Caribbean Studies ISSN: 0008-6533 [email protected] Instituto de Estudios del Caribe Puerto Rico

Savastano, Peter Reseña de "Dancing Wisdom, Embodied Knowledge in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba, and Bahian Candomble" de Yvonne Daniel Caribbean Studies, vol. 37, núm. 1, enero-junio, 2009, pp. 277-281 Instituto de Estudios del Caribe San Juan, Puerto Rico

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Yvonne Daniel. 2005. Dancing Wisdom, Embodied Knowl- edge in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba, and Bahian Can- domble. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 324 pp. ISBN: 0-252-07207-3.

Peter Savastano Seton Hall University [email protected]

hether or not she would describe Dancing Wisdom as such, WYvonne Daniel has written a near perfect example of “experi- mental ethnography,” of which such experimentation is outlined and analyzed in the now somewhat classic work Anthropology as Cultural Critique (Marcus and Fischer 1986). While some anthropologists and other social scientists will claim, and some of my students will hope, that the experimental moment in anthropology is now over, gratefully Yvonne Daniel seems to have resisted the trend if Dancing Wisdom is to be taken as evidence for my claim. In keeping with the theme of experimental moment in the human sciences as put forth by George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer, Dancing Wisdom has the complex mixture of theory, various models of ethnographic descriptive narrative, and the intersubjective dimen- sions of fieldwork that I think fittingly matches the subject matter of the book: embodied knowledge in three of the major African Diasporic ritual/healing traditions of Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba and Bahian Candomble. Some of the metaphors that have been used to describe both experi- mental ethnography and the African Diasporic religions are pastiche, collage, melange, hybridity, and mestizaje. Such metaphoric descriptions serve to undermine the more traditional characterization of these rich traditions of ritual healing as syncretistic. Syncretistic is a term that has long troubled me, since historically, it is understood that what is being synchronized are various so-called “primitive” religious traditions with, in this case, Christianity, thus implying that Christianity is the superior, more authentic and more sophisticated religious tradition to which these others only aspire. Thus they need to graft onto Christianity in order to have any kind of relevance or claim to truth whatsoever. Gratefully, Yvonne Daniel has managed to present to her readers a picture of the African Diasporic religions which depicts that as equal in sophistication and authenticity and which renders them as real and true as are any and all religious traditions of the world, past and present. In my many years as student, dare I say scholar, of the African Diasporic religions in the Americas, Yvonne Daniel’s Dancing Wisdom

Vol. 37, No. 1 (January - June 2009) Caribbean Studies 278 PETER SAVASTANO is among the few books that I have encountered, which attempts to put the major African Diasporic religious/ritual healing traditions in conversation with each other. Whenever I have taught a course on the anthropology of religion or, more specifically, a course on the African- based religious traditions in the Caribbean and Latin America, one of the claims that I have made is that while Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba (I confess that in terms of the traditions that emerge out of Cuba, I continue to use the world Santeria rather than Yoruba) and Bahian Candomble (I confess I use the phrase Brazilian Candomble rather than Bahian), I often point out that while each of these traditions has its own unique local expression with a lot of room for variation, even within a particular tradition, nevertheless, all three share a common ritual struc- ture, a common set of symbols and healing and ritual practices and a common worldview. This Daniel manages to demonstrate with skill in Dancing Wisdom’s Chapter One, “Deciphering Diaspora Dances: The Origin Nations and Belief Systems” and Chapter Two, “Body Knowl- edge at the Cross Roads.” By putting Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba and Bahian Candomble in conversation with each other in the way she does, Daniel provides a comprehensive view of both local knowledge and practice and global knowledge and practice, all within the context of rich and thick ethnographic description. To do this, as I am sure readers of this review will already know, is a central element of anthropologi- cal research, i.e., to explore the relationship between the particular or local and the universal or global, with the understanding, as Margaret Mead reminded us so many years go, that the particulars far outweigh the universals. Here too, Daniels exemplifies this important aspect of the ethnographic enterprise. She does as a thorough job as an author possibly can in a book, of outlining and honoring not only what Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba and Bahian Candomble share in common, but also what about them is unique and forged out of the historical, cultural and geographical context in which each of these traditions emerged as a result of the European slave trade and the colonialism and imperialism that goes along with it. Most important to the subject matter of the book is Yvonne Daniel’s experience as a trained dancer and teacher as much as is her training as an anthropologist. As someone who in my own teaching and scholarship has long made an argument that we human beings are the possessors of many kinds of knowledge, not just intellectual knowledge, Daniel’s focus on “bodily knowledge” and the power of ritual dance, drumming and praise song to access that knowledge helped to deepen my own understanding of the central role of the human body as a primary source of spiritual, intuitive, cultural and historical knowledge. Yvonne Daniel expounds on these truths in Chapters Three, Four and Five respectively,

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though unless the reader has a good working knowledge of dance theory, she or he may find her- or himself wandering through a deep wood of technical terms and abstractions that will make no sense without pos- sessing the ability to access first hand bodily knowledge through some degree of formal dance training or through having participated in the ritual dances and ceremonies of Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba or Bahian Candomble. Anyone who has read Chapter Seven “The White Darkness” in dancer and ethnographer Maya Deren’s Divine Horsemen, the Living Gods of Haiti (1970 [1953]), wherein Deren describes her own experi- ence of having a spirit “dance in her head” or of being “mounted” or “ridden” by one of the Lwa-yo (divinities or energies) of Haitian Vodou, or of my own mentor Karen McCarthy Brown’s firsthand encounters with the Lwa Ogou and Gede in Mama Lola (2001 [1991]), will find Daniel’s Chapters Six, Seven and Eight of Dancing Wisdom an elaboration of the reality of possession/trance/performance made concrete. In each of these chapters, Daniel ushers her readers into a first hand encounter with the Lwa-yo, Orichas, and Orixa of Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba and Bahian Candomble, by allowing these sacred energies to manifest in her own head and to speak through her as they possess the words Yvonne Daniel has put to pen (or keyboard) in the pages of these chapters. Recently, after I gave a talk at a university about my own fieldwork and experience with the African Diasporic traditions of Haitian Vodou and Cuban Santeria as practiced here in the United States, a philosophy professor approached me and said he would like to invite me to come to speak to his students about these, as he put, “polytheistic” religions. He felt it was important that his students who are studying classical Greek philosophy and religion know that polytheism is alive and well in the world today and is in fact being practiced right here in New Jersey where his students live and study. Unfortunately, time did not allow for me to explain to this professor that the African Diasporic religious/spiritual traditions are not in the least bit polytheistic. In fact, they are quite monotheistic, even if the one God that they acknowledge is not a deity that is personally involved with the individual lives and circumstances of human beings, as anyone who has read the works by E. Bolaji Idowu (1994) and John S. Mbiti (1990) would know. Gratefully, in Dancing Wisdom, Daniel has managed to clearly convey this understanding of God in the African Diasporic traditions and “agents of the divine” or “spirits” of these traditions by using words such as “divinities” and “energies” (p. 232) to describe and counteract the anthropomorphism by which the Lwa, Orixa, and Oricha of Haitian Vodou, Bahian Can- domble and Cuban Yoruba are often described as “Gods,” a mistaken designation that even Maya Deren herself makes in subtitling her Divine

Vol. 37, No. 1 (January - June 2009) Caribbean Studies 280 PETER SAVASTANO

Horsemen, the living Gods of Haiti. Dancing Wisdom is replete with diagrams, chants and prayers, in both their original sacred ritual languages (Langaj for Haitian Vodou and Lucumi for Cuban Yoruba as just two examples of what I mean by sacred ritual languages) and their translations, so that the reader, whether knowledgeable about African Diasporic religions in the Americas or not, is provided with a living sense of how these sacred songs are utilized and embodied within the rich ritual context of the three traditions upon which the book concentrates. Dancing Wisdom is definitely not a book for those who are looking for an introduction to the sacred ritual/healing traditions of the African Diaspora, nor is it a book for those who have little knowledge of perfor- mance or dance theory. Rather, Dancing Wisdom is a book written by an academic for academics, or for those who are advanced practitioners of any of the three African Diasporic traditions that are the focus of Yvonne Daniel’s meticulous, and thorough research, both in theory and in practice. For in this regard she leaves few stones unturned. If there is one stone, however, I would love to see her turn over more than she does in Dancing Wisdom, it is the stone that is the complex and troubled relationship between Catholic iconography, statuary, ritual devotion and their melange (or mixing) with the African base that is the foundation of Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba and Bahian Candomble, in all of their permutations. While there has been a movement afoot over the past 15 years or so too “unmix” these two traditions by some practitioners and scholars in an attempt, I believe, to recover a purity that will never be found in any religious tradition, African Diasporic or otherwise, my own experience has been that in practice, at least here on the east coast of the United States, the incorporation and transformation of Catho- lic symbols, ritual and devotional practices is still very much a reality, though certainly not uniform in all communities. Perhaps the persistence of this Catholic presence, is because despite the ugly history of slavery, colonialism, and imperialism, all of which are rightly associated with Catholicism’s troubled history, most especially in the Caribbean and Latin America, nevertheless this aspect of the African Diasporic reli- gions is also a part of the bodily knowledge of their practitioners, even if, historically, it was forced upon them unwillingly. In the humble opinion of this reviewer, Yvonne Daniel has written a superb book. She has done a great service to the traditions of Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba and Bahian Candomble for those who honor and practice them, for those who study them, and for those who do both.

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References

Brown, Karen McCarthy. 2001 [1991]. Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. Updated Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press. Deren, Maya. 1970 [1953]. Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. Kingston, NY: Documentext McPherson & Company. Idowu, E. Bolaji. 1994. Olodumare, God in Yoruba Belief. New York: Wazobia. Marcus, George E. and Michael M. J. Fischer. 1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experiment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Mbiti, John S. 1990. African Religions and Philosophy. Second Edition. Ports- mouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann Educational Books, Inc.

Louis Sala-Molins. 2006. Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French Enlightenment. Translated by John Conteh- Morgen. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 165 pp. ISBN: 0-8166-4389-X.

Gene E. Ogle Assistant Professor of History John Cabot University [email protected]

s John Conteh-Morgen points out in his introduction to this Atranslation of the 1992 book Les Misères des Lumières: Sous la raison, l’outrage, Louis Sala-Molins has been a key figure in raising French public awareness of the dimensions and significance of France’s involvement in the slave trade and slavery, as well as the frequently less than “heroic” or “progressive” positions of Enlightenment thinkers on Afro-Atlantic slavery. Sala-Molins’ work has had a similar importance for many non-French scholars of France, including this reviewer, who over the last two decades have increasingly turned their attention to early modern French colonialism. In this sense, the translation of his work into English is long overdue, and Dark Side of the Light is a first step to be welcomed. It is also a questionable first step, however, for of his books treating French political and philosophical engagements with Atlantic slavery (all of which, given the intellectual environment in which they appeared, understandably contain elements of polemic), Dark Side of

Vol. 37, No. 1 (January - June 2009) Caribbean Studies