Bahian white: the dispersion of candomblé imagery in the public sphere of bahia
ABSTRACTFor most of its history, candomble was a marginal and persecuted spirit possession cult. From the 1920s onward, however, the cult evolved into the “trademark” of Bahia, a state in northeastern Brazil. The color white—a spotless and impeccable white—has come to dominate the public face of the cult: evoking positive connotations such as cleanliness and purity, the color helped to portray candomble as the splendid cultural heritage of the Bahian state as well as a respectable African religion. However, the “politics of white” has always been intersected by a “poetics of white,” as Bahian artists, writers, and other image producers sought to destabilize the condoned meanings of white. Hinting at that which is absent from the impeccable surfaces of candomble's public appearance, this “poetics of white” produced a layered public understanding of the cult. As people engage in speculations over the “true” candomble that lies hidden behind its public facade, claims to be “in the know” reconfigure the notio...
South-South Transnational Spaces of Conquest: Afro-Brazilian Pentecostalism, Feitiçaria and the Reproductive Domain in Urban Mozambique
AbstractBrazilian Pentecostals are establishing new transnational Christian connections in Africa. Focusing on Mozambique, this paper examines the specific logic of cultural mixing that is emerging in the South-South contact of African and Brazilian Pentecostals. This South-South connection is based on a particular framing of the transatlantic history in Afro-Brazilian concepts of evil, such as macumba and feiticaria. The South-South transnational features of Afro-Brazilian Pentecostalism enhance a need to spiritually scrutinize, combat and transcend aspects of ‘African culture’ in the reproductive sphere of marriage, sexuality, family, money and work. Upwardly mobile Mozambican women, who are conquering new cultural positions, are finding this South-South transnational Pentecostal space attractive. Afro-Brazilian Pentecostalism and upwardly mobile women find and reinforce each other in their capacities to challenge and move frontiers in the national sphere around reproductive issues. However, the powerful atmosphere of conquest that South-South Pentecostalism consequently creates has to be carefully manoeuvred by the women to not let their accusations of feiticaria rise against themselves.
Crossing Borders: Time, Memory, and the Construction of Identity in Song of the Exile
This article analyzes the construction of memory in Ann Hui's Song of the Exile as it intersects with issues of cultural identity, national allegory, and women's autobiographies.