The Ontogeny of Dolls: Materiality, Affect, and Self in Afro-Cuban Espiritismo
Objects are fundamental components of cosmology in Afro-Cuban religions; they serve to represent, pay homage to, and feed a constellation of covetous spirits. In a moral universe of practitioners materiality allures and potentially corrupts; it grounds personal and collective ritual agency; mediates...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
[2019]
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| In: |
Material religion
Year: 2019, Volume: 15, Issue: 3, Pages: 269-292 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Cuba
/ Spiritism
/ Afro-American syncretism
/ Materiality
/ Doll
/ Ontogeny
|
| Further subjects: | B
Cuban creole spiritism
B Materiality B Selfhood B Dolls B Affect |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) |
| Summary: | Objects are fundamental components of cosmology in Afro-Cuban religions; they serve to represent, pay homage to, and feed a constellation of covetous spirits. In a moral universe of practitioners materiality allures and potentially corrupts; it grounds personal and collective ritual agency; mediates thoughts-feelings; materializes the immaterial; and invariably transcends all these dichotomies and becomes gods, parts of people, concepts. In this article I wish to understand "things" as continuous with the unfolding of selfhood, but more contentiously, with and as affects. Drawing on my long-time research with practitioners of Cuban Creole espiritismo in Havana, for whom "representation" objects are essential to the development of spirits, muertos, and thus extended selves, I argue that the dolls and figurines that mediums regularly fabricate and care for are less "representational" than they are affective forms themselves. Dolls are not symbols for feelings-for-spirits made material or registers of affective perception towards one's muertos; in a very real sense they are affects that may grow roots and bloom. In the ethnography I will describe these relations as a system of affectively invested selfhood, one that encompasses the very muertos in question. |
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| ISSN: | 1751-8342 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Material religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2019.1603067 |