ملاقات‌های شگفت‌انگیز: کاندومبل باهیا و جستجوی واقعیت واقعی

For over a hundred years, writers, artists, anthropologists and tourists have travelled to Bahia, Brazil, in search of the spirit possession cult called Candomblé. Thus, successive generations of cultists have seen a long, steady stream of curious outsiders coming to their temples with notebooks and cameras, questions and inquisitive gazes, or ogling eyes and the hope of inclusion. This study asks what seduced these outsiders to seek access to the Afro-Brazilian religious universe and, conversely, how did cultists respond to the overwhelming interest in their creed and to becoming an object of the outsiders’ imaginations.“Thriving in the gap between the sensuous fullness of life and the impossibility of its cultural representation, Ecstatic Encounters opens mind-blowing vistas for 'writing culture' in anthropology today.”— Birgit Meyer, Free University of Amsterdam. Reality Does Not Comply With Our Narrations Of It. And That Is Most Certainly The Case With The Narrations Produced In Academia. An Anthropologist In Bahia, Brazil, Fears To Become Possessed By The Spirits He Had Come To Study; Falls Madly In Love With An 'informant'; Finds Himself Baffled By The Sayings Of A Clairvoyant; And Has To Come To Grips With The Murder Of One Of His Best Friends. Unsettling Events That Do Not Belong To The Orderly World Of Scientific Research, Yet Leave Their Imprint On The Way The Anthropologist Comes To Understand The World. Reflecting On His Long Research Experience With The Spirit Possession Cult Candomblé, The Author Shows, In A Probing Manner, How Definitions Of Reality Always Require The Exculsion Of Certain Perceptions, Experiences And Insights. And Yet, This 'rest-of-what-is' Turns Out To Be An Inexhaustible Source Of Amazement, Seduction And Renewal. --p [4] Of Cover. Introduction: Avenida Oceânica. Candomblé, Mystery And The-rest-of-what-is In Process Of World-making -- On Immersion. Academics And The Seductions Of A Baroque Society -- Mysteries Are Invisible. Understanding Images In The Bahia Of Dr Raimundo Nina Rodrigues -- Re-encoding The Primative. Surrealist Appreciations Of Candomlé In A Violence-ridden World -- Abstracting Candomblé. Defining The 'public' And The 'particular' Dimensions Of A Spirit Possession Cult -- Allegorical Worlds. Baroque Aesthetics And The Notion Of An 'absent Truth' -- Bafflement Politics. Possessions, Appartitions And The Really Real Of Candomblé's Miracle Productions -- The Permeable Boundary. Media Imagninaries In Candomblé's Public Performance Of Authenticity -- Conclusions: Cracks In The Wall. Invocations Of The Rest-of-what-is The Anthropological Study Of World-making. Mattijs Van De Port. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 273-293) And Index. Du site de l'éditeur: Ecstatic Encounters takes its readers to the threshold of Candomblé temples in Bahia, Brazil, where - for many generations -- members of this spirit-possession cult and curious outsiders have been meeting to marvel at each other's otherness. Having allowed himself to be baffled by Candomblé's mysteries and miracle productions, the author explores the notion of 'the-rest-of-what-is': the excess that is the inevitable by-product of all reality definitions; the non-sensical that is the surplus of all culturally informed sense-making. Ethnographical insights in Afro-Brazilian mysticism are thus made to speak to anthropological forms of world-making, in a study that rejects the totalizing pretensions of all reality definitions, emphatically including those of academia. The theoretical importance of this book lies in its critical assessment of the constructivist paradigm that long dominates cultural and social anthropology. Adopting the Lacanian premise that the meaningful worlds we inhabit are lacking, and depend on fantasy and make-belief to be perceived as coherent, persuasive and incontestable, this study argues that the analysis of cultural forms should always include an exploration of the processes of cultural enchantment that endow man-made worlds of meaning with a sense of the really real. Ecstatic Encounters is written in an accessible, engaging, literary style. Philosophical issues are taken out on the streets, to be pondered in the face of everyday life; just as mundane dimensions of being are allowed to soil the conventional proprieties of academic text production Ecstatic Encounters takes its readers to the threshold of Candomblé temples in Bahia, Brazil, where - for many generations -- members of this spirit-possession cult and curious outsiders have been meeting to marvel at each other's otherness. Having allowed himself to be baffled by Candomblé's mysteries and miracle productions, the author explores the notion of 'the-rest-of-what-is': the excess that is the inevitable by-product of all reality definitions; the non-sensical that is the surplus of all culturally informed sense-making. Ethnographical insights in Afro-Brazilian mysticism are thus made to speak to anthropological forms of world-making, in a study that rejects the totalizing pretensions of all reality definitions, emphatically including those of academia. The theoretical importance of this book lies in its critical assessment of the constructivist paradigm that long dominates cultural and social anthropology. Adopting the Lacanian premise that the meaningful worlds we inhabit are lacking, and depend on fantasy and make-belief to be perceived as coherent, persuasive and incontestable, this study argues that the analysis of cultural forms should always include an exploration of the processes of cultural enchantment that endow man-made worlds of meaning with a sense of the really real. Ecstatic Encounters is written in an accessible, engaging, literary style. Philosophical issues are taken out on the streets, to be pondered in the face of everyday life; just as mundane dimensions of being are allowed to soil the conventional proprieties of academic text production "Reality does not comply with our narrations of it. And that is most certainly the case with the narrations produced in academia. An anthropologist in Bahia, Brazil, fears to become possessed by the spirits he had come to study; falls madly in love with an 'informant'; finds himself baffled by the sayings of a clairvoyant; and has to come to grips with the murder of one of his best friends. Unsettling events that do not belong to the orderly world of scientific research, yet leave their imprint on the way the anthropologist comes to understand the world. REflecting on his long research experience with the spirit possession cult Candomblé, the author shows, in a probing manner, how definitions of reality always require the exclusion of certain perceptions, experiences and insights. And yet, this 'rest-of-what-is' turns out to be an inexhaustible source of amazement, seduction and renewal." --P [4] of cover. For over a hundred years, writers, artists, anthropologists and tourists have traveled to Bahia, Brazil, in search of the spirit possession religion called Candombl. Thus, successive generations of followers have seen a long, steady stream of curious outsiders coming to their temples with notebooks and cameras, questions and inquisitive gazes, or ogling eyes and the hope of inclusion.This study asks what seduced these outsiders to seek access to the Afro-Brazilian religious universe and, conversely, how did believers respond to the overwhelming interest in their creed and to becoming an object of the outsiders imaginations. Thriving in the gap between the sensuous fullness of life and the impossibility of its cultural representation, Ecstatic Encounters opens mind-blowing vistas for 'writing culture' in anthropology today. Birgit Meyer, Free University of Amsterdam. For over a hundred years, writers, artists, anthropologists and tourists have travelled to Bahia, Brazil, in search of the spirit possession cult called Candomblé. Thus, successive generations of cultists have seen a long, steady stream of curious outsiders coming to their temples with notebooks and cameras, questions and inquisitive gazes, or ogling eyes and the hope of inclusion. This study asks what seduced these outsiders to seek access to the Afro-Brazilian religious universe and, conversely, how did cultists respond to the overwhelming interest in their creed and to becoming an object of the outsiders'imaginations. “Thriving in the gap between the sensuous fullness of life and the impossibility of its cultural representation, Ecstatic Encounters opens mind-blowing vistas for'writing culture'in anthropology today.”— Birgit Meyer, Free University of Amsterdam. Contents......Page 6 Preface......Page 8 Introduction......Page 12 1 On Immersion......Page 48 2 Mysteries are Invisible......Page 70 3 Re-encoding the Primitive......Page 100 4 Abstracting Candomblé......Page 128 5 Allegorical Worlds......Page 160 6 Bafflement Politics......Page 184 7 The Permeable Boundary......Page 216 Conclusions......Page 250 Notes......Page 264 Bibliography......Page 274 Index......Page 296