Beyond Tradition, Beyond Invention
Cód:
491_9781907774379
Afro-Cuban religiosity is likely to bring to mind beliefs and practices with a visibly African flavour - music, dance, spirit possession, sacrifices and ritual language that have undergone a transformation, on Cuban soil, under a strong Spanish and Catholic influence. Much anthropological work has analysed Afro-Cuban religions syncretic character in the light of these European influences, taking as a given that each tradition is relatively independent, and focusing on well-documented origins in specific socio-historical environments. In this context, understandings of religious innovation based on charismatic leaders have resulted in a top down approach.However, this volume argues that there are alternatives to cult-centred accounts, by looking at the relationships between Afro-Cuban traditions, and indeed going beyond traditions to place the focus on creativity as an embedded logic in everyday religious practice. From this forward-looking perspective, ritual engagement is no longer a means of recreating pre-existing universes but rather of generating, as well as participating in, an ever-emerging cosmos. Traditions are not perceived as given doctrines or mental constructs but as perceptual habits and potencies beyond questions of spirit or matter, mind or body. Offering a fresh, improvisatory ethnographic vision, this book recasts the Afro-Cuban religious complex in the terms of the experts and adepts who creatively sustain it and responds to the significant fact, often overlooked or ignored, that many Cubans engage with more than one tradition without any sense of conflict.Amidst the cacophony of calls to creativity and innovation as cultural commodities, heres a remarkable collection about the power of creation as a condition of human existence, rather than just its outcome. If you want to see what the world might be like without the very distinction between creator and creation - or, for that matter, between human beings and the worlds they inhabi
Veja mais
