mediums ­were willing to reveal the identity of t­ hese masters: nearly all of them w ­ ere middle-­aged men, three of them ­were village headmen, the ­others ­were well-­ known men who had earned a good deal of money on the coast or as shop­ keep­ers in the interior. They ­were called to appear before Gangáa’s kangaroo court and confronted the mediums who accused them in public of their murderous plans and the training they had been giving to that purpose. All of ­these elders ­were humiliated, most of them beaten, and all had to pay substantial amounts of money. What ­these episodes brought to the surface was the impotence of the gerontocracy. When village headmen or other elders ­were summoned to appear before Gangáa’s court, or when gangs of youngsters appeared before their ­houses, the committee of elders, usually so active when prayers had to be said for the ancestors, or corpse divination had to be overseen, did not convene. When the victims appealed for help, the advice given them by their colleagues was not to resist. Before the eyes of their colleagues, the headmen, bosses, and other elders ­were dragged away by youngsters and brought before Gangáa’s court. While ­these pillars of Ndyuka society ­were sitting before their judges on low stools, they w ­ ere jeered at by young w ­ omen, spat at, 21 and quite often hit with sticks.

The Moon House The institution of menstrual sequestration, and attached taboos, confines ­women for the ­whole of their period to a hut on the outskirts of the village, the so-­called moon ­house (munu-­osu) or bad place (takuu-­osu); they may go to their gardens, but they are not allowed to participate in village life, not in 102  van wetering and van vel zen

collective prayers, mortuary feasts or any other social event. They have to remain in the moon h ­ ouse, at the fringe of the village, do their cooking and washing near that ­house, and sleep ­there as well. For the days of their period ­women are impure, stigmatized and socially nonpersons. ­People argue that any transgression of the cluster of taboos connected with the moon ­house ­will seriously jeopardize male obiya, the medicines and other objects or knowledge allowing them to tap the forces of the universe. When a man meets with a serious accident, the first line of inquiry is to check w ­ hether he has perhaps been in contact with a menstruating ­woman. Major setbacks that happened to Ndyuka guerrillas in the war against the government forces during the so-­called War of the Interior (1986–1992) ­were often seen as springing from male negligence in their contacts with w ­ omen during their period (Thoden van Velzen and van Wetering 2004, 246–247). Spirit possession is widespread among female adults. During the days spent in the “moon ­house,” however, any form of possession is excluded. For the more prominent female mediums, the institution is a severe handicap. ­Women claiming to be possessed by a spirit of importance are denied any form of legitimacy: “How can a ­woman who has to spend a considerable part of her life in such a poor place claim that her spirit is of relevance to all of Ndyuka (the ­whole Ndyuka nation)?” the rhetorical question runs. In this way an impor­tant channel for ­women to gain influence beyond their lineage or village is permanently blocked. In general, the menstrual taboos tend to act as formidable barriers to ­women’s participation in social life.22 Impurity never wears off completely. ­There is a good deal of speculation about the length of the period: “was so-­and-so diligent enough in observing ­these rules?” and “did she not threaten our safety by postponing her monthly stay in the “moon ­house”? Even during “normal” days, the vagina is considered to be a source of impurity, and must be washed early ­every morning with hot ­water. Outsiders seldom hear any criticism against the institution of the moon ­house. It is praised in public by many, males and females, as a key part of Ndyuka culture. But when discretion is assured, w ­ omen ­don’t hesitate to show their distaste of the institution, and all the taboos and restrictions attached to it. As Sally Price (1984, 22) noted for the Saramaka: “Reference to the menstrual hut as the ‘bad ­house’(taku ósu) and the fact that a single expression (dê a baáka) means ‘to be in menstrual seclusion’ and ‘to be in mourning’ are true reflections of the tone of a w ­ oman’s life during t­hose times.” Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Societ y  103

Then t­here are the revolts of the past. One of the best known took place early last c­ entury. Encouraged by the rise of a new religious leader, ­women in several villages came to the conclusion that they could live their lives like ­people from the coast, that is, without the onerous restrictions menstrual seclusion entails. A Ndyuka historian, looking back on ­those days, made the following remarks: “The situation ­really got out of hand; ­women in trance ­were ­running around, d ­ oing ­things they ­shouldn’t have done. They always seemed to be possessed by one deity or another. T ­ hese mediums flouted the most sacred taboo: w ­ omen who should have been in the moon h ­ ouse ­were ­running through the m ­ iddle of the village. It was r­eally most shameful. It s­ houldn’t have been tolerated” (Thoden van Velzen and van Wetering 1982, 50).

Mourners as Prisoners At the heart of all mourning rites is the imprisonment of the surviving spouse or spouses in the village of the deceased. Writing about the Saramaka Maroons, neighbors of the Ndyuka, Sally Price (1984, 57) notes: “When a ­woman dies, her pres­ent . . . ​co-­wives are required to go through a period of intense mourning which functions in part to protect them from accusations of having contributed to her death. They wear old clothes which they may not launder, their hair is cropped close to their heads by the dead w ­ oman’s kin, their possession gods may not come to them, and they may not have sexual intercourse.” The mourning regulations for a Ndyuka man who has lost his wife are even more stringent. During a minimum period of three months he is virtually a prisoner of his deceased wife’s f­amily, confined to a h ­ ouse in her village. Only when his in-­laws call upon him to perform some minor tasks is he allowed to leave the “widower’s h ­ ouse” (baakaman osu). He can then be seen walking with a stick and in old, discarded clothes, accompanied by a young boy who tells him where his presence is required. Upon arrival in the group of his wife’s relatives, he is told to perform some menial tasks while being the butt of degrading jokes. Taking part in more lighthearted conversation is out of the question. When he needs to urinate, a boy brings him to a distinct place at the forest’s edge. For defecation he cannot go to his forest latrine, but is obliged to use the w ­ idow’s bedpan. In the morning and early eve­ning he washes his genitals with warm ­water, imitating the daily rituals of personal hygiene of an adult Ndyuka ­woman, whose moral status is partly dependent on her control of female fluids, believed to be detrimental to the ritual powers of males. 104  van wetering and van vel zen

During the months in his wife’s village, his be­hav­ior is closely monitored by a warden (baaka basi, literally “chief of mourning”). When, ­after some three months, he is set ­free he is expected to travel to the coast to earn money for the feasts that mark the end of the mourning period. ­Whether he is indeed allowed to participate in the puubaaka rite, the end of mourning ritual, usually some twelve months ­after his wife’s death, is entirely dependent on the report his warden pres­ents to his wife’s relatives. We know of widowers who ­were refused a favorable report, and who, as a consequence, spend two or three years as the despised factotum of their wife’s ­family. During all that time the mourner cannot retake his seat among the elders at the ancestral rites or be pres­ent at corpse divination. We have always felt ­there is a covert relationship between the authoritative role an elder plays in such village or regional councils, and the captive, humiliating, role that is expected of him as a mourner.23 Conclusion

Committees of elders, w ­ hether grave priests or the ad hoc committees of older men that control access to the ancestral shrines, appear to the casual visitor and to the anthropologist as basic and essential parts of the social order. It is hard to imagine Ndyuka village life without them. The prestige that accrues to the officials seems natu­ral and uncontested. ­People are ­eager to tell you that what you—­the anthropologists—­witness is the very essence of Ndyuka culture. What they are arguing is that notions connected with the gerontocratic institutions are the heart of their culture. T ­ hese are the collective repre­sen­ta­tions, the key notions on which the social edifice appears to be built. Only during times of upheaval, or through inadvertent remarks, one gains a view of another world, the world of ideas and emotions of ­those who ­don’t sit on the councils of elders that control access to the ancestors. Akalali’s revolution of the 1970s laid bare the intense distrust in the institution of corpse divination. His intention of shortening the cycle of mortuary prayers and feasts was another attack on the dominant position of grave priests and elders. Gangáa’s search for demon masters resulted in several elders, usually seen as “pillars of society,” ending up in the docks and, as a result, fined and beaten. Harder to grasp for the outside observer is the discontent that rises to the surface in what Kenelm Burridge (1960, 148) called a “myth-­dream,” which he circumscribed as “a series of themes, propositions, and prob­lems which are to be found in myths, in dreams, in the half-­light of conversation.” It Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Societ y  105

is only through intimate conversations with p ­ eople we came to know quite well that we learned about the deep humiliation of the male mourner. When menstrual seclusion is mentioned, both men and w ­ omen praise it as an institution that is central to the well-­being of the Ndyuka ­people. ­Women may even pride themselves in adhering strictly to the rules of menstrual seclusion. Yet, at other moments, and off guard, they may suddenly curse the restrictions that the menstrual period imposes on them. And, as mentioned, t­ here has been a full-­blown revolt against the institution in the past. Then ­there are the revealing conditions a deceased wife’s relatives impose on her husband. ­Little is then left of the honor and dignity of the village elder, the former pillar of the ancestral cult. Even the relatives of a person convicted of witchcraft are now his superiors. From their midst, the warden is chosen to monitor his be­hav­ior. The example of Gangáa’s revolutionary committee not only demonstrates the precariousness of the social order, but also the lack of solidarity among the elders responsible for corpse divination and the ancestral cult. It certainly reveals the intense hatred of a younger generation of predominantly young w ­ omen for some of the elders officiating at the ancestral cults. ­These are emotions that in the ordinary course of village life d ­ on’t come to the surface. Notes 1. We follow the Summer Institute of Linguistics in referring to t­ hese communities ­either as Ndyuka or Aukans. Aukans is locally pronounced as “Okanisi.” 2. Bookode, pronounced “Bookoday.” 3. From historical rec­ords we know that ma Akuba did indeed live in Mainsi. From about 1800 to 1810, she negotiated with the planters about the conditions for surrendering recently arrived Maroons to them. Ma Akuba usually refused to comply. At that time she was described by the Dutch officials as of advanced age, and well beyond child-­ bearing (Thoden van Velzen and Hoogbergen 2011, 29–30). At the time of the peace treaty (1760), she must have been a young ­woman. 4. Such a roll call is not a regular part of ­these solemnities. 5. For a similar view of relations between ancestors and the living, see A. F. J. Köbben’s explanation of the do ut das attitude of Ndyuka elders when asking the ancestors for ­favors: “I sacrifice so that you ­will give me something in return” (1979, 36). 6. Jean Hurault (1961, 159), when describing the mortuary rites of the Aluku or Boni, neighbors of the Ndyuka, rightly suggests that the mortuary rites are the most impor­ tant events in their daily life. The author states that ­these death rites mobilize the ­whole community. He is at pains to point out that during ­these mortuary rites, the village or groups of villages, rather than the matrilineage, is the most impor­tant unit. For a similar view on the Ndyuka, see Jean-­Yves Parris (2011, 148–149). 106  van wetering and van vel zen

7. The papai is constructed with branches from the cecropia Sp. (Hurault 1961, 160). 8. For announcing an investigation into the ­causes of death among the seventeenth-­ century Kquoga, ­people who lived in present-­day Liberia, a ritual specialist sounded the alarm by striking two pieces of iron against each other (Dapper 1676, part 2, p. 34). 9. Usually only three persons are selected for this test. 10. Kumanti, elsewhere in the Ca­rib­bean often named Cromanti or Coromantee, are an association of ritual specialists who are reputed to be healers. They may also prepare their followers for ­battle. During the Surinamese civil war their medicines (obiya) ­were much in demand by Maroon guerrillas. Coromantee refers to ­those enslaved Africans who are believed to have been shipped to the New World from one of the Akan states of the Gold Coast. 11. This is a general rule that also holds true for the Aluku Maroons (Hurault 1961, 160). 12. Peter Kloos (1971, 300), in his book on the Maroni river Caribs, offers the following information: “Kuse:we, red dye, Bixa Orellana.” 13. We could understand a few Kumanti phrases, but the other esoteric languages ­were unintelligible to us. 14. This is also known as diidakanyanyan. 15. Gaanman Gazon died in November 2011, and he was buried in April 2012. 16. Oseyse was the paramount chief from 1884 to 1914. 17. Akontu Velanti referred ­here to a ­bitter quarrel between Amatodya and Kanapé, two prominent ancestors of the 1930s. Amatodya was at that time the paramount chief; Kanapé, the high priest of the tribal Sweli Gadu cult (Thoden van Velzen and van Wetering, 2004, 179–189). 18. When the grave priests cut the cocks’ neck, and blood flows into the sand, the taking of photo­graphs, encouraged during other mortuary rituals, is suddenly considered taboo. Not only Outsiders are forbidden to take photo­graphs, but the Ndyuka are also stopped from recording ­these solemnities. 19. Someone explained the solemn character of this part of the ritual by telling us: “This is the most sacred moment of Ndyuka culture; ­there is nothing more impor­tant in our world.” 20. In 1972, a Ndyuka prophet by the name of Akalali successfully put an end to the ritual of the carry­ing of the corpse (Thoden van Velzen and Van Wetering 1988, 331–386; 2004, 195–222). However, only ten years ­later, approximately half of the Ndyuka villages along the lower part of the Tapanahoni River reinstituted the practice. The Opu Ndyuka, ­those living further upstream, have not yet reached a consensus on w ­ hether the carry­ing of the corpse should be resumed. Jean-­Yves Parris (2011, 58–68) has documented the fierce re­sis­tance against any resumption of this form of divination in some Opu Ndyuka villages. This does not mean that the fear of witches has abated, and neither should the conclusion be that the Ndyuka have no forms of divination left to assess the moral status of the deceased person. It is likely that tests at the graveyard provide the oloman with what they consider as relevant information on the moral stature of the deceased. We ­were told that when Sa (­sister) M’s spirit saw the grave where her corpse was to be buried, she admonished the grave priests: “Why have you dug such a deep grave?,” meaning that her spirit did not think it appropriate that she should be buried in such a respectable way. Lacking sound information on what happens on the graveyard Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Societ y  107

of the Opu Ndyuka during the ­actual burial, we ­will proceed as if the pre-1972 carry­ing of the corpse was still the general form of divination. 21. We refused to attend the meetings at Gangáa’s court. Our report is based on what Ndyuka friends of ours told us about the goings-on and on two films depicting t­ hese scenes. They ­were recorded on dvd and are named “Tuu Tuu Doo, Lei Loweh [Truth Has Come, Falsehood Dis­appears] 2006, Part 1 and Part 2.” ­These films recorded the dances of the mediums and their verbal and physical attacks on the victims. We h ­ aven’t seen a third film, said to show the torching of the demon masters’ h ­ ouses. 22. As Sally Price (1984, 21–22) noted: “Menstruating ­women may not sit on stools, touch small babies, burn a garden site, plant crops, wash clothes at designated stones in the river, hand anything to a man, skin game, or cook food for men, travel in a canoe with a man, or carry ­water that ­will be used by ­others.” 23. A Ndyuka friend of ours who related to us many of the humiliating experiences during the mourning period ended his summary with the following words: “Only when I went into mourning, did I begin to understand what it means to be a Ndyuka.”

108  van wetering and van vel zen

chapter 4

Death and the Construction of Social Space L A N D , K I N S H I P, A N D I D E N T I T Y I N T H E J A M A I C A N M O R T U A R Y C YC L E

Yanique Hume

A person does not belong to a place ­until someone is dead ­ under the ground. —­Gabriel García Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude Det ah when yuh kno who an who is who —­Jamaican proverb

In January  1995, the one-­year anniversary of my ­brother Steve’s untimely death, I deci­ded to temporarily abandon my university studies in the United States and return to my maternal f­ amily land in the rural hinterlands of Jamaica.1 Nestled in the heavi­ly vegetated mountains between the parishes of Clarendon and Manchester is the yard from which we have sprung and also from which we have mostly departed. However, notwithstanding the countless exits and migrations to town and then abroad, we always returned, in part ­because we knew we always could. It was the first time I would see my grand­mother ­after approximately five years of being away. My grand­mother was among the many elder matriarchs of the district who had no interest in traveling to town, much less overseas. Instead, she stood guard in her yard watching over her dead kin and maintaining the ancestral land that linked the f­ amily to generations of dead and living relatives.2 I made my way out of the car and down the rocky pathway leading to the ­family ­house. The multicolored tones of the walls stood out against the

verdant hills and majestic trees. But the most prominent site was the f­ amily plot (gravesite) positioned approximately one hundred feet away from the main ­house and abandoned outdoor kitchen. Upon arriving to the entrance, Miss Lettie, as my grand­mother was affectionately called, greeted me with her warm smile and embrace before taking hold of my hand and leading me on a walk around the land. As we strolled Miss Lettie pointed to the dif­fer­ent fruit-­bearing trees around the yard, alerting me to the fact that, “all yuh f­ amily ’av dem nabel string bury unda de tree so dem know seh dem belong to dis yaad.”3 We walked the circumference of the home and fi­nally through the banana grove and line of crotons that defined the ­family burial ground. We stopped at my grand­father’s tomb before Miss Lettie drew my attention to a collection of items neatly positioned on the earth: a ­bottle of overproof white rum, a gallon of flat white emulsion paint, a paint brush, and basin of w ­ ater and a cloth. Miss Lettie proceeded to instruct me on the task at hand. I listened intently, quite taken by the rather abrupt way I was called to order and the deliberate manner in which she explained how I was to paint the tombs. The urgency and importance of the mission ­were made clear through her instructions, “Yuh mus wipe deh headstone dem first and den wipe off the tomb. Paint each one of dem wid t’ree coat a paint from top to bottom and den do the sides, nuh come inside before yuh finish.”4 She poured the rum on the ground and doused my head and the back of my neck. She then placed her straw hat on my head and left me with t­ hese words: “Tek yuh time, laba, ’memba and plant yuh bradda inna de earth, inna dis yaad.”5 Unable to enter the ­family ­house to commune with the living, I was left outside fulfilling my debt to the dead.

Implicit in this opening vignette is the normative social system operative in rural working-­class Jamaican society, which situates mortuary practices at the center of familial and communal life. As such, the social order is so impregnated with moral codes and judgments that can be disturbed by any failure to fulfill an obligation to the ancestral spirits to whom the f­ amily is indebted. Performing some form of ser­vice through actively recalling the dead and expressing reverence to the departed through one’s conscious, physical ­labor is what ensures the continuation of t­hose gifts and privileges afforded to the living. The intimate connectivity between the dif­f er­ent spheres of existence is consistently made tangible through t­ hese “rituals of 110  Yanique Hume

remembrance,” which Dianne Stewart rightly states, “reconstitute kinship bonds across time and space” (2018, 2). My return to my ­family home had to begin with fulfilling my duties to the dead, including my newly deceased b ­ rother, who was killed in New York and subsequently buried in an urban public cemetery a farin.6 Having missed the funerals of the f­amily members interred in the land, most notably my grand­father’s, I had also renounced my obligation to participate in the commemorative ceremonies critical to the moral order that serves to define the very contours of social relationships and f­ amily ties. I was, in a Simmelian sense, a “stranger” in my own yard; someone who was both near and far, accepted as being part of a f­ amily or social group yet also socially detached.7 My grand­mother’s insistence that I “labored” and “remembered” functioned therefore as a corrective mea­sure to assist in my reincorporation into the social fabric of the home and likewise my contemplative ritual action served to anchor my deceased ­brother into the land among the community of ­family spirits. It is this very question of the intersections of death, f­ amily land, and kinship that is at the heart of this chapter. Critical to my concern is examining how the rites around death re-­create and help reconstitute social relationships and notions of belonging to a specific “place” or community. By reviewing the lit­er­a­ture on the practice of land tenure in relation to funerary practices, I argue that the symbolic potency of ­family land, as a site of belonging, is reaffirmed continually during the mortuary cycle, which is deliberately structured and performed on and around the f­ amily plot and home of the newly deceased. I utilize a personal narrative of loss and remembrance as a point of departure to begin my meditation on death and the Jamaican mortuary complex. To this end, I highlight the transformative and healing dimensions of t­hese emotively dense and poignant rituals that have been part of the Jamaican cultural psyche from the period of enslavement. Additionally, my own “outsider-­within” status provides a critical posture from which I examine and interpret ­these intimate rites that reflect broader questions of being and belonging.8 This “in-­betweenity” as both cultural insider and outsider reflects on my liminal positionality and also mirrors the way Jamaicans view and interact with a newly departed f­ amily spirit. T ­ hese wandering souls, who are no longer among the living, yet not quite at the realm of an ancestor, pres­ent a prob­lem of recognition. In much the same way that my return to Jamaica a­ fter a long departure necessitated ritual intervention, so too do ­these spirits require attention to secure their safe passage and to The Jamaican Mortuary C ycle  111

ensure that the social order is restored (Bloch 1971; Bloch and Parry 1982; Hertz [1907, 1909] 2004; Metcalf and Huntington 1991). In his work on the culture around death that pervaded Jamaican slave society, historian Vincent Brown notes, “during funerals enslaved blacks created a shared moral universe: they recovered their common humanity, they assumed and affirmed meaningful, social roles, and they rendered communal values sacred by associating them with the dead” (2008, 65). Indeed the importance of funerals and mortuary rites to the Jamaican cultural, spiritual and communal ethos, as in many socie­ties across the African diaspora, is uncontested. In the intervening centuries between slavery and the con­ temporary era, commemorative rites surrounding death have evolved yet they remain vital to the social fabric of the island’s rural and urban residents. As an example, con­temporary “bling funerals”9—­characterized by their ostentatious celebratory displays of remembrance—­offer insights into the expansive aesthetic registers within which mourning and collective catharsis function in urban Jamaica. In the absence of f­amily land on which to center ritual activities, the scantly or elaborately dressed bodies that move through the street pro­cessions leading into public cemeteries pres­ent an arena where the declaration of self, visibility, community, and status is performed (Dacres 2016; Paul 2007; Thompson 2015). As opposed to seeing ­these more flamboyant events as an anomaly, I suggest that they share in the fundamental ontological princi­ple that governs mortuary practices in Jamaica more generally, which is in fact the affirmation of life and the reconstitution of the self and the collective. While a full discussion of ­these inner-­city funerary cele­ brations is beyond the scope of this chapter, I do reference them to show the relationship that exists between the varying modalities of commemorating the dead across the continuum of rural and urban communities. In what follows I provide an overview of the history and symbolism of ­family land as a critical “site of identity” and locus of belonging (Besson and Olwig 2005). I demonstrate how the symbolic orchestration of rites rooted in socialized space “anchors rituals to a seemingly enduring world” (Beidelman 1997, 75) and reveals broader philosophical ideas on how Jamaicans comprehend, commemorate, and continually give meaning to the passage or transition from life to death and by extension give symbolic significance to the land itself. Although ­there have been numerous studies looking into the emergence and importance of f­ amily land, I am concerned with examining how funerary customs imbue the land with symbolic meanings that stretch across generations. To this end I ask, how do rites conducted in dif­fer­ent spaces around what Mintz (1974) has identified as the h ­ ouse/yard 112  Yanique Hume

complex help to move the newly deceased from the ambivalent and liminal category of “duppy” to ancestor? In what ways are kinship and community relationships restored through performing ­these rituals in gender-­specific spaces? Moreover, in centering my investigation on rural customs of memorializing the dead around the land, I do not disavow the existence of alternative modes of commemorating death in urban spaces, but instead choose to elaborate on a distinctive sociocultural feature of Jamaican society that informs the logic of funerary customs more generally. As an example, specific attention is paid to the ritual technologies deployed in the rites associated with the Nine Night or Dead Yard, for they throw into relief the tangible manner in which the dead and living are situated in social space.10 Land Tenure and the Origins of ­Family Land

The African Ca­rib­bean system of land tenure and the origins of the cultural institution of ­family land have been the subject of sustained academic inquiry in the anthropology of the region (Besson 1984; Besson and Momsen 1987; Car­ne­gie 1987; E. Clarke 1966; Crichlow 1994; Mintz [1974] 1997; Olwig 1999). ­These studies have argued that the establishment of ­family land became a principal strategy employed by the formerly enslaved populations throughout the Ca­rib­bean to self-­fashion a ­future beyond the subjugation of the plantation. ­Family land as a common form of land tenure among the African Ca­rib­bean peasantries or rural populations emerged within the historical transformation born out of Emancipation. In the interstices and marginal lands of the estates and further afield in the rural hinterlands and mountains of the respective islands, freed blacks established rural enclaves as an alternative space of blackness where they w ­ ere able to reconstitute their subsistence-­based economies and kinship structures wedded around working the land. Through the act of interring deceased kin on property they lived and labored on, the initial inhabitants claimed owner­ship of the land, marking it as a site of origin and belonging for subsequent generations. In the Jamaica of the nineteenth and early twentieth c­ entury, the acquisition of land took many forms. Even though Emancipation granted the enslaved freedom, the ability to exercise their newly acquired status and autonomy was continually challenged. Restrictive colonial legislation, most notably the 1839 Ejection and Trespass Acts, w ­ ere designed to manage the movement of the formerly enslaved and in turn physically as well as eco­ nom­ically bind them to the plantation (Besson 1984, 63). As a response, nonconformist missionaries began purchasing land for h ­ ouse spots wherever The Jamaican Mortuary C ycle  113

they could. The missionary zeal of the Baptist and Methodist Church began during the Apprenticeship period (1834–1838) and matured immediately thereafter with the development of church communities and the launching of the F­ ree Village Movement (Mintz 1958). The missionary leaders bought ruined estates within which they set aside land for cultivation and a church. Remaining plots of land w ­ ere parceled out for the formerly enslaved to purchase and s­ ettle. The movement played an impor­t ant role in amassing considerable amounts of land available for purchase. Baptist missionary leader Pastor Knibb estimates that “19,000 of the island’s ex-­slaves had purchased land and w ­ ere erecting their own cottages” prior to 1850 (Paget 1964, 9). The continual success of the F­ ree Village Movement was however limited, for the missionaries encountered ­great re­sis­t ance from the planters and colonial government; hence its demise approximately fifteen years ­after its inception. Land was also acquired through squatting or purchase. Outside of the gaze of the Christian Church many Jamaicans captured lands in the countryside. ­Those who managed to acquire freehold properties maximized their rights by creating ­family land. This system of peasant land tenure was cemented with unwritten but binding rules that stipulated the nature in which land acquired must remain undivided among all descendants of the original owner in a unified and undifferentiated w ­ hole. Land in this sense is characterized by an unrestricted cognatic descent system that is bilaterally distributed among kin regardless of sex, age, or legitimacy (see Besson 2002, 314–315). In turn, an extensive kinship network based on the premise of mutual exchange (i.e., usufructuary rights of the land) was established. The original inhabitants equated owning land with freedom and autonomy, as well as a sense of permanence and rootedness to a place, which they sought to transfer to their descendants in perpetuity through requesting their bodies be interred in a f­ amily plot on the land itself. Contact taboos associated with the dead guaranteed that the land would remain in the ­family, since most would not contemplate buying land with someone’s remains in it. It is within this act of consecrating the land with one’s dead and particularly the older relatives who originally purchased or captured the land that, the symbolic significance of land and the social relations among the living and the dead emerged. Even with the rise of land scarcity and migration, which has borne witness to an increase in burials in public cemeteries and church graveyards, the centrality of land in shaping identity remains tantamount (see Horst 2004). The triple-­tiered cement tombs with their marble headstones and white or checkered tiled surfaces, stand as vis­i­ble reminders 114  Yanique Hume

of the presence of one’s departed kin, the continuity of the ­family line, and the site of a common origin. Rural Jamaicans say their most valuable asset is their land b ­ ecause ­there is a pervading sense of permanence and security that the land affords them—­a physical and metaphysical/spiritual connection to a specific abode. Given the premise that f­amily land and especially land with a f­amily plot is unlikely to be sold, land is not seen necessarily as a commodity from which one can reap monetary benefits.11 The deliberate act of interring the dead on the land takes it out of circulation, thus wealth is enclaved within t­ hese ­family holdings, and becomes the physical repre­sen­ta­tion of the f­ amily’s status and prestige. It is also a means of differentiation between landowner and landless tenant. In her astute analy­sis of the dichotomous value system engendered in the two social institutions (the plot and plantation) that structured the lives of the enslaved, Sylvia Wynter maintains that the socie­ties of the Ca­rib­bean came into being along with the emergence of the market economy. Africans ­were thus conscripted as laborers to drive the cap­i­tal­ist machinery of the plantation and in response became imbricated into a systematic pro­cess of dehumanization and alienation. The plots of land that existed in the interstices of the plantation became the oppositional agential spaces whereby the rehumanizing proj­ect was set into motion: For the African peasants transplanted to the plot all the structures of values that had been created by traditional socie­ties of Africa, the land remained the Earth—­and the Earth was a goddess; man used the land to feed himself, and to offer first fruits to the Earth; his funeral was the mystical reunion with the earth. ­Because of this traditional concept the social order remained primary. Around the growing of yam, of food for survival, he created on the plot a folk culture—­the basis of a social order—in three hundred years.12 As argued by Michel Foucault, “Space is fundamental in any form of communal life; space is fundamental in any exercise of power” (1984, 252). For the dispossessed, ­those who materially owned nothing, who ­were considered the property of o ­ thers, the notion of “shaping a space” became an empowering act of self-­definition. The plot of land consecrated for communion with the spiritual realm can be seen as a conscious act of declaring the right of existence. Enmeshed in the concept of the plot is an inclusive ideology of communal unity and freedom. By claiming space, the disenfranchised exercised their power to name and articulate a subjectivity beyond the reach of The Jamaican Mortuary C ycle  115

their oppressors. It can also be argued that even in the absence of owning a physical plot of land, the sentiments around belonging to a par­tic­u­lar community, neighborhood, or block are fundamental to inner-­city politics, as they give meaning to the concept of space/place and its relationship to notions of personhood. Mortuary practices among inner-­city populations, for example, reveal this dynamic as they involve a deliberate appropriation and reclamation of public space to memorialize deceased community members. Shrines and murals depicting area leaders who have been killed inscribe the identity of the individual onto the physical spaces within the communities in which they lived. A sense of belonging to place is thus performed through ­these acts of remembrance orchestrated to render the deceased forever vis­i­ ble and an eternal part of the community. Yard and Plot as Critical Sovereign Sites of Identity and Belonging

Erna Brodber, in her publication from 1975 Yards in the City of Kingston, identifies “yard” as an urban residential unit with its own internal matrix and logic. What Brodber reveals is that urban yards are a product of migration from the outlying rural hinterlands to town. T ­ hose who occupy the urban yard may not all be blood relatives but may be linked by other ties of sociality and through the princi­ples of cooperation. Interestingly, the concept of “yard” is not readily utilized by middle-­class Jamaicans who live in “uptown” residential communities, but instead reserved for speaking about ­either the inner city or countryside. Conversely, the rural concept of yard is synonymous to ­family land and likewise is imbued with emotive sentiment but also reflects a spatial dimension. The designation of ­family land is further nuanced by the terms “top yard” and “bottom yard.” The former refers to the land where the original ­family line starts, that is, where the progenitors are buried and immediate kin occupy. The latter indicates land that has been allocated and inherited by the ­children, grandchildren, or other descendants of the ­family line. The bottom yard is usually on the same land as the top yard, and as the name suggests, it is usually below the main f­ amily ­house and graves. More affluent families, or ­those with more land, may have bottom yards throughout the district or in neighboring parishes. As the families living on t­ hese satellite plots grow, they eventually become their own top yard. However, it is impor­tant to note that although land inheritance continues along a linear trajectory that seemingly moves further away from the original top yard, the threads of kinship affiliation and obligation maintain the link between t­ hese 116  Yanique Hume

satellite yards and the site where the f­ amily line is said to originate. T ­ here is thus a continual ebb and flow of f­ amily members between the top and bottom yards. As the older generation dies, their c­ hildren and grandchildren ­either remain on their own properties or return to the natal land of their progenitors.13 While it is not uncommon to be buried at the top yard among one’s great-­ grandparents, once an individual has land, they are generally buried on that land. Married ­women are buried on the land they shared with their husbands and where they raised their ­children. Jamaican mortuary rites are grounded in space and in turn the social and physical environment of which the deceased was once a part. Thus the identity of the individual in life is affirmed at death within the space(s) that nurtured the construction of that personhood. The meta­phor of the yard, therefore, as argued by the late Jamaican anthropologist Barry Chevannes goes beyond detailing “yard” as a collective my­thol­ogy of home and nation-­space for the diasporic Jamaicans, to also reference yard as critical to the ontological foundation that structures and gives meaning to an individual’s subjectivity and their relationship to clan and community: That bit of space ­behind the decorative shrubs and hedges, signaling identity. . . . ​became the summary of memory, life, and hope—of memory ­because it hosts the ancestors, who are buried and tombed within its confines, in what is commonly referred to as “­family plot” . . . ​; of hope, ­because the navel string, the umbilical cord, of each newborn is buried ­there and a tree planted on top of it. . . . ​The yard is the focal point of nurturing and sustenance, of discipline and healing, of growth and transition, of connectedness and integrity. Yard thus becomes that space where lineage identity is constructed and maintained, where the circle of life opens with birth, matures with living and closes with the burial and tombing. (130–131)14 The spatial matrix of the yard encompasses the dead, newly born, and living relatives who occupy the land and by extension living kin who exist beyond the confines of the land itself. The ­family plot serves as a site of origins but more poignantly still, a lieux de mémoire,15 and a locus of charged and potentially harmful or dangerous energies if not managed well. While ­family spirits transgress t­ hese specified bound­aries penetrating all spheres of the sociospatial structure, it is understood that they have an abode outside the space of the living. The complex and often lengthy mortuary practices are therefore crucial to the reconstruction and reevaluation of social The Jamaican Mortuary C ycle  117

meaning and relations within the core unit of the ­house/yard/family plot. Reincorporation of disparate kin occupying the outer realms of the home-­ yard complex is actualized through their participation in t­ hese rites, and like the appeasement of the spirit, the task is one fraught with complexities. This is in part ­because while ­there is an understanding that death and life are mutually constitutive states, Jamaicans also see ­these two spheres of existence as distinct phases in the cycle of life, which is understood spatially. The conundrum, which is born out of this realization, is that of spatial proximity of the dead to the living. Given that both inhabit the same yard, the rituals are to help demarcate the spaces of social existence ­after death interrupts the social structure. Note on the Jamaican Mortuary Cycle

The rituals of death and burial are far from uniform across the social classes.16 Although families demonstrate their “respectability” through upholding Christian values, a conservative decorum and sober restraint during funerary rites, recent studies on bling or dancehall funerals (see Hope 2010; Paul 2007; Thompson 2015) suggest that the urban underclass subverts this association of death with sobriety. Bling funerals are highly festive occasions to transgress the social mores and “bourgeoisie respectability” of the Jamaican ­middle class.17 Through the elaborate display of fantasy coffins, gregarious funeral pro­cessions, and ribald expressions of grief and jubilation, members of disenfranchised communities commemorate the larger-­than-­life identities of fallen loved ones. They honor the departed not solely through tears but by sending off the dead with a party befitting the celebrity status they attained in life. As art critic Annie Paul suggests, the highly visual effect created through the displays of aesthetic and material excess allows the Jamaican underclass to construct social prestige against the background of per­sis­tent vio­lence and marginalization (2007). Like their rural counter­parts, status and visibility are actively constructed through ritual per­for­mance. However, whereas rural populations express this through an elaborate tomb or commemorative feasts hosted on ­family land, in the inner-­city context the rites are concentrated around creating an impactful spectacle that renders vis­i­ble individuals who other­wise remain unseen within the broader Jamaica society. To this end, ­whether enacted in an urban community or rural district, the central themes that unite funerary practices across the island and along the distinct moral registers and aesthetic codes in which they function are 118  Yanique Hume

the communal/collective honoring of life and the importance of ensuring a safe transition to the afterlife. In her work on the dynamics of inner-­city vio­lence, Imani Tafari-­Ama speaks of the pervasiveness of wakes as a cultural institution in both the rural and urban contexts, “demonstrating strong African retentions . . . ​[that] not only encode meanings of spiritual re­sis­tance but also provide a psychosocial coping mechanism for p ­ eople who experience the death of loved ones” (2006, 178–179). She goes on to say, “this tradition—­the wake—­might have died out as a cultural practice if it was not for the pervasiveness of violent deaths” (2006, 180). I would, however, beg to differ with this latter statement, for wakes, irrespective of increasing inner-­city vio­lence, continue to animate Jamaican society b ­ ecause they are part and parcel of the religious worldview that structures ­people’s lives. Afro-­Jamaicans of ­every class recognize the singular importance of observing the wake or Set-Up, which forms part of a more elaborate mortuary complex. My intention ­here is not to freeze rural practices in a specific space and time as quaint, folkloric diversions that speak of enduring “Africanisms” pres­ent in Jamaican ritual practice. Likewise my goal is not to locate t­ hese rites observed in the rural environments as being more culturally au­then­tic or representative of mortuary rituals writ large. My aim is instead to illuminate the spatiality of death rituals and to show that con­temporary iterations of commemorative rites for the dead can be historically situated within a continuum of ritual observances modified from African and Christian forms. The cultural dimensions of ­these rites are critical for understanding how the personhood of individual subjects is constructed through memorializing their death. The belief system that governs mortuary rites is a hybrid, eclectic blend of religious traditions from diffused African customs and Chris­tian­ity. The syncretic spiritual practices result in the use of diverse ritual symbols and the development of varying concepts for explaining the afterworld and spirits (Bryan 2000; Lawson 1996: R. Stewart 1992; D. Stewart 2005). While I speak of a Jamaican mortuary cycle, I am cognizant of the fact that not all religions in Jamaica adhere to a similar cosmological orientation. The Rastafarian faith, as an example, has an almost complete disengagement with the spirit world, thus, as one Rasta elder proclaimed in a conference held at the University of the West Indies, Mona, in 1996 that honored the work of Rex Nettleford, “Duppy ’av no place inna Rasta” (Spirits have no place in Rastafari).18 Inherent in this view is also the displacement of the primacy of the burial ground, for, as Kenneth Bilby argues, “Rastafari has abolished The Jamaican Mortuary C ycle  119

the ancestral spirits altogether, cutting all ties with the dead including the deceased relatives whose burial sites might other­wise bind Rastas to specific parcels of land” (1999, 324). This par­tic­u­lar detachment of sentiment has allowed Rastas to conceive of an alternative universe where they are not wedded to the land and the physical locality of Jamaica and hence their subjugation; but instead that of their source of origin, Africa/Ethiopia or Zion.19 Likewise, the Rastafari emphasis on life as expressed in the concept of “livity,” or vital life force, shifts the focus away from death, suspending the sentiment attached to burial rites.20 That Rasta theology cele­bration of the primacy of life and the messianic figure of Haile Selassie I over that of death or a pantheon of spirits does not in any way remove the centrality of ancestral veneration within the cultural traditions and religiosity of Jamaican ­people.21 Thus, the pervading religious cosmos can be formulated along a vertical axis whereby ­there is a hierarchical placement of the invisible and vis­i­ble planes of existence in a tripartite structure: God ­Family Spirits / Duppies ­Humans In this system God occupies a prominent position and is acknowledged as being omniscient. Meanwhile, duppies and ­family spirits function as mediators between God and ­humans. While the terms “duppy” and “spirit” are often collapsed in everyday talk to mean the same t­ hing—an apparition—­ they are considered distinct entities within the mortuary complex. According to John Pulis, “The multiple soul-­concept constitutes Afro-­Jamaican cultural construction of social being” (1999, 393). A duppy is equated with the soul of the newly deceased corpse or the spiritual force inside the body. The shadow or spirit is the lingering energy or entity. A ­ fter death, the disembodied duppy is released and journeys in the world between the living and the dead for at least nine days before fi­nally settling in an otherworldly realm; the shadow, on the other hand, is believed to remain or lurk ­behind (1999, 393). The propitiatory rites and the activities at the wake or Nine Night are thus to assist the newly deceased journey from duppy to ancestor and to also meta­phor­ically plant the shadow into the earth.22 The ambivalence ­toward the dead is consistent with the view that shadows/sprits have profound powers that can be manipulated by obya/obeah men or ­women.23 In this view, all spirits are duppies, but not all spirits are ancestral kin. The observance of the mortuary cycle thus serves to distinguish ­these highly potent spiritual 120  Yanique Hume

beings and reestablish the proper spatial configurations that structure the lives of ­those who inhabit ­family land. Against this background of f­amily land and its link with ancestral kin, I now turn to my analy­sis of Nine Night. The ritual pro­cess of burying the dead—as a classic example of rites of passage—­replicates in many ways Van Gennep’s (1960) and l­ ater Victor Turner’s ([1969] 1995) tripartite schema of separation, “liminality,” and rebirth/communitas. I utilize the paradigm offered by ­these two scholars in order to sequentially map the contours of the vari­ous rites and activities across distinct spaces and modalities of social and gendered conduct. Special attention is given to interpreting what the dif­fer­ent stages of the event mean for participants and relating ­these to my broader theoretical arguments concerning mortuary rites as a source of culturally making place and organ­izing social space. I conclude my analy­sis by reflecting on the role of inversions or the symbolic and spatial reordering of ­things as a power­ful ritual and performative device.24 Ritual Pro­cess of Rural Nine-­Night Ceremonies Rites of Separation: Demarcating Ritual Space

The ordering and reordering of social relations are first made tangible in spatial terms.25 The preliminary rites conducted in the intimate spheres of the familial abode establishes the par­ameters for orienting the living and the dead, so that the two may begin to transition safely into their new social spaces. The potency of the corpse as a symbol of un­regu­la­ted spiritual power is at first physically separated by quarantine; this is especially the case when the person dies outside of the private space of their bedroom. With the body temporarily sequestered and contained, the ­family can then move to prepare the home to welcome close ­family and friends to view the body before it is removed by morticians.26 The pro­cess of removing the body begins the psychosocial work of separating the dead. The body is carried out of the h ­ ouse feet first, “just as a man walks,” ­toward the yard. This impresses on the spirit that its place of residence is no longer in the home, but with the other ancestral spirits in the ­family plot. The act of removing the body through the front door is an inversion of the postpartum rites, which begin with the newborn child entering through a back entrance, head first and remaining secluded with their ­mother for nine days. This seclusion ensures that t­ hese two vulnerable beings are protected from harmful spirits or anyone with “the evil eye”—­that is, an envious or “bad-­minded” person whose potent gaze may cause harm. The Jamaican Mortuary C ycle  121

On the ninth day, or sooner if the umbilical cord has sufficiently dried and fallen off, the child is bathed for the first time in a purifying solution of rum and ­water and welcomed fully into the folds of the ­family once the navel string is buried on the land. A newborn thus moves from the spiritual world of ancestral spirits through the womb of his/her m ­ other into the seclusion of a domesticated space-­house, in which the infant remains for nine days u ­ ntil publicly received by community and planted in the earth/yard.27 Conversely the spirit of the deceased is traditionally propitiated over nine nights of public communal rites so that it may be secluded in its tomb, the spirit’s new ­house, and incorporated into the new world of ancestral kin.28 This ritual reversal poignantly illustrates the manner in which death is an inversion of life.29 Ritual inversions within this mortuary rite manifest through dif­fer­ent modalities and registers of meaning, a point I ­will consistently return to as we pro­gress through the dif­fer­ent activities of a Dead Yard or Nine Night. The removal of the body, which is part of the opening rites, signals the necessary rupture required to instigate an eventual reaggregation at a ­later stage. When I ask gravediggers in the communities about this act of leading the dead feet first, their usual response is that “it’s an African custom to confuse the spirit.” In probing further, Eli Robinson, an avid Dead Yard attendee and retired schoolteacher, offered his observation: When a person dies, he d ­ oesn’t automatically know that he is dead, that is why we have to turn every­thing upside down, right side up. It starts from the beginning with the body leaving the ­house in the opposite way it comes in at birth. . . . ​When we take out a body we d ­ on’t just walk the spirit out; we turn the body around in a circle first and then leave pointing the feet outside so he ­don’t know where he is. The dead ­don’t want to be dead, so we have to confuse him so him d ­ on’t come back to the living. . . . ​Longtime days the ­people would dance out the spirit throughout the district for miles and would have to stop whenever and wherever the spirit stopped. . . . ​They would journey with the spirit all about the place. Nowadays we ­don’t do them ­things . . . ​but you can see one and two ­people still dancing the coffin to the ­family plot.30 Mr. Robinson’s astute commentary reflects on the ways Jamaicans view life and death as two moments of a continuum. The confusion that is evoked from disorienting the spirit spatially—­through turning the deceased around in a circle before leading feet first—­elaborates on the cyclical passage an in122  Yanique Hume

dividual takes in their lifetime. The home becomes the site where the meta­ phor of the cycle of life becomes spatially defined as the removal through the front of the h ­ ouse completes the initial entrance through the back of the ­house, at birth. In Robinson’s further description of dancing and journeying with the spirit, we get a sense of the intimate interactions that the living have with the dead up to the point of the burial. As the spirit travels literally and figuratively to its final resting place, the community also marks the journey in their bodies as they dance alongside the corpses. Robinson’s narrative further corroborates much of the early writing and accounts of Nine Night during the period of slavery.31 Often written in a dismissive tone, planters remarked on the “heathen” and “ludicrous manner” in which the enslaved buried their dead.32 The dancing of the coffin that one may witness ­today in country funerals or even in con­temporary bling funerals does not carry the same meaning as it did in the past. The spirit of the dead is not understood to be dictating the movements of ­those who carry or dance alongside the coffin, but instead the coffin is danced and revelers accompany it so as to both entertain and confuse the dead. In bling funerals, dancing forms an impor­tant part of pro­ cessions whereby through embodied collective action revelers are able to lift the spirit of the bereaved and likewise elevate the spirit of the deceased as it journeys.

Meta­phors of Purification in the Rites of Separation The condition of the duppy at the preliminary stage of its journey “is one of ambiguity and paradox, a confusion of all customary categories” (Turner 1967, 97). The duppy is neither among the living nor the dead, thus it cannot behave in accordance with e­ ither of ­these categories. The “meta­phors of purification” (Goody 1962), like ­those of spatial orientation and disorientation, are pervasive throughout this ritual complex, but it is during this preliminary period that the ingredients are gathered, prepared, and used to clear the domestic space of any negative or harmful energies. Although the corpse is removed from the home, the lingering quality of its potent residue still poses a threat for the living and therefore must be purified through burning rosemary and frankincense/myrrh, and presenting w ­ ater in the bedroom and entrances. ­Water presented in a bowl or glass at the threshold of rooms and u ­ nder the bed or by the bed head is used to “catch the spirit.” It is believed that spirits and all impure m ­ atter circling through the air are The Jamaican Mortuary C ycle  123

eventually deposited in the contained ­water, physically represented by the transformation of the w ­ ater’s transparent quality to its cloudy haze. The ­water must remain untouched for the nine days to ensure the gradual pro­ cess of evaporation and the subsequent cleansing of the space. However, if ­there is any w ­ ater remaining by the ninth night, it is poured in the grave or disposed of in a secluded space in the yard. The burning of rosemary and or frankincense and myrrh purifies the space by repelling spirits, but also attracts them. The pungent aroma and the smoke produced by burning rosemary bush disorients the duppies, for they are believed to be sensitive to strong smells and have difficulty navigating through the cloud of smoke. However, the sweet-­smelling fragrance of frankincense and myrrh is said to appease t­ hose spirits who have found peace and have been successfully “sent off.” The burning of incense is quite pronounced during the separation period but is used sparingly ­after the threat of pollution decreases. Outside of the rituals of death, frankincense and myrrh are used to smudge or bless a ­house before occupancy. Rosemary, on the other hand, is associated primarily with repelling duppies, and is used specifically during mortuary rites. Unlike ­these active agents of purification, the opening of the Bible to the twenty-­third psalm summons the powers of God, thus ­there is faith in the efficacy of divine words. As one recites the twenty-­third psalm, ­there is a sense that all the chaos and confusion surrounding the hardship of life and the threat of death diminish, for one is protected and guided by God. The confluence of folk practice—­“burning out the duppy”—­and Chris­tian­ity (biblical psalms) should not be viewed as two incongruous constructs but as parallel systems that operate together to establish the propitiatory objects and sacred ethos needed to purge the home. ­There is then no set value judgment placed on one and not the other but a sense that the two worldviews and accompanying practices may be used together and serve to reinforce the necessary protective boundary needed during this initial stage of transition. The physical removal of the body, the preliminary purification rites, and the initial gathering of f­ amily members and friends lay out “the meta­phoric structure” of the ritual (Comaroff 1985, 88) that initiates the transformational pro­cess. At the same time the kin group and community begin to act out their respective roles, but with a degree of intense meditation and with an extraordinary focus that is developed further over the course of the remaining days. The h ­ ouse, yard, and f­ amily plot are all centers of ritual activity and are spaces dominated by specific genders and contrasting modes of conduct, each of which articulates both a spatial and moral order. 124  Yanique Hume

Food Preparation and Social Cohesion In my conversations with Dead Yard attendees, they often comment that the role of consoling and entertaining the bereaved is the primary purpose of the Nine Night. ­These twin pro­cesses are regulated by social customs and carried out in gender-­specific spaces within the ­house/yard complex. During the Nine Night, the interior of the ­house is occupied by the immediate kin network and not used as the principal site for entertaining guests. Instead, the semipublic verandah and yard space between the h ­ ouse and ­family plot is where ­people gather to talk, play games, drink, and share meals. Usually during the first few nights, female members of the f­ amily and close female friends come to offer assistance and com­pany for the bereaved. The ­women’s primary roles as caretakers, nurturers, and custodians of the sacred cultural traditions become amplified as they orchestrate some of the domestic duties and tasks associated with the Nine Night. The w ­ omen provide intimate and private support through consoling and conducting chores, while the men and all ­those gathered in the yard assist the bereaved f­ amily through entertaining ­those assembled. Men are responsible for the maintenance of the vital energy and life force needed to combat death. As protector of the yard, the public space where every­one congregates, they continually monitor the ethos of the proceedings through making sure that all pres­ent are attended to in some fashion or the other. They ensure that the proper emotional climate is maintained as indicated in one gentleman’s comments, “dis ya ah ded yaad . . . ​sadness nuh have a place ’ere” (this is a dead yard . . . ​sadness has no place ­here). The broad talking and per­for­mance of verbal dexterity, which is often expressed in the domain of the streets during the Nine Night, is given public license and sanctioned as part of Dead Yard activities to entertain the bereaved and likewise the spirits in the yard. Joking, as a specific genre of oral expression, becomes the one most utilized. Through spinning tales and rhymes, the man-­of-­words unites the community, ­family, and spirit world together within a unified social matrix (see Abrahams 1983). The jokes often depend on sexual banter to lift the spirits of the crowd and in turn bring life to an other­wise somber occasion. Kinship affiliations and an affirmation of one’s identity within this community are created through the collective endeavors associated with attending a Dead Yard. This bond of kinship extends beyond the par­ameters of having a blood connection or sharing the same name, to the inclusions of individuals who participate in the day-­to-­day and nightly activities of the wake. The preparation of food and its subsequent distribution among the The Jamaican Mortuary C ycle  125

community are central to ritual practices that occur both inside the home and also in the outdoor kitchen spaces where ceremonial meals are prepared. The cycle of food preparation in the mundane setting of everyday life is not suspended, but instead magnified during this heighted ritual frame through the sheer volume of production and the meticulous attention paid to executing each meal. Whereas w ­ omen traditionally prepare sandwiches, fry fish, stew chicken, and coco tea, as well as cook the ground provisions and rice and peas, men are called on to sacrifice and prepare the ram goat that ­will become the mannish ­water (goat head soup) and curry goat that both the living and dead consume.33 This separation of the cooking chores is out of re­spect of contact taboos relating to the bodily fluids of ­women. Menstrual blood is considered to be polluting and hot, thus able to sour the goat meat, rendering the meal inedible. In the ritual context of Nine Night, the moral obligation associated with bringing an offering of food or rum is reciprocated by the ­family’s obligation of providing a meal. The spirits are given an offering of a salt-­free meal,34 followed by the gravediggers, visitors, and f­ amily. This shared commensality serves to “maintain and renew the natu­ral kinship” (Durkheim [1915] 1965, 381) that unites the individuals in the community, that is, the living, vis­i­ble, and invisible worlds. But while ­there is a sense of communal bonding and reciprocity inherent in the wake, as activities move to the gravesite ­there is an increased public display of individual bravado and “anti­social” be­hav­ior. Spirit at a Crossroads: Rituals and Symbols of Liminality and the Role of the Gravediggers

The spatial uprooting of the dead in the opening rites of separation that begin in the home is followed by a series of preparatory activities in the ­family plot and gravesite, which aim to transfer the corpse while si­mul­ta­ neously transforming the spirit of the deceased. Critical to this phase of spiritual suspension are the gravediggers who transgress the sociospatial bound­aries between the vis­i­ble and invisible worlds and in the pro­cess use their verbal skills in playful, licentious oratories to subvert the ethos of sobriety that one would normally expect if death is viewed as a solemn occasion. As ambiguous social characters, gravediggers, like the newly deceased spirit stand “betwixt-­and-­between” the normative moral order as they straddle the spaces of life and death (Turner [1969] 1995, 95). They exist in a state 126  Yanique Hume

of “in-­betweenity” that in turn serves as a crucial conduit for reestablishing balance to the disrupted social order. In his analy­sis of a huge variety of ritual be­hav­ior across distinct cultures and customs, Van Gennep emphasizes ([1909] 1960) that t­ here exists an undergirding structural logic to the sequencing or pattern of rites, what Turner (1969) would ­later call “the ritual pro­cess.” Van Gennep shows that within rites of passage,35 ­there is a focus on the transition from one stage to a next. However, this transformation is mediated through a liminal stage. Victor Turner builds on the concept of liminality by stressing that it is a “state of transition” where social roles and moral values are suspended or reversed. During Nine Night, this notion of liminality takes full expression with the gravediggers, whose social identities are notoriously a source of tension, especially for ­those who adhere to the dictums and social mores of a Christian ethic. As one Dead Yard attendant retorted in disgust, “­Every Dead Yard me go to, is only so so drunken man dem ah dig grave” (­every dead yard I attend is filled with drunken men digging graves).36 The gravediggers thus stand as a social sign of disruption, yet their roles as the undertakers of the dead, who have “one foot in de grave and de other pon de earth,”37 speak to their embodiment of the “in-­betweenity” of the transitioning spirit. Outside of this ritual complex, ­these men are often respectable masons and carpenters making a living from their craft and adhering to the mandates of proper public decorum and mannerisms, but as gravediggers their drunken be­hav­ior becomes distinctly antisocial. They personify and exaggerate some of the more disdainful characteristics equated with improper social manners or as they say locally, “dem be’ave as doh dem ’av no broughtupsy” (they behave as though they had not been brought up properly). Crucial to their oral repertoire are sexually explicit and comical jokes and stories that emphasize the fecundity of ­women and hence life itself. Fortified with copious supplies of rum, given to them as payment for their ­labor, they make lascivious remarks about the exploits of the deceased as a means to cheer the spirit as it enters into the next stage of existence. This per­for­mance of their virility and bravado is punctuated by playful anecdotes, suggestive dancing and laughter,38 which serves to emphasize the triumph of life over death. However, the tools of their trade also give them the necessary armor required to interact with the spirit world, for it is commonly maintained that “a duppy w ­ ill never trou­ble a carpenter or tailor ­because they carry a rule.” The ability to manipulate numbers is a hallmark feature of the carpenter/ gravedigger and a distinguishing ele­ment separating ­humans from duppies. The Jamaican Mortuary C ycle  127

Just as their skills as masons or carpenters provide a source of power that counteracts the potentially contagious and harmful effect of interacting with the dead during this liminal time, likewise their expertise translates into their ability to appropriately construct the final resting place. It is believed that the land, which is the foundation of the home, must be blessed before any structure is erected and occupied. Likewise, the grave, which is the final home of the deceased, must undergo similar preparatory rites associated with building a ­house. As such, the earth is “watered” with rum ­until it becomes moist enough to be pierced with a fork or hoe. Some families offer a cock and sprinkle blood in the four corners and at the point in which the earth is initially punctured. The men wash their bodies with rum creating an invisible coat of protection before they turn the soil. This is especially noticeable in older f­ amily plots where ­there are several bodies interred. In the past (prior to the use of morgues in the 1950s), the digging of the grave started on the eve­ning of the first night and closed with the interment on the third. While con­temporary diggers can still take three days to complete the work of marking out the land, digging and packing the grave (day 1), constructing the vault and painting the interior walls (day 2), and interring the body and sealing the grave (day 3), this pro­cess may fall outside of the Nine Night ceremony. Notwithstanding the con­temporary context wherein ­people may take up to two weeks to several months to bury their dead as they await the arrival of relatives coming from abroad, the ritual acts of pouring libations and asking the spirits permission to disturb the soil and construct the vault is seldom altered. Traditionally masons and carpenters of the district volunteered their ser­vices to ­those less fortunate and at times the materials needed for the construction of the tomb w ­ ere credited if the f­ amily had financial difficulties. Unlike other building contracts, ­there was seldom an offer of monetary payment. Instead, remuneration was made in kind through food and rum. In offering food, often produced on one’s own land, as opposed to money, the ­family reaffirms the ritual economy of exchange that define the contours of social and kin networks. The food cultivated on the land is transferred to the gravediggers, who bear the responsibility of serving the newly deceased, the f­ amily, and the extended kin through digging the grave and constructing the final home for the dead. The tomb stands as a vis­i­ble structure on the ­family land that functions as a reminder of the presence of ancestral spirits and the metaphysical continuity that animates the interde­pen­dency of the living and the dead. ­Today gravediggers are charging for their ser­vice and in fact many supplement their income with their trade. 128  Yanique Hume

The Transition Home—­Tu’ning out the Spirit: Final Expulsion of the Newly Deceased

The capacity of the dead to harm as well as heal and help speaks to the profound power they hold over the lives of their living kin. The final ritual segment of the Nine Night focuses on rupturing this bond, which due to the recent death is perverted by the spirit’s attachment to its previous station in life among the living. Although the corpse is removed from the h ­ ouse on the first day, the spirit of the deceased still lingers around the familiar spaces that it inhabited while alive. The proper realignment of the dead, living kin, and community around the spatial matrix of the h ­ ouse/yard and plot depends on the expulsion of the spirit from the home through the final rite known locally as “tu’ning out the spirit”—­“turning out the spirit.” The termination of the formal social relations the duppy has with the living is expressed in the “destruction” of the bedroom, which represents the intimate, procreative center in the ­family home. For nine nights the bedroom once occupied by the deceased remains vacant, untouched, and illuminated by a lamp. The reconfiguration of the bedroom or “turning out the spirit” is conducted by the closest relative of the deceased and involves a complex series of cleansing rituals. Chief among them is the dismantling and removal of furniture, especially the bed, which is turned over three times before being placed on the reassembled bed frame. The contents of the room are taken out of the room, thus severing the ties that the duppy had to its former material existence while ­family members sprinkle the room with coarse rock salt and sweep the ceiling, walls and floor, reciting psalms as they cleanse the space. The debris is then collected in parchment paper and placed at the threshold of the entrance to the room. Clothes, shoes, toiletries, and other personal effects are also gathered and placed in a barrel and passed through the win­dow into the yard, so as not to contaminate the room or the rest of the h ­ ouse that has under­gone a week of cleansing. The barrel is ­later stored under­neath the ­house in the cellar u ­ ntil ­after the fortieth night, when the contents are ­later distributed to ­family friends and close friends of the deceased. Most ­houses in the villages where I conducted my research had sections of the h ­ ouse raised a few feet off the ground, while other homes had underground storage areas or cellars that ­were quite small and used primarily to place animals in inclement weather or store ground provisions. Incidentally, like rites of the preliminary stage, this final separation recalls the postpartum rite of burying the afterbirth under­neath the ­house. The material refuse of both infant and the debris from the room of the newly deceased The Jamaican Mortuary C ycle  129

are placed beneath the surface, thus, once again illustrating that death and life are both part of the same continuum. Central to this concept of turning out the spirit is the ideology of inversions, which have strong meta­phorical and cultural implications for understanding the complex ritual pro­cess of the Nine Night. In his study of Kongo cosmology, art historian Robert Farris Thompson offers the following observations: “The inversion of pierced white basins and other vessels is common in many Kongo cemeteries. Indeed, the verb, ‘to be upside down’ in Ki-­Kongo also means ‘to die.’ Moreover, inversions signifies perdurance, as a visual pun on the superior strengths of the ancestors, for the root of bikinda, ‘to be upside down, to be in the realm of the ancestors, to die’ is kinda, ‘to be strong,’ ‘­because ­those who are upside down, who die, are strongest’ (1984, 142). The pro­cess of turning out the dead involves a series of performative ritual acts of inversion including taking the door off the hinge and turning it three times; flipping the light switch on and off; turning over the mattress three times; sweeping the ceiling, the walls, and then the floor; painting the walls a dif­fer­ent color; and fi­nally moving all the furniture out of the bedroom before moving them back in and changing the orientation of the room. Deploying ­these prescribed ritual technologies punctuate the social distance between the dead and the living and communicate to the dead that they are no more of the world of the living. As one ritual specialist remarked, “the duppy cyan feel seh ’im can draw up inna bed wid de living afta ’im dead; dats why we tu’n out every­thing so he ­don’t recognize di place ’im did once live” (The newly deceased spirit cannot return to his place of residence to lie down in his bed; that is why we turn out the place so he does not recognize where he lives). This par­tic­u­lar view is part of the moral landscape of Jamaica and informs many social customs around safeguarding one’s person and home.39 In placing the contents of the private, interior domestic space outside in the yard, the separation of the deceased is made a social and public event. It would appear that it is through the act of making the separation social—­ out in the yard—­along with the reconfiguration of the bedroom that ­family members are able to restructure their domestic space (the ­house) and usher the deceased into his/her living space (the ­family plot). The ­family land or yard is what unifies t­ hese two distinct spaces in one locale. Both living and the dead have their respective ­houses on the land, and this latter stage of the ritual highlights that as the activities move out into the yard and in the vicinity of the f­ amily plot where the spirit is to be h ­ oused. The spatial distinction 130  Yanique Hume

of ­house and yard is continuously negotiated throughout the Nine Night, but the greatest transgression is achieved during the “turning-­out” of the duppy, which culminates with an exuberant cele­bration in the yard between the ­house and the plot. ­These final ritual acts move in and out of the domesticity of the ­house to the public space of the yard, realigning the social equilibrium. While ­there may be alterations to the sequencing or less elaborate rites to expel the spirit of the deceased, the rupture that is caused by death is understood to necessitate a reordering of the domestic space. The symbolic inversions of the bedroom thus “cleans out the spirit,” rendering it ready for habitation once again. Conclusion: Tracing Our Lineage in the Earth

In speaking with modern-­day Jamaicans, it becomes evident that rituals of remembrance, such as Nine Night, are understood to be part of an inherited custom that emerged out of a tumultuous history of enslavement. Yet at the same time, the Dead Yard, as an affective ritual complex, is not a static antiquated “tradition” but part of the cultural psyche that reflects the interior moral landscape of a p ­ eople’s deepest values and sentiments. The commemorative rites refashioned over time and space placed ritual action at the center of a psychosocial imperative to be ­free. In much the same way, urban bling funerals push the normative codes of respectable conduct and in turn articulate an emancipatory ethos. The system of land tenure that arose in the immediate wake of Emancipation and the rites in honor of ancestral kin that ­were refashioned and honed during the period of enslavement come together in a synergistic way in the Nine Night. The land becomes the sacred vessel of the past that ­houses the spirits of t­ hose who have gone before and the hopes of t­ hose yet to come. As the site where the earliest articulations of freedom ­were first realized, ­family land is literally and meta­phor­ically a potent emblem of both individual and collective identity and personhood. The wake complex traditions or funerary practices in Jamaica, which conjoined the symbolic potency of f­amily land with that of ancestral veneration, reveal the repository of indigenous sacred knowledge embedded in the folklore of the ­people. ­These sacred traditions also reflect an alternative epistemology and ideology of freedom that subverted the civilizing mission of Chris­tian­ity and the repressive colonial apparatus. The myriad “monuments to the dead” (V. Brown 2008) that take the shape of white-­washed or tiled tombs that cover the rural landscape or, in The Jamaican Mortuary C ycle  131

the case of urban settings, murals in honor of the dead, stand as testament to this protracted history of continual self-­fashioning and articulations of belonging. Nine Night, as a form of ancestral veneration, and a specific type of embodied ritual practice, reflects a cosmological orientation that honors the balance between the invisible and vis­i­ble worlds. The pro­cess of restoring social and kin networks ­after death illuminates the mutual intertwining of the lifecycle. At the same time, orienting the living and dead to their respective abodes reflects the inherent spatial dimension to this funerary rite. Through the deployment of ritual technologies of inversion, the world of the newly deceased is literally turned upside down so that the world of the living can be restored. Wakes are key sites of sociability where participation in the communal gathering to honor the deceased structures the ritual logic of the event, which serves to entertain the living and the dead as both transition from one state to a next. W ­ hether performed on ­family land or in an urban compound, ­these commemorative acts of sociability situate the individual within a network of ­people who share in each ­others’ lives as kin, friend, or neighbor. The sea has been the unifying meta­phor utilized to explore the passage of African religious grammars across the Amer­i­cas. This is most noted in the Haitian concept of the afterworld, where spirits of the dead travel across the sea back to their ancestral home in Ginen and likewise ­those of the Kumina universe where spirits cross the kalunga or marshy watery abyss leading back to Africa. As a site of rupture and continuity, the sea, and, in par­tic­u­lar, the Atlantic, has been ­imagined as a generative site to commence research on Afro-­Atlantic religious cultures. While the traditions of our ancestors traveled across the Atlantic, the religiosity of the Jamaican ­people grew in part out of their relationship with the land. The burial plot reveals the enduring potency of ­family land as a site of identity and belonging, as a space where one’s ­family line in the New World commences. On August  13, 2006, my beloved grand­mother transitioned. Like the many who went before, she was planted in the soil among other ancestral kin on the land she made her home and left for her descendants for generations to come. In celebrating her life, we followed the customs of gathering in the yard night ­after night, and on the occasion of the Set-Up we hired a band to play traditional hymns to entertain the multitudes that assembled on the eve of her burial. As eve­ning turned to night we recognized that while the words w ­ ere familiar, the rhythmic structure that accompanied them was faster, taking on a distinctive dance hall cadence. F­ amily members continued to ­labor to ensure that every­one was comfortable, but over the course of 132  Yanique Hume

the night enterprising villa­gers began to set up stalls selling pan chicken and soft drinks, and when they ­were asked to move from the front yard, they simply responded that they ­were ­there to offset the pressures of trying to feed so many p ­ eople. In the course of the eleven years separating my planting my ­brother into the earth and dancing my grand­mother into the otherworld, I have witnessed the tides of ritual change and have come to appreciate Jamaican mortuary practices as a distinctively blurred genre blending dif­fer­ent worldviews, social customs, and aesthetic markers. A ­simple bifurcation of respectable rural forms and resistant urban expressions belies the fact that funerary rites are not hermetically sealed. While backyard burials are u ­ nder threat by new regulatory legislations,40 what I have argued in this essay is that the primacy of the land still remains paramount. Our collective bodily ­labor around the gravesite each year to beautify our ­family plots beckons us all to remember our past and the many who saw the importance of leaving something tangible b ­ ehind. The ability of generations to trace their lineage in the soil indicates that our unity is as much subterranean, as it is submarine!41 Notes 1. “­Family land” refers to a customary practice of land tenure whereby property that was originally owned by one’s foreparents is passed down to all f­ amily members in perpetuity. Despite efforts of the authorities to regularize the owner­ship of land by seeking that ­there be registered titles for properties, in many parts of Jamaica the concept and practice of ­family land still dominate. See Besson (1984, 1995, 2002); Besson and Momsen (1987); Car­ne­gie (1987); Crichlow (1994); Olwig (1999). 2. The concept of “matrifocality” or “matricentricity,” which explores the phenomenon of female-­headed ­house­holds, is one of the areas of sustained academic inquiry in the anthropology of the Ca­rib­bean. For an overview on the anthropology of the region see Trouillot (1992); Slocum and Thomas (2003). 3. All of your ­family have their navel strings buried ­under ­these trees so they know that they belong to this land. 4. You must wipe off the headstones first and then wipe the tombs before painting three coats of paint to each tomb starting from the top down to the bottom and fi­nally the sides; do not come inside before you are finished. Across rural Jamaica, one of the most quin­tes­sen­tial sites are the burial plots on f­ amily land often painted white or decorated with black-­and-­white tiles. 5. Take your time to remember as you work and plant your ­brother in the ground. The fact that Steve was buried in the United States away from his land and country of origin was devastating. My grand­mother’s instruction to use my thoughts and ­labor to capture and plant his soul in the earth was a way to unite him with the rest of our relatives buried in the ­family plot. The Jamaican Mortuary C ycle  133

6. A Farin’ or “foreign” is a term that references the vast expanse of territories outside of the national bound­aries of Jamaica. 7. Georg Simmel formulated the concept of the “stranger” as a so­cio­log­i­cal form or type in 1908 to speak of an individual who participates within a specific group but is situated as distant from other natives. Within this concept, social distance is emphasized over nearness. For further reformulations of the “stranger” see also Bauman (1991). 8. Patricia Hill Collins (1986) expounds on the so­cio­log­i­cal concept of the stranger to discuss the category of the “outsider-­within” as a generative standpoint from which Black feminist thought is articulated. The “outsider-­within” pres­ents a critical posture from which personal and cultural biographies intervene in the telling of stories and exploration of so­cio­log­i­cal paradigms. 9. Bling funerals, also called “dance hall funerals” are often reserved for “dons” or community leaders of inner-­city neighborhoods. They are marked by an aesthetic of high effect and visibility whereby mourners parade in the latest dance hall fashions ­behind a pro­cession of fantasy coffins and designer hearses. ­These funerals have expanded over the course of the past de­cade and have been instrumental in the growth of a lucrative mortuary industry in Kingston. 10. Regarding the transmission of African ritual technologies within the Black Atlantic, see Diakité and Hucks (2013). Nine Night or Dead Yard refers to a funerary tradition practiced in Jamaica and other parts of the Ca­rib­bean. This extended wake functions as a festive event of communal gathering with the dual purpose of separating and containing the divine energy of the newly deceased spirit while si­mul­ta­neously cheering up the bereaved. The emotive sentiments of ­these ritually charged social events blur the bound­aries of the sacred and the profane as solemnity is suspended and in its place a celebratory ethos ensues. For a masterful dramaturgical rendition of Nine Night see Dennis Scott (1974). The Jamaican Nine Night has been the subject of scholarly investigations as noted in the work of Zora Neale Hurston ([1910] 1938); Elizabeth Pigou (1987); George Simpson (1957); and Huon Wardle (2000). While initially performed over the course of nine nights, many families do not have the economic means to entertain over a protracted period and instead opt to observe a celebratory vigil on the eve of the funeral or Set-Up. 11. This practice is, however, shifting. In conversations with gravediggers, they attest to a change in values whereby some families remain respectful by not disturbing the plot but instead cultivating their crops around the site, using trees to naturally shield the graves. ­Others are, however, bulldozing the land or removing the tombs but keeping the vaults intact. 12. For more on the relationship between the plot and plantation see Wynter (1971, 99). For a con­temporary revisiting of this phenomenon, see Forbes (2012). 13. This observation and terminology of “top” and “bottom” yard grew out of interviews and informal discussions about ­f amily genealogies constructed from data I collected from 1996 to 1999 in the parishes of Clarendon and Manchester. 14. Chevannes (2001, 130–131). 15. Pierre Nora’s concept of lieux de mémoire (1989) captures the emotive sentiment that specific sites, such as a ­family plot, engender. ­These sites or entities, ­whether material or nonmaterial, represent a store­house of remembered values. “Sites of memory are where [cultural] memory crystallizes and secrets itself ” (7). Likewise Roger Bastide 134  Yanique Hume

speaks of the “localization of memories in material objects that endure in social time” (2007, 247). Memory is thus more durable once it has a tangible, material dimension or is linked to a specific landmark or site. 16. The mortuary cycle punctuates the passage of the deceased in four to five communal moments. Nocturnal collective gathering in the home of the deceased marks the first nine nights. This is followed by the “Set-­Up” or keeping the final vigil in the yard or home (in the absence of ­family land). The day ­after the Set-Up is the funeral and interment. In some communities, most notably in the parish of Hanover, the fortieth night, also conducted at night, is celebrated with feasting, speeches, and dancing. The tombing, like the final vigil, is universally practiced and involves the final “sealing” of the tomb by building the characteristics tiers and the placing of the headstone. Tombing ceremonies are performed usually a year ­after the funeral, but can take place several years or even a de­cade ­after death depending on the financial circumstance of the ­family. The tombing is usually conducted in the day ­either on the ­family land or in the churchyard and climaxes with a communal meal. For ­those unable to attend the funeral ser­vice, the tombing pres­ents another occasion for collective gathering among kin, especially ­those from overseas, who often assist with the cost of the event. See Horst (2004) for more on the significance of tombing. Most of the dances preserved as Jamaican folk forms ­were traditionally performed at wakes and ­were linked to traditions in specific parishes, such as the shawling dance, known as Ettu and performed in Hanover, Dinki Mini in St. Mary, Zella in Portland, Gerreh in West­moreland. ­These dances of supplication and reverence form part of the “wake complex” (i.e., per­for­mance traditions specific to the mortuary cycle) and are centered around cheering the bereaved while also elevating the spirit of the newly deceased. Other funerary dances of the Anglophone Ca­rib­bean would include the Big Drum and nation dances of Carriacou, and the Bongo found in Trinidad and Tobago. See Ryman (1980) for more on Jamaican folk dances. For more on Ca­rib­bean dance see Daniel (2011). 17. For more on this concept of Jamaican bourgeois respectability/sensibility, see Deborah Thomas (2004) and Edmonson (2009). 18. For more on the rejection of spirits within Rastafari theology, see Heron and Hume (2012) and Chevannes (1994). 19. Kenneth Bilby (1999) furthers this line of argument by exploring the ideological purchase of Ethiopia for Rasta with that of Ginen for Haitian vodouisants. However, unlike Rastas, who have no sentimental attachment to land, among vodouisants t­ here is a coexistence of this otherworldly, mythical realm embodied in the concept of Ginen with that of eritaj, or “­family land” where the dead are installed in their mausoleums and earthen vessels. For more on Haitian mortuary rites, see Karen Richman in this volume. 20. For more on the treatment of death in Rastafarian cosmology see Chevannes (1999). 21. As an example, Revival and Kumina are two religious cultures whereby spirits and ancestors play a pivotal role. See D. Stewart (2005). 22. For more on duppies, jumbies, and shadows, see also Barrett (1976, 41–44); Bryan (2000, 40–41); Hurston ([1938] 1990, 43–56); Simpson (1965, 24–25 and 76–78); and Gibson (2001). 23. Obeah is a term that references an amalgamated spiritual universe of beliefs and practices from diverse religious healing traditions of Africa refashioned over time in the The Jamaican Mortuary C ycle  135

enslaved communities of the Ca­rib­bean. According to religion scholar Dianne Stewart, Obeah during the slave period “was multilayered and came to be associated with manifestations of elaborate African-­derived systems of communal belief and practice as well as solo prac­ti­tion­ers’ assertions of power via the exercise of specialized knowledge of forces and spirits. Obeah was capacity, strategy, as well as weapon (for defensive protection against White aggression and for offensive attack on White aggression)” (2005, 62). For more on the criminalization and healing dimensions of Obeah, see Bilby and Handler (2004); Paton and Forde (2012); and Handler and Bilby (2012). 24. The concept of symbolic and ritual inversions has been a rich field of inquiry within anthropology, especially noted in the Manchester School of British Social Anthropology. See, for example, Gluckman (1962); and Turner ([1969] 1995). 25. I have conducted research on the Jamaican mortuary cycle since 1995. The ethnographic data on rural Nine Night ceremonies presented ­here ­were gathered principally from White Shop and Sanguinetti District in the parish of Clarendon and Chantilly, Manchester, during the period of 1995–1997 and again in 2006. When pos­si­ble I discuss some of the changes ­these rites have under­gone over the fourteen years that I have been participating in and analyzing them. Information was collected through participant-­ observation at dead yards and interviews with ­family and community members as well as archival research at the African Ca­rib­bean Institute of Jamaica (acij) and the Jamaican National Library. What is presented ­here is the general sequential order of the events of Nine Night with an interpretation of their enduring symbolic, structural, and philosophical significance. 26. Prior to the advent of funeral homes in rural Jamaica in the mid 1950s, the corpse would remain in the home for three days on ice before being buried in the late morning or early after­noon of the third day. According to residents in White Shop District in Clarendon, this practice of preparing the body in the home persisted among the poorer communities well into the late 1970s and early 1980s. ­Today families may take a week or as long as a month to finalize burial arrangements. The funeral is often detained to await the arrival of ­family coming in from overseas or to accumulate the necessary funds required to cover the cost of such an undertaking. 27. While ­these rites are still in existence ­today, especially in rural environments, fewer ­people are observing them and even less know why they are performed. Many I have interviewed simply regard the practice as being “tradition” or what the “old p ­ eople use to do.” Yet even with waning knowledge, many still recognize the spatial distinction in treating a newborn and the dead. For further exploration of this Jamaican folk custom, see Beckwith (1929). 28. In con­temporary Jamaica ­there is a collapsing of all the rites and social activities associated with the protracted nine nights of commemorative feasting and cele­bration into the night before or eve of the ­actual funeral. The Set-Up, as it is called, refers to the act of keeping vigil or staying up for the duration of the night till dawn, singing, dancing, and engaging in merriment. “Set-Up” also references the act of creating the space of social interaction through setting up a tent where ­those in attendance assem­ble and setting up food stalls or ­tables with refreshments. 29. For more on the correspondence of death and inversion from the perspective of a Kongo aesthetic and philosophical system, see Robert Farris Thompson (1981, 1984). 136  Yanique Hume

30. Interview conducted with Dead Yard attendee Eli Robinson in Sanguinetti, Clarendon, November 17, 2002. Dancing the coffin is an example of a per­for­mance practice that can be found across the Afro-­Atlantic, for example, the Second Line jazz funeral pro­cessions in New Orleans (see Roach 1996; and Regis 1999) and also the less well-­ known casket dance performed by the Afro-­Creole population in Suriname. 31. See, specifically, Lewis (1834); Long ([1774] 1970); and Phillippo ([1834] 1970). 32. According to Baptist missionary James Phillippo, “When on the way with the corpse to interment, the ­bearers, who ­were often intoxicated, practiced the most strange and ridicu­lous maneuvers. They would sometimes make a sudden halt, put their ears in a listening attitude against the coffin, pretending that the corpse was endowed with the gift of speech—­that he was angry and required to be appeased, gave instructions for a dif­fer­ent distribution of his property, objected to his mode of conveyance, or refused to proceed farther ­towards the place of burial ­until some debts due to him ­were discharged, some slanderous imputation on his character removed, some theft confessed, or ­until they (the ­bearers) ­were presented with renewed potations of rum” (1843, 244–245). For more on this tradition, see Vincent Brown (2008). 33. In fact, men cook for all significant ceremonial occasions representing a rite of passage including christenings, weddings, and funerals. Contact taboos also inform Rastafari perceptions around food preparation. The concept of feeding the spirits cut across the religious cultures of the African diaspora. While the offering of libations and sacrificial blood are the two channels for assuaging the divine, it is also believed that the dead commune with the living through sharing in a meal. To this end, a small plate of saltless food is set aside for the dead, who are appeased by the recognition that they are still remembered by the living. The plate of food would be eventually discarded or consumed by animals, but the gesture of the offering is what is deemed impor­tant. 34. Salt is a deterrent that repels spirits. Coarse rock salt is used in the closing rites of the Nine Night, when the room is turned out and salted from top to bottom as a sign that the spirit is no longer welcomed in the home. During the occasion of offering food, you do not want to offend or ward off ancestral kin, for their presence is tantamount to ushering the newly deceased along its journey to the afterlife. Instead, t­ hese spirits are given unsalted food as well as sweet and translucent liquids such as cream soda and sugar and ­water. 35. According to Peter Metcalf and Richard Huntington, “The concept of the rite of passage stands close to the center of three major issues in modern social anthropology: the integration of the individual into society, the nature of symbolic meaning, and the moral and intellectual relativity of cultures” (1991, 11). 36. Comment made by Mrs. Inez Robinson, Dead Yard in Mizpah, Manchester, December 10, 2003. 37. Interview with gravedigger, Clive Francis, White Shop District, Clarendon, March 15, 1998. 38. For more discussion on the importance and creative tension between play and work in Afro-­Caribbean rituals and per­for­mance practices, see McAlister (2002). In the context of Nine Night, the outward veneer of social misconduct and jest cloaks the serious physical and spiritual ­labor required to assist the deceased as well as the ­family and community of mourners transitioning from one state to a next and thus reestablishing an equilibrium that is other­wise disrupted. The Jamaican Mortuary C ycle  137

39. As an example, ­there are a host of practices including the pouring of “spirits” or hard liquor in the earth, the throwing of salt ­behind to ensure nothing remained, the sprinkling of white rum in the corners to appease the spirits who may have dwelled in a home, turning counterclockwise ­after leaving a Dead Yard or when a glass breaks, a ­woman being made to wear red drawers inside out with a small scissors sewn inside to ensure their protection from the advances of the spirits of their dead husband. 40. Interring a body on ­family land now requires prior approval from the Parish Council and Health Department. The threat of contaminating the w ­ ater ­table is the official reason for regulating “backyard funerals.” However, also of growing concern are the complaints about ruining the aesthetics of an area and bringing down the property value of a district. 41. This concept of “submarine” is taken from Kamau Braithwaite’s closing line of “Ca­rib­bean Man in Space and Time,” where in explaining the cultural development in Ca­rib­bean socie­ties he states, “the unit is submarine.”

138  Yanique Hume

chapter 5

Mortuary Rites and Social Dramas in Léogâne, Haiti Karen Richman

A scholarly tendency to see Haitians, and Ca­rib­bean persons generally, as in­de­pen­dent individuals who engage in dyadic relations with other autonomous actors has obscured contrary evidence of a central collectivist institution of rural ritual and social structure: land-­based, cognatic descent groups that trace their beginnings to the mid-­nineteenth ­century. The Kreyòl term eritaj signifies the interdependent web of relations between and among living, deceased, and spiritual members of landholding descent groups. A sacred landmark of eritaj identity is the shrine that h ­ ouses the collection of earthenware jars dedicated to ­every ancestor whose soul has been transformed through the primary and secondary mortuary rituals, known as “sending the dead into the ­water” and “taking the dead out of the ­water.” The mò, the deceased veterans of t­ hese rites of passage, can then play a critical role in the well-­being of the heirs, ­because they mediate communication between the living and their spirits (lwa), whose power­ful sway derives from their inclination to harm and to help lineal kin. ­There are other meanings and purposes to t­ hese elaborately staged, nighttime mortuary rites, including providing the frame for an extended, two-­ installment “social drama” (Turner 1957). During the secondary funerary rite, which can take place a year ­after the first phase, a pithy, cryptic, and crucial exchange is expected to take place between the new ancestor and the living. The living need to know the cause of death. The medium coaxes the mò inside a small white tent, which, lighted by a candle, glows dramatically against the darkness. Speaking through the medium, the mò is expected to explain, or at least provide hints to, the cause of death. The secondary mortuary ritual in turn produces what Turner (1982, 181) called “metatheatre”—­the

communication about the communication pro­cess, spectators, and actors reflect upon how the actors do what they do on stage, “the ability to communicate about the communication pro­cess itself.” Depending on one’s interpretation of the per­for­mance, the interchange may bring cathartic healing and peace to some and further accusation and anxiety to o ­ thers. The disembodied voice, while speaking through the medium, may address additional interpersonal conflicts and immoral be­hav­iors, which threaten the interdependence of the eritaj as well. Death as Transition

The study of death as a socially constituted and culturally mediated pro­cess, as opposed to a plain biological fact, began determinedly at the turn of the twentieth ­century with Robert Hertz’s text “A Contribution to the Study of the Collective Repre­sen­ta­tion of Death” ([1907, 1909] 2004). Hertz offered an explication of mortuary logics of death as an integrated symbolic pro­ cess involving the deceased (corpse), the soul, and the living. The model reflected Hertz’s deep familiarity with the details of Indonesian mortuary practices and double disposal of the dead, especially, albeit based on a limited number of second­hand reports. Meanwhile, Arnold van Gennep ([1909] 1960) applied a complementary method of inquiry into death rituals in The Rites of Passage, comparing a wide variety of travelers’, administrators’, and other protoethnographers’ reports. He concluded that constructions and cele­brations of life and death everywhere conform to the tripartite model governing all rites of passage involving separation, transition, and incorporation. According to Van Gennep, the transition between socially constituted identities was universally i­ magined as a spatial passage across territorial and maritime zones, the se­lection of which draws upon “the perceived landscape of that par­tic­u­lar world” (153). Mortuary rites practiced in western Haiti clearly illustrate the models elaborated by Hertz and Van Gennep more than a ­century ago. In both contexts, death occasions a complex, prolonged transition, a rite of passage involving first and second funerals and clearly delineated stages of separation, transition, and incorporation that take place over a year or more. At the end of the pro­cess, the deceased becomes an ancestor who can be consulted from the deceased’s seat in the shrine. Death rituals constitute major collective, public events involving prayer, feasting, singing, and pro­cessions. The rites are the result and symbol of substantial financial contributions from the heirs, especially ­those working abroad. In the western Haitian context, 140  Karen Richman

the primary mortuary rite separates the deceased from this world and sends them “­under the ­water.” The deceased remains in a symbolically indeterminate and vulnerable state of transition u ­ ntil the enactment of a secondary mortuary rite. The retrieval of the mò from the liquid abyss occurs a year or more ­later. For an island ­people with a deep historical consciousness of having come from across an ocean, from Ginen, w ­ ater pres­ents a power­ful material symbol. At the secondary rite, therefore, a basin of w ­ ater awaits the deceased soul upon reentry to the earth. Afterward, when the deceased “wants” to return for f­ uture visits, they ­will find a comfortable, dry home in the dedicated earthenware vase (govi) in the ­family shrine. An impor­tant finding by both Hertz and Van Gennep is not only that the dead have to make a symbolic journey into a new status, but also that ­those touched by death have equally to move through the states of a rite of passage. “The transitional period of the living is a counterpart of the transitional period of the deceased, and the termination of the first sometimes coincides with the termination of the second—­that is, with the incorporation of the deceased into the world of the dead” (Van Gennep [1909] 1960, 147). Hertz explained the rationale: “when a man dies, society loses in him much more than a unit; it is stricken in the very princi­ple of life, in the faith it has in itself ” ([1907, 1909] 2004, 78). He added that “death as a social phenomenon consists in a dual and painful pro­cess of ­mental disintegration and synthesis” (86). ­Until they are reintegrated without their lost “member,” the bereaved are like “social amputees” (Metcalf and Huntington 1991, 84). Victor Turner (1967) shed further light on the linkage between the transition of the dead and the patterning of the emotions of ­these social amputees over a ritually demarcated period of time. Their ethnography of the Ndembu focused on the liminal qualities of ritual subjects in the transitional phase, which suspends them ambiguously “betwixt and between” statuses of “no longer and not yet.” Haitians’ practice of extending the transitional phase to one year or more demonstrates their sense that at least twelve months are needed for the social amputees to prepare to be fitted with a new “social prosthesis” at the close of the second (and final) mortuary rite. The Organ­ization of Mortuary Rites in Haiti

A fundamental anthropological finding of Hertz’s classic text on death as a social pro­cess is that it is also situated in par­tic­u­lar cultural contexts. Primary and secondary burial practices in Indonesia, he demonstrated, only Mortuary Rites in Léogâne , Haiti  141

make sense as they articulate basic local categories and ideas about persons and ­things and life and death. In similar fashion, death rites in Léogâne hence reflect and, in turn, reproduce the society’s key institutions and moral concepts, which are epitomized by the word eritaj, literally meaning inheritance. Eritaj signifies the interdependence linking par­tic­u­lar inherited spirits, lineal ancestors, and living descendants and their inherited land. The ultimate purpose of the primary and secondary rites is to place the soul in this symbiotic chain of relation. In sum, death, if handled appropriately, is supposed to ensure the connection of the ancestor’s “life” to society ­after the body breathes its last breath. Given the high priority of each kin member’s final rites of passage, mortuary rituals can be the most elaborate, extensive, and costly rituals celebrated by ordinary Haitians. The “eloquent décor of death” in Haitian society mirrors Philippe Ariès’s description of nineteenth-­century French practices: “funeral pro­cessions, mourning clothes, the spread of cemeteries and of their surface areas, visits and pilgrimages to tombs, the cult of memory” (Ariès 1974, 106). Staged interior photographic and videographic images of a coiffed and beautified, embalmed protagonist at rest in a shiny lacquered coffin, surrounded by f­amily members who gather from lands near and far add a modern twist to the long-­established lavish spectacle of death. As they circulate across transnational Haitian communities, the pictures pres­ent status-­affirming testimonies of mortuary expenditures. Outside the funerary studio, landscape visually proclaims the salience of death’s eloquent décor through spacious burial monuments of cement block, often decorated with forged iron and tile, which pose a striking and appropriate contrast to the quality and cost of the h ­ ouses inhabited by the deceased during their lifetimes.1 Thus it is normal for elders to talk positively about their expectation of death and of the pomp and circumstance that ­will represent their individual character, worth, and social and religious connections. ­Those with substantial economic assets ensure the extent of the spectacle when they oversee the building of their own tombs, which they can often see from their home location, and they may also select and prepare their own funeral attire. As death draws near, the d ­ ying play active roles in orchestrating their departure. They typically die at home, where or near where they w ­ ere born, and the body remains ­there, as if still participating in the ­family’s activities, ­until it is readied for burial. The recently departed w ­ ill be expected to speak briefly to the bereaved at the end of the first funeral and to talk again at the secondary rites a year 142  Karen Richman

or more ­later. The Ndyuka of Suriname confer a similarly active role to the deceased (van Wetering [1979] 1996 and Thoden van Velzen and van Wetering 2004, and this volume). At the initial funerary rites, the deceased soul is thought to direct the movements of the coffin to reveal the location of the witch(es) who stole the deceased’s life. A ­ fter the final rite, as in the Haitian context, the Ndyuka ancestor can and should remain involved with the living, interacting with them at the shrine and visiting them in dreams. The attribution of significant moral authority to the d ­ ying and the dead prob­ably harks back as much to French premodern beliefs and rituals as to West and Central African sources. Ariès (1974) describes how in the ­Middle Ages, the ­dying person directed action continuously from the deathbed to the wake, while the bereaved expressed unrestrained grief. Eu­ro­pean attitudes t­ oward death subsequently underwent a “brutal revolution” to efface the fact of death and render fatality shameful and forbidden. Ironically, con­ temporary Eu­ro­pean and American cultures, which privilege individualism, have made death a taboo, reduced the d ­ ying to passive roles, and denied the grieving the right to mourn (Gorer 1965). Metcalf and Huntington (1991) report that Americans tend to feel that the ­dying is better off not knowing the truth about their terminal condition (201). Embalming further prevents confrontation with the putrefaction of the corpse and fixes the final comforting image of a passive body at peace. No doubt the modern funeral industry has played an inordinate role in the alienation of control over death. By the mid-­ twentieth ­century, morticians had “acquired the éclat of a medical profession” (not long ­after healers themselves constituted a medical profession) (Metcalf and Huntington 1991, 209). Funerals in con­temporary Léogâne incorporate t­ hese two opposed models of the role of the d ­ ying in their own death, the one attributing agency to the individual and the other reducing the departed to peaceful quiescence. The two models are spatially and temporally distributed. The ­dying directs their own passing and intervenes a­ fter burial, at the end of the mourning period, and again at the secondary rites discussed below, which install the deceased as an ancestor. In the interim period between death and burial, a modern funeral industry takes professional control of the care, preparation, and pre­ sen­ta­tion of the corpse. In the other­wise moribund economy of Léogâne, several competing “funeral parlors” represent a rare sector of economic growth. As major events in the translocal community’s religious and social calendar, funerals constitute the subject of significant, comparative and competitive social discourse. Murray (1980, 314) observed that the ­family of the Mortuary Rites in Léogâne , Haiti  143

deceased feels “incalculably strong social pressure to make substantial expenditures.” ­Those who fail to provide adequate refreshment for guests at funerals may expect to “meet(s) immediate, vigorous, and open public criticism” in the forms of blatant spoken remarks or songs whose barbs are indirectly embedded in the lyr­ics. Financing for the construction of respectably ample tombs and abundant mortuary feasts is expected to come from “outside,” that is, f­ amily members who are working abroad. In the case of Léogâne ­today, a significant portion of the f­ amily, and the deceased himself or herself, may be outside. Hence in addition to representing a religious rite of passage, for ­these transnational communities, funerals also symbolize a significant social ritual of return. Contrary to some outsiders’ assumptions, migration has not diminished mi­grant members’ ritual obligations; indeed mi­grants are expected to shoulder the burdens of ever-­more-­exorbitant ritual costs for lineal kin. Particularly reflective of the adaptation of mortuary rituals to the transnational dispersal of the kin is the delayed timing of burials and funerals ­today. It is not uncommon for a corpse to stay in a morgue for a month or more while mi­grant kin work to muster the temporal, social, and financial capital to support the costs of storage and preparation of the patiently waiting corpse, transnational and local travel, mourning attire for all lineal kin, generous feasts for days on end, Catholic funeral Mass, musicians for the pro­cession to the cemetery, burial, and the primary and secondary rites discussed below. As practiced throughout Haiti ­today, the rites generally include wake, a church funeral, and pro­cession to the kin group’s cemetery led by musicians and burial. A ­ fter a Catholic funeral, the mourners observe a nine-­day-­long mourning period, in which relatives and neighbors of the deceased gather nightly to mourn, chant Catholic hymns, socialize, re­create, and cajole the dead (with food) to take leave of the living for the world of the ancestors. The culminating “final prayer” (denye priyè) may precede or coincide with an elaborate and generous banquet for the guest of honor—­the one who is dead—­and for scores of discriminating relatives and neighbors equally presuming to be received with generosity and grace. ­After “the final prayer,” as part of a relatively modest ritual, the ritual specialist/shaman (gangan ason [male] or manbo ason [female]) performs the ceremony known as dragozen, which “sends” the spirit of the deceased “­under the ­water” (anba dlo) far below the earth’s surface. Before departing, the spirit of the deceased typically attempts to speak to the f­ amily but the deceased’s fragile voice, sounded through that of the gangan ason, fades out before they can communicate anything conclusive. The ­family is resigned to 144  Karen Richman

wait ­until the ancestor emerges to “speak” at the far more elaborate and expensive “retrieval from the ­waters” (wete mò nan dlo) ceremony to learn more fully the circumstances of the deceased’s death. No sooner than a year and a day, but sometimes as long as several years ­later, the gangan ason, assisted by a corps of initiated female servitors (ounsi), performs the “retrieval.” ­Because of the high expense, kinsmen often collaborate to retrieve several of their dead relatives at the same time. Although each ­family must purchase their own ritual objects and a new set of white garments and shoes for the dead, they may share the burden of fees for the gangan ason, offerings and food, and drink for guests. This collaboration lowers the cost for each unit. The voice of the ancestor is heard from inside a white tent, where at least two gangan ason—­I have seen as many as four—­ are sitting. The main Guinea spirit authorizing the rite is Loko, the same spirit who confers Guinea authority to the gangan ason. Loko responds to the rhythmic language of the ason, beseeching him to go and fetch the dead ­under the ­water. Speaking through a gangan ason, Loko narrates his journey to a faraway body of ­water, where he encounters the ancestor who only reluctantly agrees to move from the liquid oblivion into a basin of w ­ ater, which has been placed inside the tent (the dead’s ele­ment is fluid; the dead cannot locomote on the earth). The retrieval of the dead provides the frame for a “social drama” (Turner 1957). Every­one expects the ancestor to ­settle personal accounts as the ancestor’s spirit individually addresses each relative and close friend left ­behind. The ancestor is thought to have been in a kind of time warp and to have no knowledge of what has tran­spired since being sent into oblivion. Neither is the ancestor able to see who is pres­ent. Hence the ancestor typically addresses persons who have since died or emigrated or who chose not to attend. The assembled answer in their stead, bringing the ancestor up to date on their conditions and whereabouts. An unexcused absence may be interpreted as an admission of guilt. The reclamation rite progresses with the gangan ason mediating the conversation between the bereaved and the ancestor ­until the lwa, Loko, barges in to terminate the dialogue. The departure of the dead leaves the microphone available, as it w ­ ere, to certain key lwa with whom the deceased was known to have shared a special relationship. ­These lwa take turns addressing both individual members of the descent group and the group as a ­whole. At least one lwa can be expected to remind the assembled of the dead’s outstanding ritual “debts.” The threats by the lwa to harm the descent group if they fail to collaborate to “pay up” typically elicit repeated, earnest pledges Mortuary Rites in Léogâne , Haiti  145

on the parts of the assembled. Once the lwa finish settling their scores with the ­family, the gangan ason and the ounsi perform a ceremony that uses fire to consecrate objects or ­people. Known as “burning pots” (brule wazen), this frequently required Guinea transformation ritual could only be carried out by specialists who have “taken the ason.” At the close of the “burning pots,” a vessel consecrated for the ancestor is set upon the altar of the shrine next to ­those of the other ancestors. Henceforth, whenever descendants needs to communicate with the ancestor, they may go to the shrine and employ the gangan ason to summon the ancestor to speak in the jar.2 ­Because the dead soul can only communicate with the grieving through a gangan or manbo ason, ritual professionals wield considerable affective power (in addition to economic and social power). Neither the ritual specialists nor the community members pretend that the gangan or manbo ason do not wield influence over the soul’s voice. The choice of the medium is impor­tant, therefore, and key survivors may advocate for one medium with whom they might have sway over another who may be less sympathetic to their agenda. The practice of squeezing two or more ritual specialists into the ­little tent where the séance takes place (with the mourners gathered outside) is thought to provide some insurance against partisan interference in the dead soul’s speech. Research into the evolution of the gangan ason’s authority suggests that death rites, in par­tic­u­lar, ­were fundamental to the consolidation of a professional priesthood and an emerging congregational form of worship in and around the capital city in the early mid-­t wentieth ­century (Murray 1980; Richman 2005, 2008).3 Significantly, the leaders invited skepticism about their power within the ritual itself. In a double mimetic interplay, the voice of the deceased, speaking through the gangan ason, publically questioned the very same gangan ason’s integrity. By encompassing communal doubts and diffusing them with ludic humor, rather than attempting to deny or repress naysayers, the ritual professionals seem to have effectively deflected re­sis­tance to their new authority.4 Descriptions of the secondary mortuary rite of taking the dead out of the ­water from the mid-­century provide examples of this preemptive discursive strategy. Maya Deren ([1953] 1983, 52) describes a final mortuary ritual in which the dead ­woman’s spirit comments to the houngan / gangan ason, through whom she si­mul­ta­neously speaks, “Business must be pretty good if the ­family can manage to pay your fees.” Deren notes that “the crowd bursts out laughing, and the houngan’s angry retort is lost in the noise.” Humor at the expense of the ritual leader further diffuses skepticism. A deceased spirit’s graphic sexual teasing of the gangan ason at a rite witnessed by Odette 146  Karen Richman

Mennesson-­Rigaud at mid-­century also provoked cathartic humor among the grieving (Métraux [1959] 1972, 261). In the midst of a more recent funerary rite, which is presented below, the voice of the deceased (speaking through the gangan ason) cautioned the grieving awaiting a diagnosis of the cause of his demise by warning, “­Don’t let the gangan lie to you.” The Prob­lem of Causality and the Social Drama of Mortuary Rites

Death and suffering as a prob­lem of meaning has been a subject of long-­ standing anthropological inquiry. E. E. Evans-­Pritchard’s (1976) classic study, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande, is the ideal point of departure for the pres­ent discussion of Haitians’ notions of the ­causes of suffering and premature death. Witchcraft, as defined by Evans-­Pritchard, involves the activation of innate and putatively unconscious powers to bring about harm. Sorcery entails the per­for­mance of magical words, deeds, and manipulation of objects with the conscious intent to inflict damage. Despite the fact that Evans-­Pritchard in the 1930s confined his study of witchcraft and sorcery to a small-­scale, horticultural society, it is not only p ­ eople from rural villages or tight-­knit urban neighborhoods who make use of such powers. Anticipating recent ethnographic and historical studies of magical and occult economies, Paul Farmer’s (1991) chronicle of the etiology of aids in the Haitian Central Plateau found that Haitians assume that witchcraft and sorcery can be thrust upon them from national, regional, and global heights, as well as from within their local social networks. Thus Haitians generally assume the potential for harm from symbolic interpersonal weapons. Whereas Haitians routinely resort to the use of magical protection to deflect random witches’ unpremeditated, visual strikes from falling, especially, on vulnerable postpartum ­mothers and their infants, they nonetheless tend to be more preoccupied with escaping the deliberate dispatches of sorcerers. In addition, they maneuver to prevent retribution from spirits, who represent the primary agents of misfortune and death. T ­ here are two categories of spirit: inherited spirits called lwa and manufactured, unnaturally vitalized powers called pwen (points) and dyab (dev­ils). In notable contrast to reported beliefs of Garifuna (Kerns 1983), Ndyuka (Thoden van Velzen and van Wetering 1988, 2004), and several other Ca­rib­bean socie­ties, Haitians do not tend to fear magical assaults from ancestors. The primary religious role of the dead (mò) is to link the living and their lwa. “Witchcraft is ubiquitous” (Evans-­Pritchard 1976, 18). In explaining the Azande’s conviction,5 Evans-­Pritchard si­mul­ta­neously obviated the conclusion Mortuary Rites in Léogâne , Haiti  147

that Azande automatically attributed all misfortune to witchcraft. He added, “it was obvious that they did not attempt to account for the existence of phenomena or even the action of phenomena, by mystical calculation alone. What they explained by witchcraft ­were the par­tic­u­lar conditions in a chain of causation which related an individual to natu­ral happenings in such a way that he sustained injury.” A hunting meta­phor explained their pluralistic concept of natu­ral and mystical causation: they said that witchcraft was “the umbaga or second spear” (Evans-­Pritchard 1976, 25). Fittingly, the vagueness of the conditions of the second spear allows them to be manipulated to adapt to a broad range of situations and social relations (Turner 1967, 377). As Evans-­Pritchard emphasized, the import of the second spear rests on it being “the only one (cause) that has significance for social be­hav­ior.” Having originated in (marred) social relations, the misfortune can only, indeed must, be redressed through social, that is, ritual, action including divination, magic, and prayer. Extending Evans-­Pritchard’s approach in another African society, Victor and Edith Turner (1967) explained how the diviner acts as a social “doctor,” curing not just individuals, but also the social group. “The sickness of a patient is mainly a sign that ‘something is rotten’ in the corporate body” (Turner 1967, 392). The diviner “makes vis­i­ble” the interpersonal or corporate conflicts under­lying mystical attacks and exposes them to ritual treatment, strips them of their antisocial character, and harnesses their intensity for the intended outcome. This model shapes mortuary rites of passage in the Haitian context. The patients—­namely, the deceased and the bereaved—­cannot recuperate, in other words, cannot move out of the liminal phase, ­until the intergroup conflicts are “made vis­i­ble,” if not resolved, in the final mortuary rite. Making suffering vis­i­ble does not necessitate its alleviation. Clifford Geertz (1973) famously took up Evans-­Pritchard’s discussion of Azande notions of causation to assert that far from alleviating suffering, the role of religion is to show us how to suffer. “As a religious prob­lem, the prob­lem of suffering is, paradoxically, not how to avoid suffering but how to suffer, how to make of physical pain, personal loss, worldly defeat, or the helpless contemplation of ­others’ agony something bearable, supportable—­something, as we say, sufferable” (104). Understanding misfortune empowers agents. A ­ fter a death in Haiti, p ­ eople need to know about the source of the misfortune, the counterpart to the Azande second spear, so that they can understand their collective suffering. When they summon the deceased to speak at the final mortuary rite, as part of the deceased protagonist’s and their own rite of reincorporation, they do not expect the deceased’s communication to wash 148  Karen Richman

away all of their grief. What they do expect is to understand its meaning. Not knowing the meaning of their suffering—­the dead’s and their own pain—is intolerable. Powerlessness is the inability to make sense of suffering. Not being able to reach a moral understanding is intolerable, so insufferable as to bring about death itself.6 In work that integrated Geertz’s and other anthropologists’ insights on misfortune and suffering with the clinical practice of medicine, Arthur Kleinman (1988) defined illness as “how the sick person and members of the ­family or wider social network perceive, live with, and respond to symptoms and disability” (3). Illness acts like “a sponge” in its capacity to absorb disparate social meanings and short-­and long-­term interpersonal histories. Kleinman emphasized the compensatory power of “the illness narrative,” which is “a story the patient tells, and significant ­others retell, to give coherence to the distinctive events and long-­term course of suffering” (49). In the context of a death in Haiti, even though the biomedical cause of death has already been declared, a year or more ­after the soul was sent ­under the ­waters, the reason yet remains in doubt, prolonging feelings of anxiety and distrust. The mò is expected to explain, or at least provide hints to, the cause of death. The cause may involve accident, biological pathogens, ­human cruelty or neglect, spiritual affliction, ­human aggression (witchcraft or sorcery), or a combination of ­these etiologies. As Evans-­Pritchard observed, this indeterminacy is the work of a pluralistic and, at the same time, intensely interpersonal theory of affliction. Moreover, the diffuseness of the affliction makes it even more amenable to fitting a wide range of social etiologies (Turner 1967). Nefarious spirits and jealous persons, acting as sorcerers, spawn so much misfortune that when a death occurs p ­ eople inevitably suspect a personalistic etiology. The onus is on the living to demonstrate that the cause is not a “sent” illness (Farmer 1990). Spirits and sorcerers “send” misfortune so frequently that a biomedical explanation by itself can only be believed ­after personalistic motivation (or motivations)—­the Azande “second spear”—­ has (or have) been ruled out. Death as a result of random, nonpersonal ­factors, which is called a maladi Bondye, can be believed if it has been established that motivated, personal forces have not been “sent” upon the person by a sorcerer or by a spirit. A credible natu­ral cause would have ruled out the suspicion that someone’s immoral be­hav­ior brought about so much sadness that the sufferer’s own blood or milk turned “bad” (Farmer 1988). The believability of a natu­ral death would also have cleared the deceased of their own illicit magical or sorcerous actions to gain unearned wealth, for such actions are believed to eventuate in inevitable reprisal. Mortuary Rites in Léogâne , Haiti  149

By the time of the secondary mortuary rite, anticipation of this cathartic verdict has reached a tense climax. The living are expected to both want and need to make meaning of the death, but their hopes for one etiology or another may diverge. Someone who feels accused of using sorcery to murder one’s foe may hope for exoneration. An offspring whose well-­being hangs in the balance ­will desire the dead to admit the immoral pursuit of a money-­ making pwen or a dyab and reveal how the growing danger can be captured and controlled. Indeed the urgency of the heir’s affliction may condition the timing and the narrative outcome of the rite. A spouse whose cruelty precipitated his wife’s “bad blood” may pray for a biomedical explanation, or an interpersonal one that points the fin­ger at someone ­else. The rites of sending and taking the dead out of the ­water establish a power­ful performative frame for personal mobilizing and settling of scores related to the death. Once the frame is “erected,” it offers possibilities for mediation of other conflicts threatening the interdependence of the community. The disembodied voice, while speaking through the medium, may use her or his “microphone” to call out a person for an antisocial be­hav­ ior or to bring out into the open a simmering conflict whose resolution can perhaps now be addressed. Depending on one’s interpretation of the dead soul’s verbal per­for­mance, the soul’s words may bring cathartic healing and peace to some attendees and increased or newfound anxiety to o ­ thers. The dramatic proceedings of three distinct secondary mortuary rituals illustrate the range of pos­si­ble denouements. ­These wete mò nan dlo involved members of interrelated descent groups in Ti Rivyè with whom I have interacted over the past thirty years. Two of the cases have been described in my book Migration and Vodou, which documented the emergence of the mortuary rites and analyzed their impact on religious organ­ization and ritual authority. I explore the three cases ­here in order to consider how the mortuary rites reproduce dramas of social relation, life and death. They include the death rites for Breton, Noivil, and Filoza.

Breton Breton died about a year before I arrived in Ti Rivyè. He was a beloved ­brother and ­uncle. He had no ­children of his own, and he shared the fruits of his successful plantain trade with his kin. His ­sister Filoza described him as “a good person,” a characterization she used sparingly, for in her view few ­people ­were truly “good.” Breton’s death when he was only about sixty years old left his kin in deep grief. The following year, on an eve­ning in July, they 150  Karen Richman

gathered in his eritaj’s compound to take him out of the ­water. His niece Alina returned from Guadeloupe to or­ga­nize the elaborate rites to retrieve him from the ­waters and establish his home in a vessel in the shrine. ­There ­were two gangan ason in the tent. They invoked the lwa, Loko, who in turn fetched Breton from the ­waters and ushered him into the basin. Breton’s voice, speaking through the shaman, was weak and mournful. He first called the name of his ­sister Avila and greeted her. Then he named ­sisters, ­brothers, nieces, nephews, and his cousin and business partner, Kamila, one by one, waiting for each to answer, “I’m h ­ ere, thank God,” “I’m no worse,” and so on. He greeted about fifty individuals in all. Some, like Filoza, ­were still too sad to speak to their loved one. She told me l­ ater she was too upset to answer when he called her name. He thanked Alina, in par­tic­u­lar, for the ceremony, which included drumming, dance and song, but expressed regret that “illness would keep him from enjoying the party.” At times he named persons who had emigrated since his death, suggesting that he had been cut off from the news of the ­family. ­After addressing each ­family member, Breton explained that he died from “a bad gas u ­ nder the heart.” (“Gas” [gaz] is a natu­ral or random condition related to dyspepsia, and can travel throughout the body.) He repudiated the gossip that Kamila, his business partner, had him killed. Kamila, vindicated, retorted, “The w ­ hole country, every­body said it was I. It ­isn’t true.” Before Loko interrupted Breton to put him into the jar, he reinforced his previous statement about the cause of his tragic death, “No man caused my death. ­Don’t let the gangan lie to you.” Thus Breton’s voice clarified that his sad passing was an unmotivated, random disease, and not the work of sorcery, absolving Kamila of the suspicion that she had him killed. By confirming the random, natu­ral cause of Breton’s tragic passing, the rite endorsed the existence of ailments that magical and ritual techniques cannot address.

Noivil Noivil was a prosperous healer whose expertise straddled biomedical and ritual fields. He owned a fleet of vehicles that plied the route between the capital and Léogâne. His ability to take many wives symbolized his prosperity. When he died a­ fter a long illness, twenty of his c­ hildren gathered for the death rites. A few of the offspring met one another for the first time. About a year a­ fter his death, Noivil’s other­wise robust, eighteen-­year-­old ­daughter, Carmel, fell sick. She was afflicted with seizures and a ghastly type of paralysis. Reaching a diagnosis had eluded her maternal u ­ ncle, a gangan Mortuary Rites in Léogâne , Haiti  151

ason, and the ­family consulted the more experienced Aiscar, who fi­nally divined that she was being eaten up by her deceased ­father’s pwen. Her collapse was likely the eruption of her mounting dis-­ease with her personal situation (the details of which I do not know), a cry for help that she could not other­wise voice.7 Her deceased ­father’s alleged practices provided a credible context for her affliction, and elicited thereby support and recognition she needed at that time. Noivil had died just twelve months before—­a serendipitous correspondence with the minimum acceptable term between the funeral and the rite of removing the dead from the ­water. His affines (his d ­ aughter’s maternal kin) quickly prepared for the removal. Four gangan ason w ­ ere deemed requisite to officiate at the wete mò nan dlo. The “prediagnosis” before the rite was that Noivil had “bought a pwen” to make unearned money. He took the secret of the illicit, magical source of his wealth to the grave. Like other individuals overcome with ambition and shame, he had neglected to divulge his deed to his heirs, and now the “hungry” (neglected) power was persecuting one of his offspring. Surely more victims would fall if the pwen ­were not found and confined. The ­family of the girl was expecting that by taking the soul out of the w ­ ater, the soul would be given the opportunity to speak and thereby reveal the secret of the pwen’s identity and hiding place. Apparently the four ritual leaders cramped inside the white tent could not coerce the soul of their former colleague to confess to his “­little ­thing.” When the time came to come clean about his illicit pursuit, the deceased claimed innocence, denying any knowledge of a pwen, and frustrating his relatives’ hopes for resolving the crisis of his ­daughter’s paralysis. The ritual’s incomplete finale inspired considerable discussion. In my subsequent conversation with Filoza, she rebuked the deceased for pretending that he did not buy the magical power for personal gain (and ignoring his ­daughter’s affliction). “Pay no attention to him!” she bellowed. “He buried it alive in front of the door of the shrine. . . . ​­there was (economic) pro­gress ­there!” (Pa okipe li. . . . ​Li te antere l tou vivan devan pòt kay la! Te gen yon pwogrè la a!) ­Later, in a more forgiving tone, Filoza opined that the reason the deceased backed out of his promise, made during the earlier, private divination, to divulge his ­little ­thing in public, was that his ­daughter had shamed him. When the deceased, speaking from inside the tent, greeted her, she retorted defiantly, “I’m fine!” (Mwen byen), implying in addition, “no thanks to you.” A polite response would have been, “I’m no worse.” Feeling ashamed, he refused to cooperate. 152  Karen Richman

The ritual leaders carried out a subsequent, private séance that allowed the deceased to save face. Noivil admitted that he indeed bought a pwen, which he buried along with a live pig ­under the portal of his shrine. With this information, the ritual specialists could now stop it from “devouring” his heirs.

Filoza Filoza’s pithy comments on Noivil’s funeral are described above. Readers of my book and especially, my article “Miami Money and the Home Gal” ­will also recognize the formidable, charismatic w ­ oman who intervened in a transnational dispute involving her mi­grant nephew and his “home gal” wife, who had become pregnant in his absence. Filoza used her loud theatrics to salvage the wife’s honor and her nephew’s reputation as well. In a most ­bitter irony, not long a­ fter Filoza’s dramatic intervention, Filoza found herself condemned to a similar prison of sexual disgrace. Her husband of three de­cades, and the f­ather of her six adult c­ hildren, publically shamed her with the accusation of being a prostitute (bouzen). Despite the astounding strength of her own character and wit, and the support of her kin and friends, including myself, she found no medicine for her grief. The precipitating event was the scandal of her husband’s latest additional or “outside” affair. He was having an affair with Filoza’s twenty-­eight-­year-­ old niece, whom they had raised as a surrogate ­daughter ­after her ­mother, Filoza’s ­sister, died. The niece had regularly visited her aunt’s lakou and had suddenly stopped coming by. The gossip about the affair was that it was immoral, incestuous, and, as if that w ­ ere a valid further explanation, the niece was a bouzen, anyway. B ­ ecause of it, Filoza and Jean w ­ ere no longer on speaking terms and he did not enter the lakou. More impor­tant, he stopped “giving” Filoza the conch she needed to carry out her trading activities. One day Filoza’s cousin summoned her to her yard. It was an apparent setup. Jean suddenly appeared and seized the opportunity to deflect scrutiny of his own questionable be­hav­ior. Obviously aware of the content of the virulent gossip, Jean threw out ­these words, putting down his current flame in the course of humiliating his wife: “When you ­were young you ­were far worse (as a prostitute) than (your niece).” Filoza was beside herself. She made so much “bad blood” (over it), the illness ­women suffer from malignant emotions. She kept talking about it over and over again, deaf to her close relatives’ and friends’ suggestions that she should ignore Jean’s underhanded accusation; no one believed it. She would stop anyone passing through the lakou to repeat her incredulity at what happened. She would recount how Mortuary Rites in Léogâne , Haiti  153

she and Jean ­were the coparents of six adult ­children and many grandchildren. (She had one son before their u ­ nion, and he had two c­ hildren concurrently.) P ­ eople used to say to her, “Nobody has a husband like you; nobody has a u ­ nion as good as yours.” Had she not defied the odds, and succeeded as a fish trader, m ­ other, and a cherished wife? How could their relationship have come to this, that in her grandmotherhood she could be accused of having been a bouzen? Visitors would listen politely and slowly back out of the yard. She even summoned her friend and cousin, a well-­connected po­ liti­cal man, the elder ­brother of the sheriff to see if ­there ­were some po­liti­cal remedy for her pain. Filoza’s health faltered. She died an excruciating death two years ­later of cancer, a few days ­after having half of her swollen leg amputated. She was fifty-­nine. All of her c­ hildren returned from “Mayami” for the funeral, which was grandly celebrated with a Mass at a prominent cathedral in the distant capital city, followed by the nine-­day mourning period in her ­family’s rural yard. In what we might call a final justice, though, she raised her voice to prevent Jean from getting his way at the final mortuary rites. He desperately wanted the diagnosis of her death to be sorcery, a “death by a person” who was jealous of her wealth. According to her niece, Jean accused her ­father (Filoza’s brother-­in-­law), who was a gangan ason, of killing her (through sorcery). In a cynical display of the politics of ritual, he tried to persuade the gangan ason Emile, who was to officiate at the rite, help the rite come out that way. At the rite, the voice of Filoza’s spirit was heard from inside the white tent. Emile provided the unseen instrument for Filoza’s voice. Just before departing for the place u ­ nder the w ­ ater, Filoza’s “mò” spoke to her kin. In her weakened voice, she confirmed that she died of “bad blood,” of the sadness that turned her blood into poison. This eloquent w ­ oman’s final address to her devastated kin disproved the phony charge of sorcery and confirmed their suspicions that it was her status as Jean’s wife that led to her untimely death. Conclusion

The elaborately staged, nighttime rites of sending and taking the dead out of the w ­ ater establish a power­ful performative frame for a social drama. Even though the biomedical cause of death has already been declared, an encompassing interpersonal theory of disease casts doubt on the diagnosis, prolonging feelings of anxiety, distrust, and hostility. Only the mò is expected to explain, or at least provide hints to, the cause of death. The indeterminacy 154  Karen Richman

of the mortuary ritual frame brings the social drama to a pitched, if not always satisfying, climax. The rite of reincorporation rescues the dead from a liminal state; it does not necessarily provide the living with desired closure. A functional interpretation of this ritual form would mistakenly presume its socially integrative role. In his study of the sectarian drama unfolding during a Javanese mortuary rite, Geertz (1957, 51) pinpointed the inadequacy of functionalist theory to the analy­sis of death rites. “At death . . . ​the traditional symbols tend both to solidify individuals in the face of social loss and to remind them of their differences; to emphasize the broadly ­human themes of mortality and underserved suffering and the narrowly social ones of factional opposition . . . ​and to ‘tune up’ their animosities and suspicions.” Indeed, I have suggested that in the aftermath of a tragic death, the social drama unfolding in the rite of retrieving the mò may inhibit catharsis. Feeling rejected or insulted by the living, the mò may decide not to oblige them and refuse to provide the fateful diagnosis. A spouse whose cruelty caused his wife to make lethal, “bad blood” may try to prevent the mò from speaking the truth by entreating the ritual specialist to get the mò to proclaim a false verdict of death that wrongly accuses someone ­else. An accused ­woman is vindicated when her deceased business partner affirms that he died from natu­ral ­causes. The voice of the dead being retrieved from the abysmal ­waters may bring cathartic healing to the some grieving and to ­others the prolonged guilt of dis-­ease. For all parties, the rite of passage made their misfortune sufferable. Notes 1. Gerald Murray (1980, 31) notes that in the mid-1970s masons charged between $200 and $400. 2. Ira Lowenthal (1987, 361) was the first to point out that several authors mistakenly claimed that the secondary mortuary rite transforms the ancestor into a lwa. Ancestors, who link the living members of the descent group to their spirits, are clearly distinct from lwa. 3. The French ethnologist Odette Mennesson-­Rigaud was an impor­tant participant-­ observer of ­these rites during the 1940s and 1950s and prob­ably contributed to the dissemination of its forms. Her description of a mortuary rite appears in Alfred Métraux’s Vodou en Haiti ([1959] 1972, 259–263). Maya Deren, who was also guided by Mennesson-­ Rigaud, provides a similar account of the ritual ([1953] 1983, 46–53). 4. Maya Deren describes a similar verbal invitation to skeptics attending a secondary mortuary rite. The humorous solicitation is proffered by a “dead” speaking through the body of the gangan conducting the reclamation rite. The dead ­woman’s spirit says to Mortuary Rites in Léogâne , Haiti  155

the medium, through whom it also speaks, “Business must be pretty good if the f­ amily can manage to pay your fees.” “The crowd bursts out laughing, and the houngan’s angry retort is lost in the noise” (Deren [1953] 1983, 52). 5. The Ndyuka of Suriname maintain the same belief that “witchcraft is everywhere,” according to Thoden van Velzen and van Wetering (1988, 2004, and this volume). 6. Geertz (1973, 104) illustrated his point with the case of the Ba-­Ila ­woman who died from a failure to understand her suffering, which was cited by Paul Radin (1957, 100–101). 7. This young ­woman’s affliction seemed to be an embodiment of her distress over a tense, difficult predicament involving her boyfriend. Her experience of paralysis suggests parallels with the conditions of young Viennese ­women, which first drew Freud’s attention and inspired the founding of psychoanalysis (Breuer and Freud [1893–1895] 1957). Hysteria appears to have been an embodied, socially appropriate means for young ­women to passively rebel against their insufferable and repressive situations. See also Paul Farmer’s (1988) discussion of poor Haitian ­woman’s dis-­eases, “bad blood” and “spoiled milk” female diseases.

156  Karen Richman

chapter 6

From Zonbi to Samdi L AT E T R A N S F O R M AT I O N S I N H A I T I A N E S C H ATO L O G Y

Donald Cosentino

Götterdämmerung I had not thought death had undone so many. —­T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Most Vodou death rituals and postlife dispositions offer familiar vistas to students of Afro-­Caribbean eschatologies. For instance, postlife real estate advertises no heaven or hell, except for select lwa (divinities) who inhabit swank digs in Lavilokan, the City of Camps, a divine paradise which exists in the geomythology of Vodou somewhere near Port-­de-­Paix in Haiti’s other­ wise desolate Northwest, a place where the lwa disport themselves just out of ­human sight, not unlike the Greek divinities on Mt. Olympus. Vodou Pantheon is the residential paradise ­imagined in this painting of Haiti’s ­great twentieth-­century priest-­artist André Pierre. As for ­human beings, their postlife transit lines head in other directions. As attested to in Vodou ritual and art, the souls of good folks (fran ginen) sojourn to Gine, an Africa that exists ­under (though not at the bottom of ) the Ocean.1 But this Gine is only a staging area: a terminus in an eternal cir­ cuit ­ride from ­under the ­water to the lakou (­family compound), where in the Good Time of the Good God (Bon Dye) one w ­ ill be born again by popu­lar affirmation in three or four generations. ­Because souls are forever in transit, the cemetery that receives their bodies is a very busy place. Overseeing all this spiritual traffic is the f­amily of Bawon Samdi, divinities of Death,

figure 6.1  ​In his iconostatic Vodou Pantheon (ca. 1980) Pierre dresses his black and colored lwa in eighteenth-­century ball gowns, sashes, epaulets, and tiaras, all purloined from the ­colonial wardrobes of St. Domingue. The divinities are freeze-­framed in Lavilokan, posed in the sort of lush fo­liage that has all but dis­appeared from Haiti in the last half-­century. Alone and apart, the ­family of the Bawon Samdi stands at the bottom, on the far right. André Pierre (ca. 1915–2005), Vodou Pantheon, ca. 1980. Oil on Masonite, 48 × 96 in. Collection of John B. Fulling. Photo from Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, ed. Donald J. Cosentino (ucla Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1995).

Sexuality, and Rebirth whose genealogies may be traced back to the Eshu/ Legba complex of West Africa (Cosentino 1987) but whose manifestations in con­temporary Haiti are unique in the Black Atlantic world. As manifested on the peristyle floor, and in the production of Haitian artists, Bawon Samdi is a ­family man, presiding over a ­whole clan of related spirits. While other lwa group into nachons (nations), it is only Bawon Samdi who presides over a clan of related spirits, which bears a startling collective resemblance to the Addams ­family. ­There is for instance the ex-­whore ­Grand Brijit, Samdi’s Morticia-­like bride; his strange ­brothers, the imbecilic Bawon Lakwa, who keeps the cemetery grounds; the gnomic Bawon Simitye, who knows the secrets of the Dead; and the psychotic Bawon Kriminel, who runs amok, biting himself and wounding o ­ thers. Descended from t­ hese monstrous forbears are a limitless band of capricious c­ hildren, known collectively as the Gedes, who are as beloved to Vodouisants as the Bawons are feared. As sacred ­children, the Gedes merge with the other dead, and with the lwa, to form the holy trinity of Vodou. As has often been noted by oungans (Vodou priests) and ethnographers alike, it’s Bawon Samdi who condemns, but only the Gedes who can dig the grave. And the Gedes are just. 160  Donald Cosentino

The Gedes cavort in dialectical relationship with the se­nior Bawons. Upstairs/ Downstairs: The Gedes always laugh, but the Bawons never do. Bawon kills, but the Gedes heal. Bawon is a skeleton, but the Gedes are suppurating flesh. Bawon controls the zonbi, but Gede sets them ­free. The Bawon are bosses, but the Gedes are bums and louts. Bawon imposes harsh order, but the Gedes dance in anarchy. Bawon has secrets, but the Gedes always tell the truth. In praxis and discourse, t­ hese distinctions are not always so clear. Names get conflated as do attributes. Bawon may flash his phallus. Gede may don a top hat, or pose in Masonic gear. While never displaced, the Gedes w ­ ere marginalized during the years of the Duvalierist dictatorship (note their absence from André Pierre’s Vodou Pantheon, fig. 6.1). Their emergence as premier divinities at the end of the twentieth ­century traces an arc from the  1986 dechoukaj (uprooting) of Jean-­Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, through the first de­cade of the new millennium to the apocalyptic Earthquake of ­January 12, 2010. Gedes’ overthrow of divine hierarchies is rooted in the catastrophes of Haiti’s fin de siècle, and the calamitous first de­cade of its twenty-­first ­century, which has so suddenly and horrendously overpopulated Gine, the land of the Dead. In Vodou tradition, if ­things go right, the souls of the Dead are recalled to their lakous (homesteads) or ounfos (­temples), first as spirit dwelling in govi (clay pots) on altars, and then, a­ fter a cycle of generations, reborn into f­ uture generations. But ­things can go wrong—­terribly wrong. A person can die before their time, by the hand of man rather than the decree of Bon Dye. The person’s soul can be hijacked, indentured, set to work as a zonbi astral (spiritual rather than physical entity), or, far more rarely, as a reanimated corpse, ­under the control of a bokor (sorcerer). ­These then are the phenomena that sharply differentiate Haitian afterlife beliefs from other Ca­rib­bean traditions: control of afterlife arrangements by a macabre ­family of spirits presided over by the Bawon Samdi; the symbiotic relationship of the Samdi ­family with the zonbi: captured souls and (rarely) bodies who claim a place in the urban legends and racist imaginations of Euro-­America, far outpacing their relatively modest role in the Haitian imaginary; the dialectic of power relations with the Samdi ­family, specifically between Bawon Samdi, his ­brothers, and their ­children, the Gedes. ­Because Vodou divinities, including the Dead, are alive and thriving in Haiti, their role within the culture is ever evolving. Divine reputations wax Transformations in Haitian Eschatology  161

figure 6.2   In September 2004, floods and mudslides caused by Tropical Storm Jeanne

killed over 2,500 p ­ eople in the city of Gonaives. Zephirin commemorates this catastrophe by imagining the floodwaters engulfing the House of the Dead, with a g ­ aggle of Gedes indifferently surveying the horror from their own open door. An equally devastating flood swept Gonaives in 2008. Frantz Zephirin (b. 1968), The Resurrection of the Dead, 2007. Acrylic on canvas. Collection of Bill Bollendorf, Pittsburgh, PA. Used by permission of Bill Bollendorf.

and wane with the exigencies of time, a phenomenon particularly apparent in the drastic reassignment of mythological weight ascribed to the Samdi ­family, and to the zonbi they oversee. I have been privileged to observe ­these transformations and to rec­ord what may now be understood as a revolution in Haitian mythological thought regarding death and afterlife arrangements over the last generation. This cosmic revolution took place during the period roughly defined as the generation between the dechoukaj, or uprooting, of Duvalierisme, which began with the flight of Jean-­Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier from Haiti in February 1986, and the Apocalyptic Earthquake of January 12, 2010, which Haitians metonymically call bagay la (the ­thing) or onomatopoetically as goudou-­goudou. During that time Bawon Samdi ceded his commanding role in the House of Death to his capricious sons, while bodily zonbi retreated from their special place in the Haitian imaginary, only to plod back into a central role in Euro-­American popu­lar culture.2 Bawon/Gedes’s dual roles, as intensely Haitian divinities who now claim an evolving role in global my­ thol­ogy, are reflected in the New Yorker’s choice of Frantz Zephirin’s painting The Resurrection of the Dead, as cover art for its issue of January 25, 2010, two weeks a­ fter the g ­ reat Earthquake that devastated Port-­au-­Prince and much of southern Haiti. 1986 Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven. —­William Words­worth, The Prelude

This chapter is a first attempt at explaining ­these dramatic reversals of divine fortune. Let’s take the mea­sure of ­these seismic shifts by comparing the relative status of Bawon Samdi, the Gedes, and their zonbi from the Haiti of 1986 to that of the post-­Earthquake, post-­Apocalyptic world following 2010. As witnessed during my first field trip to Haiti in spring 1986, the overthrow of Baby Doc had cosmic reverberations. Although hardly filling the ­Grand Guignol shoes left by Papa D, Baby Doc’s regime remained shadowed by the patronage of Bawon Samdi, including that dread lwa’s mastery of zonbi. ­Edouard Duval-­Carrié’s painting, Mardigras au Fort Dimanche (1992) captures this bizarre fusion of Death, Politics, and Carnival: a combination that would be anomalous in any other culture than Haiti’s. ­Under Papa Doc, the nation had been zombified: ­those pathetic creatures becoming a potent meta­phor for the regime’s reign of terror—­a role zonbi Transformations in Haitian Eschatology  163

figure 6.3  ​In this painting Duval-­Carrié gathers the Duvalier ­family in a gangrenous

cell of Ft. Dimanche, the torture chamber of the regime. Signaling the f­ amily’s celestial alliances, they all sport black Ray-­Bans, much favored by the Bawon, and by the Ton Ton Macoutes, the Duvalier’s goon squad. In the center of the portrait is the unholy ­family. Mama Simone wears ­widow’s weeds, in the fashion of Gran Brijit, Bawon’s wife. President-­“Avi” (For Life) Jean-­Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier is in a wedding dress, manifesting his devotion to Ezili Freda, the campy lwa of love, as well as his disastrous marriage to the rapacious Michèle Bennett. But it is on Papa Doc Duvalier that we must focus our attention. Dead since 1971, Papa Doc’s skull is half-­eaten into the leering rictus of Bawon Simitye, ­brother of Samdi, and spiritual keeper of the cemetery to which so many of his ­brother’s enemies had been prematurely dispatched. Edouard Duval-­Carrié (b. 1954), Mardi Gras au Fort Dimanche, 1992–1993. Oil on canvas, 59 × 59 in. Collection of Sanford Rubenstein. Photo by the artist. Used courtesy of Edouard Duval.

have long claimed in the national imaginary. Consider Laënnec Hurbon’s brilliant gloss of the meta­phor: Vodou does develop a discourse on sorcery which consists of meta­phor­ ically capturing someone’s soul . . . ​but it is always in order to place this practice at the borders of the religious system as a limit never to be crossed, an interdiction never to be transgressed. At the same time it is 164  Donald Cosentino

impor­tant to recognize that, inasmuch as Vodou belief holds that invisible forces can intervene in the daily life and body of the individual, it inspires fear and fascination before ­these forces from whence the possibility of beliefs in sorcery that can subject the body to uncontrollable forces, and even to the making of a zombie manipulated by a master. If by chance the Vodouist comes to find himself forced into an abyss, unable to actuate any expected protection, he cannot but see himself in a situation of being zombified. Thus . . . ​rumors of zombification proliferate, as if the Vodouist w ­ ere expressing . . . ​the feeling of not being able to escape from the regime of slavery and the arbitrary. (1995, 196) Therefore, the anti-­Duvalier movement quickly assumed the nature of an anti-­zonbi cult. Wall graffiti couched calls for uprising by demanding the release of the zonbi, and the ti legliz (the “­little church,” as the Catholic Liberationists called themselves) began publishing a broadside whose title Un Gout du Sel celebrated “a taste of salt,” the universal antidote to zonbi medicine. At the same time, Harvard-­trained ethnobotanist Wade Davis’s best-­ selling adventure memoir The Serpent and Rainbow (1986) was reviving the pseudoethnography genre of zombie tales in the tradition of William Seabrook (1929) and Zora Neale Hurston ([1938] 1990). While Davis was making the Discovery Channel rounds wrapped in the aura of Indiana Jones, his celebrated revenant Clairvius Narcisse—­upon whose returned body Davis based much of his argument on the real­ity of zombies—­was looking bewildered on the cover of the Harvard Alumni Magazine. Narcisse described his revivification from the grave and rehabilitation by Baptist missionaries, a tale oft-­told by ex-­zombies ever since Seabrook published his Depression-­era zombie exposé, Magic Island. Most Vodouisants would agree with Narcisse’s decision to head for the Baptists. Few in Haiti dispute the fact that becoming a Protestant is the best inoculation against Vodou spells. And most Protestant missionaries are only too happy to sponsor evidence of the diabolical intent of Vodou “spells and rituals,” “zombification” surely being the most potent example. ­There is no doubt that zonbi are the subject of universally retold Haitian legends. Perhaps the most piquant being the origin of “zombification” told to American anthropologist Elizabeth McAlister by bokor Dieupe: “The ­whole reason that we are able to raise p ­ eople ­after they die goes back to when they crucified Jesus Christ. [­After the crucifixion] Gran Met sent Mary Magdalene [to the tomb] along with two bodyguards from the Haitian army. When Jehovah gave the password to raise Jesus from the Dead, the soldiers Transformations in Haitian Eschatology  165

stole it, and sold it. It’s been handed down from f­ ather to son, which is how I could get it” (1995, 316). Note the substrates of Dieupe’s instructive narrative: the secret zonbi “password” was stolen from Gran Met, the unknowable high God often associated with Masonic konesans (secret knowledge), by army officers—­the repressive arm of predatory regimes, including t­ hose set up a­ fter the dechoukaj, and then sold to the politicians. Dieupe was merely affirming what most Haitians knew: zombification was a key aspect of state power. With the overthrow of Duvalier, the succès de scandale of The Serpent and the Rainbow, and the general demotion of Bawon Samdi in Vodou ceremonies, it became pos­si­ble to laugh at zonbi. I observed a troupe of what appeared to be Arabs dressed in sheets and pancaked white ­faces during Carnival 1991, which immediately followed the inauguration of Jean-­Bertrand Aristide: A parody of the Gulf War being played on cnn by and for foreigners, I wondered? Then I saw the familiar black top hat tugging at the rope that bound ­these hapless creatures in white sheets. It was Bawon Samdi, and by his side was Gede carry­ing the coffin that he alone can bury. It was Le Troupe Zonbi, raucously mixing the ghouls from their own folklore with the Hollywood phantasms created by George Romero and Wes Craven.3 Haitians continue to be amused by American fascination with corporeal zombies, who constitute only a peripheral part of their own my­thol­ogy. But if Americans want to buy their beliefs, Haitians ­don’t mind selling. Herard Simon, the emperor of the Vodou shrine at Nan Soukri and a bokor who was instrumental in helping Wade Davis buy the puffer fish zombie medicine described in The Serpent and the Rainbow, laughed with me as he admitted, “We sold Davis the plans for the b-­24, but ­we’ve kept the f-16 secret” (personal communication, 1986). The dechoukaj of Duvalier was in significant ways also the dechoukaj of Bawon Samdi, whose long reign was ending, in ­favor of his raucous ­children, the Gedes. This transition was foreshadowed at the 1987 Gede ceremonies at Gesner’s ­temple in Carrefour, where Katherine Dunham had been initiated, and Baby Doc and his fancy bride, Michèle Bennett, used to be regulars. ­There I saw the Gedes line up in military fashion, dressed in goofy Sgt. Pepper costumes. They ­were being marched through a parody of martial display by Bawon Samdi, who now twirled his phallic cane as if it ­were a baton. ­Every few steps he paused to execute a bump and grind, while the brass band hired for the ceremony was playing a schmaltzy version of “Jingle Bells.”4 The audience in the upstairs balcony was convulsed in laughter, chanting zozo, zozo, zozo, over and over. Zozo means cock, and it means fuck, and every­ 166  Donald Cosentino

one, men and ­women, sweaty faced and laughing hard, was shouting it. Just as ­every person—­-­stripped of his or her pretense is an avatar of Gede, so fi­nally is e­ very motive and ­every action reducible to zozo. Not l’amour, nor la vie, nor even l’honneur, only zozo. Gede is also the sworn e­ nemy of euphemism. He exists beyond all ruses, being master of only two absolutes: fucking and d ­ ying. A ­couple of year ­later I was again standing on the Rue Capois in downtown Port-­au-­Prince watching another carnival troupe sing the grossest of Gede’s mock-­love songs (Cosentino 1995). When you see a smart-­ass chick Pick her up and throw her down Pull down her pants and give her zozo Wo-­wo-­wo-­wooooo (My translation)

One could won­der at the fact that that w ­ omen as well as men w ­ ere shouting the misogynist lyr­ics. But Gede rides ­women as well as men. And among the Fon, whose descendants brought Vodou to Haiti, it is w ­ omen who strap on Legba’s dildo in masquerade (Herskovits 1938). Zozo means “cock” and “fuck” no doubt, but what e­ lse does it signify? Is zozo a flip off of established order? Of la misère? Or that irrepressible lingam that finds life in death all around? I would suggest it is all ­these ­things, and more. It is the quintessence of orgasmic jouissance, which in fact finds its perfect expression in Fet Gede, and the season of Kanaval and Rara that follow. Since every­thing is reducible to Gede, and He cannot lie, Gede makes it pos­si­ble to laugh at even the most terrible ­things. With Gede, every­thing enters carnival. Even aids: the viral crossroads of both his kingdoms. Thus ­later that after­noon I recorded marchers in Troupe Kontre sida sing: O Mama, lock up my dick, So I ­won’t fuck a trick If I fuck, I’ll get clap Go and fuck your Mama’s crack . . . (My translation)

The singers matched their lyr­ics with gyrations of the banda, Gede’s hallmark bump and grind. One young reveler waltzed around the marchers with a rubber dildo tied to his head. Another waved a phallic cane from a Gede shrine with a condom rolled over it. How to account for this outburst of jouissance, where so recently the ­family of Bawon Samdi inspired only fear? I would argue that with the Transformations in Haitian Eschatology  167

dechoukaj the fear inspired by the regime of Duvalier had subsided, zonbi had tasted their salt, and at last the laughter of the Gedes could be heard. Unrestrained by their grim f­ather, the Gedes emerged in all their goofy glory. They transformed the National Cemetery, which had been the setting for state executions ­under Papa Doc, into a carnival grounds for the Dead.5 Kwa Bawon, the black cross set up in e­ very Haitian cemetery for Bawon Samdi, was now stage central for Gedes’ antics: As mournful supplicants paraded to the Cross with offertory klarin and candles, vagabond boys hung over adjacent tombs roaring “zozo, zozo, zozo.” At long last Kanaval and Day of the Dead had resumed their traditional roles as Feasts of Reversal. But of course the biggest reversal was happening in the po­liti­cal arena, where a Roman Catholic priest with a droopy eye and a golden tongue was winning the presidency in the first demo­cratic election in the country’s history. A child of Gede is how many i­ dentified Jean-­Bertrand Aristide, who appeared to delight in the scandals he was causing. “Yo sezi,” the crowds chanted, “they are shocked,” referring to the boujwa (as fran ginen refer to the Haitian elite) who momentarily seemed to have lost control of the national state, which had been their exclusive piggy bank for two hundred years.6 Transformations of power in  the invisible world of the Dead had found a correlate in the Haitian state. A ­ fter 2010 . . . I want a photo opportunity; I want a shot at redemption, ­Don’t wanna wind up a cartoon, In a cartoon graveyard. —­“You Can Call Me Al,” Paul Simon

Since a mood of relative optimism, which prevailed at millennium’s end, Haiti has been enveloped in an accelerating series of natu­ral and social catastrophes: the controversial overthrow of Aristide in 2004 and the street vio­lence and kidnappings which followed his forced departure from Haiti in a U.S. Air Force plane; the Katrina-­sized floods of 2004 and 2008, which washed away much of Gonaives, the city where Haitian in­de­pen­dence was first proclaimed 168  Donald Cosentino

in 1804, si­mul­ta­neously devastating the adjacent headwaters of the Artibonite River, the site of the nation’s breadbasket; the earthquake of January 12, 2010, the worst natu­ral catastrophe in the recorded history of the Ca­rib­be­an; the cholera epidemic, which begin in 2011 and persists especially in the tent cities, which ­house ­those displaced by the earthquake. The combined effect of t­ hese catastrophes has challenged Vodou theology, radically altering perceptions of the relationship between the vis­i­ble and invisible worlds and the benevolent order of the universe, affirmed in that most common expression of Vodou theodicy, “Bon Dye Bon” (God Is Good). To an extraordinary degree, Haitian artists have responded to t­ hese catastrophes in their art. Across a range of genres, they have re­imagined the lwa and the fate of the nation transformed by an ecological, social, economic, po­liti­ cal, and seismic apocalypse beyond any ­human control. As ­every single ­thing in Haiti seems to have grown only worse and worse, their visions have grown richer, bolder, and stranger. Not surprisingly, the Vodou spirit who presides to an ever-­greater degree over all this postapocalyptic creativity is Gede, the ab­ eople) through surd beggar in his top hat and waistcoat, leering at pep la (the p his one-­eyed lunettes: Gede the vagabond, the flasher with an ill-­disguised phallus, the petty thief, wise counselor and miraculous physician, and—­best of all—­the brutal ­enemy of hypocrites and liars. As times have worsened, Gede’s stock has risen. His iconography, especially the jaunty skull with crossbones, is now ubiquitous. And his sexuality, of which he was never ashamed, is now explicit, with genitalia grown to Brobdingnagian proportions. The most dramatic examples of this outsized Gede may be found in con­ temporary Haitian sculpture. A genre that began with fanciful images of the lwa cut out from oil drums is now being wrought by the Atis Rezistans (Re­ sis­tance Artists),7 a collective of self-­trained bricoleurs who transform detritus found on the G ­ rand Rue in downtown Port-­au-­Prince—­truck chassis, medical debris, tire chains, computer boards, bed springs, skulls from the nearby National Cemetery—­into Richard Serra–­sized statues of Gede re­imagined as a divine behemoth beyond ­human comprehension. Their very size suggests the enormity of the nation’s catastrophes, without ever losing the grotesque humor, which finds this cemetery god leading carnival dancers on Mardi Gras. Let us now consider the work of André Eugène, primus inter pares among the Atis Rezistans, who created a provocatively entitled ensemble piece he calls Dr. Zozo. T ­ here is an odd cyberpunk feel to this tumescent corpse, who

Transformations in Haitian Eschatology  169

figure 6.4  ​Perhaps the most telling witness to the cosmopolitan-

ism of con­temporary Haitian sculpture is this forty-­foot sculpture of Bawon Samdi, which towers over the front yard of the Atis Rezistans atelier. This sculpture acts, mutatis mutandis, as “greeter” to ­those who visit the atelier. His body is monstrous, a creature of disparate parts wrought from a ­whole car chassis with a muffler head. His most outstanding feature, however, is a four-­foot zozo, carved from wood and attached to what might be his pelvis by an industrial-­strength spring, rendering the zozo not only bionic but also pneumatic. This Bawon/Gede sometimes sports a Haitian flag drooped beneath his rampant member like a pair of boxers sagging halfway down a gangsta’s butt. Although sometimes called “Bawon” this sculpture more closely resembles some new hybrid lwa, one with Gede’s sexuality grafting onto Samdi’s inhuman physicality. André Eugène and other members of Atis Rezistans, 40 ft Gede, ca. 2002. Used courtesy of André Eugène. Photo by Donald J. Cosentino, 2010.

seems quite at home among the broken manifolds and abandoned cir­cuit boards on the G ­ rand Rue. This is a Gede with a prosthetically enhanced ­future, navigating the technoculture of the twenty-­first ­century. This is not just art about death, flesh, and the symbolic power of the genitalia, but also art as a talisman against death, as videographer Leah Gordon, who has made the g ­ reat film about t­hese artists, reveals in her conversation with the artist: Andre Eugene has assembled a remarkable installation in his yard comprised of a group of life-­sized figures, many with skull heads, some with stethoscopes, some with battered video cameras surrounding a small coffin containing an erect, but putrescent penis. The work tells the story of a man who has died and his body has decayed but his dick remains. The figures are doctors, journalists and scientists from the spirit world trying to ascertain why the penis remains. When asked why he uses the symbol of an erect penis in his work, Eugene has replied, “You cannot hide an erect penis and this reveals the truth of a person’s desires, and exposes the hy­poc­risy of the Puritanism associated with the slave ­owners. In my work the erect penis is also a way of revealing the often hidden desires of a ­people living in grinding poverty.” (2012, 109) The dimensions of t­ hese sculptures further resonate with a con­temporary Black Atlantic aesthetic, which Kobena Mercer describes as Afro-­Baroque, “massiveness and movement [are] defining features of Afro-­Baroque style . . . ​ we might be tempted to meta­phor­ically connect the stylistic quality of massiveness with the weight of the crushing pressures that overburden blackness with contradictory meanings in the West” (2011, 14). ­These same Afro-­Baroque ele­ments of style are also pres­ent in drapo, ­those sequined or beaded ceremonial banners that have been the genre of Vodou-­inspired arts most popu­lar in boutiques and museums for the last half century. Now a new generation of fabric artists—­including Roudy Azor, Evelyne Alcide, and Myrlande Constant—­have extended this venerable tradition into the fabrication of nonritual sequined tableaux. No longer saluting the Vodou divinities, their often grotesque canvases evoke lwa who are themselves in extremis: Gedes and Gedelias in the throes of über-­sexualities or ­Grand Guignol tortures. The evolution of this genre from depictions of gods gamboling in paradise to worn out divinities wallowing in wastelands is itself one of the most startling barometers of the parallel socioeconomic devolution of twenty-­first-­century Haiti. Transformations in Haitian Eschatology  171

figure 6.5  ​André Eugène (b. 1959), detail of Dokto Zozo (Dr. Dick), 2004. Mixed media.

­ ollection of the artist. Used courtesy of André Eugène. Photo (2009) by Leah Gordon, C used courtesy of the photographer.

For when the cataclysmic Earthquake struck on January 12, 2010, utterly changing the ­human and physical landscape of the Black Republic, neither the Gedes nor any other member of the Samdi ­family had consolation or explanation to offer. Haitian sequin artist Myrlande Constant responded to their divine indifference by sewing a tableau of dismembered bodies while Bawon, Gran Brijit, and Gede cavort aimlessly amid the ruins of Port-­au-­ Prince. Constant has created a memento mori as stark and shocking (though in Technicolor) as Picasso’s Guernica: Ayiti, madi 12 janvye 2010. So why are Gede and his f­ amily acting so frivolously in Constant’s scenario? ­Ought not the lwa who is not only divinity of death, but tribune of the fran ginen, be of some assistance or consolation to his p ­ eople? Worse yet, might Gede in some way be implicated in this unspeakable mayhem? That very question was posed to oungan Sauveur St. Cyr, whose ­temple near the Solomon Market was demolished in the Quake. “Au contraire,” Sauveur explained, “Gede was also terrified by the goudou goudou.” According to Sauveur, Gede fled Port-­au-­Prince for Lavilokan, only returning to earth nine days ­later, when most of the dead had been burned in mass pyres or bulldozed into improvised graves. And ­there they molder without ritual or Gede to dance them back to Africa. 172  Donald Cosentino

figure 6.6  ​Myrlande Constant (b. 1968), Ayiti, madi 12 janvye 2010. Fabric, beads,

sequins, 239 × 249 cm. Collection of the Fowler Museum. Photo by Don Cole, Director of Photography, Fowler Museum. Photo courtesy of the Fowler Museum at ucla.

Post-­mortem: Retour du Bawon? Surely some Revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand . . . —William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

What Sauveur revealed is what Alcide realized in colored beads: a catastrophe beyond the comprehension even of Gede. In this vacuum of reason, it is only the artists who are capable of bearing witness. But what of the Gods? If Gede fled, did the Bawon also flee? Or is ­either of them commensurate with the catastrophe: What is the use of a used-up God?, asks Rainer Maria Rilke. That seems to be the question that inspired Edouard Duval-­Carrié’s installation, Le Baron Triomphant. Transformations in Haitian Eschatology  173

figure 6.7  ​Edouard Duval-­Carrié (b. 1954), Le Baron Triomphant, 2011. Mixed media on alumi-

num. Nine panels, each panel 72 × 72 cm. Collection of the artist. Used courtesy of Edouard Duval. Photo by Jide Shabaka.

Note that Bawon has his back to us, turning his head wistfully for a last look as he walks into a landscape too lush to be Haiti. Is he heading back to the Lavilokan imaged by André Pierre (fig. 6.1), just ahead of the US Protestant/ Pentecostal sound trucks that plied the G ­ rand Rue ­after the Quake, blaring denunciations of Vodou whose depravities forced the wrath of an avenging Jehovah-­God? Post–­January  12, 2010, t­here is a vacancy in Vodou Heaven. Bawon is displaced. The jouissance of Gede is irrelevant. And the wrath of the Catholic/Masonic Bon Dye or the Pentecostal Jehovah-­God has no place in any creditable theodicy. Con­temporary Haiti displays all the symptoms of Antonio Gramsci’s grim diagnosis of our disease of culture: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is d ­ ying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum 174  Donald Cosentino

a ­great variety of morbid symptoms appear” (1971, 80). Just as thousands of vivan-­yo, the survivors of Haiti’s catastrophic twenty-­first ­century, strug­gled to remain alive in rapidly decaying tent camps, so f­ uture generations of lemo, the Dead, persist in a parallel kind of limbo, while Gods and artists strug­gle to discern the outlines of a new Haitian eschatology. Notes 1. The structure of this geomythology is analogous to that described by Robert Farris Thompson as “The Four Moments of the Sun” (Thompson 1981, 83). As for existing u ­ nder the ocean, compare Gine to the sacred space ­imagined by August Wilson in Gem of the Ocean: The play is set in 1904 in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. Aunt Ester, the drama’s 285-­year-­old fiery matriarch, welcomes into her home “Citizen Barlow,” a young man in search of redemption. Aunt Ester is not too old to practice healing; she guides him on a soaring, lyrical journey of spiritual awakening to the “City of Bones,” which sounds a good deal like Gine. 2. Ever since the financial panic of 2008, the image of the “zombie” has dominated the imaginary of the late cap­i­tal­ist economies of Euro-­America, as witnessed in the spate of “zombie” and “undead” movies and tv shows, for example, Abraham Lincoln, Zombie Killer, as well as a new genre of comic horror novels, Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim; and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies . . . ​ad nauseam. The genealogy of ­these soulless postmodern undead victims is of course only meta­phor­ically related to their etymological cousins in Haiti, who are themselves only etymologically related to their Central African progenitors (i.e., Nzombi mpunga in Kongo). 3. Romero must be credited with creating prototypes for the con­temporary image of zombies: ghoulish, mindless flesh-­eaters, with no other relation to their hapless Haitian counter­parts than being the animated “undead.” As Pauline Kael observed, it would be fun to dismiss Romero’s Night of the Living Dead as undoubtedly the best movie ever shot in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, except for the genuine horror that it continues to inspire in audiences. Romero followed his sucés de horreur with two more Zombie classics: Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, which in turn inspired such comic ripostes as Sean of the Dead and Zombieland. 4. The joke was over a few weeks ­later when the Macoutes, in alliance with the military government, aborted the national elections by massacring would-be voters just a few blocks from Gesner’s ­temple. 5. For a particularly harrowing account of the Duvalier’s use of the National Cemetery as the staging ground for the televised execution of po­liti­cal enemies, read Edwidge Danticat (2010, 1–8). 6. True to his reputation as an avatar of Gede, Aristide or “Titid,” as he was popularly known, once advised his hungry constituents to visit Pétion-­Ville, the comparatively wealthy suburb of Port-­au-­Prince, where plenty of food was available in the shops and fine homes of the Haitian boujwa. And more menacingly, and in a reversion to a more Bawon Samdi persona, Titid praised the “sweet smell of Pere Lebrun,” the name of a popu­lar brand of tire used in “necklacing” po­liti­cal adversaries. 7. Regarding the oil drums, note especially the seminal iron sculptures of Georges Liautaud. See Randall Morris (1995). Transformations in Haitian Eschatology  175

chapter 7

Governing Death in Trinidad and Tobago Maarit Forde

During a difficult caesarian section at the Port of Spain General Hospital in August  2011, four spirits arrived to the operating theater to look ­after the newborn, a tiny preemie, who would spend his first months at the neonatal ward. The spirits ­were recently deceased relatives of the ­mother: her aunt, her grand­mother’s husband, and two ritual ­brothers from the Spiritual Baptist church, where she had grown up and remains a key member. Two months ­later, when the baby was strong enough to go home to Tobago, the spirit of his great-­grandfather visited the church. He was first seen by the baby’s three-­year-­old cousin, who told her great-­grandmother, the ­widow of the deceased man, about “the old man” standing by the center pole. Other members of the ­family and close ­family friends ­were then taken by a wave of spiritual manifestations, and the spirit of the grand­father, the former leader of the church, announced through his ­widow that he had been protecting the baby all along and wanted the ­little one to be named ­after him. The congregation sang his favorite hymn as some of the s­ isters waved a purple flag in his memory. In a g ­ rand thanksgiving ritual l­ ater on, no less than two hundred f­amily members, ritual ­sisters and ­brothers, neighbors, friends, and drummers celebrated the christening of the baby boy, whose name would remind them of the past patriarch. In con­temporary Trinidad and Tobago, visions or manifestations of the dead are seldom publicly discussed. The m ­ other of the baby never mentioned the spirits to the nurses or doctors at the hospital and would describe her experiences only to close friends and ­family. Only ­those church members who ­were closest to the f­ amily ­were able to interpret the manifestation of the late leader’s spirit in the church, as nothing was openly said or ex-

plained to the congregation. Although commemorative rituals are a regular ele­ment of present-­day mortuary culture—­memorial ser­vices are held in church or at home, candles lit on graveyards on All Soul’s Night, and loving obituaries published in the newspapers to mark the anniversary of a ­family member’s death—­the notion of the dead lingering around and interfering in the lives of their families has been discursively marginalized. The everyday tone in which the Garifuna in Paul Johnson’s work talk about their ancestors, the ancestral pride emanating from Saramaka historiography, or the confidence of Haydee, the self-­identified Bruja Número Uno when she describes her work with los muertos to Raquel Romberg, are rare in other than the most intimate of discussions in Trinidad and Tobago (Johnson 2007; Price [1983] 2002, 2009; Ochoa 2010; Romberg 2003; but see also Bilby 1999 on Kumina in Jamaica). The rituals and cosmologies of working and underclass ­people ­were pathologized, criminalized, and folkloricized in post-­Emancipation Ca­rib­bean socie­ties (Palmié 2002; Paton and Forde 2012; Ramsey 2011; Román 2007). This drew on, and solidified, the discursive categories and cultural understandings of modern and rational and on the other hand, nonmodern and superstitious cultural practices. The discourse on inappropriate rituals and beliefs and the accompanying state policies have rendered a wide range of cosmological notions and ritual practices nonmodern and uncivilized, marginalizing them in Ca­rib­bean colonies and ­later, in­de­pen­dent nations. Heavy-­handed criminalization and policing of ritual practice, but also the reproduction of the dominant value complex of respectability,1 have left lasting imprints on the moral landscape of con­temporary Trinidad and Tobago, where beliefs and practices bearing the slightest connotation to the manipulation of the spiritual world tend to be illicit, heterodox, or a source of embarrassment (Forde and Paton 2012; Khan 2004; Paton 2009). This is not ­because modernization in the oil-­rich, industrialized colony has led to secularization: on the contrary, religion and religiosity have always been central to the Trinidadian and Tobagonian modern (e.g., Khan 2004, 14). The con­temporary religious landscape is highly diverse, with Roman Catholicism and Hinduism remaining the largest denominations and charismatic Chris­tian­ity drawing converts from vari­ous dif­fer­ent Christian and non-­Christian groups. But although religiosity, and by default Chris­tian­ ity, has been one of the main tenets of the value complex of respectability that has been guiding Trinidadian and Tobagonian subjectivity since the establishment of missionary churches to convert and transform the laboring population, the borders of appropriate cosmological, ontological, and ritual Governing De ath in Trinidad and Tobago  177

content of respectable religiosity have been ardently policed and discursively disciplined so as to exclude subaltern knowledge and practice. In this chapter, I take part in anthropological and historical discussions of colonial and postcolonial government of religion by focusing on death and its rituals, particularly in rural and urban working-­class communities. Looking into relationships between the living and the dead in early twentieth ­century and in con­temporary Trinidad and Tobago, I discuss state biopolitics aimed at disciplining working-­class mortuary culture. State interventions, campaigns, and hostile reporting in the media in the colonial period have continued to influence local understandings of appropriate and inappropriate ritual practice and orthodox and heterodox cosmologies, especially in relation to the spirits of the dead. The Trinidadian communities I discuss in this chapter are ethnically and religiously diverse, and while African heritage remains an impor­tant point of reference in many of my sources, some of the ritual specialists and spirits I introduce are specifically defined as Indian. Engaging in conversation with recent work on the cosmologies of Ca­rib­bean modernity (e.g., Khan 2004; McNeal 2011; Ochoa 2010; Palmié 2002, 2014a, 2014b; Paton and Forde 2012; Richman 2005; Román 2007; Romberg 2003), I question the role of the dead in the discourse of modernity in Trinidad and Tobago and the cultural production of class difference that has accompanied that discourse. My work draws on archival data, including (often prejudiced or hostile) newspaper reports of arrests and prosecutions of ritual specialists who worked with the dead, and on ethnographic material collected in Spiritual Baptist churches, homes, and rituals mostly in Tobago, but also in Trinidad, New York, Toronto, and Grenada since 1996.2 Although I read the discourse and government of working-­class death culture as biopolitics informed by the moral justification of imperialism—­the civilizing agenda of the empire—­I recognize that the efforts to make mortuary rituals and relationships to the dead more suitable to a modern colony also reflected developments in western Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca. In Victorian ­England, mourning was publicly presented, most notably in clothing and periods of seclusion, and funerals w ­ ere home centered. In early twentieth ­century and especially ­after the massive death tolls of the First World War, the rituals of death and mourning transformed, as professionals, rather than families, had primary access to the deceased during the mortuary rites, and mourning became a more private affair (Hockey 2001, 189; Stearns 2007, 103). Significant reduction in mortality rates, most importantly for c­ hildren, from 1820 to 1920 and resulting from public health mea­sures, inoculation, and ­phar­ma­ceu­t i­cal treatments gave rise to cultural transformations around 178  Maarit Forde

death in the United States. Along with the professionalization of death and death rituals came a novel fear and aversion of death as well as a new emotional guideline against showing too much grief (Stearns 2007, 85–94). This modernist take on death has lately given way to more diverse, often personalized death rituals in the global north, so that the bereaved and even the deceased can actively take part in the planning and design of last rites (Hockey 2001, 207–208). Death has, again, become less of a taboo (Metcalf and Huntington 1991, 25; Stearns 2007). In Trinidad and Tobago, the professionalization and commercialization of death in the course of the twentieth ­century manifests in the central role of medical professionals and funerary homes in the mortuary pro­cess. However, if the f­ amily so wishes, ritual specialists—­e ven ­those of historically marginalized groups like Orisha or Spiritual Baptists—­can access, wash, dress, and prepare the corpse for the last rites. The community, along with the ­family of the deceased, attends wakes, funerals, and rituals of commemoration, often in large numbers. Death rituals, then, have not become entirely professionalized or ­family centered. The Good Dead and Mr. Steel: Spirits of the Dead in Con­temporary Rituals

Death has t­oday an exceptional media presence in Trinidad and Tobago. Violent crime has escalated in the country “at a phenomenal rate” since the turn of the twenty-­first ­century (e.g., Johnson and Kochel 2012; Sookram et  al. 2009), and the high frequency of road fatalities adds to the number of untimely deaths, especially in Trinidad. The daily newspapers; tv news and other programs focusing on crime, such as the popu­lar Crime Watch; and radio talk shows circulate graphic imagery and descriptions of murders and other violent crime on a daily basis, including uncensored images of dead bodies, blood and carnage, or victims’ f­ amily members in a state of shock. The sensational imagery and discourse are further disseminated in social media. In this sense, death in Trinidad and Tobago is extremely public. The constant flow of media repre­sen­ta­tions of death and the dead have served to normalize and even trivialize violent death—or at least, the death of certain members of society. The young African Trinidadian, working-­ class men and boys from unprivileged urban neighborhoods sacrificed in the gang wars sustained by international drug trade (Johnson and Kochel 2012, 224), or shot by the police, are not unlike the men who died in the munera of ancient Rome: ­Others, whose deaths in gladiator arenas provided panem et circenses to the public.3 The thanatopolitics of the neoliberal state Governing De ath in Trinidad and Tobago  179

that enables the continuation of drug-­related crime and extrajudicial killings by the police and consequent deaths of apparently dispensable citizens are supported and amplified by the sensationalist media, providing morbid entertainment to spectators who view the deaths of O ­ thers from an affective 4 distance (see Fabian 1972). Con­temporary mortuary rituals in Trinidad and Tobago, including t­ hose arranged for the victims of state and gang vio­lence, tend to follow a tripartite sequence of wake, funeral, and rituals of commemoration. Although it has become shorter and simpler, this sequence has structured mortuary rituals in Trinidad and Tobago for generations, and the earliest examples of wake and burial discussed in this chapter date from 1880. Despite the state’s and media’s efforts to Eu­ro­pe­anize local mortuary culture as discussed below, wakes are still an impor­tant ele­ment of the funerary complex in Trinidad and Tobago and across the Anglophone region (Forde 2009; Guilbault 1987; Titus 2008; Wardle 2000). In Trinidad, the wake had become part of Hindu mortuary rituals by the 1950s and remains popu­lar ­today (Klass 1961; Niehoff and Niehoff 1960; see McNeal’s chapter in this volume). T ­ here is historical continuity in the structure and purpose of mortuary rituals (along with much variance in style and content) across ethnoreligious bound­aries, and the ­family and community-­centered wake remains outside the other­wise professionally managed ritual pro­cess of preparing and burying or cremating the body. In contrast to the ubiquitous discourse on death and the widely recognized structure of mortuary rituals, interactions with the dead are limited to the fringes of nonmainstream religious groups and confined to highly private, domestic spaces and rituals. Some of ­these interactions take place between ritual participants and unrelated spirits summoned in formulaic kabbalah ­ thers occur in dreams and visions, and sometimes ceremonies,5 whereas o manifestations, of deceased ­family members and friends. ­These forms of communication with the dead belong to the ritual repertoire of some Spiritual Baptists and Orisha devotees. Practicing the Spiritual Baptist religion was illegal in Trinidad and Tobago between 1917 and 1951, and to this day both Spiritual Baptist and Orisha traditions remain marginal in a society where the value complex of respectability continues to mark class difference across vari­ous fields of social life, including religion. ­Because of the power­ ful discursive production of normative knowledge of death and the dead, but also ­because of cosmological notions of nonancestral dead as potentially dangerous, it is impor­tant to many devotees who identify with ­these religions to distance themselves from kabbalah or other ritual interactions with 180  Maarit Forde

the dead.6 Many devotees regard entities such as kabbalah spirits heterodox and delineate their own practice as dif­fer­ent from the more inclusive versions of Spiritual Baptist or Orisha, often basing their notions of orthodoxy ­either on ifa, or for Spiritual Baptists, Chris­tian­ity. Rituals or vocabulary related to the dead are certainly not part of large-­scale rituals open to the public or covered in the media, such as the annual cele­brations on Spiritual (Shouter) Baptist Liberation Day, a national holiday commemorating the repeal of the Shouter Prohibition Ordinance in line with recent efforts to promote multiculturalism in the religiously diverse society (see Henry 2003, 51). Also, studies of ­these religions by prac­ti­tion­ers—­such as Hazel-­Ann Gibbs de Peza (1999), Patricia Stephens (1999), or Asram L. Stapleton (1983)—do not mention kabbalah or the spirits of the dead. Public self-­representations of Orisha and Spiritual Baptist religions tend to approach the more mainstream religious practices of European-­and American-­originated churches, and the inclusion of spirits of the dead would compromise any attempt to represent ­these religions as respectable. In consequence, the dead have been pushed to the margins of already marginalized religious systems. Kabbalah practice in Trinidad was first recorded by George Eaton Simpson in 1965, and in more detail in the 1990s (Glazier 2006; Houk 1995; Lum 2000; Simpson 1965, 23). Far removed from Jewish mysticism, Trinidadian kabbalah rituals aim at communication with the spirits of the dead. Kabbalistic spirits are invoked by a medium and can manifest through the medium’s body in small-­scale rituals: banquets, dinners, or thanksgivings, usually arranged in private homes or, less frequently, in Orisha compounds and Spiritual Baptist churches (Lum 2000, 177–190). The development of kabbalah practice has not been systematically studied, and the word itself does not come up in archival data on illegitimate ritual practices in Trinidad from 1880 to 1940.7 ­There are, however, continuities between con­temporary kabbalah and rituals that ­were policed ­under obeah laws in early twentieth-­century Trinidad. Many of the early ritual specialists charged with practicing obeah used esoteric lit­er­a­ture published by the DeLaurence com­pany in Chicago, and according to Stephen Glazier (2006, 180) t­hese books guide the work of ­today’s kabbalah prac­ti­tion­ers.8 The pantheon of spirits summoned in kabbalah banquets resembles the spirits that took part in early twentieth-­ century séances and other illegitimate rituals. I am not suggesting that the spirits that spoke through Anita Smith’s body in the 1922 mesmerism case discussed below would have been among the ones named by Kenneth Lum’s in­for­mants in the 1990s—­Mr. Steel, Sir J. D. Hanuman, King Solomon, and ­others—­but that a category of spirits of the dead, unrelated Governing De ath in Trinidad and Tobago  181

to the prac­ti­tion­ers but able to help them, and ritually summoned for this purpose, seems to have been reproduced throughout the twentieth c­ entury up to the pres­ent moment. This category signals another continuity worth noticing: unrelated spirits of the dead in Trinidadian rituals relate to other, higher spirits or deities in the cosmologies of ritual prac­ti­tion­ers, orishas or saints, in a way that resembles the relationship between the spirits of the Congo-­inspired palo and the Yoruba-­inspired regla de ocha in Cuba, or djab and the lwa in Haiti (e.g., Laitinen 2002, 200–201; Ochoa 2010; Richman 2005; see also Warner-­Lewis 2003 on Congo influence in the Ca­rib­bean). Kenneth Lum’s Trinidadian in­for­mants explained that kabbalah spirits worked faster, but ­were more dangerous than orishas (Lum 2000, 177–190); in the same way, los muertos in Cuba or djab in Haiti can offer quick and efficient assistance, unlike the orichas or lwa who are generally benevolent but whose ­favors cannot be taken for granted. In Cuba, palo is understood as “very power­ful” (muy fuerte), violent but fast and effective (violente, trabaja rápido, muy efectivo), and it is associated with the dead rather than deities (Palmié 2002, 164).9 On the other hand, the lower-­ranking spirits have to be compensated for their work, whereas relationships to orichas or the lwa are based on long-­term dedication, often initiation, and rituals of sacrifice. This bifurcation of ritual practice draws upon differentiated logics of exchange between h ­ umans and spirits, one resembling cap­i­tal­ist, the other, gift exchange (see Forde 2012; Richman 2005). For Isidra, Todd Ramón Ochoa’s teacher and main in­for­mant on palo in Havana, los muertos include her own ancestral dead and the spirits of ­people she knew, such as teachers or neighbors; but also unidentified, distant spirits, conceptualized at times as an anonymous, impersonal mass (Ochoa 2010, 24; see also Beliso-­De Jesús 2014 and Espirito Santo 2015). Similarly, ancestral spirits, unidentified, potentially malevolent spirits, or jumbies, and kabbalah spirits can coexist in the cosmologies of some Trinidadian and Tobagonian Spiritual Baptist and Orisha devotees, along with other spiritual entities, saints or deities, and the Holy Spirit. The four spirits that came to protect the prematurely born baby in the opening anecdote are a regular presence in the lives of the ­mother’s ­family: they are the good dead, spirits of recently deceased f­amily and friends who visit the living in dreams and visions. “Our dead stay around our ­houses all the time—­they know what is g ­ oing on h ­ ere,” explained the baby’s great-­grandmother, the female leader or “­Mother” of a Spiritual Baptist church in Tobago, to her grandchildren and me as we w ­ ere sitting on her porch in 1998, long before the baby was born. “Like ­Brother D [a member of her church and a close 182  Maarit Forde

f­ amily friend], he is h ­ ere all the time, and when we say good t­ hings about him, he hears them.” What the grand­mother referred to as the good dead are tutelary spirits who can give advice on a wide range of m ­ atters from finding an apartment or a job to physical illnesses, social relationships, and rituals. In this par­tic­u­lar ­family, female members in four generations had the gift of seeing the dead in dreams and visions: the grand­mother often spoke of her own grand­mother who brought her up with good advice from the dead. Her grand­daughter, the ­mother of the baby in the opening anecdote, and one of her great-­granddaughters can see their dead relatives and friends both in dreams and in daytime visions. Such visions and dreams often have material consequences in the daily life of the f­ amily, or in the ritual practice of the church: the dead may advise on the ritual materials and colors used in an upcoming ceremony, suggest dietary changes for f­ amily members suffering from ailments, or promise to help an aunt find a suitable apartment to rent. Apart from communicating with the living in visions and dreams, the dead can occasionally manifest in the bodies of the living. Within the wide range of cosmological perspectives that make up the Spiritual Baptist and Orisha religions in Trinidad and Tobago, the rituals of some groups allow for a concrete, embodied presence of the spirits of the dead. Such a presence illuminates and challenges cultural notions of individual personhood and cosmological and temporal distance between the living, who occupy the pres­ent, and the dead, who supposedly occupy the past. The grand­mother’s youn­gest ­daughter, who passed away at the age of thirty-­four, continued to take part in f­ amily rituals, such as her ­sister’s wedding and the annual thanksgiving ritual the ­family organizes ­every December by manifesting through her niece. The aunt’s personal style of dancing and moving when taken by the Spirit ­were now perceptible in her niece’s possession. Whereas the good dead continue to occupy the physical appearance and the positions they had in the ­f amily when alive, jumbies are spirits of the deceased that have no benevolent, tutelary roles as guardians or advisers. On the contrary, during my fieldwork in Tobago I heard stories of accidental encounters with jumbies that resulted in serious physical or ­mental suffering, infertility, or even death. Healers described malevolent spiritual work, often diagnosed as obeah, which achieves its most threatening power when jumbies are evoked. The good dead dwell around their ­family, but jumbies as depicted in such narratives tend to abide in secluded, dark places, such as bamboo patches or ancient burial grounds, or near silk cotton trees. Jumbies, like the good dead, ­were only discussed in private, confidential settings, except for the humorous, folkloricized repre­sen­ta­tions of jumbies in skits Governing De ath in Trinidad and Tobago  183

performed during the Best Village competition or the Tobago Heritage Festival. ­Because of this institutionalized folklorization, most p ­ eople in Trinidad and Tobago are able to recognize the concept of jumbie, but few would publicly admit to believing in them or find their presence in local cosmologies legitimate. Mortuary Rituals and the Dead in Colonial Trinidad

Unlike ­today, social relations, communication, and exchanges between the living and the dead ­were constructed and reproduced in vari­ous rituals in early twentieth-­century Trinidad. Mortuary rituals, but also many practices that fell ­under the ­legal category of obeah extended the ritual space from living rooms, shops, and graveyards to the hereafter and facilitated interaction between the dead and the living. Newspaper reports of such rituals, prejudiced as they ­were, can help us see how death “stimulates and re-­defines social relationships” (Strathern 1981, 206). Ca­rib­bean mortuary rituals construct death as a pro­cess rather than a singular event, aligning neatly with Robert Hertz’s classic model ([1907, 1909] 2004, 82). The ritual cycle of the wake, funeral, and memorial ser­vices facilitated the prolonged presence of the spirit of the deceased in the world of the living and provided opportunities for communication and exchanges between the living and the spirit.10 The earliest ethnographic accounts of religious life in Trinidad and Tobago include narratives of the spirits of the dead lingering around their families during the wake cycle, but sometimes also ­after the rituals had been completed. In their discussions with the ­people of Toco in 1939, Melville and Frances Herskovits w ­ ere told that the dead might get upset if their extended f­ amily did not wear proper mourning attire, or that dead relatives might harass the bereaved, should they find the mortuary rituals of the wake complex lacking: “Your own dead may trou­ble ­because want reel dance.”11 Ethnographers working in Tobago in the 1954 proj­ect headed by the British sociologist Andrew Pearse found that the deceased would return to the h ­ ouse on the third night of the sequence and that “the spirit is absolutely earth-­bound” for the first nine nights. The spirits of the dead would “respond to the chanting of t­ hose assembled” and could also possess the dancers.12 Memorial ser­vices for loved ones w ­ ere and can still be held a­ fter forty nights, and then, a year from the death. Smaller in scale than the wake, ­these rituals would usually involve the singing of hymns and prayers led by a ritual specialist, and the sharing of refreshments (not necessarily alcohol). Pearse 184  Maarit Forde

has documented a ritual of commemoration that was prob­ably already becoming obsolete at the time of his fieldwork in Tobago in the 1950s, but still appears now and then in folk per­for­mances: the reel dance. One of Pearse’s in­for­mants explained that like his parents, he or­ga­nized a reel dance (which he called a thanksgiving) for the “old p ­ eople” ­every November. Unlike the year nights, this ritual honored the dead in the ­family more collectively and was not dedicated to any par­tic­u­lar relative. The ritual specialist, “workman,” was able to identify when the ancestral spirit or spirits had arrived at a nearby junction, and the participants would go to meet them with gifts of ­water, rum, and rice, playing the favorite song or jig of the deceased.13 Herskovits ([1947] 1964, 160–161) analyzes the reel as a healing ritual, in which the ­family dead w ­ ere summoned to bring a cure to a sickness or bring a solution to other forms of misfortune, such as miscarriages. His in­for­mants in Toco spoke of the dead appearing in dreams, instructing their ­family members on how and when to arrange a reel dance. In addition to individual mortuary cycles, the Catholic calendrical ritual of commemoration, All Saints’ Day, was and still remains relevant in Trinidad and Tobago. In Tobago, Pearse was told that on All Saints’ Night, the dead “­were about” visiting relatives, and it was easy to invoke them. They would also bless the crops planted in provision gardens, securing the reproduction of essential resources (see also Bloch and Parry 1982, 7).14 Governing Death

In Trinidad and Tobago and other British colonies in the Ca­rib­bean, mortuary rituals such as the wake engendered moral debates in the media and ­were targets of state biopolitics: police interventions, arrests, and prosecutions. In some colonies, specific laws addressed the conduct of wakes (e.g., the 1849 and 1911 acts in St. Vincent and Law 27 of 1873 in Jamaica), whereas ­others, like Trinidad and Tobago, prosecuted wake organizers or participants ­under laws on disorderly conduct and breach of the peace.15 Wakes ­were part of a wider cultural field of working-­class communities in urban Trinidad (Ramcharitar 2007; Trotman 1986). Religious practices that ­were placed ­under the disparaging moniker “Shouters” and criminalized in Trinidad and Tobago in 1917 w ­ ere sometimes mentioned in connection to wake-­related prosecutions, and magistrates might also note similarities between Shouters’ ser­vices and wakes,16 In a similar manner obeah, another umbrella category for ritual practice in colonial legislation, helped in the discursive construction of illegitimate funerary rituals.17 Unsurprisingly Governing De ath in Trinidad and Tobago  185

carnival, a major signifier of what the colonial ­middle class and elite considered as immoral “jammette” culture of the working and underclass, was also evoked in ­these moral and ­legal debates over mortuary rituals.18 The discursive construction of respectable death culture in Trinidadian courtrooms echoed the views of religious authorities in the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches. Abbe Armand Massé, a French Catholic priest who was stationed in the south of Trinidad in the late 1870s and early 1880s, aired his daily frustrations in the isolated community in his diary, including descriptions of the annoying funerary practices of his parishioners. Abbe Massé’s discontent resonated ­later on in the rhe­toric of the antiwake campaign discussed below. It was not just the noisy, rum-­infused wakes to which he objected: what offended him was that ­people invested more resources, time, and interest in the wake than in the burial and that the wake could be held even ­after the burial. The villa­gers’ emphasis on the wake compromised the priest’s ritual authority in the mortuary cycle and promoted the villa­gers’ own cosmological knowledge rather than the dogma of the Catholic Church, but it also contradicted the notion of death as a singular event closed by the final rite of committal, the burial. The ritual logic of the wake, to secure a safe transition of the spirit of the dead to the hereafter by communal feasting and merriment, implied a blurred boundary between h ­ uman agency and life ­after death, a coexistence of the dead and the living in the same ritual space. 28th  February  1881: Sooner than pay a small stipend and to have the burial of the unfortunate young man done in the Guapo cemetery they spent money to buy drinks and to have a big wake. Then they threw the body of the dead man like a dog in a hole. From time to time some big persons die at Guapo without my being notified. In this case they never miss the wakes, less do they feel the need of a priest. (Massé 1988, 142) 3rd  May  1880: I was woken up last night by loud cries. An old negro whom I had made his First Communion in the h ­ ouse the same day [. . .] has just died. The b ­ rother of this man came this morning to make the wake for the dead the following night, when the dead man was already buried. I replied that I had no permission to give, that that had nothing to do with me, but he knew how much I was the ­enemy of wakes and what he wanted to do would be even more blameable since it was being done in the absence of the body. The burial had taken place in the eve­ning. [. . .] 186  Maarit Forde

4th May 1880: The wake for the dead man whom I buried yesterday took place last night. It has passed into the blood of t­ hese miserable negroes. They sang, drank, ate, and played the ­whole night. (Massé 1988, 70).19 Members of the clergy continued to condemn heterodox death rituals long ­after Abbe Massé’s days. In 1913, the Port of Spain Gazette (posg) reported on a “Mr. E. W. Lewis, an itinerant preacher” who had “interviewed the Colonial Secretary on the subject of legislation against the demoralising and pernicious orgies [wakes], to use Mr. Lewis’ expressions.—­Mr. Lewis says that he has the sympathy of the Hon. H. C. Gollan K.C., and he means to carry on his propaganda against Wakes &c ­until the baneful practices are no more in our midst.”20 The Herskovitses’ in­for­mants in Toco ­were reluctant to discuss death rituals such as the reel dance, ­because ­these ­were “vigorously opposed by Anglican and Catholic priests, who not only preached against holding them, but marked down as undesirable citizens any who gave them” (M. Herskovits [1947] 1964, 159). Although wakes ­were frequently disparaged in courtrooms and pulpits and ­people ­were regularly charged and fined for crimes that ­were reported as “sequence of a wake,” they w ­ ere never illegal in Trinidad and Tobago. In 1913, following the criminalization of funerary wakes in St. Vincent in 1911, one of the major newspapers of the colony, the posg, launched a campaign to prohibit wakes in Trinidad and Tobago. A series of editorials, letters to the editor, and reports attacked wakes in Port of Spain as well as in the provinces, describing them as “diabolical orgies” (September 4, 1913, 4); “horrible saturnalia”, “scandalous” and an “immoral custom” (November 12, 1913, 9); and a “savage practice” marked by “stupidness and dev­ilry” (March 25, 1917, 9). The participants w ­ ere “illiterate” (February 12, 1913, 7), “coloured masses” (March 25, 1917, 9) occupying “the lower and lowest walks of life” (November 12, 1913, 9).21 Like the culture of the urban working and underclass generally, and their religious practice more specifically, wakes ­were discursively marginalized by their association with immoral sexuality, unhealthy and unhygienic conditions, and subhuman be­hav­ior. Like “sardines in a can,” working-­class Trinidadians held wakes in h ­ ouses that mea­sured only sixteen square meters and had to be “disinfected by the authorities” (posg, March  23, 1917, 4), and ­were “screeching”, “bellowing,” and “indulging in unearthly yells” (posg, December 12, 1913, 7). The following editorial, urging the acting chief of constabulary to outlaw wakes, includes a brief description of the ritual:

Governing De ath in Trinidad and Tobago  187

the horrible custom of wakes

We fear that in our recent condemnation of the horrible orgies locally known as “wakes,” some of our readers may think that we have gone too far with the ­matter, but we are sure that it is nothing of the kind. We think that, considering both Pulpit and Press have taken such a firm stand against the immoral custom, it is time that the Government should act in the ­matter. Complaints frequently reach us of t­hese horrible saturnalia which take place on the death of some ­people in the lower and lowest walks of life; but it is said that the Constabulary is helpless. A case was brought to our notice yesterday where a wake held at 108 St. Vincent Street was what a certain Parson acquaintance of ours would call a hellish affair. It commenced at 9.30 o ­ ’clock on Monday night—­there being several “sides,”—­one indulging in “tim tim bois seche” [storytelling], and the like (nothing harmful of course) while another corner was devoted to the singing of “Peace, Perfect Peace”! (the idea!) and afterwards, “On the Resurrection Morning” and such like hymns,—­each singer (?) trying to make more noise than his neighbour. This sort of business continued with slight intermissions when rum and coffee ­etc. ­were served. All through the night this nuisance continued till 5.30 a.m. yesterday when the affair burst up with a “triumphal” rendering of the celebrated Rag “Row, Row, Row.” And next door a poor suffering patient, suffering from Tuberculosis, had to bear this unnecessary penance. Surely peaceful citizens should be protected from such scandalous orgies. We call upon Col­ o­nel Marshall to do the needful. If no law exists to help him, we hope that he see that one is introduced in Council during the time he is acting Chief of Constabulary. If the island of St. Vincent could put down the disgraceful practice ­there should be no difficulty for us to do likewise. (posg, November 12, 1913, 9) Still pleading for a ban on wakes in 1917, the editor stressed the support of the local clergy: “It is absurd to class [the wake] as in any way a religious ser­vice. We should be the last to interfere if they w ­ ere. But the clergy of all denominations have denounced them time and again; and we have some recollection of a decision [—­—] arrived at by the clergy of one church at least some years ago not to allow the holding of the full church ser­vice at the funeral of anyone over whom t­ here had been a wake held. A short ordinance is all that is needed [—­—]” (posg, March 27, 1917, 11). Although wake-­ related arrests and prosecutions continued throughout the 1910s and 1920s, the newspaper’s efforts did not result in legislative changes. 188  Maarit Forde

Practices at funerary wakes that differed most clearly from the mortuary rituals of the colonial elite—­loud singing, heavy drinking of rum, storytelling and gambling—­were used in courtrooms and newspapers as evidence of the nonreligiosity and inappropriateness of the nocturnal wake. Chief Justice Sir John  T. Goldney, presiding over a 1898 slander case that originated in a wake for a dead child, scolded the accused for drinking at the wake: “You o ­ ught to be ashamed of yourself, just fancy stopping ­there in the ­house with a dead child from 6 pm to 6 am engaged in drunken riotousness. You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself; of course you ­were drinking” (posg, December 3, 1898, 3). The posg editorial of December 12, 1913 (p. 7) asked “must the peace of an entire neighbourhood be broken [—­—] ­because a certain class of ­people can think of no other way of showing their sorrow for a departed one other than by indulging in unearthly yells, in many instances lewd songs, and other uncivilised forms of amusement?” Drinking and “lewd” songs ­were hardly unusual in the nightlife of the city: it was their inclusion in a rite of passage that made them uncivilized in the eyes of the editor. The emotional content and code of be­hav­ior in Euro-­Christian ritual practices, established as normative in British colonies, allowed for expressions of grief and communal support to the bereaved, but did not leave space for more than a referential presence of the deceased: the idea of the spirit responding to, or participating in, the ritual was cosmologically and ontologically threatening to the civilizing mission. While the biopo­liti­cal discourse about death culture used moral and medical arguments to incriminate wakes as disrespectful, barbaric, and unhygienic, underpinning ­these arguments was a less explicit but equally significant discomfort with the notion of death as a pro­cess. This is evident in Abbe Massé’s irritation with the wake that was held a­ fter deceased had been buried, as well as in City Magistrate Deane’s comments thirty-­four years ­later: In January 1914, Martin Mayers, whose wife had died in St. Vincent, had or­ga­nized a nine nights wake, and subsequently found himself before City Magistrate Deane along with six other defendants charged for disturbing the peace. The prosecution estimated that forty participants had “indulged in singing vari­ous songs, including carnival songs, [beating] ­bottles together and [bawling] out in a boisterous manner, each trying to excel the other.” The magistrate, fining the defendants 10 shillings or seven days imprisonment each, was offended by the “idea of you all keeping a wake for a person who died nine days before. You ­were not in the wilds of Africa, but in Port-­of-­Spain.” (posg, January 31, 1914, 9, italics mine) Governing De ath in Trinidad and Tobago  189

Mortuary rituals held several days or even a year ­after the medical death signaled a prolonged, gradual pro­cess of transition from the world of the living to the hereafter, which disturbed magistrates, clergy, and other commentators. Lengthy mortuary sequences supported the understanding of the spirits of the dead lingering in the society of the living, and spirits ­were generally problematic to the colonial proj­ect in Trinidad and elsewhere, as the modern, rational individual became central in the discourse about sovereignty and self-­governance, and ­later, modernization and development.22 Such discourse in the realms of law and mainstream religions, but also lit­ er­a­ture and popu­lar ­music, medicine, and social sciences has had lasting effects on Trinidadian and Tobagonian (and more generally middle-­class Ca­rib­bean) perspectives on death rituals and the relationship between the living and the dead.23 Besides funerary rituals, the spirits of the dead participated in other types of ritual practice in colonial Trinidad. Ritual specialists summoned the dead to assist in rituals of healing, or when trying to recover hidden trea­ sures.24 On the other hand, ritual work was performed to exorcise malevolent spirits—­jumbies or duppies—­from ­houses, shops, bank accounts, or material objects (see, for example, Udal 1915 on Jamaica; Beckwith 1929). In the spirit of James Frazer’s classic definition of contagious magic, defendants in obeah cases ­were reported to have manipulated graveyard dirt, headstones, bones, skulls, hair, and other materials to communicate with the dead.25 Pearse’s ethnography includes detailed descriptions of the manipulation of dead bodies in Tobago in the 1950s, both in order to keep them from returning to haunt the bereaved and on the other hand, to enable ­those who ­were suspected to have died in result of obeah to come back and seek revenge.26 Jumbies, anonymous, and potentially malevolent spirits of the dead ­were not confined to the private space of domestic rituals but w ­ ere part of the urban landscape. Large crowds would gather and listen to spirits sing “old time plantation songs” or “the cries and howls of a w ­ oman who was believed to be the victim of a flogging by a jumbie” in the streets of Port of Spain, or watch “an Indian man raising a ‘jumbie’ at the Ciparo Embarcadero” in San Fernando.27 As the latter report suggests, spirits of the dead found their way into Indian Trinidadian ritual practice and cosmologies, reflecting the creolization of working-­class belief systems across ethnic and religious bound­ aries.28 The presence of the dead in working-­class cosmologies, ­whether as a threat or a resource, source of suffering or healing, continued to inform the dominant discourse on normative death culture in the media and courtrooms. While the tone of this discourse was pejorative and, at times, hos190  Maarit Forde

tile, and while it effectively marginalized working-­class interactions with the dead, at the same time it influenced the cosmological notions of the ­middle class and elite. Journalists, l­ awyers, and magistrates’ descriptions and discussions of spirits reinforced their presence in the more general cosmological landscape in Trinidad. The government of death in colonial Trinidad and Tobago may not have produced a seamless moral community between the dominant and the subaltern, but working-­class ideas of death and the dead did become recognizable and familiar to ­middle-class and elite Trinidadians. ­Legal discussions and media accounts of the dead helped to produce a field of meanings, ontological common ground, to which all Trinidadians could relate, although with dif­fer­ent degrees of owner­ship and approval. Whereas the dead in the reports discussed above brought about material effects in the world of the living, for example, by causing or alleviating illness and other suffering, their physical manifestations w ­ ere most tangible in séances and other rituals, in which spirits communicated through the body of a medium. The dead could occupy the bodies of the living, uninvited: the posg of April 11, 1905, reports that a Tobagonian man named Willy Tabia, identified as a “Shouter” (member of what became known l­ater on as the Spiritual Baptist religion), attended a wake in George Street in Port of Spain and was “taken by the spirit of the deceased.” He “shouted” for hours, and an elaborate ritual was arranged to bring him back. When the spirit left him, Tabia “treated the com­pany to a learned dissertation on his ‘experiences in the spirit world’ ” (3).29 But ritual specialists could also deliberately seek communication and physical unity with the dead. In several obeah cases, the defendant had been channeling a spirit in a healing ritual, and, in the eyes of the justice system, obtaining money from a client “on the assumption of super­natural powers” (this formulation defined obeah as a crime in the Summary Convictions Ordinance of 1868). ­These cases offer an ­angle to an impor­tant area in the government of death, as they produced detailed debates on the role of the dead in modern society between l­ awyers, magistrates, policemen, and witnesses. Circulation of religious knowledge within the Ca­rib­bean, but also between colonies and metropolitan centers in Eu­rope and the US, was fueled by ­labor migrations, occult lit­er­a­ture, and newspaper coverage of practices such as Spiritist séances, astrology, mesmerism, or hypnotism in Eu­rope, and many Trinidadian ritual specialists as well as their colleagues elsewhere in the Amer­i­cas ­were fluent in the vocabulary and ritual practice related to ­these traditions (Palmié 2014a, 2014b; Polk 2014; Putnam 2012). Some self-­identified as mesmerists, phrenologists, or hypnotists; John Mollyneaux, charged for practicing obeah Governing De ath in Trinidad and Tobago  191

in 1928, had his ­lawyer explain that the treatments he offered to his clients ­were “magnetic healing or personal magnetism.”30 Like Puerto Rican Spiritists of the same era, who shared intellectuals and nationalists’ ideals of pro­ gress and “saw themselves as part of a cosmopolitan vanguard poised to bring forth a new age” (Román 2007, 107), Trinidadian ritual specialists tapped into global flows of newly established ideas and identified with science, education, self-­development, and other tenets of modernity, as envisaged in local discourse. From the elite’s point of view, however, they represented backward superstition and ­were beaten into modern subjects with the cat-­o-­nine tails: for example “Professor” Carrington, whose healing practice in 1918 involved massage, electronic treatment, and hypnotism, as well as esoteric ­lit­er­a­ture by the de Laurence Com­pany, was found guilty of practicing obeah and sentenced to six months of hard ­labor and twelve strokes with the cat (posg, April 5, 1918, 5). Charles Car­ter and Anita Smith’s prosecution in 1922 is an example of the colonial state’s role in public discourse on the legitimacy of communication with the dead. Arrested during a séance that had been initiated by an agent provocateur sent by the police, Car­ter, an ex-­police constable, was charged with practicing obeah. He had allegedly “mesmerized” Anita Smith, who worked as his medium, by staring at her “for seven or eight minutes.” In the court hearing, the agent provocateur witnessed that when mesmerized, Smith had declared, “It is not I speaking but the dead spirit in my body. I am now at the 12th stage of science and when I wake from h ­ ere I w ­ ill not know what I have said” (posg, August, 18, 1922, 7). The counsel for the accused, Mr.  Scipio-­Pollard, cross-­examined the arresting officer, Lance-­Corporal Lewis Lambert (who specialized in obeah cases in the Port of Spain area the early 1920s), and sought to pres­ent his clients’ communication with the spirits of the dead as mesmerism, not obeah. He constructed a categorical difference between the two by linking mesmerism to science, Eu­rope, and local elites. Mr. Scipio-­Pollard asked Lance-­Corporal Lambert ­whether he knew that “mesmerism was a science allowed in France” or that Mr. Edgar Gaston Johnston (a respected ­lawyer and member of the city council of Port of Spain, l­ater knighted) had practiced mesmerism, or that “mesmerism was used for chloroform in lieu of an anaesthetic [sic].” He also quoted the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Physiology of Faith and Fear “by W.S. Saler, M.D. (an American)” to prove that mesmerism and hypnotism w ­ ere “regarded as science” in Eu­rope and the US. Mr. de Verteuil, the city magistrate and member of one of the power­ful French Creole families in the colony, was not convinced: in his view, it was “essentially an obeah case in the ordinary 192  Maarit Forde

sense of the word.” Skulls and other items found on the premises of the accused compromised the defense’s attempts to show that Car­ter’s methods ­were scientific, not “assumption of super­natural power or knowledge” and hence, illegal. At the time of Mr. Scipio-­Pollard and Mr. de Verteuil’s debate, Eu­rope had seen a revival of Spiritist séances in the wake of the First World War, as the bereaved sought to connect with victims of the war and to make sense of the unpre­ce­dented scale of death in the ­Great War (French 2013; Hazelgrove 1999). An interest in the occult ­shaped artistic production—­for example, in the Bauhaus group—in the interwar period (Otto 2012). Although popu­lar, mesmerism and spiritism w ­ ere becoming confined to personal, mystical ritual practice rather than public rituals or discourses hinging on science (Monroe 2008). Mr.  Scipio-­Pollard, however, built his defense on the assumption of the legitimacy and respectability of Eu­ro­pean knowledge and religion—­even heterodox religion—in contrast to African superstition, well established in the colonial Ca­rib­bean. The defense was suggesting that the dead could be part of modern, civilized society, if communication with them was mediated by scientific or religious discourse acceptable to colonial and metropolitan elites. This way the dead could stay within the cosmological par­ameters of the Enlightenment and the ontological authorship of spirit-­ human relations would remain in the hands of Eu­ro­pe­ans. The discursive and legislative production of normative and on the other hand, inappropriate death culture drew on the notion of modernity, placing working-­class funerary rituals and encounters with the dead to the realm of the nonmodern, backward and superstitious, or simply “African,” as voiced by members of the judiciary. This polarization was supported by the social sciences, memoirs, travelogues, imagery, and other genres of colonial knowledge production (e.g., Forde and Paton 2012; Mohammed 2009), and it has well outlasted British rule in the region. But the death culture that the colonial state and media sought to discipline was not simply African; it had developed in cosmopolitan communities immersed in cap­i­tal­ist economy, ­shaped by regional and hemispheric ­labor migrations. The allegedly nonmodern and superstitious working-­class Trinidadians of African and Indian ancestry ­were actively engaging with Eu­ro­pean Spiritism or mesmerism along with vari­ous other explorations to the borderland between religion and science, a borderland discursively and judicially policed in post-­Enlightenment socie­ ties. Esoteric books published by the Chicago-­based de Laurence com­pany, used by many ritual prac­ti­tion­ers in Trinidad and elsewhere in the colonial and also con­temporary Ca­rib­bean, are but one example of the circulation Governing De ath in Trinidad and Tobago  193

of knowledge that went into the reproduction of working-­class mortuary culture (e.g., Putnam 2012). This culture was “differently modern” (Trouillot 2002) rather than a retention of precolonial tradition. Death and the Reproduction of In­equality

The discursive grounds for state biopolitics and the governance of mortuary culture relied on culturally specific notions of modernity, science, and respectability, reproducing an ­imagined global geography of modernity and tradition, civilization and barbarism. I’d like to conclude by drawing attention to the subjectivity produced and required by the modern state and the ways in which the dead complicated the notion of sovereign subjectivity. The ­legal, religious, and media discussions explored above reveal some of the discursive production of illegitimate selfhood and relations, defined against the progressive, educated individual, whose social relations adhered to the norms of middle-­class respectability. The state disciplined the relatedness of its colonial subjects through vari­ous policies and campaigns, most explic­ itly by social policies promoting marriage and the nuclear ­family.31 Extended families, visiting or common-­law ­unions, matrifocality, c­ hildren born out of wedlock, and other aspects of Ca­rib­bean kinship systems ­were established as social pathologies by the social sciences, most notably the Moyne Commission of 1938–1939 and Thomas Simey’s social welfare program and publications in the 1940s (Barrow 1996, 9–11; R. Smith 1982). The value complex of respectability, combined with power­ful notions of pro­gress and modernity, underpinned biopo­liti­cal governance of social relations in the colonial period as well as in in­de­pen­dent nation-­states: as Raymond T. Smith wrote about Ca­rib­bean social policies in 1982, “the tendency seems to be to try to bring the area into line with a universal ‘modern’ practice, suitable or not, for no politician wishes to appear unprogressive” (111). Protonationalist and nationalist thought from Pan-­Africanism to l­abor movements relied on the modern, autonomous, and rational individual as a po­liti­cal agent (e.g., Henry 2000, 253–254). The society of the living and the dead, the continued presence of the dead in the social lives of the living, compromised the civilizing proj­ect of the Empire and contradicted the tenets of “progressive” nationalism: the modern, civilized subjectivity that relied on a coherent individual, a rational, autonomous agent. Respectable colonial subjects and ­later, progressive and modern citizens ­were not to recognize the presence of disembodied spirits, to communicate with them, or to be “possessed” by them. Permeable selves—­such as, for example, Willy 194  Maarit Forde

Tabia or Anita Smith—­whose bodies enabled the temporary occupation and tangible manifestation of spirits, did not align with the idea of a sovereign individual as an agent of modernity; neither does the con­temporary Spiritual Baptist, taken by the spirit of a deceased relative. This chapter has looked into some of the ways in which a dominant system of values and norms of respectable, civilized, and progressive subjectivity has been entrenched in Trinidadian and Tobagonian culture. In post-­ Independence Trinidad and Tobago, the mortuary cycle has become expert driven with biomedical institutions, funerary homes, and licensed ministers at the helm. The nocturnal wake, however, remains popu­lar as ever across the country. Although the state and the governing classes have never been successful in rooting out working-­class mortuary culture that might undermine the modernizing proj­ect, spirit-­human relations have been made harmless by turning them into folklore or confined to private spaces in the fringes of society. The discursive and legislative molding of desirable subjectivity and knowledge has contributed to the reproduction of class difference—­more so than ethnic difference—in Trinidad and Tobago. The ­people whose ideas about death and the dead are not in line with notions of autonomous subjectivity occupy the same class position as ­those who have fallen victim to state vio­lence and extrajudicial killings by the police and in t­ oday’s Trinidad, gang warfare that is closely connected to the po­liti­cal and business interests of the elite. The disciplining of mortuary culture is an example of systematic stratification of cultural knowledge in colonial and postcolonial Trinidad and Tobago, a proj­ect that has helped not only to promote dominant norms and values, but also to justify economic and po­liti­cal disenfranchisement as well as discursive and state vio­lence against ­those whose lives, and deaths, seem to ­matter a ­little less. Notes 1. E.g., Brian L. Moore and Michele A. Johnson (2011); Diana Paton (2009, 2012); Paton and Forde (2012); David Trotman (1986); also Kate Ramsey (2011); Reinaldo Román (2007). On respectability, see Jean Besson (1993); Carla Freeman (2014); Karen Fog Olwig (1990); Peter Wilson (1973). 2. My research has been funded by the Acad­emy of Finland (1999–2002 and 2004– 2007), the Leverhulme Trust (2007–2009), and the Campus Research and Publications Fund of the University of the West Indies (2013–2014). I am deeply indebted to t­ hese funding bodies for enabling my work in the anthropology of religion and politics in the Ca­rib­bean throughout dif­f er­ent research proj­ects. Governing De ath in Trinidad and Tobago  195

3. Johannes Fabian’s 1972 essay “How ­Others Die” compares anthropology’s fascination with death in “primitive” socie­ties to the Roman gladiator games, or munera, where the suffering and death of “alien and exotic ­people” provided entertainment to vast audiences. Whereas anthropological accounts of death in modern, urban, and western contexts are common in con­temporary lit­er­a­ture, Fabian’s point about the affective distance between us, the spectators, and the death of ­Others has not lost its relevance. 4. On the neoliberal state and vio­lence in Jamaica, see Deborah Thomas (2011). 5. Trinidadian kabbalah rituals are small, secretive meetings, often performed as festive meals (banquets or thanksgivings), in which participants seek to evoke and communicate with a pantheon of spirits (Houk 1995; Lum 2000). 6. See Stephan Palmié (2002, 165) on similar attitudes ­toward los muertos, the dead, among Cubans who associate with regla de ocha. 7. As part of the research proj­ect “Colonial Rule and Spiritual Power: Obeah, the State, and Ca­rib­bean Culture,” funded by the Leverhulme Trust, Diana Paton and I collected archival data on the government of religion in Trinidad (and other Ca­rib­bean colonies) between 1880 and 1939. The database includes all reports of relevant court cases in the daily newspaper Port of Spain Gazette (posg) within the time period. 8. On the use of DeLaurence books in criminalized ritual practice in early twentieth-­ century Trinidad and Jamaica, see Diana Paton (2015, chap. 6). 9. See also Lydia Cabrera (1979) and Todd Ramón Ochoa (2010) on Cuban notions of the dead in reglas de congo, and George Brandon (1993, 111) on Cuban santeros’ approaches to Espiritismo and the dead in New York. 10. In many colonial socie­ties in the region, the burial was preceded or succeeded by dif­fer­ent communal rituals of feasting and divination, and ­these mortuary sequences are still common in the con­temporary Ca­rib­bean (Guilbault 1987; Titus 2008; Wardle 2000). In Trinidad and Tobago, the initial phase of the mortuary sequence began with the funerary wake, held on the night before burial, and the nocturnal rituals could continue for nine nights as the Bongo feast. Alternatively, a Nine Nights wake could be held for the deceased on the ninth night ­after his or her death. The wake and Bongo ­were communal rituals, drawing on the joint resources and participation of the village or neighborhood: neighbors, friends, and other associates of the bereaved f­ amily gathered at the ­house of the deceased to sing hymns and other songs, but also to ­gamble, play competitive games, tell stories and jokes, and to eat and drink ­until daybreak. Physically demanding dances and songs with sexual symbolism, usually performed by young men who specialized in ­these ritual arts, ­were central to Bongo nights (Elder 1971; Titus 2008). 11. Selina, June 7, 1939, and Margaret, September 7, 1939, Melville and Frances Herskovits Papers, mg261, Boxes 15–17, the New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. 12. Andrew Pearse Collection, Box 1, Folder 6: 19, and Box 1, Folder 6: 49, 1954; see Hurston [1938] 1990, 44–45, and Beckwith 1929 on duppies, the spirit of the dead, rising during funerary rituals in Jamaica. Much of the ritual practice in Jamaican funerary rituals in the post-­Emancipation period sought to prevent the duppy from returning to the land of the living (Moore and Johnson 2011, 78–79; see also Hume, this volume). Rituals of divination offered another link to the spirit of the deceased at funerary rituals. Funerals of enslaved ­people in eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century Jamaica, much 196  Maarit Forde

like Ndyuka funerals in Surinam, included a highly dramatic ritual of coffin divination, in which the deceased directed the pallbearers carry­ing the coffin to the person responsible for the death (Brown 2008; Thoden van Velzen, this volume; Williams 1925, 235–236). Coffin divination provided a forum for the community to discuss the cause of the death and identify and perhaps seek to solve breaches in social relations. The deceased, guiding the bereaved from inside the coffin, was very much an active presence in the society of the living. 13. Andrew Pearse Collection, Box 1, Folder 6. 14. Andrew Pearse Collection, Box 1, Folder 6. 15. Summary Offences Act, Act 31 of 1921, http://­rgd​.­legalaffairs​.­gov​.­tt​/­Laws2​ /­Alphabetical​_­List​/­lawspdfs​/­11​.­02​.­pdf; and “An Ordinance for rendering certain Offences punishable on Summary Conviction, 1868” (co 297/8 Ordinance no. 6 of 1868). On Jamaican legislation prohibiting wakes, see Brian Moore and Michelle Johnson (2011, 75–76). Wake-­related prosecutions in Trinidad ­were based on charges for breach of the peace, being drunk and disorderly, or assault (e.g., posg August 31, 1895, 5; November 4, 1897, 3; January 24, 1899, 5; November 26, 1917, 9; July 18, 1922, 13; June 28, 1927, 9). Selling rum without a license was another charge that would come up in prosecutions of wake participants (posg, September 26, 1922, 13; November 11, 1925, 15). 16. posg, June 14, 1905, 5; July 9, 1920, 9; December 14 1921, 14. 17. posg, December 3, 1898, 3. 18. posg, November 26, 1917, 9; January 31, 1914, 9. 19. See also Massé (1988, 238). 20. posg, July 19, 1913, 5. 21. posg, February 12, 1913, 7; September 4, 1913, 4; November 12, 1913, 9; March 25, 1917, 9. 22. See, for example, Catherine Hall (2002, 344, and in passim) on the exclusion of African ontologies and knowledge from desirable subjectivity in post-­Emancipation Jamaica. John Jacob Thomas, a Trinidadian Pan-­Africanist and critic of colonial repre­sen­ ta­tions of Ca­rib­bean subjects, argued for the ability of colonial subjects in the British West Indies to partake in the government of the colonies by emphasizing their intellect, capability of leadership, and Chris­tian­ity, but also by distancing them from “obeahism” and “heathenism,” especially as practiced in Haiti (Thomas [1889] 1969, 43, 220; see also Smith 2002, 160–171). Similar focus on respectable subjectivity, achieved through education, emerges from the protonationalist essays by the authors of Jamaica’s Jubilee in 1888 (Thomas 2004, 48). 23. Mendes [1935] 1984; Growler: The Bongo Dance. 24. On spirits in rituals of healing, see, for example, “Amusing Obeah Case,” posg, December 30, 1904; “The Brabant Street Obeah Case,” posg, July 13, 1910, 5; “More Obeah,” posg, February 4, 1920, 3; and “The Super­natural at San Juan,” posg, October 9, 1929, 11. On spirits and money or trea­sures, see, for example, “Alleged Assumption of Super­natural Power,” posg, July 19, 1912, 7; and “ ‘Spiritualists’ before the Magistrate,” posg, June 27, 1917, 11. On getting rid of spirits or jumbies, see, for example, “Exorcising a Jumby,” posg, February 3, 1899, 5; “Witchcraft Again,” posg, February 21, 1917, 5; and “An Alleged Obeahist,” posg, May 5, 1922, 9. 25. Alexander (1920, 95–102); “Amusing Obeah Case,” posg, December 30, 1904; “Obeah in Newtown,” posg, March 30, 1920, 12; “A Respectable ­Woman Caught PracticGoverning De ath in Trinidad and Tobago  197

ing Obeah,” posg, January 30, 1902, 6; “Allegations of Obeah,” posg, January 30, 1902, 6; “Desecration of a Grave,” posg, April 10, 1902, 5; posg, September 15, 1910, 3; posg, December 2, 1897, 3; “Ex-­Constable Alleged Obeahist,” posg, August 18, 1922, 7; “An East Indian Trickster,” posg, May 29, 1924, 12. 26. Ovid Armstrong, “Funeral Rites in Tobago,” Andrew Pearse Collection, Box 1, Folder 6: 29, 1954. 27. posg, February 17, 1891, 6 ; “Listening to the Jumbie,” posg, September 27, 1900, 6 ; “Pranks of an Indian ‘Invoxer’,” posg, August 15, 1920, 17. 28. posg reported about Indian spirits for example on April 27, 1902, February 3, 1899, October 2, 1897, May 29, 1924, and October 3, 1928. On the creolization of cosmologies in Indian Trinidadian ritual practice, see Maarit Forde and Diana Paton (2012); Khan (2004); Klass (1961); McNeal (2011) and this volume; Stephen Vertovec (1992). 29. Interviewed by the Herskovitses in Toco on July 9, 1939, Margaret described her experience of channeling a spirit: “When [lookman; ritual specialist] called spirit, she talked, but was spirit talking, riding me, we says it when spirit get person, he say who he was, why he come to trou­ble her, what he wanted to go away, leave her in peace. Obiaman explain it. Spirit talk tongues.” Margaret, July 9, 1939, Melville and Frances Herskovits Papers, mg261, Boxes 15–17, New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. 30. In obeah-­related court hearings, Mary Clement, charged for practicing obeah, was referred to by her husband as a Roman Catholic and a mesmerist (posg, July 13 1910, 5). Karan Cooche, reportedly an Egyptian ­woman arrested in Port of Spain in 1925, said she was a phrenologist (posg, June 26, 1925, 9); Herbert Brathwaite identified as a hypnotist (posg, May 8, 1927, 8); John Mollyneaux’s case is discussed in posg, September 15, 1928, 11. 31. My use of the concept of relatedness draws on the anthropology of kinship, and especially Janet Carsten’s work (e.g., 2004). Of course, biopo­liti­cal governance of relatedness among the enslaved and, ­later, indentured laborers was instrumental to the plantation regime, as the planter class sought to secure and discipline the reproduction of the ­labour force. Marital and ­family patterns among the enslaved or laboring masses ­were manipulated to maximize profits for the owning class.

198  Maarit Forde

chapter 8

Death and the Prob­lem of Orthopraxy in Ca­rib­bean Hinduism RECONSIDERING THE POLITICS AND P O E T I C S O F I N D O - ­T R I N I D A D I A N MORTUARY RITUAL

Keith E. McNeal

In late July 2012, the first Indian prime minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, Basdeo Panday, caused a bit of kuchoor, Hindi slang for po­liti­cal chicanery, at the funeral of his friend and colleague, Kelvin Ramnath. Former member of parliament with the United National Congress (unc) and chairman of the Environmental Management Authority, Ramnath had just died of a heart attack at sixty-­three years old. His body was first taken to the Couva South constituency office, for which he had served as mp off and on since 1976, before arriving at Arunodai Presbyterian Church in Balmain, Couva, for the funeral, where the “Lion”—as Panday is affectionately known by his supporters—­ delivered a stinging critique of former unc associates in his eulogy.1 Panday lambasted the hypocritical outpouring of affection for Ramnath, who had been active in politics for de­cades, yet deemed “unfit” by the unc to represent the ­people of Couva South during the last election. He likened the situation to Mark Antony standing over the dead body of Julius Caesar, who had been betrayed and murdered by ­those he thought he could trust, followed by no less than eight biblical references, such as Jude 1:16, “­These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud-­mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage.” ­After the ser­vice at the church, Ramnath’s coffin was taken to the cremation site associated with the Sewdass Sadhu Hindu “­Temple by the Sea” at

figure 8.1  ​One of the pyre sites at the Waterloo ­Temple by the Sea ­after a cremation. Photo (January 2014) by Jason Ramcharan, used courtesy of the photographer.

Waterloo, on the central west coast of Trinidad, where he was cremated on a funerary pyre. I begin with this anecdote since it so dramatically embodies several aspects of con­temporary Indo-­Trinidadian mortuary ritual unthinkable in earlier times. H ­ ere we have a deceased Christian Indo-­Trinidadian whose hybrid funeral is conducted at a po­liti­cal party constituency office, Presbyterian Church, and neotraditional Hindu cremation site u ­ nder modified rites for a Christian funerary pyre, thereby indexing how drastically the politics and poetics of cremation have changed over the years. I set out to reexamine this change b ­ ecause it is a complicated and impor­tant story in its own right, but also ­because it facilitates fresh perspective on the colonial history of West Indian Hinduism and helps clarify the late modern politics of postcolonial multiculturalism in Trinidad and Tobago. Hinduism has been progressively ethnicized in the West Indies, making for a potent diasporic emblem of Indianness (Khan 2004; Munasinghe 2001; Vertovec 1992). The effort to legalize cremation was impor­tant for consolidating an assertive Indo-­Caribbean voice in the late colonial period. Yet, as we ­shall also see, it took time for cremation to be established at the heart of orthodox Hindu ritual praxis, fi­nally trumping burial only in the last quarter of the twentieth ­century, well into the era of in­de­pen­dence—­much ­later than most realize. The mortuary ritual corpus known by the Sanskrit-­derived terminology of antyeshti samskaara (or antyaishti sanskaar) has therefore been 200  keith E . mcne al

complexly implicated within both colonial and postcolonial efforts to revitalize Hinduism in Trinidad. This corpus has been recently expanded and embellished, now organ­izing not only most local Hindu response to death, but has also become the quintessentially “Indian” way of ritualizing the postmortem condition to such a degree that it has become popu­lar among Christian and even some Muslim Indians as well. Moreover, the popularity of cremation has grown considerably among non-­Indians. I suggest that religious beliefs concerning reincarnation have continually animated Hindu funerary praxis despite ritual fluctuations to and from burial during the colonial and postcolonial periods, arguing that t­ here are not only compelling theological, but also anthropological reasons for why mortuary ritual has operated as a central locus for Hindu revitalization. Reclaiming ritualization of the corpse represents not just recuperation of the body politic at a key life-­passage juncture, but one whose practice represents a profound cosmological gap between Hindu and Christian theology, therefore making cremation a potent vehicle of cultural assertion and ethnic revitalization. In other words, orthodoxy has been less subject to sociohistorical fluctuations than orthopraxy with regard to death and the practice of mortuary ritual in Ca­rib­bean Hinduism, the machinations of which have had reverberations well beyond the Hindu sphere.2 The Genealogy of Indo-­Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual

The history of Indo-­Trinidadian mortuary ritual is more complex and convoluted than usually appreciated. Clarifying how funerary practices adapted and changed at vari­ous points throughout the colonial period in turn facilitates a better grasp of the postcolonial ritual terrain and its own reformulations at the turn of the twenty-­first ­century. I sketch only the outlines of that history ­here.

Indentured Adaptations In Hindu Trinidad, Steven Vertovec writes: “­Little has changed, since the time of migration, in the way death is conceived and funerary rites performed. The maintenance of such a high degree of similarity, in religious ideas and actions, between mortuary rites in Trinidad and India attests to their fundamental position within the Hindu system” (1992, 205). Yet he cites no sources regarding the mortuary complex for colonial Trinidad and recognizes that cremation was essentially proscribed u ­ ntil well into the twentieth ­century, Indo -­Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual  201

ritual space occupied by a “strong tradition” of burial instead (112–113, 227). Vertovec’s claim about diasporic Hindu continuity in the domain of funerary praxis seems overdrawn, though I find the notion that West Indian Hindu conceptualization of death maintained more fidelity to traditional understandings of karma, samsara (the cosmic cycle of death and rebirth), and reincarnation, quite plausible in light of the dramatic changes and transformations that have unfolded within the realm of funerary praxis, rather than despite them. The degree to which indentured Hindus observed antyeshti samskaara when burying is not entirely clear, though it is reasonable to assume they did in fact ritualize the postmortem condition in ways that drew deeply upon remembered subcontinental cultural resources in the context of their “New” World. Yet, as J. C. Jha—an Indian sociologist who spent time in Trinidad in the 1970s—­observed, while Hindu funerary rites w ­ ere indubitably observed in the colonial era, “the ceremonies connected with death in the Indian community in Trinidad have under­gone many changes” (1976, 50). What we know for certain is that pyre-­based cremation was not officially sanctioned ­until the mid-­t wentieth ­century, and the strug­gle for legalization itself complex and hard won. We also know that Indians of all religious affiliations buried their dead throughout indentureship, though it is difficult to know what they actually thought about burial versus cremation, or felt about having been compelled to bury upon entrance into the colony. John Morton—­the indefatigable head of the Canadian Presbyterian Mission who concentrated his efforts on Indians in the last third of the nineteenth ­century—­established one of the first graveyards for Indians on the island (S. Morton 1916, 77). Burial is one of five scriptural options for disposing of the corpse in Hindu tradition, though cremation is especially iconic and considered the most theologically efficacious mortuary methodology for reasons discussed below. Consider the following early twentieth-­century newspaper accounts for more perspective on the era, though they hardly provide direct access to Hindu subjectivity on the ground. An entry in the Port of Spain Gazette (posg) of January 31, 1903, entitled, “A Saddoo Funeral,” reads: On Tuesday morning the p ­ eople of Sangre Grande witnessed a strange sight, in the funeral of an East Indian ­woman belonging to the Saddoos. The coffin was made of beautiful native cedar, and was elaborately decorated with a profusion of flags and flowers and was borne ­after the custom amongst East Indians on the shoulders of four men. The pro­ 202  keith E . mcne al

cession marched through the streets to the not untuneful singing of a kind of mournful dirge accompanied by the beating of drums, the ringing of bells, and the blowing of horns, to the new cemetry [sic] where the interment took place. It was remarked upon that three ­women, fellow-­ country-­women of the deceased followed in the pro­cession which is most unusual. Kowlasar, the High Priest of the Saddoos, and one of the largest landed proprietors in the district performed the ceremonies. If ­there was discontent about burial, it is not evident from this observer’s description. A coffin carried by men is taken as customary by the article’s author, whereas the inclusion of ­women in the funerary pro­cession is seen as unusual. The religion of “Saddoos” (sadhu is a holy Hindu mendicant) is used synonymously with Hinduism, and we know that Kowlasar—­a name more commonly spelled as Kowlessar nowadays—­was the island’s leading Kabir Panthi (a Hindu sect [panth] stemming from Kabir, a syncretic Hindu-­ Muslim reformist saint who lived in northwest India from 1440 to 1518) of the time (Samaroo 2004, 49–50). According to Dr. D. Comins (1893), surgeon-­ major of the British Army and—­until his visit to Trinidad in 1891—­protector of immigrants in Kolkata, Kowlasar had become a wealthy contractor and landowner. Yet by the time of the Comins Report, Kowlasar had become a Sadhu—no longer mahant, or institutional head, of the Kabir Panth—­and apparently more concerned with divesting of his fortune and returning to India and an ailing ­mother.3 Sixteen years ­later, “a Correspondent in Couva” describes the vault of “the Late Rampartab Pundit” in the posg, of January 16, 1919: An exceedingly pretty f­ amily vault has been recently erected at the Preysal Cemetery by Chanarkadyal Maharaj, who is the youn­gest and most popu­ lar son of the late Rampartab Pundit. The vault forms a fitting enclosure for the sacred remains of his illustrious ­father who passed away on the 21st  May last, and of his beloved m ­ other who had been at rest now for about twelve years. On passing through the Cemetery the words “­Family Vault—­Rampartab Pundit” inscribed on a marble slab in gold letters readily attracts the attention of t­ hose travelling along that route. This marble slab is placed on a concrete wall, having the shape of a gable-­end with Cornish finish at the summit, thus giving the vault a rare artistic appearance. The dimension of the vault is 14 ft square, with concrete side walls mea­sur­ing 2 ½ ft. high above the surface of the ground. A pretty steel railing runs above ­these side walls 1 ½ ft. high, supported by six concrete pillars having cappings, cornish and pannel. ­There is an iron gate entrance Indo -­Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual  203

figure 8.2  ​The Rampartab Crypt at Preysal Cemetery. Photo (August 2013) by Jason Ramcharan, used courtesy of the photographer.

4 ft. high by 3 ft. wide. The side walls moulding is finished at top with threaders at bottom. T ­ here are 6 panels mea­sur­ing 3 ft × 1 ft. with headings around the walls. The ground floor of the vault is out of concrete in diamond ­shaped blocks. Within the interior of the enclosure t­ here are two beautiful marble slabs, one over the grave of Pundit Rampartab, and the other over the grave of his wife Pundita Seedhanna. The inscriptions on the slabs are as follows: I. “In loving memory of Rampartab Pundit. Died 21st May, 1918. Aged 75 years. r.i.p.” II. “In loving memory of (Pundita) Seedhanna. Died 22nd July, 1906. Aged 56 years. r.i.p.” The vault was contracted for by the popu­lar local mason of pugilistic fame, Mr. John H. Griffith, of Couva. The marble slabs with inscriptions in gold letters, ­were furnished by Mr. J. Haynes-­Clark, of the city. The elaborate material culture of this case of burial just a­ fter the official end of the indentureship scheme certainly suggests some degree of Hindu enthusiasm for burying the dead. According to Bridget Brereton (personal communication, 2012), the mason would have likely been of black or mixed-­ black descent, given his name and the fact that whites would have been unlikely to do such a job; Haynes-­Clark was a well-­known black funeral home 204  keith E . mcne al

owner, one of few black men who owned a successful f­ amily business at the time. Thus the technical—­rather than ritual—­labor associated with Rampartab’s burial involved Afro-­creoles from near and far.

Late Colonial Cross-­Currents Although Indians began arriving in the colony from 1845 and indentureship came to an end in 1917, it was not ­until the late 1930s that mortuary ritual surfaced as an overt locus of ethnoreligious assertion vis-­à-­vis the state in the late colonial politics of culture.4 The posg, August 28, 1938, reported that permission for cremation could be granted u ­ nder special circumstances, though an intimidating application pro­cess and the general discriminatory bias against Indians made this a moot option. The “question of establishing crematoria” was u ­ nder consideration by the government, yet advocates of funerary pyres insisted they ­were inadequate for fulfilling “the requirements of Hindus” (posg, September  11, 1938). A letter to the editor of the same newspaper from Pandit Dinanath Tiwari several months l­ater (October 17) echoed this argument that only funeral pyres “can answer the religious requirements of the Hindus.” Hailing from British Guiana, Pandit Tiwari was president of the newly formed Sanatan Dharma Board of Control (sdbc), which rivaled the Sanatan Dharma Association (sda) of south Trinidad. He went to India to bring back a missionary in 1937—­Dr. Parashuram Sharma, secretary of the Foreign Propaganda Department of the Prathinidhi Sabha of Lahore—in order to further the Ca­rib­bean Sanatanist work (Samaroo 1987, 52–54). Dr. Sharma’s articulate activism boosted the Hindu case in the West Indies: he supported cremation by the pyre system advocated by Pandit Tiwari in addition to joining the ascendant chorus of demand for recognition of Hindu marriages, state aid for non-­Christian schools, the establishment of a Hindu college, and creation of an overarching Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha of the West Indies. Building on Sharma’s efforts, Tiwari emphasized the support locals had garnered for proper Hindu cremation from prominent Indians on the subcontinent—­such as Ram Saran Das, president of the Panjabi Prathinidhi Sabha with which the sdbc was affiliated, and the Hon. Sir Jagdish Prasad, Indian government minister in charge of Immigration Education, Health and Lands (Samaroo 2004, 63–64). Similarly, an editorial in The Hindu of Madras (Chennai) in 1939 protested that West Indian Hindus “are not permitted to cremate the dead. The Hindu labourers who ­were taken from ­here to serve on the sugar and cocoa plantations have so far been powerless to Indo -­Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual  205

secure from the authorities the right to dispose of their dead in accordance with the practice in their native land and the injunctions of their religion” (quoted in Kistow 2004, 252). Agitation for the right to cremate was decidedly transcolonial. Indeed, the government of India or­ga­nized for Mr. J. D. Tyson—­a British member of the Indian Civil Service—to visit the West Indies in order to document the situation and assess the grievances of Indo-­Caribbeans for pre­sen­ta­tion to the Moyne Commission, which was investigating the wave of ­labor riots throughout the region in the mid-1930s. His Report on the Condition of Indians in Jamaica, British Guiana and Trinidad states: Though Indians have not hitherto practised cremation in Trinidad ­there is a definite and apparently growing demand that this, the traditional and universal method of disposing of the dead in Hindu India, should be permitted in Trinidad. The community is ready to concede that in a thickly populated island the se­lection of sites for cremation grounds must be subservient to the requirements of public health; they recognize also that, out of deference to the feelings of other communities, cremation grounds must be adequately screened. They agree also that the ashes must be disposed of in the sea and not in the r­ unning ­waters of the island. Subject to ­these three conditions, it would seem reasonable that cremation by the pyre system should be allowed in an island where over 20% of the population are Hindus. (1939, 76) The ­matter was clearly subject to considerable conversation and debate by this time. And ­things ­were changing fast. Special permission for a high-­profile cremation was granted in 1940, but the site granted for this historically significant first event was the Port of Spain garbage dump known as the La Basse, now located along the Beetham Highway heading east out of town, where—­according to the Maha Sabha Bulletin of October  1940 (vol. 1, no.  8, p.  4)—­“the stink from the rotting and burning city garbage was awful.” The pyre erected on this site was for the funeral of Metharam J. Kirpalani, one of two famous Sindhi ­brothers (the other, Murlidhar, was lead editor of the Indian Centenary Review mentioned below), who emigrated from India along with their ­Uncle “Kako” Permanand in 1927 and established vari­ous highly successful business ventures, ­were among the first to purvey films from the subcontinent, and ­were instrumental in opposing the En­glish language proficiency restriction in connection with the fight for universal adult franchise. “Metha,” as he was known, died of a heart attack at the age of forty-­six. One of his descendants—­Raj 206  keith E . mcne al

Hathiramani—­later composed a history of the Kirpalanis in Trinidad called 50 Years Together (1977), in which he writes: Metha had earlier requested that his body be cremated according to Hindu custom. However, his wish seemed not to be fulfilled. Cremations had up to that time never taken place in Trinidad. But Metha’s ­Lawyer, J. Arthur Procope, with Gulabrai (the owner of Bombay Bazaar) and Murli, petitioned the Governor, Sir Hubert Young, in an effort to get permission for the cremation of Metha’s body. They explained that Metha was an orthodox Hindu, who had been born in India, and was still of Indian citizenship. They fervently expressed the wish that his body be cremated. This posed a dilemma to Sir Hubert Young. ­People ­were very superstitious and if the cremation was permitted near a residential area, it could provoke disturbances. He could not afford to let that happen, yet he wanted to grant the dead man’s wish. Eventually, the Governor gave his consent for the cremation. It was, however, to take place on the site designated for the burning of all the city’s refuse, the ­ ere observed ardently by Hindus throughout the La Basse. Though Hindu customs w island, no one had yet been cremated. (12, emphasis added) According to the Maha Saba Bulletin, the event attracted an unanticipated crowd of onlookers curious about the spectacle taking place. Yet despite having advanced the cause for cremation, the colonial government’s locating the island’s inaugural public cremation in the largest garbage fa­cil­i­t y was nonetheless an insult to the Hindu community. Thus the fight continued.5 The Cremation Act of 1953 for the regulation of burning of h ­ uman remains in crematoria or other­wise and for the establishment of crematoria did not explic­itly refer to Hinduism, but it clearly responded to Hindu concerns. Thus it is especially noteworthy that the bill’s sponsor was an Afro-­creole: Victor Bryan, council member for Eastern Counties and then minister for Agriculture and Lands. He emphasized the bill was intended “to satisfy an existing demand, not to create one” (p.  1568) and “to regularize the situation in deference to the wishes of an impor­tant minority in this community” (p. 1569). Bryan pointed out that the West Indies Royal Commission of 1938–1939 had “recommended that steps should be taken to make the ­legal position plain and to ensure that no obstacle was placed in the way of this practice subject to certain safeguards” (p. 1570). Yet Government action had languished for more than a de­cade, since cremation by funerary pyre was considered unsanitary and offensive.6 This “deadlock” held ­until 1948, when—­according to Bryan’s Hansard transcript—­the Hindu community unanimously assented to disposing of Indo -­Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual  207

ashes only in the sea, instead of rivers (though Tyson had reported agreement among Hindus on this front a de­cade before). Bryan also emphasized that cremation was acceptable throughout the Commonwealth, setting a compelling pre­ce­dent for legislative change in Trinidad and Tobago. A first draft of the bill was composed ­after a meeting in 1950 with Mr. C. B. Mathura—­head of what was known as the Cremation Committee—­and the respective ministers of Land, Health, and Local Government (1571). The ­matter was not simply one of allowing Hindus to observe their “traditional religious customs,” but also one of cultural rights: “The demand has existed in one section of our community in the exercise of their fundamental right for a long time, and it is the feeling of Government that this demand should be met” (1573). Bryan was followed by the Hon. Ranjit Kumar, an influential businessman who had migrated to Trinidad from India in 1935 and was elected as council member for Caroni North in 1950. Kumar emphasized the need for legislative action in the face of public stigma and previous governmental antagonism ­toward Hindu cremation. His view corroborates the view of the past outlined above, yet wildly underforecasts the explosion of interest in cremation two generations l­ ater: “For centuries in this Colony, Hindus have buried their dead in cemeteries, and even when this Bill is passed, I doubt if all Hindus w ­ ill ever take advantage of the provisions. T ­ here should be freedom of choice for ­every individual, and even if a small number of Hindus in this Colony desire that their bodies should be cremated in accordance with their ancient tradition, I think ­every single Hindu ­will support their right to be cremated in accordance with their desire” (1575–1576). Yet Kumar himself ­favors “mechanical” crematoria over pyres, seeing them as “a very progressive step” (1576) ­toward a “more modern way of disposal of the dead” (1580). When his turn came to speak, the Hon. Chanka Maharaj—­Council Member for St. Joseph—­acknowledged what a “controversial question it was in the past,” but that “the dreams of the Hindu community” w ­ ere now fi­nally being met (1585). Again, it was a fundamental m ­ atter of religious freedom. Next up was the Hon. M. G. Sinanan, Member for Caroni South, who aligned himself with Chanka Maharaj by affirming the issue as a primarily Hindu concern, then went on not only to reiterate that “freedom of worship, freedom to carry out one’s religious customs, constitutes a fundamental ­human right,” but also compared the m ­ atter with the plight of Spiritual Baptists, who had also won a b ­ attle against discrimination for open cultural expression (1586–1587). Bhadase Sagan Maraj, council member for Tunapuna and 208  keith E . mcne al

head of the newly formed Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, praised the government for having brought the bill to fruition. The bill was passed by the Legislative body on Friday, May 8, 1953.

Tracking the Ritual Corpus We may better grasp the complexity of sociocultural change by considering the main ethnographic accounts of Indo-­Trinidadian culture from the mid-­ twentieth ­century. According to Arthur and Juanita Niehoff ’s (1960) research in the Indian-­dominated Oropouche Lagoon area of southwestern Trinidad in the mid-1950s, burial was practiced by most Hindus, for whom cremation was “an unpleasant idea” (see 131–135). Bodies of the deceased ­were buried in coffins in government cemeteries containing separate sections for Hindus, Muslims, and Christians (in the early days, it was said, Indians buried the dead in their gardens). A funerary pro­cession from home to graveyard would make a number of stops along the way to perform aarti (offering of lit flame), which was again conducted at the graveside. A handful of years before, ­women would not have participated in this pro­cession at all, but they would come as far as the cemetery threshold by the time of the Niehoffs. Excerpts from the Ramayana ­were chanted “along with some other ritual,” then relatives ritually deposited earth into the grave, at which point the coffin was covered and jhandis (prayer flags) erected at each end of the gravesite. The Niehoffs report that cremation was illegal ­until 1936, presumably referring to the exceptional permission theoretically granted for cremations by the late 1930s. They observe: “With the increase in education and wealth among Indians, they have become more vocal in their efforts to get Hinduism (and Islam) on an equal footing with Chris­tian­ity. Cremation is an impor­tant symbol of Hinduism and Hindu leaders are trying to encourage other Hindus to re-­adopt this custom” (132). Since it was expensive, the few who opted for cremation used only token amounts of ghee (clarified butter) for burning of the corpse. Yet even before the expansion of cremation-­at-­ large, the Niehoff portrait suggests the observance of antyeshti samskaara accompanying Indian burial, albeit less elaborately than its ­later formulation, which t­oday includes a tenth-­day Pinda Puja (offerings of pinda, or ceremonial rice-­flour doughballs). Moreover, the Niehoffs speak of no officiation by any pandits aside from the ser­vices of a special Mahapatra Pandit, who assists in waterside ritual ablutions along with hair-­and nail-­cutting just before the tenth-­day shraddha rites centered on offerings to the spirit of Indo -­Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual  209

figures 8.3 and 8.4  ​Some Hindu burial sites in Paradise Cemetery, San Fernando. Photos (August 2013) by Jason Ramcharan, used courtesy of the photographer.

the deceased (preta). The Hindu mortuary cycle—in other words—­was far from dominated by the technical expertise of pandits (133–135). The Niehoffs also state that Indo-­Trinidadians had ­adopted the wake tradition from their black neighbors, embellishing it with lit deeyas (oil lamps) and songs inspired by the Ramayana (132; see also Klass 1961, 238–243). Hindu and Muslim Indians had likewise taken up observance of All Souls’ Day from local Catholics, in which the graves of the deceased are cleaned and decorated with candles, deeyas, and flowers on All Hallows Eve, the night before All Saints’ Day, or the eve of All Souls’ Day on the night of All Saints’ (November  1 and 2 on the liturgical calendar). Indeed, the Niehoffs write that “graveyards in the vicinity of Penal and Debe, which are predominantly consigned to Hindus and Moslems, are just as well attended as the large cemetery in San Fernando, where ­there is a greater proportion of Christians” (1960, 156–157). Based on patterns of mortuary ritualization alone, it is clear the practice and therefore meaning of Hinduism was complex and changing. This was a time in which Indian conversion to Chris­tian­ity had begun to decline, yet the Niehoffs attribute the corollary trend ­toward temple-­and mosque-­based weddings as in fact due to dominant Christian prototypes (150), pointing to a dynamic sociocultural situation, indeed. Turning to the other main ethnographic account of Indo-­Trinidadian experience from the late 1950s, Morton Klass’s East Indians in Trinidad, we find that burial predominated as the preferred funerary practice in Felicity, though cremation “sometimes occurs elsewhere” (1961, 130). He claims that villa­gers would burn camphor at the grave in order to symbolize cremation (though he is unclear about w ­ hether this is an emic or etic perspective and unfortunately does not say w ­ hether this was a recent or vintage signifying practice). Other­wise, the Hindu mortuary cycle in Felicity shared the same general profile as antyeshti samskaara then being performed further south: an initial period of mourning and ritual impurity concluded ten days ­later with riverside ritual ablutions and the special ser­vices of a Nao Barber and/ or Mahapatra Pandit, followed several days ­later by a bhandaaraa, explained below. Some held another bhandaaraa again on the first anniversary of the death, but most did not. However, Indians whom Klass knew did annually observe Pitar-­Pakh (or Pitri-­Paksh), an astrologically determined fortnight during which it is auspicious to offer pindas for one’s ancestors (178). The mortuary cycle in Felicity was also not dominated by the machinations of pandits, though one might offer a brief prayer during the wake and the rites included the work of the Mahapatra Pandit or, more commonly on his behalf, No (Nao) ceremonial barber at the end of the ten-­day period of Indo -­Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual  211

figures 8.5 and 8.6  ​Doon Pandit’s tomb in Las Lomas, which was refurbished sometime in

the 1990s. Photos (June 2012) by Keith McNeal.

kin-­based shraddha, ­after which a bhandaaraa would apparently be made without any tutelage from a pandit. Like the Niehoffs, Klass does not mention anything about Pinda Puja at the end of the first ten days of mourning, which is in­ter­est­ing in light of its l­ater, postcolonial inclusion as a central dimension of orthopraxy. Klass (1961, 130–131) reports that “good” Hindus rarely visit the graves of their deceased, but that an affinity among Indian villa­gers for visiting cemeteries on All Saints’ Night to clean and light graves alongside Catholics had emerged. With this in mind, let us consider the death of Doon Pandit, as he was known, an impor­tant sociohistorical figure in the local development of Hin212  keith E . mcne al

duism who was born at the turn of the twentieth ­century and passed away in 1958 (see Singh 2006). Doon Pandit pioneered non-­Christian schools for Indian c­ hildren that gave rise to the wave of mid-­t wentieth-­century school-­ building efforts taken up by the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (sdms) ­after its formation in 1952. He also founded, as well as supported the founding of many mandirs, and ministered to Blacks as part of his religious outreach, for which he received not a ­little blowback from other pandits. He is an extraordinary personage I mention h ­ ere in order to note that he was waked and buried—­not cremated—­upon his death (2006, 91, 95), well a­ fter the fight for cremation had been won, thereby indexing the persisting hegemony of burial in Indo-­Trinidadian mortuary ritual praxis on the eve of in­de­pen­ dence from ­Great Britain in 1962.

Postcolonial Transformations The relatively late burial of Doon Pandit affirms that the ascent of cremation into mortuary ritual orthopraxy is more recent than usually appreciated. Jha investigated Hindu rites of passage during his stint at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, in the mid-1970s and not only found the local funerary corpus to be “shortened” and “abridged” as compared with South Asian cognates, but also reports that “though t­here is talk of having a proper crematorium in this island, at the moment many younger Hindus do not like the idea of burning the dead” (1976, 50–51). Thus cremation may have been gradually growing at the grassroots level, but does not seem to have become consolidated at the heart of standard Hindu funerary praxis ­until the last quarter of the twentieth ­century, by which point a major sea change in mortuary ritual had taken place. Indeed, by the late 1980s, Trinidadian anthropologist Kumar Mahabir notes that Hindus “generally cremate their corpses” except for a few members of minority sects, such as Sieunarinis, Kabir Panthis, and Ramanandis (1990, 11). As far as I have been able to reconstruct, the first ­legal public cremation site was located along the banks of the Caroni River south of El Socorro and managed by a Mr. Gosine (N. Mohammed, personal communication, 2011). Economist and scholar Satnarine Balkaransingh’s ­father was cremated ­there in 1954 (personal communication, 2011). Yet soon thereafter, cremation ground was reconsecrated at a site west of the Caroni River Bridge on the Princess Margaret—­now Uriah Butler—­Highway. Some time ­later, the Caroni site was moved yet again to its pres­ent location east of the bridge, where it seems to have been the primary public cremation site through the 1970s. By Indo -­Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual  213

the time I first visited Trinidad in the late 1990s, cremation was overwhelmingly popu­lar, and something of a prestige hierarchy had developed among the most prominent cremation sites, with Shanti Tiram—­more commonly known as “Mosquito Creek,” south of San Fernando—at the top, followed by the Waterloo site next to the Sewdass Sadhu Hindu Mandir on the west coast next in status, and the Caroni River site in central-­north Trinidad below that (B. Samaroo, personal communication, 2012), flanked by other, newer sites across the island in Felicity, Chaguanas, and Mafeking, Mayaro. The chronology outlined above is corroborated by pandits I interviewed in May 2012 and further confirmed by funeral home operators consulted in August 2013. Originally from San Juan and now based out of Santa Cruz, Pandit Shukla concurred that cremation has become steadily more popu­lar over the last de­cade or two. He characterized burial and cremation as equivalent “sides” that one chooses from—­“every­one have their own likeness”—­but also opined that cremation is the best way of disposing of the corpse, being a “cleaner” and more efficacious method “from ages, all the way back in India” (see McNeal 2011, chap. 5, on the concept of “sides” in Trinbagonian popu­lar religiosity). He noted that Indo-­Trinidadian Muslims who “live a Hindu life” also cremate and pointed out that he had additionally conducted antyeshti samskaara for “plenty” non-­Hindu funerals, not only Indian but also Black and even some White. Also acknowledging the recent local shift from burial to cremation, Pandit Khemraj Maraj—­head of the Trinidad Acad­emy of Hinduism—­ characterized antyeshti samskaara as “an evolving ritual.” When I asked him what percentage of Hindus opts for cremation, he estimated 90  ­percent, with most g ­ oing for the pyre over mechanical crematorium. Cemetery land is at a premium, and cremation has become “socially acceptable.” Moreover, funeral homes now simplify the pro­cess by “­doing it all for you.” He emphasized the significance of property owner­ship for observing Hindu death rites as well: if one does not own land, p ­ eople may prefer to carry out some modified version of antyeshti samskaara at the funeral home, rather than on land that belongs to someone ­else. Pandit Maraj reported that some Indian Muslims also cremate, as well as non-­Hindu Blacks and Whites. Indeed, pandits should refuse no one their final sacraments: “You have a dead and you come and do what you have to do.” A practicing Hindu purohit (ritual specialist) for twenty-­five years and longtime member of the Sathya Sai Baba Movement of Trinidad and Tobago, Pandit Randhir Maharaj paints a similar portrait of the local scenario. Burying the dead was most common while growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, 214  keith E . mcne al

figure 8.7  ​Burning corpse on cremation pyre. Photo (July 2012) by Jason Ramcharan, used

courtesy of the photographer.

but he has not seen much burial for a while now, as cremation has become most popu­lar since the mid-1980s. This is not only b ­ ecause logistical impediments to cremation have been removed, burial costs are high, and an institutional infrastructure make ­things easier and more accessible than ever before; but cremation has also become standard ­because ceremonial disposal of the corpse on a funerary pyre is experientially “richer” and theologically “deeper” than burial. Moreover, cremation is more “hygienic” as compared with a rotting body in the ground. Pandit Maharaj’s perspective is especially pertinent in that he coauthored a thoughtful, impor­tant, locally published book with his d ­ aughter and son-­in-­law (also a pandit) on antyeshti samskaara titled Death and the Soul’s Journey: Final Rites and Observances. The Journey of the Soul ­After Death (P. M. Maharaj, P. R. Maharaj, and S. N. Maharaj 2003). They explicate the Hindu mortuary ritual pro­cess and its theological rationale, skillfully weaving between esoteric and exoteric frames of reference. The book responds to “a total lack of familiarity” with the rites concerning death and disposal of the body among local Hindus, as well as “near total ignorance” of their philosophical under­ pinnings (i). Although Death and the Soul’s Journey is not an officially Sanatanist publication, Maharaj et al. note they have “remained faithful” to the Indo -­Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual  215

outline of antyeshti samskaara ritualism in Saral Antyeshti Sanskaar Vidhi, a “Handbook of Death Ceremonies” published by the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha of Trinidad and Tobago in 1999 (ii). And as a revealing index of the reigning popularity of cremation, ­there is no section on burial anywhere in the text, even though the authors acknowledge it as an acceptable scriptural option. Theologically speaking, antyeshti samskaara as a ritual corpus may be understood as providing comfort for the soul, an astral body for its postmortem travels and (ideally) an obstacle-­free journey ­toward rebirth in the next stage of existence. The immediate postmortem state is a sort of “twilight zone”—as Pandit Maharaj put it—in which the disembodied soul can see and hear, but cannot be seen or heard. It is a ghostly entity known as ­ hether via burial or cremation, sepapret, or preta. Disposal of the body, w rates the soul from its former body. However, cremation is considered most theologically efficacious in this regard in that the corpse is completely destroyed, giving the preta no mortal coil to which it may remain attached, thereby compelling it to begin gathering itself for the imminent astral journey it w ­ ill take ­toward eventual rebirth. Travel t­ oward rebirth is an arduous voyage that takes a lunar year on the Hindu calendar, at which point the jeeva (soul) enters Yamaloka—­the mystical abode of Yama, Lord of Death—­where it is judged according to its karma and consequently reborn in what­ever deserving next state of existence, ­whether better or worse. The preta dissolves ­after this rebirth: the jeeva is reborn into a wholly new existence, yet also paradoxically becomes a pitri, or ancestor, who is honored annually for Pitri-­ Paksh, during the dark phase of the Hindu month of Ashwin, typically September or October. With ­these considerations in mind, let us refocus on the immediate postmortem phase of the ritual cycle, which is critical for launching the preta on its noumenal trek to Yamaloka. The antyeshti samskaara cycle begins with the funeral and ensuing disposal of the corpse, w ­ hether by cremation or burial. A period of mourning known as asaucha lasts from the funeral ­until the shraddha rites conducted on Dasgaatra, the tenth day ­after the funeral. During asaucha, the immediate ­family is considered ritually impure and should obey a number of taboos. The yajman—­a representative of the deceased’s ­family who acts as primary ritual supplicant; ideally the firstborn son, but not always the case depending on circumstances—­takes special care during this time to observe daily ablutions and make offerings for the preta in order to comfort it, as well as provide it with nourishment while it gradually forms a subtle body—­said to be the size of a ­human thumb—­ 216  keith E . mcne al

necessary for the impending journey. All of the yajman’s activities are shepherded by the technical expertise of pandits. Hair, fingernails and toenails of the yajman and ­family are cut on Dasgaatra in order to get rid of physical impurities incumbent upon asaucha. For the yajman and several close relatives, this ideally takes place by a riverside or some other body of w ­ ater, where Puja is done and pindas critical for the formation of the astral body necessary for the preta’s impending journey are made and offered. According to local tradition, the shraddha rites of Dasgaatra ­were conducted ­under the tutelage of a Mahapatra Pandit assisted by a Nao ceremonial barber, both of whose status was lower than regular pandits b ­ ecause they brought the period of asaucha to a close by dealing with its material detritus. However, the offices of Mahapatra and Nao have largely fallen by the wayside and their ritual l­abor is now covered by regular pandits in what­ever, often modified, way they see fit. On the twelfth or thirteenth day a­ fter the funeral—­that is, the second or third day ­after Dasgaatra—­a bhandaaraa, or “feast,” is given by the ­family during which more sets of pindas are made and offered, as well as a group of pandits along with the expanded circle of ­family and friends are gifted and fed. The complex Puja conducted by the yajman as directed by the officiating pandit launches the preta into its astral journey t­oward Yamaloka and brings the immediate postmortem phase of the ritual cycle to completion. The yajman subsequently makes offerings throughout the ensuing year for the preta traveling ­toward its next celestial staging ground. Pandit Shukla likened the support provided by antyeshti samskaara for the preta to “having a ­lawyer,” followed by a hearty laugh. On the “one-­year” anniversary—as it is called, but in fact a bit less than a solar calendar year—­another bhandaaraa similar to the first is again staged to mark the end of the preta’s journey and rebirth into the further hereafter. As Pandit Maraj put it: “­After the year, it w ­ ill be born somewhere.” A separate set of elliptical, rather than spherical, pindas are also offered at the bhandaaraa given at the end of the first year ­after death to provision for transformation of the preta into a pitri, who is subsequently honored each year along with all one’s other ancestors during Pitri-­Paksh. Having reexamined how t­hings have changed over the course of the twentieth c­ entury with regard to death and mortuary ritual among Indo-­ Trinidadians, several trends must be emphasized. Most obvious is the diasporic (re)emergence of cremation at the center of standard Hindu funerary praxis, yet other developments are equally noteworthy. Counteracting earlier tendencies ­toward “abridgement”—to invoke Jha—­there has recently been an effort to expand and embellish the entire antyeshti samskaara corpus, Indo -­Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual  217

figure 8.8  ​Pandit Shukla performing a “One-­Year” Pinda Puja at a home in San Juan. Photo (December 2012) by Keith McNeal.

including the upregulation of Pinda Puja throughout, in conjunction with revitalization of cremation as the preferred method of corpse disposal. All of this has come ­under the purview of pandit oversight and officiation, as compared with their relative sparseness in connection with the antyeshti samskaaras of yesteryear. The significance of this development is thrown into greater relief once we appreciate that Brahmin pandits in South Asia are not traditionally involved in disposal of the corpse or the postmortem period, as t­hese are considered polluting (Knott 1998, 21). Indeed, con­temporary development of the antyeshti samskaara ritual corpus is connected to expansive revitalization of all the samskaaras more generally among Hindus. Pandit Maharaj reported that ­people have even started asking for prenatal rites unheard of ­until rather recently. Yet cremation is not only now considered Hindu orthopraxy, but has also become the more prototypically “Indian” way of d ­ oing ­things more generally, which helps account for why wakes are considered Indian influences, rather than Afro-­creole (as several earlier sources suggest); many Christian Indians now cremate their dead despite not observing Hindu antyeshti samskaara (Christians cremate with a closed casket, rather than the open one of Hindus), such as the Ramnath case described at the outset; and even some Muslim Indians now cremate, according to several pandits and funeral home operators interviewed. In other words, cremation has become progressively iconic of a revitalized Indianness in Trinidad and Tobago’s era of postcolonial multiculturalism. T ­ hese developments have inspired new in218  keith E . mcne al

figure 8.9  ​Main sign at Shanti Tiram, also known as “Mosquito Creek,” San Fernando. Note

symbolism signifying both Hindu and Christian “sides” within con­temporary cremation praxis. Photo (June 2012) by Giancarlo Lalsingh, used courtesy of the photographer.

novations such as hybrid Hindu-­Christian funerals, or ele­ments of antyeshti samskaara being performed in funeral homes rather than at the pyreside for what­ever circumstantial reasons. To give a sense for the intimate contours of p ­ eople’s thinking in t­hese ­matters, I quote from the discourse of a converted Christian Indo-­Trinidadian man on the occasion of his Hindu f­ather’s cremation at Mosquito Creek. Hailing from Gasparillo, the second son of the deceased is interviewed for the documentary film Pure Chutney (Chatterjee and Kumar 1998), which explores the history and culture of Indians in the Ca­rib­bean. The man reports growing up Hindu, then converting to Chris­tian­ity at sixteen years of age (for unexplained reasons) and eventually attending a local Bible school, where he studied Christian Education, then migrating to New York City for a time before returning to Trinidad. With devotional filmi ­music blaring in the background at the cremation site, he tells the filmmaker on the day of the funeral: You might observe me participating in a Hindu ceremony. The reason is ­because, first, I am an Indian, and secondly, Paul says that “When you are in Rome, do as the Romans.” And this is my f­ ather, ­those are my ­brothers who have participated. I’m part of the f­ amily and I have to be identified as part of the ­family. I am still a Hindu—by birth, by culture, and by tradition. And Indo -­Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual  219

I ­will always be a Hindu in my heart. When the songs are sung, it brings back memories. It may not tell the full truth, but ­there are truths in ­there that I can live by. B ­ ecause it’s survived hundreds of thousands of years. So that’s why I’ll always be a Hindu. ­ ere we encounter the transgenerational comingling and complex layerH ing of ethnic and religious identities, in which the Indianness of cremation is paramount. Conversion to Chris­tian­ity does not obviate observance of Hindu rites, especially in connection with continuing Hindu f­ amily ties and obligations. Indeed, the “Indianization” of cremation in Trinidad makes it a palpably power­ful rite of passage linking identities and generations in the face of centrifugal pro­cesses of change and transformation. Cremating the Body Politic: From Hindu to Indian

In conclusion, then, we consider how and why the cultural politics of ethnicity, religion, decolonization, nationalism, and diaspora have played out in ways that produce the historical anthropology of mortuary ritual surveyed above. ­These patterns have no doubt also been influenced by other social ­factors, such as the unconventional, high-­profile cremation of the twin-­ island Republic’s first prime minister, Dr.  Eric Williams—an Afro-­creole Anglican intellectual—­upon his untimely death in 1981, as well as the subsequent establishment, expansion, and normalization of industrial crematoria throughout Trinidad: first in St. James (public) in the mid-1980s in the wake of the Williams cremation, then ­others to follow in San Fernando, Orange Grove, and Arima more recently (all private). Cemetery land has become scarcer, and the cost for burial plots is at an all-­time high, though ­these variables hardly account for why Hindus and so many o ­ thers cremate via pyre versus crematorium, the preferred method of most non-­Indian Christians. All the while, the funerary business is burgeoning, with an estimated thirty-­five to forty funeral homes in operation throughout Trinidad and Tobago, keeping the crematoria and cremation sites all quite busy. It is impossible to entirely disentangle all the distal and recursive influences circulating in this society’s cultural milieu, but we can certainly identify major trends and better understand them. H ­ ere I reconsider the mortuary ritual plotline in light of the changing racial politics of West Indian Hinduism. A dominant form of Hinduism emerged gradually throughout the course of the twentieth ­century ­under the neotraditionalist sign of Sanatanism in Trinidad, consolidating most of its support from conservative rural Hindus 220  keith E . mcne al

(see Khan 2004; McNeal 2011; Munasinghe 2001; and Vertovec 1992 for fuller discussion of the history and cultural politics of Hinduism in Trinidad). This orthodoxy is identified with North Indian tradition, has become standardized as well as centered upon a limited set of “high” Sanskritic deities, and proctored by a transculturated Brahmin ceremonial elite. Although the apical position of pandits is hardly watertight—­especially in the postcolonial era—­Hinduism may be understood as having become progressively ethnicized ­under their stewardship in the Ca­rib­bean. Yet the ascent of a consolidated Hinduism was overdetermined by the fact that Chris­tian­ity retained hegemony as a dominating cultural barometer of status and legitimacy throughout the colony, putting Hindus on the defensive u ­ ntil relatively recently. Thus the Indo-­Caribbean community internalized values espoused by colonial elites and a­ dopted them as their own terms of reference in an effort to forge a “respectable” Hinduism. This also means that recuperation of the religion has been a complex and uneven pro­cess. In the case of mortuary ritual, Indo-­Trinidadian Hindus maintained their a­ dopted colonial tradition of burial for quite some time even a­ fter the right to cremate the dead had been achieved in the early 1950s. Indeed, as we have seen, it took more than three de­cades ­after legalization for cremation to become the most popu­lar form of corpse disposal among Hindus in Trinidad, and the reason for this seems clear in retrospect: the postcolonial “Indian Re­nais­sance.” The passing of an earlier era of Afro-­creole nationalism ­after decolonization into the current period of postcolonial multiculturalism was a complex pro­cess conditioned by many f­ actors: the political—if not wholly economic or cultural—­denouement of whiteness with the rise of nationalism and decolonization; the emergence of Black Power in the wake of in­de­pen­dence as a form of internal critique connected with wider hemispheric currents; the rise and fall of an oil boom, which wrought unforeseen transformations in economic differentiation, social mobility, and ethnic and religious revitalization across society as a w ­ hole; the death of the nation’s first prime minister, Eric Williams, and subsequent fall of the ­People’s National Movement (pnm) in the wake of the boom; the rise of the National Alliance for Reconstruction (nar), a co­ali­tion of Blacks and Indians headed by A. N. R. Robinson, a Tobagonian, which obtained a plurality of support u ­ nder a banner of “One Love” from all ethnic groups, religious denominations and social classes, but which soon fractured b ­ ecause of internal racial politics and fierce debate regarding “culture” and the state; and then, a­ fter a one-­term return of the pnm to government in the early 1990s, the ascent of a more forthrightly Indian-­based po­liti­cal party, the United National Congress (unc), in Indo -­Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual  221

the mid-1990s. Viranjini Munasinghe (2001) reports that the idea of an Indo-­ Trinidadian government or prime minister was unthinkable—­even among Indians—as late as the 1980s. Yet an Indian-­dominated coalition—­the unc—­came to power in 1995 with Basdeo Panday at the helm as the nation’s first Indian prime minister. T ­ hese po­liti­cal developments reflected a series of deeper economic and cultural transformations facilitating the emergence of an Indo-­Trinidadian sociocultural re­nais­sance in the last quarter of the twentieth ­century, based upon a shift from expressing sectarian interests to targeting the formerly uncontested privilege of Afro-­Trinbagonian po­liti­cal and cultural power. Hinduism in par­tic­u­lar has been embraced as an expression of ethnic revitalization and the assertion of identity. New wealth earned by Indo-­ Trinidadians as a result of the oil boom facilitated the construction and maintenance of ­temples, the sponsoring of multifarious ceremonial and orga­ nizational activities, the pursuit of doctrinal or religious knowledge, the proliferation of Bollywood films and Indian radio stations, more active interest in connecting with and traveling to ­Mother India, a welter of new ritual innovations, and the increasing prominence of Hindu and Indian holidays (see Harlan 2013 on Indian Arrival Day). Hinduism has therefore become a privileged vehicle of diasporic identification for a revivifying local Indian ethnicity, and this accounts for the expansive elaboration of the entire spectrum of samskaaras in general, as well as antyeshti samskaara in par­tic­u­lar, including the ascent of pyre-­based cremation to a position of orthopraxy within Hindu mortuary ritual practice. As suggested at the outset, the spectacular iconicity of cremation as emblematic of Hinduism along with the theological conceptualization of death and reincarnation upon which it is based have made it a potent locus of postcolonial religious assertion and ethnic revitalization. And it must be noted that t­hese diasporic developments in the southern Ca­rib­bean have also been contemporaneous with—­and therefore stand in dynamic global relation to—­the late twentieth-­century upsurge of Hindu Nationalism in India (see Bhatt and Mukta 2000; Hansen 1999; ­Jaffrelot 1996; Knott 1998; van der Veer 1994, 2002, for overviews of Hindu nationalism). Yet it is not only Hindus who have embraced cremation as the primary ritual vehicle for disposing of the corpse, but also many Christian—­and even a few Muslim—­Indo-­Trinidadians as well. This is b ­ ecause Hinduism has become ethnicized, as we have seen, and, as a corollary, the ceremonial scope of cremation has been extended beyond the sphere of Hinduism to include Indianness more generally. The “otherness” of pyre-­based cremation 222  keith E . mcne al

has made it a compelling oppositional symbol of a revitalized postcolonial ethnicity for Indo-­Trinidadians across the board, not simply the purview of Hindus alone, despite the fact that it stems from the long-­term recuperation of Hinduism in the West Indies over the course of the twentieth c­ entury. ­Because Indianness became racialized as a result of the colonial Ca­rib­bean experience, reclaiming a quintessentially “Indian” way of ritualizing the corpse therefore represents recuperation of the body politic at a key life-­ passage juncture, no ­matter what one’s religious orientation may be. Notes 1. The unc po­liti­cal party was founded by Panday and several ­others—­including Ramnath—in the wake of the dissolution of the country’s first multiethnic co­ali­tion government in 1988, led by the National Alliance for Reconstruction, much of whose electoral support had come from the unc. For newspapers reports, including photos from the funeral, see “Distasteful Panday,” Sunday Express, July 24, 2012, https://­w ww​ .­trinidadexpress​.­com​/­news​/­local​/­distasteful​-­panday​/­article​_­495ab4a6​-­57a2​-­507a​-­bb82​ -­bb7230af721d​.­html; “Panday: I Just Spoke the Truth,” Daily Express, July 26 2012, https://­ www​.­trinidadexpress​.­com​/­search​/­​?­f​=­html&q​=­panday+i+just+spoke+the+truth&sd​ =­desc&l​=­25&t​=­article%2Ccollection%2Cvideo%2Cyoutube&nsa​=­eedition; http://­w ww​ .­guardian​.­co​.­tt​/­news​/­2012​-­07​-­26​/­bas​-­behaves​-­‘bad’​-­ramnath’s​-­funeral; http://­w ww​ .­guardian​.­co​.­tt​/­news​/­2012​-­07​-­27​/­panday​-­ramnath’s​-­wife​-­knew​-­about​-­line​-­i​-­will​-­take. Panday’s funeral oration was posted online, July 29, 2012, https://­w ww​.­facebook​.­com​ /­note​.­php​?­note​_­id​=5­ 09495762410760&​_­fb​_­noscript​=1­ . 2. My overall research in and on Trinidad and Tobago involved an initial summer of pi­lot fieldwork in 1997 as a gradu­ate student, two years of doctoral field research in 1999 and 2000, approximately one month of follow-up fieldwork in the summers of 2002 through 2005, another follow-up period in December 2010 through March 2011, and September 2011 through July 2012 as a Fulbright Scholar affiliated with the University of the West Indies, as well as a month in the summer of 2001 conducting archival research at the British Museum in London. ­There is no standard orthography for South Asian–­ based terms in the West Indies, but I hew as close to P. M. Maharaj, P. R. Maharaj, and S. N. Maharaj’s (2003) spellings as pos­si­ble, since theirs is not only an influential local text regarding Indo-­Trinidadian mortuary ritual, but also ­free of diacritical marks, which are almost completely irrelevant in the Ca­rib­be­an. 3. See also “A Coolie Funeral,” Port of Spain Gazette, April 24, 1906. 4. This view emerges from the fact that none of the standard historical and historiographical texts on Indo-­Trinidadian culture suggests other­wise and is corroborated by Alex Rocklin (personal communication, 2012), a doctoral researcher from the University of Chicago who combed through all the major newspapers and related public documents in the West Indiana Division at the University of the West Indies–­St. Augustine concerning Indians in Trinidad from the late nineteenth c­ entury through the 1940s. I gratefully acknowledge Dr. Rocklin for having sourced the three newspaper articles discussed above. It is impor­tant to note agitation for Hindu, as well as Muslim, marriage Indo -­Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual  223

had also already emerged by this time, especially for more well-­to-do Indians and Indocentric activists (Jha 1982; Reddock 2007). The fact that the b ­ attle for legalization of non-­Christian marriage surfaced earlier than cremation may have to do with the fact that it primarily concerns living—­rather than dead—­persons, though this speculation would be difficult to fully substantiate. In any event, Muslim marriage was first legalized in 1935–1936, followed a de­cade ­later by the Hindu Marriage Act of 1945, which took longer due to po­liti­cal infighting among Hindu factions. 5. The Indian Centenary Review: One Hundred Years of Pro­gress, lead-­edited by Murlidhar Kirpalani and published in 1945 to commemorate the first ­century of Indian domicile in Trinidad, noted that cremation of Hindus “is now allowed by the Government” and that the Sanatan Dharma Board of Control “has already acquired lands for the purpose of erecting a crematorium” (Kirpalani et al. 1945, 63). Yet ­there is no hint of the pyre debate, which had already surfaced and would subsequently rage in the late 1940s and early 1950s. 6. As Hansard rec­ords for proceedings of the Third Session of the Eighth Legislative Council (1952–1953) indicate, ­there was no previous legislation that explic­itly disallowed cremation ­under colonial rule (1569, 1574). However, “the general public view was that ­there was no provision in our law for cremation” and “while t­ here was no ­legal restriction, yet whenever any Hindu applied to government for permission to cremate, or whenever it came to the knowledge of the government officer that a cremation was to be carried out, the government officer always refused to give permission” (1574).

224  keith E . mcne al

chapter 9

Chasing Death’s Left Hand P E R S O N A L E N C O U N T E R S W I T H D E AT H A N D I T S R I T U A L S I N T H E C A ­R I B ­B E ­A N

Richard Price

We begin with a passage from Brooklyn-­Barbadian Paule Marshall’s magnificent The Chosen Place, The Timeless ­People, set on the east coast of an island that closely resembles Barbados, where I can easily imagine our friend George Lamming gazing out at the breakers rolling in ­toward Bathsheba. It was the Atlantic this side of the island, a wild-­eyed, marauding sea the color of slate, deep, full of dangerous currents, lined with row upon row of barrier reefs, and with a sound like that of the combined voices of the drowned raised in a loud unceasing lament—­all ­those, the nine million and more it is said, who in their enforced exile, their Diaspora, had gone down between this point and the homeland lying out of sight to the east. The sea mourned them. Aggrieved, outraged, unappeased, it hurled itself upon each of the reefs in turn and then upon the shingle beach, sending up the spume in an angry froth which the wind took and drove in like smoke over the land. ­Great boulders that had roared down from Westminster centuries ago stood scattered in the surf; ­these, sculpted into fantastical shapes by the wind and w ­ ater, might have been gravestones placed ­there to commemorate ­those millions of the drowned. (Marshall 1969, 106) Suriname, whose first permanent settlers came out from Barbados with their slaves in 1650, quickly became part of what anthropologist Michael Taussig called the post-­Columbian “space of death . . . ​where Indian, African, and white gave birth to the New World” (1984, 468). The post-­Columbian Ca­rib­bean and its rimlands constituted a tumultuous stage for an unlikely and

varied set of actors—­from Eu­ro­pean pirates and buccaneers through African and Afro-­American Maroons to Caribs deported from the islands and large numbers of Native Indian groups. In this colonial arena, unspeakable greed, lust, and conquest rubbed shoulders with heroic acts of re­sis­tance and solidarity. Millions of ­human beings ­were killed outright—by enslavement, forced ­labor, and disease.1 Yet in many parts of the region, vibrant new socie­ties and cultures emerged from the ashes. Within this prototypical space of death—­ indeed, often within the complex interstices that divided it internally—­forcibly displaced Africans, a motley crew of Eu­ro­pe­ans, and what remained of Native American populations forged new, distinctively American modes of ­human interaction. And through the complex pro­cesses of negotiation between such groups, ­whole new cultures and socie­ties ­were born. In the idealized slaveocracy (such as planters in Barbados or Suriname ­imagined it) ­there was ­little room for slave response or maneuver. As Sidney Mintz and I have pointed out elsewhere (Mintz and Price 1992, 25), “The often unquestioning ac­cep­tance by the masters of their right to treat the slaves [who ­were defined legally as property] as if they ­were not ­human rationalized the system of control.” But it is equally clear that in practice, throughout the Amer­i­cas, “the masters did recognize that they w ­ ere dealing with fellow ­humans, even if they did not want to concede as much. . . . ​A lit­er­a­ture produced over centuries, in a dozen Eu­ro­pean languages, attests throughout to the implicit recognition by the masters of the humanity of the slaves, even in instances where the authors seem most bent upon proving the opposite” (25). As is well known, the planter class, in spite of itself, remained dependent in countless ways upon the enslaved. And in such a society, deeply cleft by status divisions yet unified by the theoretically unlimited power of the masters, it was this “core contradiction” that was the motor for much of the creative institution building that characterized the plantation regions of the New World. I have made the argument that, in the exercise of totalizing power, capital punishment constitutes a limiting case.2 Yet for this very reason, it may be a good place to begin, if we are interested in the ultimate capacities of the oppressed to respond, resist, and create. For an examination of the ways that condemned slaves throughout the Ca­rib­bean went to their deaths reveals much about the limits of planter power and about the spirit that allowed slaves to create, within the spaces available to them (which varied by place and time), a world of their own, one that influenced not only e­ very aspect of their own descendants’ lives but also that of the descendants of their oppressors. 226  Richard Price

The theatrical public torture and execution of slaves who had transgressed one or another plantation rule was a ubiquitous feature of socie­ ties throughout the Ca­rib­bean, from early colonial days u ­ ntil well into the nineteenth c­ entury. Both planters and the colonial judiciary strongly believed that such gruesome spectacles would act as a disincentive to other slaves. A formal sentence involving public torture was characteristically preceded by a justification that it was being handed down “in the hope that it would provide an Example and deterrent to the [victims’] associates, and reduce the propensity of slaves to escape” (Hartsinck 1770, 763). Such a sentence from the early eigh­teenth ­century in Suriname read: “The Negro Joosie [who was a recaptured Saamaka Maroon] ­shall be hanged from the gibbet by an Iron Hook through his ribs, u ­ ntil dead; his head s­ hall then be severed and displayed on a stake by the riverbank, remaining to be picked over by birds of prey” (Price [1983] 2002, 85). And fi ­ gure 9. 1 shows William Blake’s engraving made a­ fter John Gabriel Stedman’s drawing, based on an eyewitness account from 1773, entitled A Negro hung alive by the Ribs to a Gallows (Stedman 1988, 105). But such ceremonies of order and discipline differed in one crucial re­ spect from the public executions that w ­ ere commonplace in con­temporary metropoles. To the surprise of Eu­ro­pean visitors, ­these victims consistently refused to acknowledge that the executioners could cause them pain. Indeed, it was the calm and dignity (never resignation!), and even the sense of irony, with which ­these African and Afro-­American men and ­women went to their deaths that prompted comment by Eu­ro­pean observers in the colonies. Even while submitting to the most excruciating tortures, t­ hese victims w ­ ere refusing to acknowledge the whitefolks’ ultimate sanction. And, in so refusing, they managed—­within the very limited range of action available to them— to render it strangely impotent. Let us begin with a narrative that illustrates ­these generalizations and permits some further elaborations. Early one morning in 1776, John Gabriel Stedman, a young Scotsman then living in the capital of the Dutch colony of Suriname, was musing on all the dif­fer­ent Dangers and Chastisements that the Lower Class of ­People are Subjected to/ [when] I heard a Crow’d pass u ­ nder my Win­dow—­Curiosity made me Start up, Dress in a hurry, & Follow them When I discovered 3 Negroes in chains Surrounded by a Guard ­going to be Executed in the Savannah—­their Undaunted look however Averse to Cruelty’s fassinated my Attention and determined me to see the Result, Cha sing De ath’s Left Hand  227

figure 9.1  ​Engraving by William Blake, A Negro hung alive by the Ribs

to a Gallows, 1792, from John Gabriel Stedman’s Narrative, of a five years’ expedition, against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (London: J. Johnson & J. Edwards, 1796; reproduced in Stedman 1988, 105). Photo by Richard and Sally Price.

Which was Viz, that the Sentence being Read /in Low dutch which they did not understand/ one was Condemned to have his head Chop’d Off With an Ax for having Shot a Slave who had Come to steal Plantains on the Estate of his Mistress, While his Accomplice was Flogg’d below the Gallows—­the Truth Was However that this had been done by the mistresses Absolute Command, but who being detected & Preferring the Loss of the Negro to the Penalty of 500 Florins, Allow’d the Poor man to be Sacrificed; he laid down his Head on the Block With uncommon Deliberation & even Streached out his Neck when with one blow it was Severed from his Body— 228  Richard Price

The third negro whose name was Neptune was no Slave, but his own Master, & a Carpenter by Trade, he was Young and handsome—­But having kill’d the Overseer of the Estate Altona in the Para Creek in Consequence of some Despute he Justly Lost his Life with his Liberty.—­However, the particulars are Worth Relating, which Briefly ­were that he having Stole a Sheep to Entertain some Favourite W ­ omen, the Overseer had Determined to See him Hang’d, Which to Prevent he Shot him dead Amongst the Sugar Canes—­this man being Sentenced to be brook Alive upon the Rack, without the benefit of the Coup de Grace, or mercy Stroke, laid himself down Deliberately on his Back upon a Strong Cross, on which with Arms & Legs Expanded he was Fastned by Ropes—­The Executioner /also a Black/ having now with a Hatchet Chop’d off his Left hand, next took up a heavy Iron Crow or Bar, with Which Blow A ­ fter Blow he Broke to Shivers ­every Bone in his Body till the Splinters Blood and Marrow Flew About the Field, but the Prisoner never Uttered a Groan, or a Sigh—­the Roaps being now Unlashed I i­magined him dead & Felt happy till the Magistrates moving to Depart he Wreathed from the Cross till he Fell in the Grass, and Damn’d them all for a Pack of Barbarous Rascals, at the Same time Removing his Right hand by the help of his Teeth, he Rested his Head on Part of the timber and ask’d the by Standers for a Pipe of Tobacco Which was infamously Answered by kicking & Spitting on him, till I with some Americans thought Proper to Prevent it— he then begg’d that his head might be Chopt off, but to no Purpose, at Last Seeing no end to his Misery, he declared that though he had Deserved death, he had not Expected to die So many Deaths, “However you Christians /Said he/ have mis’d your Aim, and I now Care not ­were I to lay ­here alive a month Longer,” ­After Which he Sung two Extempore Songs, With a Clear Voice taking leave from his Living Friends & Acquainting his Deceased Relations that in a ­Little time more he Should be with them to enjoy their Com­pany for ever—­this done he Entered in Conversation With two Gentlemen Concerning his Pro­cess Relating ­every one Par­tic­u­ lar with Uncommon tranquillity, but Said he Abruptly, “by the Sun it must be Eight OClock, & by any Longer discourse I Should be Sorry to be the Cause of your Loosing yr. Breakfast” then turning his Eyes to a Jew Whose name was De Vries, “Appropo Sir said he ­Won’t you please to pay me the 5 Shillings you owe me”—­for what to do—­“to buy meat & Drink to be Sure: ­don’t you perceive that I am to be kept Alive” Which /Seeing the Jew look like a Fool/ he Accompanied With a Loud and Hearty Laugh—­Next Observing the Soldier Who stood Sentinel over him biting Occasionally on Cha sing De ath’s Left Hand  229

figure 9.2  ​Engraving by

William Blake, The Execution of Breaking on the Rack, 1793, from John Gabriel Stedman’s Narrative, of a five years’ expedition, against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (London: J. Johnson & J. Edwards, 1796; reproduced in Stedman 1988, 548). Photo by Richard and Sally Price.

a piece of Dry Bread he asked him, “how it Came that he a White Man Should have no meat to eat along with it” ­Because I am not So rich said the Soldier. “then I ­will make you a Pres­ent first pick my Hand that was Chopt of[f ] Clean to the Bones Sir—­Next begin to myself till you be Glutted & you’l have both Bread and Meat which best becomes you” & Which piece of Humour was Followed by a 2d. Laugh & thus he Continued when I left him which was about 3 Hours ­After the Execution but to dwelt more on this Subject my Heart—­Disdains [and he adds]: In the Adjoyning Plate see the above Dreadfull Chastisment. ­ igure 9.2 shows the famous engraving, drawn for Stedman’s book a­ fter his F own watercolor, by William Blake: The Execution of Breaking on the Rack (Stedman 1988, 548). Stedman speculated, with awe, about the way that Neptune, and other condemned slaves or freedmen, confronted their torturers: “Now How in the name of Heaven H ­ uman nature Can go through so much Torture, With So much Fortitude, is truly Astonishing, [­unless] it be a mixture of Rage, Contempt, pride, And hopes of ­Going to a Better place or at Least to be Relieved from this.” 230  Richard Price

A mixture of rage, contempt, and pride seems pretty much on the mark. ­ hese final, dignified gestures of re­sis­tance helped lend meaning to the T lives of slaves and Maroons and gave their fellows the courage to continue building.3 Neptune’s story, recounted in the words of a foreign observer, reveals much about the degree of totalization of the local plantation world. The protagonist, a freedman/artisan—­already a liminal category in a society in which 99 ­percent of the population was ­either black and enslaved or white and ­free—­ran a very ­human risk (stealing a sheep to entertain some potential lovers), had the misfortune to be caught by an overseer, seems to have been the victim e­ ither of specific (personal) jealousy or simply of the widespread hatred of overseers for all blacks who w ­ ere not enslaved or “toms,” and—­knowing he was condemned to die—­was left with precious ­little room to maneuver. Yet, if we listen closely to Stedman’s words, maneuver Neptune did, unctuously excusing himself for making two gentlemen observers miss their breakfast, publicly exposing the “money-­grubbing Jew” figure as a fool, and, while ridiculing the sentry’s poverty, making a final comment about the local articulation of color and class. Like t­ hose other Afro-­Americans who suffered “the discipline,” Neptune went to the land of his ancestors (with a characteristic song) leaving bystanders with l­ ittle doubt that—­whatever the character of his persecutors or the moral bankruptcy of the slaveocracy—­ This was a man.

When I originally presented this case in print (Price 2005), I paired it with another execution, one occurring among the Saamaka Maroons in almost the same year. We know of this second execution both from Saamakas who have preserved its memory and told me about it, and from Moravian missionaries who witnessed it in a Saamaka village deep in the rainforests of Suriname in 1781. What happened, in a nutshell, is that when an impor­tant Saamaka chief died suddenly, his coffin, raised in divination (in a fashion that was widespread across colonial Afro-­America and is still performed for ­every death among Saamakas ­today) indicated that one of his closest friends had killed him by witchcraft.4 The man whom the coffin pointed to was formally sentenced by the tribal council and executed by burning at the stake. The Moravians describe how the relatives of the deceased, with the help of some associates, take the criminal by canoe to a distant place where they had already constructed Cha sing De ath’s Left Hand  231

a funeral pyre the previous day. ­Here, they bind him to a prickly [awara palm] tree right next to the pyre, and first cut off his nose and ears which they fry over the fire and then force him to eat. They then cut open his back and rub the wounds with hot pepper and salt, and then rub his open back up and down against the prickly tree, during which his cries of misery can be heard at a ­great distance. In addition, they carry out many other kinds of barbaric acts from which h ­ uman nature shrinks, and which decency prevents me from describing. Fi­nally, they light up the funeral pyre near him, and allow him to burn l­ittle by l­ittle, and the victim, who is bound to the tree, suffers greatly before the fire fully reaches the tree. (Staehelin 1913–1919, iii, pt. 2, 268–269) The modern Saamaka accounts of this execution that I have heard always include the observation that “they dragged him along, shrieking, all the way to the fire.” My point is ­simple. Within the world of the Saamaka Maroons, new social and cultural forms had been created and institutionalized, building on diverse African pre­ce­dents. In this context, public executions for heinous crimes (which themselves w ­ ere adjudicated through vari­ous forms of divination), ordered and carried out by Saamakas themselves, may be seen as a sign of the triumph of societas and civitas. Lacking the irony or the class conflict of the plantation world executions, t­ hose in contemporaneous Saamaka reveal a society dealing with everyday prob­lems of disorder in a fully communitarian way. Such Saamaka executions ­were carefully and publicly orchestrated, with the victim—­unlike the proud, defiant slaves who underwent whitefolks’ tortures—­“shrieking all the way” and other­wise playing the guilty victim’s role precisely as the society had defined it for this ultimate rite or ceremony. African slaves executed by their masters went to their deaths defiantly; Maroons executed by their fellows accepted that justice was being served. For me all this is terrifying if incontrovertible evidence that eighteenth-­century Afro-­Surinamers had gone a long way ­toward creating, out of their diverse African heritages, new and vibrant cultures.

In his excellent book, The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery, Vincent Brown writes that Everywhere in Jamaica, one could hear the sounds of black funerals. ­Because of the rate at which the slaves expired and the depth of their ubiquitous experience with sickness and death, funerary rites ­were an ur232  Richard Price

gent priority and w ­ ere perhaps their most extensive basis of social communion. “Their principal festivals are their burials,” noticed the resident planter William Beckford, “upon which occasions they call forth all their magnificence and display all their taste. They gathered in groups that could number into the hundreds, to weep, feast, joke, tell stories, and sing.” (2008, 63) And he adds, “For the most part, black ­people or­ga­nized and managed funerals [on the plantations] without white intervention” (V. Brown 2008, 63). This is ­really the key: death and its complex rituals constituted one of the most impor­tant institutions that the slaves and freemen on plantations and in cities, and the Maroons off in the forests, developed and celebrated on their own, drawing on their diverse African pasts. I’d like to turn to the importance of ancestors, of the dead, in everyday life in the Ca­rib­bean. Although ignorant and unobservant outsiders have often decried a lack of culture in the Ca­rib­bean, its ­peoples are much given to ceremony and commemoration. Saamaka Maroons still gather periodically to perform commemorations of eighteenth-­century events and to thank their early ancestors for fighting their way to the freedom that the Saamaka p ­ eople have enjoyed ever since. A book in which I describe such commemorations, First-­Time (Price [1983] 2002), begins with an epigraph from Jorge Luis Borges that says, “­There was a day in time when the last eyes to see Christ w ­ ere closed forever”—my point being that Saamakas too are keenly aware of the ending of historical eras, of the passage of linear time. That book begins: In a sacred grove beside the village of Dángogó, shaded by equatorial trees, stands a weathered shrine to the Old-­Time ­People (Awónênge), t­ hose ancestors who “heard the guns of war.” Whenever t­ here is a collective crisis in the region—­should the rains refuse to come on time or an epidemic sweep the river—it is to this shrine that Saamakas repair. As libations of sugar-­cane beer moisten the earth beneath newly raised flags, the Old-­ Time P ­ eople are one by one invoked—­their names spoken (or played on the apínti drum), their deeds recounted, their foibles recalled, and the drums/ dances/songs that they once loved performed to give them special plea­sure. Literally thousands of individual Saamakas must have heard the guns of war between the 1680s and the coming of the Peace in 1762. Yet the names invoked at Awónênge number merely in the scores. All history is thus: a radical se­lection from the im­mensely rich swirl of past ­human activity (Price 1983, 5). Cha sing De ath’s Left Hand  233

One name thus invoked is that of a ­woman named Fankía. A Saamaka man explained to me: Fankía heard the guns of war. When they brought her down from the Upper River [in the ­great migration of the 1770s], she was still a teenager. Well, she lived t­ here [in the new village of Dángogó] u ­ ntil she was very very old. They used to lift her up and lay her out in the sun, for warmth. She would begin to shake her body like this [he demonstrates dance movements with torso]. And when they would ask her why, s­ he’d say she could hear them playing the drums for her in the land of the dead. Well, she lived u ­ ntil she died, and they raised up her coffin in divination. She told them that the Old-­Time ­People had a message for the living about how they should henceforth speak with them. They should build a shrine according to the specific instructions she would give. And whenever they wanted to talk to the Old-­Time ­People, they should pour libations at its base. And ­until ­today, the first name invoked at the shrine of Awónênge must always be Fankía, who heard the guns of war. (Price 1983, 6)5 Some of ­those old-­time Saamakas are as familiar to t­ oday’s Saamakas as are their own neighbors or their ­brothers and ­sisters. ­Here is my friend Tooy, reminiscing about a man named Gadien whose drum rhythms he is proud to play two and a half centuries ­after this ancestor’s death. I quote, in translation, from a recording of Tooy pouring libations at an ancestor shrine. In the ­middle of invoking vari­ous ancestors, he prayed: ­Father Gadien, we give you rum. (Gadien would say he was Opéte nyán opéte, he was Akótokoí djaíni búa. Káu tjánkontíma béye, a bête djáni kó a bêliwa. Gadien would say all that. The man called Gadien, he was a short ­little fellow!—­ that’s what ­we’ve heard. Whenever he walked around, it was always with his sword hanging from his waist!) F­ ather, we give you rum. F­ ather we call on you. (He called Tatá Antamá “­mother’s ­brother”—­Antamá’s ­sister bore him.) F­ ather Gadien, we give you rum! We pour rum on the ground for you, our elders. (They say that when you said your praise-­name, you’d say Opéte nyán opéte, opéte nyán opéte. And ­they’d answer that t­ hey’d heard you. You’d say again, Opéte nyán opéte, opéte nyán opéte. And then you’d say you ­were akotókoí djaíni búa. You’d say Káu djankotíba béye, a bete djaki kó a bé­ on’t find liwa. In other words, “the death that killed the jumping animal w it to kill again!” [This proverb means, “the person who did you harm this time ­won’t be the one who does it next time.” Like other óbia men, Tooy cannot say, or hear, the normal word for “toad” so he says “jumping ani234  Richard Price

mal.”] [Tooy continued ] . . . ​Gadien! He called Gisí “­mother’s b ­ rother.” Gadien! He called Bási Antamá “­mother’s ­brother!”) . . . ​[and then Tooy continued praying to other ancestors]. (Price 2008, 153) When I ­later pressed Tooy on his fondness for Gadien, he filled me in on some of the reasons. “When Antamá [one of Tooy’s favorite eighteenth-­ century ancestors] was old,” he told me, “he worked closely with Gadien, and when he died he left him all the knowledge he had.” Another time, ­ ere all belong to Gadien— Tooy told me, “the apínti drum rhythms I play h he got them from Antamá.” And in another context I got some spontaneous confirmation, as Gadien’s drum became the authority for a tale that Tooy’s ancestors have told at least since the eigh­teenth ­century. Tooy was in a teaching mood that day, talking to several younger kinsmen as well as to me. He told us: The ­Great God once sent down his messengers to announce that young ­people must kill their ­mothers and their ­fathers so that the youngsters could run the world. The message [in drum language] is odú kwatakí bi ­ reat God’s way of testing them.) So, the de a bímba tála. (This was the G youngsters all did it, and then they burned the bodies. Except for one kid who snuck out and dug a deep hole in the forest, built a h ­ ouse in it, and set up his ­mother and ­father ­there, where he brought them food e­ very day. (That’s what the drum is saying.) Then the ­Great God sent his messenger again and told the young ­people that they should braid a rope out of sand for him. So they went to the river and gathered sand, but they ­didn’t have any idea of how to braid it into a rope. The one kid snuck out to his parents and asked them how to do it. He told them, “I ­didn’t save your lives for nothing, now it’s payback time! . . .” The husband told the wife to tell him. She said, “No way, he’s yours too. I ­didn’t cheat on you to make him, he’s r­ eally yours! You tell him what to do.” So fi­nally he said, “When the messenger comes again, tell him to braid you one meter’s length of the rope at exactly the thickness he wants yours to be and say that you’ll add on to it and make it as long as he wants.” So, the kid said OK. The messenger came and reported back to the ­Great God. The ­Great God said, “That kid ­didn’t kill his parents!” He sent back the messenger. The kid arrived at his parents in tears. He told them he’d hidden them so that they could live, but now this was ­going to be their last day alive. The ­father said to the m ­ other, “­Don’t cry. The G ­ reat God exists.” The G ­ reat God himself came down and asked his messenger to call the kid. Then he asked him to bring his parents. He did it. Then the G ­ reat God said, Cha sing De ath’s Left Hand  235

“You and your parents come and stand over h ­ ere, on the east side. All ­those who killed their parents, go over t­ here, to the west.” He waved his arm, and all t­ hose ­people dis­appeared. But the place where the kid and his parents w ­ ere standing, that’s right where we are ­today, it’s our village. That’s what the apínti drum says! It says, odú kwa táki bi de a bímba tála. . . . ​ It means, “Young ones must live amongst older ones. Older ones must live amongst younger ones.” (Price 2008, 154) And then Tooy adds, an old man once told me that when you drum asú muná fulú ben konú fulú, that means “Young ones must live amongst older ones. Older ones must live amongst younger ones.” But as far as I’m concerned, asú muná fulú ben konú fulú ­doesn’t mean that at all! In fact, it means, “Your old folks ­really used to know ­things, but now only youngsters are left and they have it all mixed up.” It’s a completely dif­fer­ent drum proverb. If you want to say, “Young ones must live amongst older ones. Older ones must live amongst younger ones,” you play odú kwa táki bi de a bímba tála. That’s precisely what ­Father Gadien’s drum used to say! That’s what I’ll take any day! (Price 2008, 154–155) So, the authority of a par­tic­u­lar named ancestor, Gadien, a short fellow who liked to walk around with a sword tied to his waist and who died two hundred years ago, gives Tooy the confidence to play ­those wonderful drum rhythms ­today.

I’m choosing not to speak about Saamaka funerals per se this evening—­ Sally Price and I have already written a book that covers a good deal of that ground (1991; see also Price 1990). Suffice it to say that funerals are, among the Saamaka as among many Ca­rib­bean (and for that ­matter West and West Central African) p ­ eoples, the largest and most impor­tant social events in any 6 community. Instead of discussing the very public ceremonies of funerals, which span a full year’s time and take up countless resources, I’m ­going to share with you some thoughts about a more esoteric, secret, and dangerous aspect of the way that a self-­selected minority of Saamakas deal with Death. This w ­ ill get us at last to Death’s Left Hand, which knowledgeable Saamaka men call Lêgbe-­lêgbe. ­There is a power­ful Saamaka óbia known as Dúnguláli-­Óbia that has long been part of Sally’s and my lives.7 We first encountered it during a particularly 236  Richard Price

traumatic personal experience in the 1960s, when a four-­year-­old boy who often stayed with us in the village of Dángogó while his ­mother worked in her rice field was attacked on the head by a flock of hornets and, within a minute or two, died of cardiorespiratory shock in Sally’s arms. During the subsequent days, we w ­ ere treated by the “­great spiritual power” called Dúnguláli-­Óbia in order to ritually “separate” us from the dead child we had been so close to and to prevent him from taking us with him to the land of the dead. Dúnguláli specializes in keeping the living separate from the dead, removing harmful ghosts from the lived environment. For t­ hose in the know, it is the most power­ful of all means to assure that Death’s Left Hand ­won’t take you away. For Saamakas, the extraordinary powers known as gaán-­óbia—­the magical forces to which they credit their eighteenth-­century military victories over whitefolks and their ability to survive in a hostile environment—­remain each clan’s most valuable possessions, and many are believed to have been brought by specific ancestors from Africa. Dúnguláli is dif­fer­ent. Despite being a major gaán-­óbia, it was in fact “discovered” for the first time on the Oyapock River (the border between French Guiana and Brazil) by mi­grant Saamaka men only at the very beginning of the twentieth c­ entury. A Saamaka man called Kódji played a central role in its discovery. Kódji had several gods in his head including a ghost-­spirit known as a Nèngèkòndè-­Nèngè (roughly, “an African person”), a class of ghost-­spirits conceptualized as ritually power­ful African men who can possess Saamakas and teach them óbias and other ritual lore. Kódji’s ghost-­spirit was Akoomí, who worked closely with a Komantí spirit called Afeemaónsu. In an oft-­told story, a Saamaka paddling down the Oyapock would see a small, white-­haired old man with a short paddle standing on the bank calling out, “Take me across, please! My canoe got loose and drifted downstream.” And ­after the paddler did as requested and continued to the Saamaka village of Tampáki, he would see Akoomí at the landing place, speaking through Kódji, accosting him and joking with him, “Man, that place you left me on the other side of the river—­that was a no place to leave me, I almost got killed t­ here!” So the miracle of Akoomí’s omnipotence would again be confirmed. It was Akoomí (perhaps in the guise of Afeemaónsu, who often spoke through him, becoming almost synonymous with him) who taught the secrets of Dúnguláli-­Óbia to Kódji, but Akoomí himself had learned them from his father-­in-­law in the land of the dead. ­Here, very much in brief, is how Tooy says it happened. In the land of the dead a power­ful man named Pupú, the owner of Dúnguláli-­Óbia, had a beautiful d ­ aughter called Djesu-­akóbita. One day Cha sing De ath’s Left Hand  237

she crossed paths with Akoomí, who was on one of his frequent visits from the Oyapock to the land of the dead—­Nèngèkòndè-­Nèngès are so ritually power­ful that they move effortlessly between the worlds of the living and the dead—­and she deci­ded to sleep with him, the dead with the living (as Saamakas say). But other dead p ­ eople intervened and bound him up preparatory to killing him, so she ran off to tell her ­father. Pupú prepared himself ritually, throwing his sack of Dúnguláli leaves and roots over his shoulder, grabbing his calabash rattle, putting his pipe in his mouth and lighting the Dúnguláli tobacco, and setting out on the path, very displeased. Eventually, his sack “barked” to warn him he was arriving and he chased off the aggressors, found his son-­in-­law, and untied him with Dúnguláli-­Óbia, taught him the ins and outs of its rituals, and then sent both Djesu-­akóbita and Akoomí off to the land of the living, where they lived for a time in a place a day’s journey upstream from Saint-­Georges-­de-­l’Oyapock called Dadiaféi, where Saamakas still proffer offerings whenever they pass on the river. Over a period of years, during the treatment of many cases of illness and misfortune, Kódji learned the leaves, roots, and vines, the taboos, the songs, the drums, the sacrifices, and the other esoterica of the Dúnguláli cult, which has always specialized in separating the living from the dead—­helping ­free living ­people from the machinations of the dead. In fact, the young Agbagó (the ­future chief of the Saamakas) was cured by Kódji’s Dúnguláli at Tampáki ­after he had accidentally caused the death of his own b ­ rother in a tree-­felling accident on the Approuague River, and eventually he and another ­brother, Gasitón, learned the óbia and, around 1920, brought it back to Dángogó in central Suriname, where Gasitón established the shrine and cult that, in 1968, ritually separated Sally and me from the ghost of the boy who had died in Sally’s arms. ­Today, my friend Tooy Alexander, who lives in Cayenne, is the priest of Dúnguláli-­Óbia. ­Behind his ­house is a small room—­permission must always be asked to enter by knocking and inquiring, “­Father, may I come in?” This is the shrine of Dúnguláli-­Óbia. The red door is marked with darker-­ red blood stains. The dirt-­floor chamber—­t wo by three meters with a low ceiling—is windowless and has a two-­foot-­high post, representing Akoomí, whose top half is stained with the blood of sacrificial animals, flanked by two rows of crusty b ­ ottles of rum and beer, and iron and clay pots filled with medicinal leaves and sacrificial blood—­the iron pots are for Gisí, Dankuná, and other óbia. ­There is a bull’s horn, ritually prepared cutlass blades, and balls of kaolin before the altar and along one wall. A wooden plank with an oracle bundle attached is on one wall, waiting to be taken down for divination. All around the walls a forest vine is draped. Whenever friends gather to 238  Richard Price

eat a meal with Tooy, he always dishes out a plate of food and brings it back into the Dúnguláli chamber so the óbia can share the meal. The room is always kept pitch dark, ­unless Tooy is inside. Tooy makes it a habit to say our goodbyes, a­ fter ­we’ve visited him from Martinique for a few days or weeks, inside his Dúnguláli chamber. My notes rec­ord that late in the eve­ning, ­after every­one ­else has left, we are ready to say farewells ­until our next trip. Tooy pres­ents Sally and me with a lovely embroidered Brazilian hammock and ushers us into the Dúnguláli shrine, where he sits us down next to him. He prays, “My master Dúnguláli, óbia that parts the paths! Awíí, awíí kándikándi! The path to the land of the dead must stay dark, the path to the land of living must stay light! The óbia must eat meat! . . . ​We ask for long life [for us]. We ask for two hundred years, three hundred years, without illness. . . .” He asks me to pray, then Sally. I notice that ­there’s fresh blood from a sacrifice on the stone in front of the altar. He reaches over to a clay pot and removes a biceps-­ring, which he pres­ents to me, saying that its taboos include never wearing it to a funeral and, when I go to a wake where ­there’s food set out, turning my back to the t­able and sitting down and standing up three times before facing the t­ able. Then he passes a calabash of Dúnguláli liquid to us, telling us to hold it palm down with our left hand, touch it to the earth three times, and take three swallows. He gives me a generous handful of “Dúnguláli tobacco” (made, he explains, from the dried leaves of a First-­Time variety of banana tree) saying I should buy a pipe and smoke it as often as I want—­that pipe is called Anánagóa, he says and he sings the song that’s sung as men pass the pipe from hand to hand during ceremonies, Pípa, pípa-­e, pípa lóntu, pípa-ya ­ eople who came Anánagoá Akoomí has this talk! With that pipe he would kill p to harm him! Tooy turns on a tape recording of a big Dúnguláli ceremony they did while we w ­ ere at a conference in Brazil—­later ­he’ll give me the tape so I can listen to it as I smoke my pipe and relax back home. (Price 2008, 213)

Tooy explains that if you work with Dúnguláli, Death ­can’t kill you—­except in one circumstance. He says: This óbia, if you work with it properly, Death c­ an’t touch you. Sickness can kill you. But not Death. When you work with Dúnguláli, a person might walk up to you and shoot you, Boom, or someone comes up to you Cha sing De ath’s Left Hand  239

and cuts you with a machete, djudjudju, or hits you with a stick—­but you’ll always live. Let’s say ­you’re traveling by canoe and you sink, but though you go to the bottom of the river, you’ll find a way to get back to shore. Dúnguláli ­people never drown! But if you “miss” Dúnguláli, if you offend him, Dúnguláli himself ­will kill you. (Price 2008, 241) ­Here’s how my notes describe a ceremony we attend in Dúnguláli’s chamber: Night has fallen. In Dúnguláli’s chamber, Tooy sits next to the altar with his wife at his side. Eight men plus Sally and me are squeezed onto the benches along the sides of the tiny room, and a ­couple of ­others sit just outside the open door on chairs. Men take up seed-­pod rattles as Tooy launches into the first song. Frank tears up a red cloth, and each person ties a strip around his head—we look like pirates. As Tooy sings, and the ­others chorus, he occasionally lights up Anánagóa and smokes a bit, and ­others take their turn at the pipe as they wish. Each of the thirty or so songs is followed by the Dúnguláli chant, spoken in unison: Dúnguláli-­é. Pási paatí óbia. Awíli. Awíli kándikándi. Dêde kòndè pási dúngu, líbi-­líbi kòndè pási límbo yéti (“Dúnguláli-­é. Path-­splitting óbia. The path to the land of the dead is dark, the path to the land of the living still light”). As they get into it, I realize that Tooy and his comrades are singing their hearts out against Death, that Dúnguláli songs all share the purpose of keeping Death at bay. Tooy sings: “Get out ghost, you get out! ([chorused:] Dúnguláli is smoking the place)” . . . ​“Dúnguláli, dangerous Indians are coming ([chorused:] Hahhhhhhhhhh), dangerous Indian story (Hahhhhhh) . . . ​ but the Pátakatjána are coming (Hahhhhh)” . . . ​“A deep grave, Dúnguláli, ­they’re digging a large hole, but it’s not for me!” . . . ​“Lêgbe-­lêgbe, Death’s left hand, Dúnguláli, Death’s left hand has come. Chase it back to the land of the dead, Dúnguláli.” As Tooy and his comrades sing on, to the steady rhythm of their seed-­pods, it’s easy to imagine Kódji a c­ entury before, with Akoomí in his head, teaching and leading the band of singers on the faraway Oyapock River.8 Near the end of The Reaper’s Garden, Vincent Brown asks, “What might reading politics through the social and cultural history of death mean for our general understanding of history—­the way we think, write, and read about the past? (2008, 258). And he answers, “To begin with, the history of death, power, and slavery [in the colonial Ca­rib­bean] suggests a new perspective on the history of the pres­ent.” “It is customary,” he notes, “to narrate the history of the Amer­i­cas alongside conventional accounts of modernity, which 240  Richard Price

chronicle the retreat of the sacred and the spiritual when confronted by the advance of reason and science, the expansion of freedom, and the extension of material pro­gress.” But, he continues, “The world of . . . ​[Ca­rib­bean] slavery, where the dead ­were active players in the most significant po­liti­cal disputes, at the very heart of . . . ​[Eu­rope’s] colonial enterprise, serves as a reminder that the modern world was still an enchanted one” (258). I think anthropologists would go farther and insist that the modern world continues to be an enchanted one. Speaking of enchantment, and death, I would mention that the g ­ reat Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite has recently unveiled Elegguas (2010)—­spelled with a snake spiraling up between the two g’s—­a series of elegiac offerings to the dead (“­Those who i hold most dear / are nvr dead . . . ​/ mixed with my sand and mortar / they walk in me with the world”), including love letters to his late wife, Zea Mexican (“And you my love? Can you see me? / Hear me? Are you close by? . . . ​What is it like & / how is it w/you across the water/or is / ­there nothing nothing nothing at all / as I think you xpected as I think yu / sometimes say tho I not too too sure / about that”). ­There’s a poem for Walter Rodney (“to be blown into fragments, your flesh / like the islands that you love / like the seawall that you wish to heal”), and t­ here’s much more, all in his inimitable “Tidelectic” nation language printed in SycoraX Video Style font. They are deeply affecting poems, and I recommend them. From the cemeteries of Haiti or Martinique, aflame with candlelight and filled with p ­ eople making offerings to their deceased relatives and friends on Toussaint, to the Saamakas who pour libations to and speak with their dead on a daily basis, to the ubiquitous libations before tasting a beer or shot of rum on any Ca­rib­bean island, the dead are with us, punishing our sins, watching over our endeavors, helping chase away danger, teaching us how to conduct ourselves, and, in many other ways, participating in our ongoing lives. “­Those millions of the drowned,” evoked by Paule Marshall, have since been joined by millions more who toiled in slavery and ­later in freedom and, together, forged the New World in which we live. Accepting this, I recommend that we join Saamakas in clapping our hand rhythmically and saying, gaán tangi tangi f’únu—­let us give ­great thanks to all of them. Notes Delivered at the conference “Passages and Afterworlds: Anthropological Perspectives on Death and Mortuary Rituals in the Ca­rib­bean,” June 6–8, 2011, Barbados, as the Featured Speaker Lecture, this contribution draws on several of my works, especially Price Cha sing De ath’s Left Hand  241

(1983, 2005, and 2008). I retain ­here the informal style of the public lecture, adding only citations and references cited. 1. Several recent books emphasize the magnitude of the early Ca­rib­be­an’s demographic disaster—­for native populations, for enslaved Africans, and for Eu­ro­pe­ans. See, for example, in addition to Vincent Brown (2008), J. R. McNeill (2010) and Erik Seeman (2010). 2. See Richard Price (2005), from which parts of the following paragraphs are borrowed. 3. As an aside, I might mention that Stedman himself adds as a note to this incident that “even So late as 1789 On October 30 & 31 /at Demerary/ Thirty two Wretches w ­ ere Executed, Sixteen of Whom in the Above Shocking Manner, Without So much as a Single Complaint was Heard Amongst them, & Which days of Martyr are Absolutely a Feast to many Planters” (Stedman 1988, 47–49). 4. At this point in the lecture, I showed some images of coffin interrogation—­ nineteenth-­century images from Jamaica, French Guiana, and Suriname, a mid-­ twentieth-­century photo of Ndyuka Maroons, and fi­nally, a clip from a 1932 film made among Saamaka Maroons. 5. At this point in the lecture, I showed an image of the kind of ancestor shrine that Fankía’s coffin instructed Saamakas to build. 6. At this point in the lecture, I showed a two-­minute clip from Ben Russell’s film, Let Each One Go Where He May (2009), which catches the final moments of the yearlong Saamaka funeral rites, the morning when the ghost of the deceased is definitively chased from the village by masked figures who cavort obscenely through the village. 7. In this section about Dúnguláli-­Óbia, I draw heavi­ly on vari­ous parts of Price (2008). 8. At this point in the lecture, I played the song of the pipe being passed around, PipaAnanagoa-­Dungulali, as well as the “dangerous Indians” song, Taku Ingi-­ Dungulali. Both can be heard at “Sound Files for Travels with Tooy, last accessed February 7, 2018, http://­w ww​.­press​.­uchicago​.­edu​/­books​/­price​/­index​.­html.

242  Richard Price

Afterword L I F E A N D P O S T L I F E I N C A ­R I B ­B E A N RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS

Aisha Khan

Not long ago, on a summer eve­ning in New York, I attended a cajón de muerto,1 a celebratory ceremony associated with Palo Mayombe, a major Afro-­ Atlantic religious tradition. Cajones de muerto vary in type and are held for dif­fer­ent reasons, but, in general, they are a “thanksgiving” ritual to honor the dead. Cajones de muerto are dedicated to paying a debt to an ancestor or to an Mpungo (a deity in Palo Mayombe), or to expressing gratitude for the spiritual intervention that the ritual’s host has received from an ancestor or from another spirit who is not necessarily part of the host’s f­amily lineage. An intervention might, for example, have solved a prob­lem for the host, resulted in the acquisition of a job, or been instrumental in overcoming fertility issues. Overall, the outcome of a cajón de muerto is personal to an individual, and the sequence of events during any given cajón de muerto may vary, depending on an individual’s wishes as well as the intended objective. Over the years, I have attended many rituals dedicated to ancestor veneration that are associated with Santeria. This was my first Palo Mayombe cajón de muerto, and it turned out to be dif­f er­ent from anything I had experienced before. As such, it presented me with some insistent questions about the real­ity of spirits and their mobility through the cosmos. The host of this “thanksgiving” was Donna, a middle-­aged, professional ­woman who wanted to give thanks to her main spirit guides for some notable successes she had lately achieved.2 Accompanied by my friend Maria, a Madre Nkisi, or palera (priestess) in Palo Mayombe, I arrived in the late after­noon. Perhaps fifty ­people, mostly prac­ti­tion­ers, but including a few respectful observers, as well, gathered in Donna’s large and comfortable

basement. We formed ourselves into a sort of semicircle, carefully distanced around the professional drummers and professional singer who w ­ ere providing the ­music necessary for this ceremony; we w ­ ere also careful not to accidently interfere with the elaborately decorated throne that was set up in one corner of the room, draped with gorgeous cloths, flowers, plants, and favorite foods and other items relished by the spirits. At another side of the room, ­there was a boveda espiritual, a ­table serving as an altar to the spirits, with, among other ­things, glasses of ­water, flowers, cigars, rum, and Chablis wine. As is usually the case, prayers opened the ceremony and specific songs ­were sung, in Spanish, for all the spirits who dwell in Donna’s ­house. Every­ one who knew the prayer-­songs sang them, accompanied by the singer and drummers. ­After ­these prayers ­were finished, the singer and drummers began their songs. ­These ­were sung in Spanish, meant to salute Donna’s own main spirit guides (who also live in her ­house), and in Kikongo, to salute her par­tic­u­lar Mpungo. The musical group, specifically the singer, plays an essential part in this ceremony, since it is the singer who, through specific songs and language, entices the spirits to come down to the ceremony and join the cele­bration. The songs ­were also directed to all the spirits accompanying the p ­ eople who w ­ ere in attendance. The idea is to greet the entirety of spiritual energies pres­ent, through drumming, call-­and-­response singing, and cajones de muerto’s high energy, upbeat bodily movements engaged in by every­one pres­ent. This part of the ceremony lasted about two and a half hours, and, as is not unusual during this phase, some p ­ eople began to respond to the amassing of all ­these spirit energies, evincing signs of possession, or “mounting,” as they reacted to a par­tic­u­lar “call” or song. Like at any cajón de muerto, if the drummers and singer perceive such signs in a person, they ­will prolong a song in order to encourage that person to become fully mounted. Sometimes at cajones de muerto no one is mounted; at other times, a number of p ­ eople might be. On this par­tic­u­lar eve­ning at Donna’s, the latter was the case. At some point well into the ceremony, something happened to me that had never happened before: I noticed that someone was approaching me, one whom I knew and yet did not know. The individual I thought I recognized was my friend Carlos, a Tata Nkisi, or palero (priest), in Palo Mayombe. As he came closer to me, accompanied by Maria, I saw his face, but his altered, yet characteristically pleasant, expression made him seem unfamiliar to me. I noticed that he wore a straw hat and pants rolled up to about the knee, sartorial choices I had never known Carlos to make. And when he started 244  Aisha Khan

speaking to me, in Spanish and, Maria told me ­later, in Kikongo, his voice was distinctly not one I had heard before. It was not “Carlos.” The message I received was specific, tailored to me, one of support and encouragement meant to help guide me during a time when I was ­going through some personal challenges due to ­family illness. ­After the cajón de muerto was finished and we ­were on our way home, I asked Maria to explain further. I learned that I had been addressed by Jacinto, one of Carlos’s Haitian spirits, an individual who had lived, and died, many generations ago in Cuba. Having mounted Carlos and speaking through him, Jacinto wished to impart to me some comforting counsel. Standing next to Jacinto as he talked, Maria translated into En­glish the Kikongo words and phrases he spoke, and also ­those in Spanish, just in case I might miss something in that atmosphere of singing, drumming, and other sounds of cele­bration. I have been pondering this experience since it happened, not entirely knowing what to make of it. But my ambivalence and puzzlement ­were productive, pressing home for me the special challenge and special allure of apprehending passages and afterworlds. On the one hand, as underdeveloped, perhaps, as my own belief system is, part of me thinks it was Carlos who spoke to me, using knowledge to which he had access as my friend. On the other hand, part of me is certain that h ­ uman consciousness may not yet, or ever, grasp fully the layers of being of which we are, in our conscious state, a part. I have asked anthropologist friends who work on Atlantic world religious traditions how they approach this conundrum—if it is indeed a conundrum for them at all. Their answers slide between sincere re­spect for the cosmological experiences of their interlocutors and, it seems to me, hedging a bit about their own explanations of ­those experiences. Clearly, the point is not to seek the “Truth” of such experiences. But ­there is still the challenging question of how we, as observers, or observer-­practitioners in some cases, are to interpret multiple worlds and ways of being in them. To borrow (and alter the meaning of ) Alexander Pope’s famous line from his poem Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1735), about “breaking a butterfly upon a wheel”: how do we engage with the infinite and the in-­between (the butterfly) without necessarily imposing par­tic­u­lar realities (the breakage)? How might scholars, trained to investigate empirical facts, apprehend the perceived presence and meaning of otherworldly beings in everyday life not their own? In grappling with ­these questions, some scholars, including anthropologists, have moved ­toward phenomenological approaches, “bracketing” (following Husserl) assumptions that derive from their own theoretical and cultural traditions in order to better understand an increased and more diverse range of culAfterword  245

tural phenomena, a major objective being to “destabilize t­ hose unexamined assumptions that or­ga­nize our prereflective engagements with real­ity” (Desjarlais and Throop 2011, 88–89). But even allowing that we can “bracket” (destabilize unexamined assumptions), can we step inside o ­ thers? Ultimately the answers are insoluble, always relative, without empiricism-­based explanation, and are thus not entirely satisfying. In his work on developing phenomenological approaches in anthropology, Byron Good summarizes the challenge in more satisfactory, if broader terms: we need to identify par­tic­u­lar historical and social contexts as part of h ­ uman consciousness, we need to be able to distinguish forms of bias and self-­deception, yet we want to avoid devaluing local claims to knowledge (1994; see also Mentore, this volume). This challenge is, I think, a key issue in the study of the relationship between power, religion, passages, and afterworlds, and in the study of religion more broadly. Briefly discussing t­ hese issues in a dif­f er­ent context (Khan 2014), I offered that one way to start is to explore the relationships between signifier and signified, and between discourse and practice: the narrative traditions that surround the customary acts which inform the narratives. Spirit worlds have cross-­cultural similarities that are conveyed in par­tic­u­lar forms that typically change over time; what are the pro­cesses of translation involved that ­will enable us to interpret relations of power and the construction and use of evidence? All forms of evidence are informed by both fact and fancy; all evidence requires a proj­ect of retrieval and analy­sis, one that becomes even more rich and complex when fact and fancy also involve an array of material and spirit worlds. The study of aftermath—­death and its afterworlds—­adds another level of real­ity to the one that we inhabit in our everyday routines in the empirical world. This additional real­ity is one that is not necessarily part of the observer’s ordinary dimensions of experience. T ­ here are times (for some analysts, perhaps always) when a suspension of disbelief must be put into play so that other realities, ­those connected to the afterworld domains of death, can be entered and interpreted. Certainly the idea of “truths” with a small “t” applies ­here: ­human consciousness and experience occur on dif­fer­ent spatial and temporal planes, the number and nature of which vary cross-­culturally and historically. But when at its best, engagement with ­these planes or dimensions while we still inhabit our usual, everyday material world calls for more than acknowledging phenomenological diversity (though it begins with such acknowl­edgment). Ideally, what e­ lse is needed is to be able to grasp, to some extent, the realities of ­these multiple dimensions of consciousness and experience as real, not simply as pres­ent for ­others. By this I do not mean that the best analyses 246  Aisha Khan

of “passages and afterworlds” are only or necessarily produced by analyst-­ practitioners; that would be both too easy to assert and not automatically the case. But I am suggesting that translating what is si­mul­ta­neously no longer “alive” and yet still active into something that makes sense to this-­worldly, empirical ways of knowing requires creating the possibility where the past and the pres­ent may be conflated, creating a dif­fer­ent sort of temporal dimension. It would mean entering a world(s) of ­things we cannot necessarily see but that are not simply categorized as being “the past” or “the ­f uture,” but, rather, where “the pres­ent” is multidimensional and fluid—­not as a progression of events or thoughts or efforts, but as simultaneous instances of “was,” “is,” and “­will be.” Another approach, likewise not easily undertaken, would be to challenge an Enlightenment legacy that seeks to unmask the magical by asserting a binary between real­ity and illusion, skepticism and faith (Taussig 1998, 241). As Michael Taussig, following Nietz­sche, argues, real­ity itself might be “one big trick,” where it is “no less magical than magic” itself (1998, 251). The study of aftermaths—­death and its afterworlds—­can add yet another level of real­ity to the one that we inhabit in our everyday routines in the empirical world. But remodeling the dual opposition between life and death requires that we enter arenas that may be other than ­those to which we expect this binary model to apply. For example, in a recent story on physician-­ assisted suicide by National Public Radio station wnyc, a professor of medicine and ethics at the University of Chicago commented to the reporter that assisting in suicide is wrong b ­ ecause it infringes on the essential foundation of medicine, which stipulates that all patients are “a somebody.” When the physician acts “with a specific intention of making a patient dead,” he said, it validates the opinion that it is acceptable to “make a somebody into a nobody” (Iverac 2015). The notion of “nobody” connotes a finality that denies a broader spectrum of possibilities to be for a “somebody” who is post but not necessarily ended, over, finished. And yet from his statement we cannot extrapolate that someone espousing this position would be areligious (for example, simply b ­ ecause of the idea that t­ here is no being ­after death). In other words, ­there is no explicit or necessary denial of a religiously envisioned afterlife ­after life. In addition to phenomenological challenges about how to analytically frame, and enter experience, a key question that this somebody (alive) / nobody (dead) model raises is ­whether death (and its rituals) need be associated with religion. In Western epistemology, it is easy to take for granted that death and religion are necessarily connected, in part ­because of the Afterword  247

premise that ­humans need to find a known for the unknown: (why) is life over?, what happens next?, how do we reconstitute the social group?, and so on. By the late 1800s, anthropologists ­were focusing on cross-­cultural beliefs in spiritual beings associated with life ­after death, an interest that spoke to an intellectual quest to discover two, presumed-­to-be connected phenomena: the origin of religion and ­humans’ beliefs about their posthumous fate (Palgi and Abramovitch 1984, 386). E. B. Tylor, for example, argued that religion originated in ­people’s ideas about dreaming, sleep, and collective responses to death (1871). In her discussion of Clifford Geertz’s contention that in religious terms, the prob­lem of suffering is not about avoiding suffering but knowing how to make pain and loss “sufferable” (Geertz 1973), Karen Richman thoughtfully observes that “powerlessness is the inability to make sense of suffering” (this volume). H ­ ere, religion’s connection with death is as a coping mechanism for pain; deep suffering is existential, bigger than the mundane challenges of e­ very day. What would our analyses, and even the data themselves, look like, however, if we began with basic questions about our epistemological practices? When might death, spirit worlds, and the super­natural be approached as other than religious phenomena? Epistemologies are always steeped in local contexts and their relations of power (see, for example, Trouillot 2003). As Maarit Forde observes in her introduction to this volume, all nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­century Trinidadians recognized ontological common ground but with dif­fer­ent degrees of owner­ship and approval (Forde, introduction), slanting the normative death culture t­oward elite values about respectability. Hence, courtrooms and newspapers of the day exemplified the loud singing, rum drinking, gambling, and storytelling occurring at working-­class funerary wakes as evidence of non-­religiosity (Forde, chapter 7), with the intention of separating death and religion rather than relating them. ­There are other, cross-­cultural examples of the tenuous or non­ex­is­tent connection between death and religion. The Maasai in southern K ­ enya and northern Tanzania traditionally had no mortuary rituals, no linkages between death and the afterlife, and, for that m ­ atter, no ideas about an afterlife. As Paul Spencer explains, traditionally (i.e., sans Christian missionary influence), Maasai left their deceased in the shade of a “cold” tree (a tree without thorns) for animal predators. Maasai belief in immortality is similarly pragmatic: limited to the establishment of a ­family—an agnatic unit that has survived their deceased forebears (Spencer 1988, 240–241). ­There are other ethnolinguistic groups who also have l­ittle to no concern with mortuary rituals, an afterlife, or its connection to this life. Noting just 248  Aisha Khan

a few examples discussed by James Woodburn (1982), the Hadza of northern Tanzania, the Mbuti of Zaire, and the Baka of Cameroon all share some common denominators that contribute to the question of the relationship between death and religion. Woodburn (1982, 187) sums it up succinctly: for ­these African hunter-­gatherer socie­ties, death “is a way of life.” The consequence of this way of life is a prosaic and notably pragmatic attitude t­ oward death. Among the common denominators that he identifies among them are no searching for the cause of death, no divination or other methods to diagnose why the person died, repudiation of the idea that death is caused by super­natural actions by members of their own society (witchcraft or sorcery), no definite or predictable belief in an afterlife, and, if one exists, not thought to be influenced by an individual’s be­hav­ior in this life or by the actions of mourners (1982, 203). For the Hadza, ­human death is dealt with by “remarkably few procedures, prescriptions, taboos or rituals” (1982, 188). They “link death and burial with their major religious cele­bration, the sa­ ecause the epeme cred epeme dance”; it is dangerous not to hold the dance b promotes and maintains general well-­being, especially good health and successful hunting (1982, 190). The dead are linked to epeme in just two ways: objects associated with epeme are often placed on the grave, and, eventually, the deceased is commemorated with a dance at an epeme (1982, 191). This commemoration, however, does not involve any sort of spiritual counterpart, spectral or other­wise. Gravesites are neither marked nor visited. The cause of death is not a prob­lem to be solved; although they believe in witchcraft and sorcery, Hadza traditionally do not believe that other Hadza are prac­ti­tion­ers (except ­those closely associated with neighboring pastoral and agricultural groups) (1982, 193). Fi­nally, ­there is no clear belief in an afterlife; Hadza “are quite explicit that when one dies, one rots and that is that” (1982, 193). The Mbuti think of death as “natu­ral,” and traditionally do not publicly express fear of the dead (1982, 198). Traditional Baka do not search for the cause of death. Although they believe that witchcraft can kill, they have no institutionalized practice of making accusations, and no other actions are taken. ­Until recently (i.e., before Christianization), the single mortuary act performed by the Baka was to pull a hut down over the corpse and leave the area. “Traditional” or “conservative” Baka say, “When ­you’re dead, ­you’re dead and that’s the end of you” (1982, 195). Woodburn concludes that “­human death is relatively invisible in ­these socie­ties in comparison with socie­ties whose members live in much larger communities and at much higher population densities” (1982, 202). He classifies hunter-­gatherers with relatively s­ imple death beliefs and practices as Afterword  249

“immediate-­return” rather than “delayed-­return” economies, social organ­ ization, and values. “Immediate-­ return” systems are “activity oriented directly to the pres­ent (rather than to the past or the ­future),” where subsistence is a daily preoccupation and consumed quickly, with minimal investment in long-­lasting material culture or debts, obligations or other binding commitments to ­family and community. In general, social activity is not saddled with major long-­term concerns, commitments, or planning. Thus, death-­related belief and practice revolve around immediate rather than social reproduction and long-­term continuity (1982, 205–207). As ­these par­tic­u­lar African cases show, “religion,” at least as Western epistemology categorizes it, may have virtually no affiliation with death, or have a tenuous one, and death may not involve mortuary rituals. Ca­rib­bean religious traditions, hailing from another part of the African continent, emerged and creolized over time from the material conditions of colonial-­capitalist society (decidedly not hunter-­gatherer based), carry­ing the cosmological truths of enslaved, indentured, and f­ ree Africans. L ­ ater, the cosmological truths of indentured and ­free South Asians would arrive and ­settle in. But precisely ­because the creolization pro­cesses of Ca­rib­bean religious traditions are numerous, context-­contingent and open-­ended, heterogeneity abounds. For example, as Yanique Hume notes in her chapter, Rastafari “has an almost complete disengagement with the spirit world.” In Tobago and some other parts of the Anglophone Ca­rib­bean, Forde tells us, the idea of the dead participating in the world of the living is not a sanctioned public discourse. The religious and lifecycle rituals of the working classes by the dominant (elite) value complex of respectability have been pathologized and criminalized such that beliefs and practices “bearing the slightest connotation to the manipulation of the spirit world” tend to be illicit and a source of embarrassment (Forde). For other Ca­rib­bean religious traditions, the fluidity between the domains of this-­ life and afterlife is what characterizes t­ hese cosmologies (although not t­ hese domains’ exact composition), meshing more or less with Eu­ro­pean religious traditions’ ideas about forms of being in this and the next life, an interlacing that is complementary rather than contradictory. This comparability among vernacular (“popu­lar” or “­little tradition”) forms defies canonical binaries that separate “sacred” and “profane,” living and deceased, and even ostensibly culturally distinct religious traditions. The orthodoxies that insist on binary oppositions have their ambiguities and loopholes, as well, ­because canons, albeit imposed, ultimately can only be insistent suggestions. Another way we might enter multiple or ambiguous realities and the relationship between religion and the afterworld is through their repre­sen­ta­ 250  Aisha Khan

tion in fiction. Fiction can allow exploration of phenomena that the initiated accept, but that outsiders or skeptics cannot understand or experience firsthand. Art, in the form of fiction or other media, can serve as an aperture that makes alternative realities more accessible, more akin, perhaps, to that real­ity in which one already feels at home. I would like to briefly explore this possibility with a look at a novella which has remained resonant, at least in the Western imaginary, for over 170 years. In one of the best-­known pieces of lit­er­a­ture to come out of Victorian ­England, a pitiless and emotionally damaged man, Ebenezer Scrooge, learns a lesson one Christmas Eve that transforms both his life and his afterlife. His instructors in this lesson are not mortal men, not even Scrooge’s initial eve­ ning visitor, his late business partner, Jacob Marley, seven years dead. Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843) is a story of redemption and of hope. In par­tic­u­lar, Scrooge’s encounter with Marley, ­whether Dickens intended it or not, is an instructive illustration of the relationship between this-­world and the afterworld in Western epistemology. Let us take a closer look. Reluctantly closing his office for the night, Scrooge gradually makes his way home, to the ­house that had once been Marley’s. The first sign of Marley is his visage on Scrooge’s front door knocker (Dickens 1843, 15).3 But as “Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again. To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. . . . ​ He did pause, with a moment’s irresolution, before he shut the door; and he did look cautiously ­behind it first, as if he half-­expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley’s pigtail sticking out into the hall. But ­there was nothing on the back of the door . . . ​, so he said ‘Pooh, Pooh!’ and closed it with a bang.” Then Scrooge thinks he sees a “locomotive hearse g­ oing on before him in the gloom,” and “double-­locked himself in,” something he did not ordinarily do (17). As Scrooge sat in front of the fireplace eating his “gruel,” Marley’s face appeared again, this time covering the entire fireplace. Scrooge’s response is a dismissive, “Humbug!” At that moment e­ very bell in the ­house begins to ring, and Scrooge feels “­great astonishment” as well as “a strange, inexplicable dread.” Next comes a clanking noise, “as if some person w ­ ere dragging a heavy chain,” reminding Scrooge that ghosts in haunted ­houses are thought to do this. The cellar door bangs open, yet Scrooge, despite his previously unfamiliar terrible sensations, irresolution, astonishment, and dread, insists that “it’s humbug still! . . . ​I ­won’t believe it!” He is not yet of a dif­f er­ent mind even when Marley’s ghost passes through the closed door, chain and all. Although Scrooge “looked the phantom Afterword  251

through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-­cold eyes . . . ​he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.” When Marley’s ghost says to him, “you d ­ on’t believe in me,” Scrooge retorts, “I ­don’t.” Marley’s ghost asks him why he doubts his senses, and Scrooge famously diagnosed: “A l­ittle ­thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach. . . . ​­There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, what­ever you are!” Yet with this wisecrack, Scrooge is trying to quell his terror: “The spectre’s voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.” Eventually Scrooge cries for mercy, saying, “Dreadful apparition, why do you trou­ble me?” Marley’s ghost replies, “Man of the worldly mind! . . . ​do you believe in me or not?” Conceding that he now believes in the real­ity of the ghost, Scrooge asks, “But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?” Of course, Marley’s ghost has come to alert Scrooge to the further warnings he ­will receive throughout that night from other spirits—­all of whom are on a mission to save him from Marley’s fate before it is too late. As Scrooge strug­gles with the (false) reassurances of his “worldly mind” (which, although comforting, limit what he is able to acknowledge) and the apparently irrational immateriality that confronts him (which, although disturbing, protect him from complete disorientation), he vacillates between “horror” and “Humbug!,” between belief and disbelief, receptiveness and rejection. Scrooge’s sense tells him one t­ hing; his sensibility another. Yet by asking Scrooge why he doubts his “senses” as he attempts to grasp what is happening to the material world with which he is familiar, Marley’s ghost blurs the distinction between sense as intellect and sense as feeling, and hence the distinction between rational and irrational; past, pres­ent, and ­future; this-­world and afterworld; real and unreal. Marley’s visit prompts a fundamental question in the study of death and afterworlds, one illustrated in the emotional and cognitive strug­gle ­going on in Scrooge’s “worldly mind.” Is Marley’s ghost a figment of the imagination or a palpable presence? The question for the reader becomes: in what sense are spirits “real”? The Victorian idea of the afterworld is clearly distinct from this-­world, as spirits are distinct from mortals. But they are not entirely detached: Marley’s ghost enters Scrooge’s domain, and Scrooge enters the domains of the spirits he accompanies throughout the night. Yet when ­these two worlds, spirit and mortal, are interpolated, they still represent two dif­fer­ent dimensions of the senses and kinds of existence. The two worlds, this-­and after-­, can overlap at certain moments and in certain ways, but ­there is not, in other words, a single, encompassing universe of varied beings—­for example, 252  Aisha Khan

alive, deceased, spirit, mortal, undead, revived, divine, dreadful and, more commonly, not at all dreadful—­who si­mul­ta­neously inhabit the same space and time, as ­there are in other religious traditions, including ­those in the Ca­ rib­bean. Indeed, multilayered universes and multiple cosmological worlds have existed throughout the Amer­i­cas, from the cosmologies of the Pre-­ Classic Maya to ­those of present-­day Ca­rib­bean diasporas. As key moments in death and the interactions among mortals, spirits, and deities, cajones de muerto are a part of major religious traditions in the Amer­ i­cas. Other religious traditions, emerging from precolonial life-­worlds—­for example, traditional subsistence practices such as t­hose among hunter-­ gatherer groups in sub-­Saharan Africa—­espouse pragmatic convictions about the finality of death and the absence of postdeath activity, raising skepticism about a necessary interface between death and religion. Although Dickens was a Christian, A Christmas Carol is not a work heavi­ly bathed in religiosity; yet with the help of Dickens’s moral imagination, Scrooge quite literally flows through equidimensional spaces and times, in a journey that Victorian ­England recognized. As the essays in this anthology attest, the Ca­rib­bean is a rich site of education about passages and afterworlds, and the optic of passages and afterworlds has much to reveal about this part of the globe. H ­ ere, the connection between religious traditions and death is not ambiguous (or non­ex­is­tent) but in most cases understood to be intimately bound. As Vincent Brown’s masterful study The Reaper’s Garden observes, the “dead are active participants in the living world” (Brown 2008, 4–5). Despite the ubiquity of death and ­dying (and torture) in Ca­rib­bean slave socie­ties—­for example, “everywhere in Jamaica, one could hear the sounds of black funerals” (63)—­Brown argues that the “extravagant death rate” did not impede cultural development but, instead, it was “the landscape of culture itself ” (59). Death and religious traditions joined together as death—­symbol and social fact—­permeated the arenas of cultural life. Added to this is Brown’s appreciation of the power of colonial law to bind the living and the dead within Euro-­Christian moral universes. For example, in Jamaica the plantocracy’s ­legal ­wills—­which involved property, including ­human property—­could allow planters to “reach back from the grave” and influence the status and condition of the living; that is, compensate the “illegitimate” families created by planters and overseers with enslaved ­women (111–112). And perhaps the most salient f­ actor that entwines religious traditions and death in the Ca­rib­bean is that the majority of Africans enslaved in the Amer­i­cas originated from West and Central Africa, whose cosmologies interpolated the domains of this-­life and afterlife, Afterword  253

and whose ancestors, spirits, and other afterworld figures have long been perceived through the optic of Abrahamic religions: Chris­tian­ity and Islam. Commenting on the significance of death and mortuary rituals in the world that Brown evokes, Erik Seeman writes that “as the living buried their dead, mourned their loved ones, and tried to escape the reaper’s scythe, they created a new culture at the nexus between the h ­ ere and the hereafter” (Seeman 2008, n.p.). The creation of new cultures is among the most, if not the most, impor­tant trope of Ca­rib­bean studies. Its most common appellation is “creolization,” or cultural transformation within unequal relations of power. Typically creolization is discussed in terms of the encounter of cultural practices and beliefs in this-­world. But the nexus to which Seeman refers can also represent another kind of creolization—­that between this-­and afterworlds. The living and the dead can be thought of as together creating new cultures through their vari­ous quotidian involvements and thus their forging of, as Brown (2008, 59) puts it, the “landscape of culture itself.” The inevitable pro­cesses of creolization in the Ca­rib­bean, ­whether occurring within one world or involving more than one world, have always and necessarily developed in a context of strug­gles over citizenship and enfranchisement (Forde, introduction). Significantly shaping this strug­gle are the images in­ven­ted and promoted by Euro-­colonialism that have long associated the Ca­rib­bean with the gruesome, the shocking, the titillating, and the dangerous. Cannibalism, the dark arts of witchcraft (obeah), and other alleged forms of moral depravity w ­ ere assumed to characterize the region. Perhaps reaching their apex in the nineteenth c­ entury, ­these themes run at least as far back as Shakespeare’s The Tempest and early explorers’ reports (at times conflating Amazonian regions and their ostensible island counter­ parts). One impor­tant consequence was the influence that this imagery had on the idea of death: the Ca­rib­bean as a site of unruly death, untimely death, ungodly death. A significant instance of this region-­specific idea of death is captured by Michael Taussig’s (1984) “space of death,” an exploration of the production and narration of terror in the Putumayo region of Colombia. The Ca­rib­bean “space of death” has been characterized in a number of ways. Although seeing its share of torture, terror, and mystification, and being a “colonial mirror” (Taussig 1984) that proj­ects and attributes Euro-­colonialism’s phantasmagorical “truths” back onto the colonized, the Ca­rib­be­an’s configuration of a space of death is one where death itself is a question. It is not where life and death are perceived necessarily to be in dual opposition, but rather offers what we might call a spectrum of the spectral, where spirits populate 254  Aisha Khan

the world of the living (with wide-­ranging intentions). It is where West and Central African religious traditions based largely on divination and healing practices continued to creolize over time throughout the Amer­i­cas. It is a space where the agency of the dead (Forde, introduction) is conspicuously expressed through ­humans’ possession by spirits. The Ca­rib­bean space of death for some also signifies what Orlando Patterson ([1968] 1985) interpreted as “social death,” a condition of psychological and cultural alienation, and the dissolution of social institutions among the enslaved. But for ­others it also signifies the place where ­whole, new cultures “emerged from the ashes” (Price, this volume). The Ca­rib­bean space of death is, on the one hand, viewed as a site of death in the literal terms of genocide, ­labor abuse, and disease. On the other hand, it is viewed as a site of life in the meta­phorical terms of regeneration, continuation, and constancy as it takes on other forms of being and diverse modes of interaction. This tension has been characterized lyrically by Carlos Guillermo-­Wilson as that between a “marvelous cradle-­hammock” and a “painful cornucopia” (2004). It is ­these multiple expressions that give death and the spaces that death creates and “lives” in, more than an association with terror, danger, and dread. The Ca­rib­bean “space of death” is also vibrant, regenerative, and celebratory.

In their explorations of the Ca­rib­be­an’s complex and multilayered passages and afterworlds, the chapters in this volume richly address this latter, affirmative aspect of spaces of death as well as the dimensions of peril and vulnerability so often associated with them. What t­hese essays tell us as a ­whole and at their broadest is that passages and afterworlds are configured and experienced according to unequal relations of power; differing social locations and points of view; and ever-­changing historical moments, cultural contexts, and social structures. We can think of ­these as constants—­factors that always require consideration. But, perhaps counterintuitively, ­these constants always necessitate protean interpretations. A number of the essays bring to the fore the profound sociality of rituals in their engagements with afterworlds and their residents, and thus their receptivity to local milieus. In his essay on Garifuna commemorative ancestor rituals, Paul Christopher Johnson puts it well: “Death [makes] for lively social calendars.” Pressing the distinctions among Afro-­Caribbean groups rather than their putatively unifying characteristics, Johnson focuses on two key ways that the deceased are manifest among the living: one involves ancestors and the other, spirit possession. Arguing that possessed bodies Afterword  255

can be entry­ways to as yet unexplored dimensions of experience, Johnson shows that diasporic Garifuna in New York are becoming part of the spirit possession–­associated African diaspora as Garifuna leaders have begun to be possessed by Yoruba spirits rather than through the attentive, conscious, deliberate practice of rituals that emphasize ancestors’ return. This supplanting of Garifuna ancestors is not, however, a growing phenomenon in Garifuna emigrants’ homes, such as ­those in Honduras. In ­these villages, ­great import is placed on containing changes in ritual that can potentially rewrite Garifuna history. As Johnson makes clear, “religious cultures are inseparable from the social and spatial conditions of their per­for­mance, . . . ​ the question of what is ritually pos­si­ble in a given place.” Ca­rib­bean passages and afterworlds illustrate well that far from being static and repetitive, perhaps the salient quality of rituals is their responsiveness and contingency. Mortuary rites are so central in the lives of Surinamese Ndyuka Maroons that Bonno (H. U. E.) Thoden van Velzen and Ineke (Wilhelmina) van Wetering suggest that t­ hese rites might be thought of in terms of a “death industry.” Connoting something dif­f er­ent from Taussig’s figuration of a “space of death,” however, Ndyuka preoccupation with “ancestor cults” is constructive: “In the world of the Ndyuka, h ­ uman and ancestors form one community,” where ­humans and ancestors are in daily contact. In this essay van Velzen and van Wetering consider the central aspects of ancestor worship: the prayers that occur daily at the village shrines; the ritual inquest that is conducted to determine the moral character of the newly deceased—­and the decision as to w ­ hether or not the spirit of the deceased can be incorporated into the ranks of venerable ancestor; and the “underground culture” in which simmer the tensions and resentments engendered by Ndyuka interaction with ancestors. Decisions about which deceased ­will be conferred with the honor of ancestor status; the need to maintain strategic relations with the ancestors as they guard the community against misfortune; and the gerontocratic, patriarchal foundations of Ndyuka culture all speak to the responsiveness and flexibility of rituals, as moments of percolating ruptures and dissention among the living as well as moments for engaging with the afterlife. Vodou divinities, including the Dead, are, Donald Cosentino tells us, alive and well in Haiti. Overseeing this considerable “spiritual traffic” is the ­family of Bawon Samdi, the divinities of death, sexuality, and rebirth. Other spirits, related to Bawon Samdi’s ­family, are the Gedes, who “are as beloved to Vodouisants as the Bawons are feared.” Active among the living, the role of otherworldly agents in Haitian culture is continuously evolving, as t­ hese agents register the this-­worldly changes that happen around them. For ex256  Aisha Khan

ample, the meaning and significance of vari­ous afterworld beings in the everyday lives of Haitians resonate with changes in the po­liti­cal culture of Haiti, particularly transformations with monumental impact. Perhaps most notable among ­these are the mid-­t wentieth-­century dictatorship of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier and the earthquake of January 2010. During the period of Duvalier’s dictatorship (1957–1971), the Gedes w ­ ere marginalized; then, at the end of the twentieth c­ entury, they returned as Haiti’s premier divinities. And, Cosentino explains, just as thousands of vivan-­yo (earthquake survivors) attempt to remain alive both within and outside the tent camps, so ­future generations of lemo (the Dead) “persist in a parallel kind of limbo, while Gods and artists strug­gle to discern the outlines of a new Haitian eschatology.” The agency of the dead (Forde, Introduction) is not simply mirrored in the sensibilities of the living; transformations of power in the world of the dead find their correlates in the Haitian state (Cosentino). The relationship between the social experience of death and the workings of the state are also evident in Keith McNeal’s discussion of the invention of tradition-­like establishment of cremation as central to Indo-­Caribbean Hindu ritual practice and identity. With Trinidad as his case in point, McNeal describes a transformation from the predominance of cemetery burial for all Trinidadians to the shift in the last quarter of the twentieth ­century to cremation and its attendant rituals among Hindus. In the postin­de­pen­dence push to assert distinct ethnic group identities, the means of po­liti­cal repre­ sen­ta­tion increasingly became dependent on the ability to represent one’s constituency in ethnic group terms. Cremation buttressed identity in two impor­tant ways. It reaffirmed the cultural claims to Hindu ethnic identity by defining community; this mortuary ritual gave life, so to speak, to the living culture of Hindu traditions in Trinidad, which w ­ ere thought to have been fading over time, absorbed by Euro-­Christianity. Cremation also buttressed Hindu identity by increasing the vis­i­ble distinctions between Hinduism and Chris­tian­ity, thereby also reinforcing Hindu identity. Gauging the authenticity of surviving Hindu culture and the po­liti­cal potency of its ­bearers became increasingly dependent on what ­were touted as subcontinental Indian traditions. This back-­to-­the-­future of cremation was not a smooth transition and necessitated cooperation from the state. It would come to represent a hallmark of identity in Trinidad’s still-­animated identity politics. Other essays pose in­ter­est­ing questions about the idea of the individual, construction of the self, and the relationship between t­hese forms of agency and the social collectives into which individuals are formed. Offering thought from certain Amerindian cultures as his case in point, George MenAfterword  257

tore points to the limitations of modernist notions about the autonomous individual, where bodily and psychic autonomy are “natu­ral” states. ­These Western epistemological assumptions about singular, sovereign individuality, he argues, have implicitly slanted scholars’ analyses of death as something that is reduced to individuated corporeality—­singular bodies who exercise their own ­will, or agency. Western traditions’ ideas about individual bodies owning their identities and their souls as a version of private property are not found among Amerindians, whose ideas about the body and the spirit are distinct in terms of in­de­pen­dent ­will. ­Human ­will exists but it is always entailed in some fashion in the deployment of the power of spirit, which is rarely perceived as intrinsic to an individual body. Mentore concludes that the Amerindian “self ” exists only in custodianship of ­others, and all beings share in the same subjectivity; thus the self cannot be differentiated, nor can it be subjected to power in the form of individual w ­ ill. One can extrapolate that u ­ ntil scholars recalibrate their assumptions about ­human agency and its relationship to death, spirits, and what constitutes the collective (perhaps by taking a more phenomenological turn?), our understanding of existential questions about the self, groups, life, and death ­will remain limited. Richman’s essay also critiques the tendency of scholars to pres­ent Ca­rib­ bean ­peoples (in her discussion, Haitians, in par­t ic­u­lar) as autonomous individuals who engage in dyadic relations with other autonomous individuals. Such a focus misrecognizes a key social institution in this region: collective-­ oriented social structure and religious rituals that involve interdependent land-­based, cognatic descent groups where the living, the deceased, and the spiritual members of ­those descent groups are linked together. It is through this web of relations—­eritaj—­that the deceased (mò) play a crucial role in the well-­being of the living heirs to the land, as they mediate communication between the living and their spirits (lwa). Richman’s analy­sis shows the centrality of this collective in efforts to alleviate suffering and the search for explanations of misfortune; individuals empower themselves to be able to understand their collective adversity. Collectivities and the intersections of ­family land, death, and kinship are also at the heart of Hume’s essay on Jamaica. The rites that are associated with death, which she calls “rituals of remembrance,” help to rebuild social relationships through the reaffirmation of claims of belonging to a par­tic­u­lar place. ­Family land serves as the convergence site through which kin maintain ties with each other as well as with their ancestral spirits, and reconfirms the individual as ensconced within a network of kin, neighbors, fellow villa­gers; genealogies are preserved in the generations of ­family members interred and commemorated on f­ amily land. 258  Aisha Khan

A key question for Hume is how f­ amily land maintains its symbolic significance over time and across generations—­numbers of whom are part of the diaspora. She argues that land dedicated to communion with the spiritual realm is a declaration of agency: “a conscious act of declaring the right of existence” on the part of both living prac­ti­tion­ers and their spiritual families (Hume, this volume). The collective (familial) exercise of power that seeks to name and assert selfhood beyond the scope of oppressors is one where “death and life are mutually constitutive states” and where the deceased are actors as well as subjects. The relationship between the sovereign individual and the collective takes a dif­fer­ent turn in Forde’s essay. Just as passages and afterworlds are configured and experienced differently, they are also espoused and acknowledged differently. Focusing on nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­century Trinidad and Tobago, Forde is concerned with the disciplining of death culture in the Anglophone Ca­rib­bean. Her aim is to underscore the force that elites’ valorization of modernity and respectability had on shaping the moral landscape, and dominant discourses about the dead, their roles, and their significance. As she argues, proper citizens ­were pressured (through ­legal and other means) to deny the presence of disembodied spirits, and, it followed, not to communicate with spirits or submit to being possessed by them. A contrasting example is found in Price’s remarks about enslaved Africans’ defiance of Euro-­colonial attempts to discipline them. Even when suffering torture and murder, they refused to show submission. On the other hand, when publicly executed for crimes according to their own forms of divination and judgment, Saramaka, distant from the culture of plantation society, played “the guilty victim’s role precisely as the society had defined it,” accepting that “justice was being served.” In the Trinidad and Tobago of Forde’s analy­sis, ­these kinds of strategies of sovereignty (resisting or accommodating) would have been incongruous with the religious hegemony exercised by elites. “Permeable selves,” Forde suggests, “whose bodies enabled the temporary occupation and tangible manifestation of spirits, did not align with the idea of a sovereign individual as an agent of modernity.” One can say that religious respectability (a legitimated, authorized religious tradition) and respectable religiosity (adhering to that tradition according to its authorized canons) are mutually constitutive. But as is the case in virtually all socie­ties and their religious traditions, not supposed to recognize and did not recognize are two dif­fer­ent ­things. The opportunities that poor and working-­class communities had to develop their marginalized versions of Trinidad’s and Tobago’s “death culture” created an environment where Afterword  259

the ongoing tensions of imposition and rejection drew social sectors of the society together even while cultural knowledge underwent continuous, systematic stratification.

Phyllis Palgi and Henry Abramovitch advise that in the study of death, the challenge is to find a “place between the anx­i­eties of a lonely individualism and the consolations of merging with something larger” (1984, 414). While this rings true for many religious traditions and their entwining of passages and afterworlds, in Ca­rib­bean religious traditions ­there may not be an idea of “individualism” as Western epistemology knows it, nor might it be i­ magined as lonely. And the “merging with something larger” may be a fact of daily life rather than something one waits for once life is over. Death, like life, is both a social fact and an i­magined or symbolic construct. “Death” and “life” are each a biophysiological condition, but that condition is null without its signification as a certain kind of ­thing. In other words, “life” means more than an entity’s breathing and moving, and “death” means more than an entity’s ceasing to breathe and move. In the Ca­rib­bean, that “the dead are with us” (Price this volume) need cast no pall. On the contrary, directly and obliquely, literally and meta­phor­ically, the dead—in their vari­ous incarnations—­act as guides for (the) living. Notes For many years I have benefited greatly from discussions with Joseline Santos—­friend, sobrina, former anthropology student, santera (priestess in Santeria), and palera (priestess in Palo Mayombe)—as she has patiently and crucially contributed to my education in the complex epistemologies of Afro-­Atlantic religious traditions. I would also like to express my gratitude to Maarit Forde and Yanique Hume for inviting me to participate as a discussant in their Wenner-­Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research–­funded conference on “Passages and Afterworlds” held in Barbados, June 2011, and for the helpful comments that they, T. O. Beidelman, Kate Crehan, Allyson Purpura, and the volume’s anonymous reviewers have given me. 1. Cajón is the box-­shaped drum that is part of the musical ensemble; muerto refers to the dead or spirits. My discussion of this par­tic­u­lar cajón de muerto is based on my experience of it, and on conversation with my friend Maria about that experience. 2. “Donna,” “Maria,” and “Carlos” are pseudonyms. 3. All quotations from A Christmas Carol are taken from pages 15–20.

260  Aisha Khan

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Contributors

Donald Cosentino is Professor Emeritus of World Arts and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nigeria (1964–1966), and as a community or­ga­nizer in Orangeburg, South Carolina (1968–1969). He received his PhD in African languages and lit­er­a­tures from the University of Wisconsin–­Madison in 1976, ­after which he returned to Nigeria to teach at Ahmadu Bello University from 1976 to 1978. He began work at ucla in 1979. He has done extensive fieldwork on oral traditions in Sierra Leone, on Vodou art and my­thol­ogy in Haiti, and on the flowering of alternative religions in Los Angeles. He is the author of Defiant Maids and Stubborn Farmers (1982, 2008) and Vodou ­Things: The Art of Pierrot Barra and Marie Cassaise (1998). He was the curator, editor, and chief writer for the award-­winning proj­ect The Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou (1995–1999), and for Divine Revolution: The Art of Edouard Duval-­Carrié (2004) and In Extremis: Death and Life in 21st ­Century Haitian Art (2012–2014). Cosentino currently blogs on Religion for HuffPost. Maarit Forde is a se­nior lecturer in cultural studies and the head of the Department of

Literary, Cultural and Communication Studies at the University of the West Indies in St. Augustine. She specializes in the anthropology of religion, migration, and po­liti­cal anthropology in the Ca­rib­bean. Forde has published on the dynamics of ritual invention and structure in the Spiritual Baptist religion in Tobago; transnational mobility and exchange among Spiritual Baptists in the Anglophone Ca­rib­bean, New York, and Toronto; the government and policing of Obeah in the colonial Ca­rib­be­an; and the civic engagement of the urban poor. She is the co­editor of Obeah and Other Powers: The Politics of Ca­rib­bean Religion and Healing (2012) and is currently writing an ethnography of civic engagement, subjectivity, and in­equality in Trinidad. Yanique Hume is a lecturer and coordinator of the Cultural Studies Programme at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus. She specializes in the interdisciplinary field of Ca­rib­bean cultural studies with a focus on African diaspora religions and per­for­mance cultures, Ca­rib­bean thought, and popu­lar culture. Yanique is the coeditor of two anthologies, Ca­rib­bean Cultural Thought: From Plantation to Diaspora (2013) and Ca­rib­ bean Popu­lar Culture: Power, Politics and Per­for­mance (2016). She has also published on a wide range of topics, including Ca­rib­bean festive and sacred arts, and diasporic tourism, as well as migration and diasporic identities. Among her current proj­ects is a monograph

on the diverse religious terrain of eastern Cuba. Hume is the recipient of grants from the Social Science Research Council, the International Development Research Centre, the Ford Foundation, and the Wenner-­Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Paul Christopher Johnson is professor of history and Afro-­American and African studies

and director of the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He specializes in theories of religion, ethnography, religion and race, and anthropology of religion with a focus on Brazil and the Ca­rib­bean. Johnson is the author of Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé (2002), which was awarded the prize of excellence by the American Acad­emy of Religion, and Diaspora Conversions: Black Carib Religion and the Recovery of Africa (2007), which was awarded the Wesley-­Logan Prize by the American Historical Association. He is also the editor of Spirited ­Things: The Work of “Possession” in Afro-­Atlantic Religions (African American). Aisha Khan is a member of the Department of Anthropology at New York University, and

is affiliated with the Center for Latin American and Ca­rib­bean Studies and the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University. She is the author of Callaloo Nation: Meta­phors of Race and Religious Identity among South Asians in Trinidad, editor of Islam and the Amer­i­cas, and coeditor of Empirical ­Futures: Anthropologists and Historians Engage the Work of Sidney W. Mintz, and ­Women Anthropologists: Biographical Sketches. She has published widely in journals and edited volumes on race, religion, diaspora, and creolization, and is currently completing a monograph on religion and race in the Ca­rib­be­an. Keith E. McNeal is associate professor of anthropology in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Houston. His first book, Trance and Modernity in the Southern Ca­rib­be­an: African and Hindu Popu­lar Religions in Trinidad and Tobago (2011), is a comparative historical ethnography of African and Hindu traditions of trance per­for­mance and spirit mediumship from the colonial into the postcolonial periods. He is currently completing his second book proj­ect, Queering the Citizen in the Shadows of Globalization: Dispatches from Trinidad and Tobago, an ethnographic study of men, sexuality, and the politics of citizenship in Trinidad and Tobago and its diaspora. His work reconstructing the history and politics of Indo-­Trinidadian mortuary ritual is part of his third book proj­ect on Trinidad and Tobago, The Lotus and the Oil Drum: Globalizing Hinduism in a Ca­rib­bean Petro-­State. He is a former Fulbright Scholar and maintains research affiliation with the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies–­St. Augustine, Trinidad. George Mentore is a professor of anthropology at the University of ­Virginia. He has pub-

lished variously on social and po­liti­cal life in the Ca­rib­bean and indigenous Amazonia. He currently has a research concentration on affect, empathy, vio­lence, and power. He recently completed a major work on the comparative poetics of “Being” in Amerindian socialities and is now set on ­future studies relating to an anthropology of cruelty. Professor Emeritus Richard Price has taught at Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, and the College of William and Mary. His ethnographic and archival work on African American culture spans from Brazil to Martinique and the United States, but the main focus of his research has been on the Saamaka maroons in Suriname and French Gui284  Contributor s

ana. Price is the author or coauthor of over twenty books, including the award-­winning First-­Time: The Historical Vision of an Afro-­American ­People; Alabi’s World; The Convict and the Col­o­nel; Travels with Tooy: History, Memory, and the African American Imagination; Rainforest Warriors: ­Human Rights on Trial; and Saamaka Dreaming. Karen Richman is a cultural anthropologist. She teaches courses in latino studies, ro-

mance languages, and lit­er­a­tures and anthropology. Richman is the author of Migration and Vodou (2005), and of numerous articles and book chapters on Haitian and Mexican migration, religion, savings, work, language, and ­music. Richman’s scholarship and teaching have been recognized with awards for Open Course Ware Excellence, the Heizer award for the best journal article in ethnohistory, and Newberry Library and Social Science Research Council fellowships. She coedited a special journal volume on Haitian religion in 2012 and was the hosting chair of the annual Haitian Studies Association conference at University of Notre Dame. Her current research proj­ect is an interdisciplinary study of Mexican immigrants’ social wealth, savings, and retirement supported by the National Endowment for Financial Education. Bonno (H. U. E.) Thoden van Velzen was professor of cultural anthropology at the Uni-

versity of Utrecht (Netherlands) from 1971 to 1991 and the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research from 1989 to 1999. He is a member of the Royal Dutch Acad­emy of Sciences (1991–­pres­ent). His main publications with Ineke van Wetering include The ­Great ­Father and the Danger (1988), In the Shadow of the Oracle (2004), and Een zwarte vrijstaat in Suriname: De okaanse samenleving in de 19e en 20e eeuw (2013). Ineke (Wilhelmina) van Wetering (1934–2011) was lecturer in cultural anthropology at the

­Free University (Amsterdam) from 1982 to 1996.

Contributor s  285

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. Abramovitch, Henry, 260 affliction, 149–150, 151–152, 156n7 African diasporic religions, 34, 49n4. See also specific religion Africanness/African retentions, 8, 26n15, 26n17, 47, 53n20, 119 Afro-­Baroque style, 171 afterworlds, 13, 260; connection to this-­ world, 252, 254; disbelief in, 248–250; fictional repre­sen­ta­tion, 251–252; Haitian beliefs, 159, 161; as multilayered, 253, 255; realities of, 246–247, 250–251; ­water meta­phors of, 23, 132 agency: of the dead, 11, 255, 257; in ­dying, 142–143; ­family land and, 115, 259; ­human, 186, 258; of the individual body, 257–258; of local ­people, 3; of participants at wakes, 26n20; of ritual prac­ti­tion­ers, 8, 9, 20; social, 74. See also sovereign individuality Akalali (prophet), 105, 107n20 Akuba, ma, 84, 106n3 Alcide, Evelyne, 73, 171 alcohol. See rum alterity, 4–5, 17, 20, 23; “intimate,” 18, 66; re/production of, 6, 52n16. See also otherness “ambient dead,” 14, 18 Amerindians: anthropological thought and, 54–56; concept of self, 18, 20, 60, 257–258; grief and memories of the dead,

17, 67–69; logic, 56, 59, 62–65; ontologies, 65, 71–72; subjectivity, 60, 66, 258. See also Bororo; Waiwai ancestors: Garifuna evangelicals and, 31–32; giving thanks to, 243; gods and, 47, 50n5; Haitian communication with, 144–147; lost, 1; mi­grants and, 32, 46, 49; Ndyuka homage to, 18, 81–85, 82, 92, 95–99, 256; performing as, 39, 43–44; Saamaka stories about, 16, 19–20, 234–236; songs to, 40–42, 52n17; superior strengths of, 130 ancestral spirits: of Garifuna dügü rituals, 19, 38–43, 48–49; of Jamaican Nine Night rituals, 121–122; modes of return, 32–33, 37–38, 46–48; Ndyuka categories, 86, 95, 96; obligations to, 110–111; rendering to the pres­ent, 33–36, 43–44; of retribution (kunu), 8; Saamaka, 19–20; of Spiritual Baptists, 176–177, 182–183; veneration of, 10, 19, 120, 131–132, 243; voice and speech of, 145 anthropological approaches: Amerindian repre­sen­ta­tions and, 54–56, 77; configuration of truths, 57–59, 78n2; ethnographic writings, 5–9; phenomenological approaches, 245–246; sociohistorical and con­temporary contexts, 22–23; subjectivity and, 60–62; theoretical legacies, 4–5, 24n2 Apter, Andrew, 50n5 Ariès, Philippe, 142, 143

Aristide, Jean-­Bertrand, 21, 166, 168, 175n6 Aristotle, 51n11; Poetics, 37, 38, 44, 51n8 art as repre­sen­ta­tion, 21, 23, 37 artists, 23, 169, 171–174 ason (gangan/manbo), 144–147, 151–152, 154, 155n4 Atis Rezistans (Re­sis­t ance Artists), 169, 170 Ayiti, madi 12 janvye 2010 (Constant), 172, 173 Azande, 147–148 “bad blood,” 101, 150, 153–154, 155, 156n7 Baka, 249 bakanyanyan (last meal), 95–96 barbarism, 4, 194 Bastide, Roger, 27n27, 49n3, 50n5, 134n15 Battaglia, Debbora, 12 Bawon Samdi: artistic repre­sen­ta­tions, 160, 170, 173, 174; black cross of, 168; Duvalier uprooting (dechoukaj) and, 21, 163, 166; genealogy and related spirits, 160–161; role of, 23, 159, 256 begi libi (begging for life) ritual, 82, 97 being, concepts: intersubjective state of, 66; sense of, 62, 111; temporality and, 57 belonging, sense of: community and, 116; ­family land and, 10–11, 111, 112, 113, 132 bereavement. See grief; mourning Besson, Jean, 10 Bible, 124 Bilby, Kenneth, 119, 135n19 biopolitics, 55, 178, 185, 194, 198n31 blackness, 49, 53n20, 113, 171 Black Power, 221 Blake, William, 227, 228 Bloch, Maurice, 13, 27n29 blood offerings, 128, 137n33, 238–239; in Ndyuka rituals, 90, 92, 97, 99, 107n18. See also sacrifice Boas, Franz, 7 bodies: act of removing, 121–122, 124, 129; agency of, 258; disposal of, 67, 70, 208, 215–216, 218; pain and plea­sure experiences, 72; preparation for burial, 121, 136n26; repre­sen­ta­tion of, 65–66; spirit vitality and, 18, 62–63, 64–65, 69–71, 73. See also possession, spirit

288  INDE X

Bongo, 8, 11, 13, 135n16, 196n10 Bororo, 69–70, 77 Bourguignon, Erika, 51n6 Brathwaite, Kamau, 138n41, 241 Brereton, Bridget, 204 Brodber, Erna, 116 Brown, Vincent, 2, 112; The Reaper’s Garden, 232–233, 240, 253–254 brujos/brujería, 5–6, 8, 14, 24n6, 25n7 Bryan, Victor, 207–208 burial rituals: of Ca­rib­bean mi­grants, 12; Indo-­Trinidadian, 202–205, 204, 209, 210, 211–213; Ndyuka, 26n18, 83, 85–86, 89–91; rural Jamaican, 10, 126–128, 132–133, 133nn4–5; of slaves, 6; Waiwai, 75–76 Burridge, Kenelm, 105 buyei (ritual specialist), 39–40, 42, 52n15, 52n18 cajón de muerto, 243–245, 260n1 Candomblé: Africanness of, 47, 53n20; compared to Garifuna rituals, 34–35, 36, 44; funeral rituals (axexé), 49n5; initiates and orishas, 27n27; possession per­for­mances, 47–48; prac­ti­tion­ers, 45–46, 51n12; scholarship on, 53n19 cannibalism, 5, 15, 24n3, 67, 74, 254 capital punishment. See executions carnivals, 166–168, 169, 186 Car­ter, Charles, 192–193 Cashinahua, 67 Catholicism: All Saint’s Day/Night, 185, 211–212; mass, 10, 50n5, 144; reaction to heterodox wakes, 186–187 causation: Azande notions of, 148; of death, 89, 100, 139, 149, 154–155, 249 Chevannes, Barry, 117 ­children: postpartum rites, 121–122, 129; premature deaths, 69, 73; sacrifice of, 5, 25n7; spirit vitality of, 72–73 Chris­tian­ity, 2, 17, 26n15, 124, 131; African customs and, 119; conversion, 177, 211, 219–220; evangelicals, 31–32; Hindu cremation rituals and, 13, 199–201, 218–219, 219, 257 Christmas Carol, A (Dickens), 251–253 civilizing proj­ects, 22, 131, 178, 189, 194 class difference, 9, 22, 118, 178, 180, 195

cleansing rituals. See purification rituals coffin ­bearers, 137n32, 197n12; gender of, 202–203; spirits guiding, 11, 88–90, 93–94 coffin makers: Jamaican, 127–128; Ndyuka (kisiman), 86–87, 89 collectivities, 258–259 Collins, Patricia Hill, 134n8 commemorative rituals: dance, 249; mangé mort, 9–10; norms and politics of, 17; for passage of ancestors, 39; Saamaka, 233; tombing, 16, 135n16; in Trinidad and Tobago, 177, 184–185 communication with the dead, 14–15, 20; Haitian practices, 139–140, 144–145, 151–154; kabbalah practice, 180, 181, 196n5; modernist approach to, 193; speaking in tongues, 198n29; Spiritual Baptists, 176, 180, 182–183, 191 community: belonging, 116, 117; building, 12; Hindu, 207–208; participation in wakes, 11–12, 125–126; working-­class, 178, 185, 259 Conklin, Beth A., 15, 67 consciousness, ­human, 245–246 Constant, Myrlande, 171–172, 173 Coromantee, 107n10 corporeal punishment. See executions Cosentino, Donald, 21, 256–257 cosmologies: Amerindian, 18; Ca­rib­bean, 2–3, 8, 17–19, 178, 250; Hindu, 14; Ifa, 27n27; Kongo, 130; Trinidadian and Tobagonian, 177, 178, 182, 184, 190; Vodou, 21; West and Central African, 253; working-­class, 190–191 Courlander, Harold, 25n12 cremation: of Christian Indo-­Trinidadians, 13, 199–201, 218–220, 219; controversy and legalization, 202, 205–209, 221, 224n6; public sites and popularity, 213–215; pyres, 200, 215; symbolism of, 22; use of ghee, 209 crematorium, 207, 213, 214, 220, 224n5 creolization, 190, 250, 254–255 criminalization, 34, 177, 185, 187, 250 Cuba: national culture, 7; spirits and ritual specialists, 14, 19, 50n5, 182. See also brujos/brujería

dances: Garifuna mali, 42; Hazda epeme, 249; Jamaican folk, 135n16; spirit possession and, 44, 45–46; Tobago reel, 184–185, 187 Davis, Wade, 165, 166 Dayan, Colin [Joan], 16 death, study of, 140, 252, 260 death industry, 100, 101, 143, 179, 256 Deleuze, Gilles, 79n8 Deren, Maya, 146, 155nn3–4 Dickens, Charles, 251–253 divination: coffin, 11, 86, 89–90, 197n12, 231; corpse, 101, 102, 105–106, 107n20; specialists, 39 Dokto Zozo (Eugène), 169, 171, 172 Doon Pandit, 212, 212–213 drug-­related crime, 2, 179–180 drums and drummers, 40, 42, 234, 235–236, 244 Dunham, Katherine, 25nn12–13, 166 duppies, 14, 113, 120, 127; repelling, 124, 190, 196n12 Durkheim, Émile, 5, 7, 9, 51n12 Duval-­Carrié, Edouard, 163, 164, 173, 174 Duvalier dynasty (François and Jean-­ Claude): artistic repre­sen­ta­tions, 164; Bawon Samdi/Gedes/zonbi correlations, 21, 161, 163–166, 168, 257; uprooting (dechoukaj), 163, 166; Vodou practice, 25n10 earthenware vases (govi), 135n19, 139, 141, 146, 161 ekatï. See spirit vitality Elder, Jacob, 13 elders: Garifuna, 43; Jamaican matriarchs, 109; Ndyuka (lanti), 81–89, 82, 87, 92, 99, 102, 105–106; Saamaka, 10, 25n13 elites: colonial, 186, 189, 221; Cuban, 6, 25n7; Trinidadian, 191, 192–193, 195; value of respectability, 250, 259 Emancipation, 113, 131 embalming, 143 Enlightenment, 4, 17–18, 193, 247 enslaved Africans: burials and funerals, 6, 112, 196n12, 232–233; land tenure, 113–114; Maroons, 80; masters and, 226; presence of death and, 241, 253; torture and executions, 21, 227–231, 228, 230, 259 INDE X  289

epistemology, Western, 23, 247–248, 250–251, 258, 260 eritaj (landholding descent group), 135n19, 139–140, 142, 151, 258 Espírito Santo, Diana, 19 Estero, Eduardo, 35 Eugène, André, 169, 170, 171, 172 Evans-­Pritchard, E. E., 26n17, 147–149 evil spirits: demon masters (Bakuu basi), 101–102; exorcising, 14, 53n18, 190; Ndyuka rituals for, 94, 94–96; protection from, 121. See also gubida; jumbies evolutionary anthropology, 6, 7 executions: Haitian state, 168; for murder, 24n4; Saamaka justice and, 21, 231–232, 259; of slaves and freedmen, 5, 227–231, 228, 230, 259 Fabian, Johannes, 4, 196n3 fabric artists, 171–172, 173 ­family land: agency and power and, 115, 259; bereavement activities on, 125; burial plots, 109–110, 114–115, 128, 130, 132–133, 138n40; kinship and, 10–11, 258; origins, 113–114, 133n1; sense of belonging and, 111, 112, 116; of vodouisants, 135n19; yard concepts and, 116–118, 130–131. See also eritaj Farmer, Paul, 147, 156n7 feasts, mortuary: as an act of restoration, 12; Garifuna dügü, 40–41, 42; Hindu bhandaaraa, 211–212, 217; Jamaican, 118, 125–126, 137n33; Ndyuka bookode, 91, 105 Firmin, Anténor, 8, 25n8 fishermen, 39–40, 43–44 folk culture, 4, 8–9; nationalist proj­ects, 7, 25n10 food offerings, 9; Hindu pinda, 209, 211–212, 217–218, 218; to Ndyuka ancestors, 82, 83, 91–92, 94–95, 97 Forde, Maarit, 18, 248, 250, 254–255, 257, 259 Foster, Byron, 52n14, 53n18 Foucault, Michel, 115 Frazer, James George, 5, 6, 190 ­Free Village Movement, 114 Freud, Sigmund, 156n7 funerals: bling, 12, 112, 118, 123, 131, 134n9; Bororo, 69–70; Candomblé, 49n5; in

290  INDE X

Garifuna villages, 31; Haitian rituals, 139, 142–144; Hindu rites, 200, 202, 209, 211, 214–219; industry and costs, 142–144, 155n1, 178–179, 220; Mapuche, 16; in rural Jamaica, 136n26; Saamaka, 236, 242n6; Waiwai, 75. See also burial rituals; Nine Night or Dead Yard; wakes gangs, 2, 12, 179–180, 195 García, Leonardo, 43 Garifuna: autonomy, 34–35; dügü, 16, 35–36, 38–44, 48–49, 51n7, 52n15; ­family and kinship, 31, 43; funeral attendance, 31–32, 49n1; ritualists in New York, 45–46, 48, 256 Gazon, gaanman, 97, 107n15 Gede: artistic repre­sen­t a­tions, 23, 162, 169, 170, 171–172, 173; ceremonies and carnivals, 166–168; Duvalier uprooting (dechoukaj) and, 21, 161, 257; genealogy and role, 160–161, 163, 256; irrelevance of, 174; phallocentric antics, 27n31, 167, 169 Geertz, Clifford, 148–149, 155, 156n6, 248 gender roles, 100–101, 125–126, 137n33; coffin ­bearers, 202–203 Gine/Ginen, 132, 135n19, 141, 175n1 Glazier, Stephen, 11, 181 Goldman, Marcio, 27n27 Good, Byron, 246 “good dead,” 182–183 Gordon, Leah, 171 government of death: condemnation of wakes and, 185–189, 197n15; cremation controversy and, 205–209; difference and, 3, 5; notions of modernity and, 3, 193, 194; spirits of the dead and, 190–193; working-­class mortuary culture and, 22, 178, 194 Gramsci, Antonio, 174 Gran Met, 165–166 gravediggers, 122, 126–128, 134n11 Green, Oliver, 40 grief: Amerindian per­for­mances of, 17, 67–69; anthropological thought on, 60; detachment and, 16; humor and, 146–147, 155n4; modernist approach to, 179; retaliation and, 57, 73; suffering and,

148–149; Waiwai per­for­mances of, 75. See also mourning Guayaki, 58–59, 61–62, 68 gubida (spirits), 39–40, 43, 45, 52n13, 53n18; compared to orixás, 49n5; description, 35, 52n14; songs to, 41, 42 Guilbault, Jocelyne, 11, 26n20 Guillermo-­Wilson, Carlos, 255 Hadza, 249 Haiti: Africanisms in, 8–9; artists, 169, 171–174; culture, 7, 25n11, 256–257; elections, 168, 175n4; ethnographic interest in, 25n12; National Cemetery, 168; natu­ ral and social catastrophes, 21, 161, 162, 163, 168–169, 175 Haitian mortuary rites: death as transition and, 140–141; ethnographies of, 7–8; funerary expenditures, 142–144; mangé mort, 9–10; prayers, 144; ritual specialists, 146–147; sending/taking the dead to/ out of ­water, 23, 139, 144–145, 150–155. See also lwa; Vodou Hathiramani, Raj, 206–207 Haynes-­Clark, J., 204 healing rituals, 14, 15, 107n10, 135n23; catharsis and, 140, 150, 155; dance as, 185; specialists, 191–192 hegemony, 213, 221, 259 Herskovits, Melville and Frances: correspondence with Price-­Mars, 25n12; ethnographic research methods, 8–9, 26n17; on Haitian kinship, 9–10; on Ndyuka burial rituals, 26n18; Rebel Destiny, 8, 25n13; on Toco mortuary rituals, 10, 184, 185, 187, 198n29 Hertz, Robert, 9, 11, 140–141, 184 hierarchies: cremation sites, 214; grave priests, 85; Jamaican religious cosmos, 120; Ndyuka culture, 99–100; racialized, 5 Hinduism: antyeshti samskaara (funerary rites), 200, 202, 209, 211, 214–219; Christian Indians and, 13, 199–201, 218–220, 219; consolidation of, 12, 220–221; cremation controversy and legalization, 21, 201–202, 205–209, 224n6; cremation practices, 199–200, 200, 209, 213; ethnic revitalization of, 201, 218, 222, 257

Hinkelammert, Franz, 6 history of death, 2, 240 Holbraad, Martin, 27n27 homo­sexuality, 58–59 Horst, Heather, 16 Hume, Yanique, 10–11, 16, 17, 250, 258–259 hunter-­gatherer socie­ties, 249 Huntington, Richard, 27n29, 137n35, 143 Hurault, Jean, 106n6 Hurbon, Laëennec, 164–165 Hurston, Zora Neale, 25n12, 134n10, 165 hypnotism, 191–192, 198n30 Iansã (deity), 49n5 identity: Ca­rib­bean, 55; cremation and, 257; of the dead, 50n5, 117; eritaj, 139; ethnic, 13, 21, 220–222, 257; ­family land and, 114, 131–132; Garifuna, 45; of gravediggers, 127; of individual bodies, 258; kinship and community, 11, 125–126; murderer, 74, 76; politics, 3, 18, 21, 257; sexual, 58–59; spaces and, 116, 117; of spirits of the dead, 50n5 illness, definition of, 149 imitation, 37, 51n12, 52n16 “immediate-­return” systems, 250 indentureship, 2, 161, 198n31, 250; East Indian, 21, 202, 204, 205. See also enslaved Africans Indianness, 200, 218, 220, 222–223. See also Indo-­Trinidadians indigénisme, 7 individualism, 143, 260. See also sovereign individuality Indo-­Trinidadians: burials and wakes, 202–205, 204, 210, 211–213; colonial politics and cremation controversy, 205–209; cremation practices, 13, 199–200, 200, 209, 213–215; ethnic identity, 12–13, 21, 220–223; Hindu-­Christian hybrid funerals, 13, 199–201, 218–220; history of mortuary rites, 201–202; spirits of the dead and, 16, 190 in­equality, 2, 5, 194 initiates, 27n27 intentionality: conscious, 66, 77; spirit and, 62–63, 64 inversions, ritual, 121–122, 130–131, 132, 136n24 INDE X  291

Jackson, Walter, 26n17 Jamaican mortuary rituals: bling funerals, 12, 112, 118, 123, 131, 134n9; ­family burial plots, 116–118, 132–133, 133nn4–5; gravediggers, 126–128, 134n11; origins, 26n15; rural/urban context, 118–119, 133; social order and, 110–112, 117–118; spirits/ spiritual beliefs, 119–120, 196n12; wakes, 16, 119. See also Nine Night or Dead Yard Jha, J. C., 202, 213, 217 Johnson, Paul Christopher, 16, 19, 177, 255–256 jumbies, 14, 15, 182, 183–184, 190 kabbalah, 15, 180–182, 196n5 Kabir Panthi, 203 Kagwahiv, 16, 67 Kalunga, 14–15 Keane, Webb, 33, 49n2 Khan, Aisha, 23, 24, 53n20 kinship: Ca­rib­bean system, 194; community and, 10–11, 113, 125, 132; ­family land and, 113, 114, 258; Garifuna, 31, 43; Haitian system of, 10; transnational, 144 Kirpalani, Metharam, 206–207 Klass, Morton, 211–212 Kleinman, Arthur, 149 knowledge: circulation of, 193–194; cosmological, 186; cultural, 195, 260; false, 70, 72; local, 246; memory and, 57, 72–76, 77; power and, 61; production, 17, 180, 193; religious, 51n11, 191, 193, 222; ritual, 20, 45; of self and other, 62; subaltern, 178; truth and, 79n6. See also epistemology, Western Kumar, Ranjit, 208 lakou (­family compound), 153, 159, 161 Lambek, Michael, 33 land: cemetery, 214, 220; of the dead, 46, 161, 234, 237–240; inherited, 139, 142, 258; tenure in Jamaica, 10, 113–114, 131, 133n1. See also ­family land Latour, Bruno, 51n12 Le Baron Triomphant (Duval-­Carrié), 173, 174 Lêgbe-­lêgbe (Death’s Left Hand), 236–237, 239–240 Léogâne, 142, 143–144, 151

292  INDE X

life, cycle of, 118, 122–123, 132, 260 light, projection of, 37–38, 51n12 liminality, 52n16, 121, 127, 141 LiPuma, Edward, 20 lit­er­a­ture: Ca­rib­bean, 5–6, 24n1; de Laurence Com­pany, 181, 192, 193; sensationalist, 7, 25n11 Lomax, Alan, 25n12 Long, Edward, 6, 24n3 Lorenzoni, Patricia, 6 Lowenthal, Ira, 155n2 Lum, Kenneth, 181–182 lwa, 19, 21, 23, 155n2, 182; Lavilokan, 159, 160, 172, 174; Loko, 145, 151; role of the dead (mò) and, 139, 147. See also Bawon Samdi; Gede Maasai, 248 Macoutes, 175n4 magic, 8, 149, 152; in Haitian culture, 147–148. See also sorcery; witchcraft Mahabir, Kumar, 213 Mahapatra Pandit, 209, 211, 217 Maharaj, Chanka, 208 Maharaj, Pandit Randhir, 214–216, 218, 223n2 Mahmood, Saba, 51n11 malevolent spirits. See evil spirits Malinowski, Bronisław, 26n17 Manuš, 15–16 Maraj, Pandit Khemraj, 214, 217 Mardigras au Fort Dimanche (Duval-­Carrié), 163, 164 Maroons, 80, 107n10, 232–233; Aluku, 106n6. See also Ndyuka; Saamaka (Saramaka) marriage, 10, 194, 205, 223n4 Marshall, Paule, 225, 241 masks/masking, 70–72, 77–78, 79n7 masons, 127–128, 155n1, 204–205 Massé, Abbé Armand, 186–187, 189 materializations, 33–34, 49n2. See also transductions matriarchs, 109, 133n2 matrilineal culture, 81, 83–84 Mbuti, 249 McNeal, Keith, 12, 21–22, 51n6, 257 mediums. See ritual specialists

Melanesia, 20 Melendez, Beatriz, 32 memory: body and, 70–71; collective, 17; evoking, 16; grief and, 67–68; knowledge and, 57, 72–76, 77; sites of, 134n15; spirit vitality and, 69; suffuse, 66, 68, 76 Mennesson-­Rigaud, Odette, 146–147, 155n3 Mentore, George, 16, 17, 18, 20, 257–258 Mercer, Kobena, 171 mesmerism, 181, 191–192, 198n30 meta­phors, 51n12, 56, 76, 117; hunting, 148; purification, 123–124; sea, 1, 132; zombie, 21, 163–165 metatheatre, 139 Metcalf, Peter, 27n29, 137n35, 143 mi­grants, 32, 42, 46, 144 mimesis, 19, 36, 46, 51n8 Mintz, Sidney, 112, 226 misfortune, 85, 147–149, 155, 185, 258 missionaries, 113–114, 137n32, 165, 177 mò (the dead): cause of death and, 18, 139, 149, 154–155; retrieval of, 141; role of, 147 modernity: Ca­rib­bean, 3, 20, 178; enchantment and, 240–241; Enlightenment, 4, 17; sovereign individual and, 194–195, 259; working-­class death culture and, 178–179, 193, 194 Mollyneaux, John, 191 mortality rates, 178 Morton, John, 202 mortuary culture, 2, 4, 5, 9, 12; Eu­ro­pe­ anization of, 180; working-­class, 22, 178, 194, 195, 259 mourning: anthropology of, 26n24; attire for, 184; Catholic practices, 144; entertaining and, 125, 134n10; Hindu asaucha, 216–217; kinship role in, 10; Ndyuka regulations, 104–105; ritualized detachment and, 15–16; suppression of memory, 67; in Victorian ­England, 178. See also grief Moyne Commission, 194, 206 mua (earth tablets), 40, 42, 43, 52n18 Munasinghe, Viranjini, 222 murder: child, 5, 24n4; memory/knowledge and, 74–75; rates, 2; retaliation/avenging, 73–74, 75–76, 77; sorcery and, 150; violent crime and, 179; ­women tasked with, 101–102

Murray, Gerald, 143, 155n1 Muslims, 201, 211, 214, 218–219, 222; marriage, 223n4 name-­giving, 69 Narcisse, Clairvius, 165 nationalism, 7, 25n10, 194, 221–222 natu­ral death, 149, 151, 155 Ndyuka: ancestral altars/shrines, 10, 18, 81–85, 82, 92, 143, 256; burials, 11, 26n18, 90–91, 107n20; chiefs, 93, 96–97, 107n17; evil ancestors, 94, 94–96; food offerings and feasts (bookode), 91–92; gender relations, 100–101; gerontocratic backlash, 101–102, 108n21, 256; grave priests and coffin makers (kisiman), 85–87, 89–90, 90, 99, 107n18; illustrious ancestors, 96–99; moon ­house (menstrual seclusion), 102–104, 106; mourning period, 101, 104–105, 108n23; patriarchy, 10, 99–100; tests to determine moral stature, 87–89, 92–94, 107n20; village settlements, 80–81 Niehoff, Arthur and Juanita, 14, 209, 211–212 Nina Rodrigues, Raimundo, 6, 50n5 Nine Night or Dead Yard, 113, 121, 132, 136n25, 138n39; cleansing and purification rituals, 123–124; closing rites, 137n34; consoling and food preparation, 125–126, 137n33; purpose, 120, 134n10; removal of the body, 121–122; role of gravediggers, 126–128; tombing ceremonies, 135n16; turning out the dead ritual, 129–131 nobody/somebody, concept, 247 Nora, Pierre, 134n15 obeah/óbia (witchcraft): court cases involving, 14, 24n4, 190, 191–192, 198n30; definition, 135n23; guide books, 181; malevolent spirits as, 183; racist misconceptions, 5; Saamaka, 236–240 Ochoa, Todd Ramón, 14–15, 24n1, 182 Okanisi, 80, 99, 106n1 old age, 73. See also elders Olwig, Karen Fog, 12 oratories, 16, 126 Orisha (religion), 179, 180–183 INDE X  293

orishas (orixás), 19, 34, 47, 49n5, 182; initiates and, 27n27; possession, 35, 44, 52n13 Ortiz, Fernando, 7, 25n9; on ­human sacrifice, 5–6, 25n7 otherness: death and, 196n3; ­human sacrifice and, 6; of pyre-­based cremation, 222; reproduction of, 4; self and, 55, 71 “outsider-­within” status, 111, 134n8 Palgi, Phyllis, 260 Palmié, Stephan, 50n5 Palo, 14–15, 27n25, 27n30, 182; reglas de congo, 196n9 Palo Mayombe, 243–244 Panday, Basdeo, 199, 222, 223n1 pandits, 209, 211–212, 217–218, 221. See also name of Pandit Parris, Jean-­Yves, 107n20 Parry, Jonathan, 13 passage, 16, 18, 256, 260; liminality and, 121, 122, 127; rites of, 137n35, 139, 140, 142, 148, 213; spatial, 39; unequal power relations of, 255; ­water meta­phors of, 1, 23, 132 Patterson, Orlando, 12, 255 Paul, Annie, 12 Pearse, Andrew, 11, 184–185, 190 ­People’s National Movement (pnm), 221 per­for­mances: of ancestrality, 16, 32, 36, 39–44; communication with the dead, 139–140; consoling and entertaining, 125, 137n38; of gravediggers, 127; of grief and loss, 16, 17; in Haitian mortuary rites, 142, 150; of sexuality, 13; spatial, 37, 46, 256; spirit possession, 45–46. See also dances; songs personhood, 116, 119, 131, 183; of the deceased, 15–17, 27n25, 119; in modern Melanesia, 20 Pierre, Andrée, 159, 160, 161, 174 Pinda Puja (rice-­ball offering), 209, 211–212, 217–218, 218 pipe ceremonies, 239–240, 242n8 plantation socie­ties: capitalism and, 20, 115; de­pen­dency on slaves, 226; escape from, 80, 97; freed slaves and, 113–114; funerary rituals, 232–233; historians, 24n3; ­legal w ­ ills, 253; relatedness and, 198n31; vio­ lence and punishment, 2, 21, 227

294  INDE X

Plato, 51n12 policing: drug trade, 179–180; ritual practice, 177, 181; Spiritual Baptists, 9; wakes, 185 Pope, Alexander, 245 Port of Spain Gazette (posg), 187–189, 191–192, 202–203, 205 Portugal, 47 possession, spirit: in Afro-­Caribbean religions, 49n3; cajón de muerto, 243–245; Candomblé, 27n27, 38, 47, 49n5; detachment from, 16; Garifuna dügü and, 35–36, 40, 42, 44, 255–256; menstruating ­women and, 103; modernity and, 194–195; per­for­mances and spectatorship, 45–46, 52n13; in Spiritual Baptist and Orisha religions, 183, 191; theatrical imitation and, 37; and trance distinction, 51n6; transductions of, 33–34, 48 postpartum rituals, 121–122, 129 power relations, 2, 3, 17, 61, 78n3; body and spirit, 62–64, 70; epistemologies and, 248; masters and slaves, 226; ritual specialists and, 146; of Samdi f­ amily, 161; in study of religion, 246; unequal, 254, 255 prayers: flags, 209; Haitian mortuary, 144; to Ndyuka ancestors, 83, 84–85, 94–95, 97–98; as songs, 244 preta (deceased), 211, 216–217 Price, Richard, 19–20, 21, 34, 50n5, 259 Price, Sally, 103, 104, 108n22, 236–239 Price-­Mars, Jean, 7–8, 25nn9–12 primitive socie­ties, 6, 25n11, 196n3 production of death, 11, 17, 23 property, personal, 67–68, 69, 75 prostitute (bouzen), 153–154 Protestants, 165 Pulis, John, 120 Pure Chutney (Chatterjee/Kumar), 219–220 purification rituals, 16, 123–124, 129 pwen (manufactured spirits), 147, 150, 152–153 racialization, 4, 5, 34, 45, 55, 223 Ramnath, Kelvin, 199, 218, 223n1 Rampartab, Pundit, 203–205, 204 Ramsey, Kate, 25n9 Rastafari, 119–120, 135n19, 137n33, 250

rebirth, 56, 59, 121; in Hinduism, 201, 202, 216–217, 222; in Vodou tradition, 159–160 reincarnation. See rebirth Reis, João, 31 relatedness, 19, 194, 198n31 religion and death connection, 148, 247–250, 253 religious freedom, 208 remembering, 16–17, 19–20, 70, 72. See also commemorative rituals; memory respectability, 13; religious, 118, 177–178, 193, 221, 259; subjectivity and, 194–195, 197n22 Resurrection of the Dead, The (Zéphirin), 23, 162, 163 retaliatory death (parawa), 17, 57, 73, 75–77 Richman, Karen, 11, 15, 17, 18, 23, 248, 258 ritual specialists: agency or authority, 8, 9, 20, 50n5, 146; diviners, 148; humor and, 146–147; Ifá babalawos, 27n27; kabbalah, 180–182; Kumanti, 89, 91, 107n10; movement and flow and, 27n27; palera/ palero (priestess/priest), 15, 243–244; spirit guides and, 19; Trinidadian/Tobagonian, 15, 179, 185, 190–192; yajman (Hindu), 216–217. See also ason (gangan/ manbo); buyei Robbins, Joel, 31 Robinson, Eli, 122–123 Romberg, Raquel, 14, 15, 177 Romero, George, 166, 175n3 rum: offerings to spirits, 95, 98, 234; poured in the earth, 128, 138n39; as remuneration, 89, 127, 128, 137n32; ritual use, 43, 84, 88, 110, 122; selling without a license, 197n15 Saamaka (Saramaka), 8, 34; commemorations, 233; divination, 11, 51n9; Dúnguláli- ­Óbia, 233–238; elders, 10, 25n13; justice and executions, 21, 231–232, 259; menstrual hut, 103; mourning period, 104; stories about ancestors, 16, 19–20, 234–236; villages, 80 sacrifice: animal, 42, 90, 92, 97, 99, 107n18, 128; of ­children, 5, 25n7; sensationalist stories of, 5–6, 7. See also blood offerings; food offerings

Sadoos, 202–203 salt, ritual use, 126, 137nn33–34, 138n39 Sanatan Dharma Board of Control (sdbc), 205, 224n5 Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (sdms), 205, 209, 213, 216 Sansone, Livio, 53n20 Santería, 19, 34–35, 48, 243; regla de ocha, 182, 196n6 Saraiva, Clara, 47 Saramaka. See Saamaka Sauveur St. Cyr, 172, 173 savages/savagery, 6, 25n7, 187 Schechner, Richard, 52n16 “The Schooner Flight” (Walcott), 1, 23 science and religion borderland, 193 sculpture, 169, 170, 171 séances, 181, 191–192, 193. See also communication with the dead Seeman, Erik, 254 self/selves: Amerindian, 18, 20, 257–258; care of, 18, 66, 69–70; collective, 12; dividually conceived, 19; embodied, 18, 60, 71; objectification of, 55; permeable, 194, 259; remaking of, 65, 68 sexuality: death and, 13, 21; of lwa spirits, 166–167, 169, 170, 171 Sharma, Parashuram, 205 shrines: Haitian ­family, 139, 140–141, 146, 151; Ndyuka ancestral, 81–85, 82, 92, 96–97, 143, 256; óbia, 238–239; Saamaka ancestral, 233–234 Shukla, Pandit, 214, 217, 218 Simmel, Georg, 134n7 Simon, Herard, 166 Simpson, George Eaton, 16, 25n12, 181 slavery. See enslaved Africans Smith, Anita, 181, 192, 195 Smith, Katherine, 27n31 Smith, Raymond T., 194 smudging, 124 social death, 58–59, 255 social drama, 11, 139, 145, 147, 154–155 sociality: Amazonian, 27n28; Amerindian, 18, 60, 63, 65, 68, 72, 77; Bororo, 69; Euro-­American, 78n2; marginal, 59; of rituals, 255; term usage, 78n1; Waiwai, 74, 77 INDE X  295

social policies, 194 songs: Garifuna dügü, 40–42, 46, 52n17; hymns, 185; prayers as, 244; Saamaka Dúnguláli, 240; Waiwai death, 76; wakes and, 189, 196n10 sorcery: cause of death by, 26n18, 149, 150, 151, 154; Vodou, 7, 164–165. See also witchcraft soul, 8, 120; in Haitian afterlife, 159, 161; rebirth, 216–217; speech or voice of, 146, 150, 152; transformation, 139 sovereign individuality, 190, 194–195, 258, 259 space: of death, 225, 254–255; domestic, 130–131; gender-­specific, 125–126; power and, 115; public, 80, 116, 125, 131; purification of, 123–124; ritual, 34, 119, 121, 184, 186, 202; social, 112–113, 121; yards and, 116–118 spectatorship, 52n13, 180, 196n3 Spence, Paul, 248 spirit guides, 19, 243–244 spirits of the dead: expulsion of, 129–131, 190; lingering among the living, 13–14, 15–16, 68, 123, 177, 190; mainstream religions and, 181; mixing with gods, 49n5; serving the living, 15; summoning, 23, 190; travel or transition, 132, 159, 186; visions or manifestations of, 176, 182–183; working-­class culture and, 190–191, 259. See also communication with the dead; evil spirits; possession, spirit Spiritual Baptists, 9, 195, 208; kabbalah rituals, 181, 182; public self-­ representations, 181; spirits of the dead, 176–177, 182–183 spirit vitality (ekatï): body and power and, 18, 62–63, 64–66; of the living, 68, 74; memory/knowledge and, 57, 72–73, 75, 77; of murder/victim, 76; premature death and, 69, 73 St. John, Spencer, 5 St. Vincent (island), 39, 46, 48, 187, 188 Stedman, John Gabriel, 227–231, 228, 230, 242n3 Stewart, Dianne, 111, 136n23 stranger, concept of the, 111, 134nn7–8 Strathern, Marilyn, 19 subaltern history, 46, 48

296  INDE X

subjectivity: Amerindian, 66, 71, 258; anthropological thought and, 60–62; embodied, 65, 66, 77; individual, 79n8, 117, 258; modern, 20; respectability and, 177, 195, 197n22; shared, 69; sovereign, 194 suffering, 147–149, 248, 258 suicide, 14, 247 Suriname: settlers, 80, 225; slave executions, 5. See also Ndyuka; Saamaka (Saramaka) Tabia, Willy, 191, 194–195 Tafari-­Ama, Imani, 119 Tapanahoni River villages, 80, 87; Diitabiki, 96; Mainsi, 83, 84, 106n3; Opu, 107n20 Taussig, Michael, 52n16, 225, 247, 254, 256 telenovelas, 47 tele­vi­sions, lcd, 37–38, 52n13 temporality, 4, 23, 55, 57, 247 theatricality, 37, 39, 52n16, 153, 227 Thoden van Velzen, Bonno (H. U. E.), 10, 18, 256 Thompson, Robert Farris, 130, 175n1 Tiwari, Pandit Dinanath, 205 Toco, 8, 10, 184–185, 187, 198n29 tombing, 16, 135n16 tono (predatory death), 73, 77 Tooy (Saamaka healer), 20, 50n5, 234–240 trance, 34, 35, 44, 49n3, 104; and possession distinction, 51n6 transductions, 33–34, 36, 48, 49n2 transformation: cultural, 3, 178, 222, 254, 256–257; of deceased into ancestors, 16, 52n14; of Haitian mythological thought, 21, 163, 168, 257; of spirits, 124, 126; of Western mourning rituals, 178–179. See also rebirth; transductions transition, death as, 127, 132, 140–141 travel writing, 4, 5, 24n3 Trinidad and Tobago, 2; class difference and in­equality, 22, 178, 194–195; commemorative rituals, 177, 184–185; cremation sites, 213–214; identity politics, 257; media repre­sen­ta­tions of death, 179–180; religious diversity, 177–178; ritual practices and specialists, 180–182, 190–193; wakes, 9, 176–177, 185–189, 196n10. See also Indo-­Trinidadians; Spiritual Baptists; Toco

tromba (spirits), 33 truths: anthropological configuration of, 56, 57–58, 61, 78n2; of cosmological experiences, 245; Euro-­colonial, 254; masking, 77; multiple, 23; Western notions of, 62, 79n6 Turner, Victor, 52n16, 121, 127, 139, 141, 148 Tylor, Edward Burnett, 6, 24nn5–6, 248 Udal, J. S., 14, 15 Umbanda, 50n5 United National Congress (unc), 199, 221–222, 223n1 van de Port, Mattijs, 47 van Gennep, Arnold, 9, 11, 121, 127, 140–141 van Wetering, (Wilhelmina) Ineke, 10, 18, 256 Velásquez, Dominga, 53n18 Verger, Pierre, 50n5 Vertovec, Steven, 15, 201–202 vessels. See earthenware vases (govi) vio­lence: colonial, 1–2, 6; crime and, 179–180; power and, 63–64; re­sis­tance and, 9; of slavery, 27n30; state, 21, 195; in Waiwai sociality, 74. See also executions; murder Vodou: anti-­Vodou campaigns, 9; “Bon Dye Bon” expression, 169; denunciations, 174; divinities, 159–161, 163, 256; Duvalier’s practice, 25n10; ­human sacrifice and, 7; inspired arts, 171; racist misconceptions, 5, 25n11; sexuality and, 13; sorcery and, 164–165; spells, 165; transition of the soul, 159 Vodou Pantheon (Pierre), 159, 160, 161 Waiwai, 16, 18, 20, 72–78 wakes: community participation in, 11–12, 26n20; erotic dancing at, 13, 196n10;

Haitian, 144; Hindu, 180, 211; inner-­city vio­lence and, 119; oratories recited at, 16; Trinidadian and Tobagonian, 180, 185–189, 196n10. See also Nine Night or Dead Yard Wardle, Huon, 11, 26n20, 134n10 Weber, Max, 51n10 ­widows and widowers, 92, 95, 104–105, 176 ­will, ­human, 62–66, 77, 258 Williams, Eric, 220, 221 Williams, Joseph J., 26n15 Wirtz, Kristina, 50n5 witchcraft, 11, 89, 93, 156n5, 249, 254; eradication movements, 10, 81; Evans-­ Pritchard’s study of, 147–148; executions for, 231–232; ­women accused of, 100, 101. See also obeah/óbia ­women: accused of witchcraft, 100, 101; bereavement tasks, 125–126; diseases, 156n7; enslaved by demons, 101–102; in funerary pro­cessions, 203, 209; menstrual taboos, 102–104, 106, 108n22, 125; mourning regulations, 104 Woodburn, James, 249 working class: mortuary culture, 22, 110, 178, 194, 195, 259; presence of the dead and, 190–191; vio­lence and, 179; wakes, 185–187, 248 Wynter, Sylvia, 18, 115 Yamaloka, 216–217 yards, 116–118, 130–131. See also ­family land Yoruba spirits, 48, 50n5, 182, 256 Zéphirin, Frantz, 23, 162, 163 zombification and zonbi, 21, 161, 163–166, 168; movies and tv shows, 175nn2–3 zozo (“cock”/“fuck”), 166–168; artistic repre­ sen­ta­tions of, 169, 170, 172

INDE X  297

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