A Refuge in Thunder

by Harding, Rachel E.

• ISBN13: 9780253216106
• ISBN10: 0253216109
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-02-01
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

The Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé has long been recognised as an extraordinary resource of African tradition, values, and identity among its adherents in Bahia, Brazil. Outlawed and persecuted in the late colonial and imperial period, Candomblé nevertheless developed as one of the major religious expressions of the Afro-Atlantic diaspora. Drawing principally on police archives, Harding describes the development of the religion as an "alternative" space in which subjugated and enslaved blacks were able to cultivate a sense of individual and collective identity that stood in opposition to the subaltern status imposed upon them from the dominant society. Harding works creatively against the biases of the primary records, culling out evidence of a religious and cultural orientation which emphasised healing, the reconstitution of family and identity, refuge and release from slavery, and the ritual redress of colonial and imperial power imbalances (especially master-slave tensions). Placing Candomblé within the larger context of Afro-Brazilian "alternative" spaces, Harding further examines the relationship between the religion and a variety of other black religio-cultural forms in nineteenth century Bahia: lay Catholic confraternities, work-groups, drum-and-dance gatherings, fugitive slave communities, families, aesthetic values, and rhythmic orientations.Rachel E. Harding is Associate Director of the Gandhi Hamer King Center for the Study of Religion and Democratic Renewal at the Iliff School of Theology.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	xiii
Slavery, Africanos Libertos, and the Question of Black Presence in Nineteenth-Century Brazil	1	(7)
Salvador: The Urban Environment	8	(11)
The Bolsa de Mandinga and Calundu: Afro-Brazilian Religion as Fetish and Feiticaria	19	(19)
``Dis Continuity,'' Context, and Documentation: Origins and Interpretations of the Religion	38	(30)
The Nineteenth-Century Development of Candomble	68	(10)
Healing and Cultivating Axe: Profiles of Candomble Leaders and Communities	78	(26)
Networks of Support, Spaces of Resistance: Alternative Orientations of Black Life in Nineteenth-Century Bahia	104	(43)
Candomble as Feitico: Reterritorialization, Embodiment, and the Alchemy of History in an Afro-Brazilian Religion	147	(10)
Coda: Abolition, Freedom, and Candomble as Alternative Cidadania in Brazil	157	(6)
Glossary	163	(6)
Appendix: Selected Documents from the Arquivo Publico do Estado da Bahia	169	(40)
Notes	209	(28)
Bibliography	237