Niyi Afolabi 
Relocating the Sacred [EPUB ebook] 
African Divinities and Brazilian Cultural Hybridities

Although Brazil is home to the largest African diaspora, the religions of its African descendants have often been syncretized and submerged, first under the force of colonialism and enslavement and later under the spurious banner of a harmonious national Brazilian character.
Relocating the Sacred argues that these religions nevertheless have been preserved and manifested in a strategic corpus of shifting masks and masquerades of Afro-Brazilian identity. Following the re-Africanization process and black consciousness movement of the 1970s to 1990s, Afro-Brazilians have questioned racial democracy, seeing how its claim to harmony actually dispossesses them of political power. By embracing African deities as a source of creative inspiration and resistance, Afro-Brazilians have appropriated syncretism as a means of not only popularizing African culture but also decolonizing themselves from the past shame of slavery. This book maps the role of African heritage in—and relocation of the sacred to—three sites of Brazilian cultural production: ritual altars, literature, and carnival culture.

Spis treści

Preface

Introduction




Part I: Mapping the Sacred



1. Bahia: Yoruba Diasporic Domain of Activating the Sacred



2. Pierre Verger and Yoruba Ritual Altars in Brazil



3. Matriarchs of Candomblé: Mãe Stella de Oxóssi, Mãe Beata de Yemonjá, and Mãe Valnizia Bianch




Part II: The Sacred in Literary Manifestations



4. Jorge Amado and Vasconcelos Maia: The Sea/River as Iemojá/Oxum’s Domain



5. Abdias Nascimento and Nelson Rodrigues: The Fallen Angel as Betrayal of Blackness



6. Zora Seljan and Alfredo Dias Gomes: Sacred Feminine Solidarities and Sango’s Revenge



7. Raul Longo and Robson Pinheiro: Afro-Brazilian Deities in Literary Rituals



8. Cléo Martins and Chynae: Oiá and Oxossi in Invocations and Encounters




Part III: Hybridities in Afro-Brazilian Culture



9. Filhos de Gandhi and Cortejo Afro: Candomblé in the Carnivalesque Frame



10. Give Us This Day Our Daily Acarajé



Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

O autorze

Niyi Afolabi is Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of
Identities in Flux: Race, Migration, and Citizenship in Brazil, also published by SUNY Press;
Afro-Brazilians: Cultural Production in a Racial Democracy; and
Ilê Aiyê in Brazil and the Reinvention of Africa.