Spiritist Mediumship as Historical Mediation: African-American Pasts, Black Ancestral Presence, and Afro-Cuban Religions

In: Journal of Religion in Africa
Author: Elizabeth Pérez1
View More View Less
  • 1 Dartmouth College, Department of Religion, 305 Thornton Hall, Hanover, NH 03755, USA
Online Publication Date:
01 Jan 2011
In:
Volume 41: Issue 4
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
330–365
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1163/157006611X604760
Keywords:
African Diaspora; Black North American religion; historiography; Santería; Espiritismo; spirit possession

Purchase instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):

€29.95$34.95
Add to Cart
Rent on DeepDyve
Redeem Access Token

Abstract

The scholarship on Afro-Atlantic religions has tended to downplay the importance of Kardecist Espiritismo. In this article I explore the performance of Spiritist rituals among Black North American practitioners of Afro-Cuban religions, and examine its vital role in the development of their religious subjectivity. Drawing on several years of ethnographic research in a Chicago-based Lucumí community, I argue that through Spiritist ceremonies, African-American participants engaged in memory work and other transformative modes of collective historiographical praxis. I contend that by inserting gospel songs, church hymns, and spirituals into the musical repertoire of misas espirituales, my interlocutors introduced a new group of beings into an existing category of ethnically differentiated ‘spirit guides’. Whether embodied in ritual contexts or cultivated privately through household altars, these spirits not only personify the ancestral dead; I demonstrate that they also mediate between African-American historical experience and the contemporary practice of Yorùbá- and Kongo-inspired religions.

In:
Journal of Religion in Africa
E-ISSN:
1570-0666
Print ISSN:
0022-4200
Publisher:
Brill
Cover Journal of Religion in Africa

  • Apter Andrew ‘Herskovits’s Heritage: Rethinking Syncretism in the African Diaspora’ Diaspora 1991 1 3 235 260

  • Asad Talal Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity 2003 Palo Alto, CA Stanford University Press

  • Ballard Eoghan C. ‘Ndoki Bueno Ndoki Malo: Historic and Contemporary Kongo Religion in the African Diaspora’ 2005 Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Bell Catherine Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice 1992 Oxford Oxford University Press

  • Bermúdez Armando Andrés ‘Notas para la historia del espiritismo en Cuba’ Revista de Etnología y Folklore 1967 4 5 22

  • Boddy Janice ‘Spirit Possession Revisited: Beyond Instrumentality’ Annual Review of Anthropology 1994 23 407 434

  • Braude Ann Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America 1989 Boston, MA Beacon Press

  • Brown David H. Santería Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion 2003 Chicago, IL University of Chicago Press

  • Buckley Anthony D. Yoruba Medicine 1997 New York Athelia Henrietta Press

  • Cabrera Lydia El Monte: Igbo finda, ewe orisha, vititinfinda 1983 [1954] Miami Colección del Chichereku

  • Calvino Italo Invisible Cities 1978 New York Harvest Books

  • Canizares Raul Walking with the Night: The Afro Cuban World of Santería 1993 Rochester, VT Destiny Books

  • Capone Stefania Searching for Africa in Brazil: Power and Tradition in Candomblé 2010 Durham, NC Duke University Press

  • Carroll Bret E. Spiritualism in Antebellum America 1997 Bloomington Indiana University Press

  • Castellanos Jorge & Castellanos Isabel ‘The Geographic, Ethnologic, and Linguistic Roots of Cuban Blacks’ Cuban Studies 1987 17 95 110

  • Castelli Elizabeth A. Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making 2004 New York Columbia University Press

  • Clarke Kamari Maxine Mapping Yorùbá Networks: Power and Agency in the Making of Transnational Communities 2004 Durham, NC Duke University Press

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Comaroff Jean Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People 1985 Chicago, IL University of Chicago Press

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Cox Robert S. Body and Soul: A Sympathetic History of American Spiritualism 2003 Charlottesville University of Virginia Press

  • Danforth Loring M. Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement 1989 Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Danto Arthur Analytic Philosophy of History 1965 Cambridge Cambridge University Press

  • Devisch Renaat Weaving the Threads of Life: The Khita Gyn-Eco-Logical Healing Cult among the Yaka 1993 Chicago, IL University of Chicago Press

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Dianteill Erwan ‘Deterritorialization and Reterritorialization of the Orisha Religion in Africa and the New World (Nigeria, Cuba and the United States)’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 2002 26 1 121 137

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Dodson Jualynne E. Sacred Spaces and Religious Traditions in Oriente Cuba 2008 Albuquerque University of New Mexico Press

  • de Certeau Michel Rendall Steven The Practice of Everyday Life 1984 Berkeley University of California Press

  • Emmons Charles F. Bryant Clifton D. ‘The Spiritualist Movement: Bringing the Dead Back’ Handbook of Death and Dying 2003 Thousand Oaks, CA Sage 57 64

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Erdogdu Ayshe Hight Eleanor M. & Sampson Gary David ‘Picturing Alterity: Representational Strategies in Victorian Type Photographs of Ottoman Men’ Colonialist Photography: Imag(in)ing Race and Place 2002 London Routledge 107 125

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Euell Kim ‘Signifyin(g) Ritual: Subverting Stereotypes, Salvaging Icons’ African American Review 1997 31 4 667 675

  • Fabian Johannes Memory Against Culture: Arguments and Reminders 2007 Durham, NC Duke University Press

  • Fernández Olmos Margarite & Paravisini-Gebert Lizabeth Creole Religions of the Caribbean: An Introduction from Vodou and Santeria to Obeah and Espiritismo 2003 New York and London New York University Press

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Flores-Peña Ysamur Polk Patrick Arthur ‘“Candles, Flowers and Perfume”: Puerto Rican Spiritism on the Move’ Botánica Los Angeles: Latino Popular Religious Art in the City of Angels 2004 Los Angeles UCLA Fowler Museum

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Foucault Michel Sheridan Alan The Archaeology of Knowledge 1972 London Tavistock

  • Gates Henry Louis The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism 1988 New York Oxford University Press

  • Greenblatt Steven Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England 1988 Berkeley University of California Press

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Hesse Axel ‘La génesis de las transmisiones espiritistas cubanas y la dialéctica transculturativa en el semiproletariado poliétnico urbano’ Revista Venezolana de Folklore (Caracas) 1975 6 67 91

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Johnson Paul Christopher ‘An Atlantic Genealogy of “Spirit Possession”’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 2011 53 2 393 425

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Jorge Angela Harris Joseph E. ‘La madama francesita: A New World Black Spirit’ Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora 1993 2nd ed. Washington, DC Howard University Press

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Kardec Allan Collection of Selected Prayers 1975 New York Studium Corp

  • Kardec Allan Blackwell Anna The Spirits’ Book 1989 [1898] Albuquerque, NM Brotherhood of Life Publishing

  • Kelly Michael ‘Mimesis’ The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics 1998 vol. 3 Oxford Oxford University Press

  • Lambek Michael Mageo Jeannette Marie & Howard Alan ‘Afterword: Spirits and Their Histories’ Spirits in Culture, History, and Mind 1996 London Routledge 237 250

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Lambek Michael Knowledge and Practice in Mayotte: Local Discourses of Islam, Sorcery and Spirit Possession 1993 Toronto University of Toronto Press

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Leonard Elizabeth Men of Color to Arms! Black Soldiers, Indian Wars and the Quest for Equality 2010 New York W.W. Norton

  • Lewis I.M. Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism 1971 Harmondsworth Penguin Books

  • Mahmood Saba The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject 2005 Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press

  • Marriott McKim Kapferer Bruce ‘Hindu Transactions: Diversity without Dualism’ Transaction and Meaning: Directions in the Anthropology of Exchange and Symbolic Behavior 1976 Philadelphia Institute for the Study of Human Issues 109 142

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Masquelier Adeline Prayer Has Spoiled Everything: Possession, Power, and Identity in an Islamic Town of Niger 2001 Durham, NC Duke University Press

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Matory J. Lorand ‘Free to Be a Slave: Slavery as Metaphor in the Afro-Atlantic Religions’ Journal of Religion in Africa 2007 37 3 398 425

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • McIntosh Janet The Edge of Islam: Power, Personhood, and Ethnoreligious Boundaries on the Kenya Coast 2009 Durham, NC Duke University Press

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • McPherson Jadele ‘Tiembla Tierra and My Abuela Speak: Ocha, Palo, and Spiritism in Latino Chicago’ 2006 MA thesis, University of Chicago

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Menocal María Rosa Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric 1994 Durham, NC Duke University Press 142 184

  • Miyazaki Hirokazu The Method of Hope: Anthropology, Philosophy, and Fijian Knowledge 2004 Palo Alto, CA Stanford University Press

  • Moore Derric Maa Aankh: Finding God the Afro-American Spiritual Way, by Honoring the Ancestors and Guardian Spirits 2010 Liberal, KS Four Sons Publications

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Moreno Vega Marta ‘Espiritismo in the Puerto Rican Community: A New World Recreation with the Elements of Kongo Ancestor Worship’ Journal of Black Studies 1999 29 3 325 353

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Morrison Toni Evans Mari ‘Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation’ Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation 1984 New York Doubleday 339 345

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Nora Pierre ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire’ Representations 1989 26 7 25

  • Obeyesekere Gananath Crapanzano Vincent & Garrison Vivian ‘Psychocultural Exegesis of a Case of Spirit Possession in Sri Lanka’ Case Studies in Spirit Possession 1977 New York Wiley 235 394

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Ochoa Todd Ramón ‘Versions of the Dead: Kalunga in Cuban Kongo Materiality’ Cultural Anthropology 2007 22 4 473 500

  • Palmié Stephan Binder Wolfgang ‘Ethnogenetic Processes and Cultural Transfer in Afro-American Slave Populations’ Slavery in the Americas 1993 Würzburg Königshausen & Neumann 337 433

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Palmié Stephan Fardon Richard ‘Against Syncretism: Africanizing and Cubanizing Discourses in North American Òrìsà Worship’ Counterworks: Managing the Diversity of Knowledge 1995 London Routledge 73 104

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Pérez Elizabeth ‘Narrative, Seasoning, Song: Praxis, Subjectivity, and Transformation in an African-American Lucumí Community’ 2010 Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Pieters Jürgen Speaking with the Dead: Explorations in Literature and History 2005 Edinburgh University Press

  • Placido Barbara ‘“It’s All to Do with Words”: An Analysis of Spirit Possession in the Venezuelan Cult of Maria Lionza’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2001 7 2 207 224

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Polk Patrick A. ‘Jim Crow, Used Up Joe, and Other Ghosts of the Minstrel Show: Performing Blackness in 19th Century Euro-American Spiritualism’ 2009 Unpublished lecture, Joint Spring Meeting of the Society for Psychological Anthropology and the Society for the Anthropology of Religion

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Poole Deborah Vision, Race, and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World 1997 Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press

  • Pouchet Paquet Sandra ‘The Ancestor as Foundation in Their Eyes Were Watching God and Tar Baby’ Callaloo 1990 13 3 499 515

  • Prorok Carolyn V. ‘Boundaries are Made for Crossing: The Feminized Spatiality of Puerto Rican Espiritismo in New York City’ Gender, Place and Culture 2000 7 1 57 79

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Rey Terry Heywood Linda ‘Kongolese Catholic Influences on Haitian Popular Catholicism: A Sociohistorical Exploration’ Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the Atlantic Diaspora 2001 New York Cambridge University Press 265 285

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Rivera Edil Torres ‘Espiritismo: The Flywheel of the Puerto Rican Spiritual Traditions’ Revista Interamericana de Psicología/Interamerican Journal of Psychology 2005 39 2 295 300

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Rolph-Trouillot Michel Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History 1992 Boston, MA Beacon Press

  • Román Reinaldo L. ‘Governing Man-Gods: Spiritism and the Struggle for Progress in Republican Cuba’ Journal of Religion in Africa 2007a 37 2 212 241

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Román Reinaldo L. Governing Spirits: Religion, Miracles, and Spectacles in Cuba and Puerto Rico, 1898-1956 2007b Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Romberg Raquel Witchcraft and Welfare: Spiritual Capital and the Business of Magic in Modern Puerto Rico 2003 Austin University of Texas Press

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Romberg Raquel ‘Ritual Piracy or Creolization with an Attitude’ New West Indian Guide 2005 79 3/4 175 218

  • Rosenthal Judy Possession, Ecstasy, and Law in Ewe Voodoo 1998 Charlottesville University Press of Virginia

  • Routon Kenneth ‘Conjuring the Past: Slavery and the Historical Imagination in Cuba’ American Ethnologist 2008 35 4 632 649

  • Schuster Melanie Until the End of Time 2003 New York Kensington Publishing

  • Scott David ‘That Event, This Memory: Notes on the Anthropology of African Diasporas in the New World’ Diasporas 1991 1 3 261 284

  • Singer Merrill & Garcia Roberto McClain C.S. ‘Becoming a Puerto Rican Espiritista: Life History of a Female Healer’ Women as Healers: Cross-Cultural Perspectives 1989 New Brunswick, NJ Rutgers University Press 157 185

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Stoller Paul ‘Horrific Comedy: Cultural Resistance and the Hauka Movement in Niger’ Ethos 1984 12 165 188

  • Szafraniec Asja Jaurretche Colleen ‘“Wanting in Inanity”: Negativity, Language and “God” in Beckett’ Beckett, Joyce and the Art of the Negative (European Joyce Studies 16) 2005 New York Rodopi Press

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Thornton John K. The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684-1706 1998 Cambridge Cambridge University Press

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Toews John E. ‘Historiography as Exorcism: Conjuring up “Foreign” Worlds and Historicizing Subjects in the Context of the Multiculturalism Debate’ Theory and Society 1998 27 4 535 564

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Warden Nolan ‘Cajón pa’ los Muertos: Transculturation and Emergent Tradition in Afro-Cuban Ritual Drumming and Song’ 2006 M.A. thesis, Tufts University

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Wardi Annisa J. ‘Inscription in the Dust: A Gathering of Old Men and Beloved as Ancestral Requiems’ African American Review 2002 36 1 35 53

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Wehmeyer Stephen C. ‘Indian Altars of the Spiritual Church: Kongo Echoes in New Orleans’ African Arts 2000 33 4 62 69 95 96

  • Wehmeyer Stephen C. ‘Indian Spirits on the Rock Island Line: Chicago as “Gate of Tradition” for African American Spiritualism in the Gulf South’ 2008 Unpublished lecture, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Wexler Anna Olmos Margarite Fernández & Paravisini-Gebert Lizabeth ‘Dolls and Healing in a Santería House’ Healing Cultures: Art and Religion as Curative Practices in the Caribbean and Its Diaspora 2001 New York Palgrave Macmillan 89 114

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Wilson Jeremiah Moses Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History 1998 Cambridge Cambridge University Press

  • Wirtz Kristina Silke ‘Divining the Past: The Linguistic Reconstruction of “African” Roots in Diasporic Ritual Registers and Songs’ Journal of Religion in Africa 2007 27 2 240 272

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Wolcott Victoria W. Remaking Respectability: African American Women in Interwar Detroit 2001 Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Wright Sylvia ‘The Death of Lady Mondegreen’ Harper’s Magazine 1954 209 1254 48 51

  • 1.

    February 28, 2004. Most subsequent ethnographic references to Ilé Laroye are based on four years of IRB-approved fieldwork, 2005-2009 (Perez 2010). I have changed the name of this community and all my interlocutors for reasons of confidentiality.

  • 6

    . 1978, 28-29.

  • 9.

    Personal communication, September 22, 2006.

  • 23.

    Personal communication, April 15, 2005.

  • 30.

    Personal communication, October 8, 2005.

  • 35.

    Personal communication, February 4, 2006. This statement was made long before Barack Obama’s famous speech on race in Philadelphia in which he mentioned his white grandmother.

Content Metrics

All Time Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 358 101 13
Full Text Views 141 10 0
PDF Views & Downloads 26 9 1