encounters ecstatic encounters ecstatic ecstatic encounters Bahian Candomblé and the Quest for the Really Real Mattijs van de Port AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS Ecstatic Encounters Bahian Candomblé and the Quest for the Really Real Mattijs van de Port AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS Layout: Maedium, Utrecht ISBN 978 90 8964 298 1 e-ISBN 978 90 4851 396 3 NUR 761 © Mattijs van de Port / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2011 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Contents PREFACE / 7 INTRODUCTION: Avenida Oceânica / 11 Candomblé, mystery and the-rest-of-what-is in processes of world-making 1 On Immersion / 47 Academics and the seductions of a baroque society 2 Mysteries are Invisible / 69 Understanding images in the Bahia of Dr Raimundo Nina Rodrigues 3 Re-encoding the Primitive / 99 Surrealist appreciations of Candomblé in a violence-ridden world 4 Abstracting Candomblé / 127 Defining the ‘public’ and the ‘particular’ dimensions of a spirit possession cult 5 Allegorical Worlds / 159 Baroque aesthetics and the notion of an ‘absent truth’ 6 Bafflement Politics / 183 Possessions, apparitions and the really real of Candomblé’s miracle productions 5 7 The Permeable Boundary / 215 Media imaginaries in Candomblé’s public performance of authenticity CONCLUSIONS Cracks in the Wall / 249 Invocations of the-rest-of-what-is in the anthropological study of world-making NOTES / 263 BIBLIOGRAPHY / 273 INDEX / 295 ECSTATIC ENCOUNTERS · 6 Preface Oh! Bahia da magia, dos feitiços e da fé. Oh! Bahia of magic, fetishes and faith. Bahia que tem tantas igrejas, Bahia that has so many churches, e tanto Candomblé. and so much Candomblé. … … Vem, vem, vem, em busca da Bahia! Come, come, come, in search of Bahia! Cidade da tentação, City of temptation, onde meu feitiço impera. where my magic spell reigns. Vem, se me trazes o teu coração! Come, if you bring me your heart! Vem, a Bahia te espera, Bahia, Bahia! Come, Bahia awaits you, Bahia, Bahia!1 This study will take you to Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, a palm-fringed place that likes to tell the world that it is the next best thing to paradise – and puts on a rather convincing performance of the paradisiacal (until, of course, it starts to rain). The roots of this project, however, stretch back to another time and place: the war-ridden Serbia of the early 1990s, where I conducted my first long-term anthropological fieldwork, and where I had to face the fact that people are not only shocked by the horrific spectacle of an all-out war, but seduced by it as well. In the book that I wrote about those dark and turbulent times, I found myself struggling with what I now recognize to be the great themes of Lacanian thought: the Serbian towns- men that figure in Gypsies, Wars and Other Instances of the Wild (van de Port 1998) had sought refuge from their traumatic experiences in World War II in ‘the symbolic order’ of Titoist Yugoslavia, which had provided them with a master-narrative to make sense of their past, present and future. This symbolic order, however, proved incapable to stand up to the forces of the Real. Faced with their world falling apart, my Serbian interlocutors resorted to fantasy: the kind of daydreaming that screens off the rents and fissures in one’s narration of the world and is thus capable to restore 7 the symbolic order. Yet they also gave themselves over to the debauchery of their Gypsy bars and to the ecstasies of war, in a desperate attempt to access a ‘really real’ beyond all narration and daydreaming. I have never been back to Serbia – but I still listen to the music and hum those deeply melancholic songs. Moreover, the research themes that Serbia held in store for me have remained at the top of my research agen- da. The confrontation with people being ‘chased out of the stories they lived by’ was such a powerful, painful and overwhelming experience that two decades later I still find most of my research questions ‘Serbianized’. Wherever my research activities have taken me – to the Dutch under- world (van de Port 2001), to the Lisbon fado (van de Port 1999) or to the Candomblé temples in Brazil – I ended up studying the same issue over and over again: what happens when people have to face up to the fact that their understandings of what is ‘real’ are dependent on a particular, and ultimately contingent narration of what life is like? And how do they, once they are lucid about the contingency of their reality definitions, produce a sense of the really real? So if my decision to accept the invitation, in 2001, to study Bahian Candomblé, in the framework of Birgit Meyer’s PIONEER project ‘Modern Mass Media, Religion and the Imagination of Communities’ felt like a rad- ical switch in my career; was indeed grabbed as an opportunity to make a radical switch; and in many ways was a radical switch: it also turned out to be a continuation of the same questions about people’s quest for the ‘really real’. This quest could not have been realized, had it not been for the gen- erous support of two organizations: the Netherlands Foundation of Sci- entific Research NWO( ) and the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research (ASSR, today: AISSR) of the University of Amsterdam. I would also like to thank the VU Institute for the Study of Religion, Culture and Society (VISOR) for having made possible the full-color photographs in this book. In Brazil, I would like to thank all the people who have been such loving and hospitable company, and who – in one way or the other – have made Brazil, more in particular Bahia, a veritable ‘second home’. In alphabeti- cal order: Maria Paula Adinolfi; Susana Barbosa; Patrícia Birman; Mar- celo Sousa Brito; Liza Earl Castillo; Dona Ceci; Edson Dalmonte; Mar- cos Dias; Luciana Duccini; Ana Dumas; Xandra Dumas; Ariana Dumas; Augusto Fernandes; Deise Cabral Guex; Ana Jaleco; Fabio Lima; Pai Luís; Carly Machado; Edward MacGray; Gil Maciel; Stéphane Malysse; William Marques; Adilson de Melo; Eloisa Brantes Mendes; Pai Milton; Eliane ECSTATIC ENCOUNTERS · 8 Pinha Moura; Mario Cravo Neto; Marcos Nogueira; Zé Carlos Oliveira; Luís Nicolau Parés; Paulinha Prado; Robério Sampaio; Lucas Sanper; Rog- er Sansi-Roca; Djalma Santana; Jocélio Teles dos Santos; André Werneck d’Andrade Bakker; Vagner Gonçalves da Silva; Jerome Souty; Eledir Victor Sobrinho; Mario Vieira; Carlo Wallnöfer; Jean Wyllys and Silvia de Zordo. On every arrival in Salvador, I am sadly aware that some of my friends are no longer around – Raimundo Nonato da Silva Fonseca, Cravina Cravo and most of all, Joel Santos Lobo. May you have found peace on the other side. My special thanks go to Victor Silva Souza and his family: Rilza, Ana Leia, João, Relane, Gisele, and my afiliada Eliana. Without Victor this book would not have been what it turned out to be: his impatience with starry- eyed paradise seekers, his wry comments on the ways of his country and countrymen (and their anthropologists), his resilience in the face of life’s adversities and his unobtrusive wisdom have been – and continue to be – a source of inspiration. Beyond Brazil, I am indebted to many people who generously shared their thoughts (and doubts) about this project; who inspired me to pursue my writing; or had the good sense to drag me away from my office desk from time to time: Zé d’Abreu, Stanley Arnhem, Koštana Banović, Niko Besnier, Maarten Boekelo, David Chidester, Freek Colombijn, Jill Crosby- Flanders, André Droogers, Yolanda van Ede, Alex Edmonds, Patrick Eisen- lohr, my family, João Paulo Firmino, Peter Geschiere, Francio Guadeloupe, Thomas Blom Hansen, Charles Hirschkind, Lotte Hoek, Jan Hooiveld, Stephan Hughes, José Koomen, Suzanne Kuik, Erle de Lanooi, Brian Lar- kin, Birgit Meyer, Annemarie Mol, Pál Nyiri, Martijn Oosterbaan, Marijke Pfeiffer, Paul van der Plaat, Joost van de Port, Pepijn van de Port, Graeme Reid, Johan Roeland, Joost Roth, Rafael Sanchez, Willem Schinkel, Alex- andra Schüssler, Irene Stengs, Alex Strating, Jeremy Stolow, my students, Marjo de Theije, Bonno Thoden van Velzen, Thomas Vandamme, Milena Veenis, Oskar Verkaaik, Jojada Verrips, Nico Vink, David Weissman, Mar- leen de Witte, Jarret Zigon. I thank my parents, Walter van de Port and Corine Houx-Smeets, for having taught me to be open to the beauty of the world. There is no great- er gift. I dedicate this book to them. PREFACE · 9 Figure 1 Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos Introduction Avenida Oceânica Candomblé, mystery and the-rest-of-what-is in processes of world-making The field notes I made on 4 February 2008, were brief. Insist‘ on the thought,’ it says (underlined like that), ‘that this is what it is all about’. This energy on the street. This sparking electricity. This ecstatic frenzy of thousands of scantily clad bodies, packed together on the Avenida Oceânica, jumping to the rhythm of Daniela Mercury, sweating from top to bottom, stretching their arms towards the goddess of Axé Music, stretching, stretching, jumping, jumping, singing their heads off in massive unison – Zum-zum-zum- zumbaba. Zumbaba. Zumbaba. Really, that’s all there is to say. Bahian carnival is hardly a time to write extensive field notes. Yet I viv- idly recall the urge I had felt that night to write these few lines. Three o’clock in the morning or thereabouts.