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...
Priests and Stars: Candomble, Celebrity Discourses, and the Authentication of Religious Authority in Bahia's Public Sphere
This article discusses the inextricable entanglement of religious and media imaginar¬ies by pointing out how, in a thoroughly mediatized society such as Bahia (Brazil), the public articulation of religious authority comes to depend more and more on celebrity discourses. Candomble, the Afro-Brazilian spirit possession cult on which this article focuses, is an intriguing example of this trend. The cult has become the main “symbol bank” of the Bahian state, and groups have increasingly sought access to its rich arse¬nal of images, sounds, myths, and aesthetics. Disconcerted by this development, Candomble priests have sought to publicly assert themselves as the only authentic representatives of the cult. Whereas within the temples, their religious authority is rmly rooted in the performance of ritual practice and constantly reconrmed in the rigid and minute prescriptions as to how the different ranks in the temple hierarchy should interact, the public sphere requires the mobilization of other resources to back up claims of religious authority. The author argues that Candomble priests are very successful in “colonizing” the tremendous appeal of celebrity discourses. Exploiting the society-wide interest in Candomble, they create media events that allow them to dis¬play their contacts and afnities with the stars. They thus nd their religious leader¬¬ship authorized in terms that are well understood by the consumers of modern mass media.
"The Plain Round Tale of Faithful Thady": Castle Rackrent as Slave Narrative
Critics of Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent tend to focus on textual elements—gender issues, the symbolism of the Big House, colonial hegemony— or contextual readings by placing Edgeworth in the Anglo-Irish history and tradition. While such criticism usually in some way examines the main theme of the text, the appropriation of power and authority, little of it accomplishes both the textual and contextual analysis that Castle Rackrent deserves. Exploring Thady’s “plain round tale” as a slave narrative in content and form sheds new light on the work both textually and contextually; in Thady Quirk, Edgeworth has created a typical slave narrator who recounts a history of oppression which is ultimately mediated by an outside editor. As John Cronin writes of Castle Rackrent, “What Maria Edgeworth has given us . . . is a magnificently realised slave, a terrifying vision of the results of colonial misrule. There must have been a moment of clearly deliberate artistic decision in which she realised that what needed to be said must be said through one of the submerged people.”1 The three main textual elements of the narrative indicate its likeness to typical slave narratives: its presentation of a conflicted slave narrator, its use of the framing device of the outside editor, and its narrative structure of episodic anecdotes that utilizes memory, description, and didacticism.