Black Atlantic religion : tradition, transnationalism, and matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé / J. Lorand Matory.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Matory, James Lorand.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Candomblé.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (392 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Black Atlantic Religion illuminates the mutual transformation of African and African-American cultures, highlighting the example of the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé religion. This book contests both the recent conviction that transnationalism is new and the long-held supposition that African culture endures in the Americas only among the poorest and most isolated of black populations. In fact, African culture in the Americas has most flourished among the urban and the prosperous, who, through travel, commerce, and literacy, were well exposed to other cultures. Their embrace of African religion is less a "survival," or inert residue of the African past, than a strategic choice in their circum-Atlantic, multicultural world. With counterparts in Nigeria, the Benin Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Trinidad, and the United States, Candomblé is a religion of spirit possession, dance, healing, and blood sacrifice. Most surprising to those who imagine Candomblé and other such religions as the products of anonymous folk memory is the fact that some of this religion's towering leaders and priests have been either well-traveled writers or merchants, whose stake in African-inspired religion was as much commercial as spiritual. Morever, they influenced Africa as much as Brazil. Thus, for centuries, Candomblé and its counterparts have stood at the crux of enormous transnational forces. Vividly combining history and ethnography, Matory spotlights a so-called "folk" religion defined not by its closure or internal homogeneity but by the diversity of its connections to classes and places often far away. Black Atlantic Religion sets a new standard for the study of transnationalism in its subaltern and often ancient manifestations.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction

Chapter One. The English Professors of Brazil On the Diasporic Roots of the Yorùbá Nation

Chapter Two. The Trans-Atlantic Nation Rethinking Nations and Transnationalism

Chapter Three. Purity and Transnationalism On the Transformation of Ritual in the Yorùbá-Atlantic Diaspora

Chapter Four. Candomblé's Newest Nation: Brazil

Chapter Five. Para Inglês Ver Sex, Secrecy, and Scholarship in the Yorùbá-Atlantic World

Chapter Six. Man in the "City of Women"

Chapter Seven. Conclusion. The Afro-Atlantic Dialogue

Appendix A. Geechees and Gullahs The Locus Classicus of African "Survivals" in the United States

Appendix B. The Origins of the Term "Jeje"

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [343]-368) and index.

ISBN:

9786613100320

9781283100328

1283100320

9781400833979

1400833973

OCLC:

724025000