Santería enthroned
Subtitle: art, ritual, and innovation in an Afro-Cuban religion
By: David H. Brown.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 413
Subjects: Santeria -- History; Art and religion -- Cuba -- History; Art and religion -- United States -- History; Kings and rulers -- Religious aspects -- Santeria -- History of doctrines; Kings and rulers in art
Description: Ever since its emergence in colonial-era Cuba, Afro-Cuban Santería (or Lucumi) has displayed a complex dynamic of continuity and change in its institutions, rituals, and iconography.  In this book, David H. Brown combines art history, cultural anthropology, and ethnohistory to show how Africans and their descendants have developed novel forms of religious practice in the face of relentless oppression.  Focusing on the royal throne as a potent metaphor in Santería belief and practice, Brown shows how negotiations among ideologically competing interests have shaped the religion's symbols, rituals, and institutions from the nineteenth century to the present.  Rich case studies of change in Cuba and the United States, including a New Jersey temple and South Carolina's Oyotunji Village, reveal patterns of innovation similar to those found among rival Yoruba kingdoms in Nigeria.  Throughout, Brown argues for a theoretical perspective on culture as a field of potential strategies and "usable pasts" that actors draw upon to craft new forms and identities-a perspective that will be invaluable to all students of the African Diaspora
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: pt. I. Institutional and ritual innovation; title: 1. Black royalty : new social frameworks and remodeled iconographies in nineteenth-century Havana; title: 2. From Cabildo de Nación to casa-Templo : the new Lucumí, institutional reform, and the shifting location of cultural authenticity; title: 3. Myths of the Yoruba past and innovations of the Lucumí present : the narrative production of religious cosmology, hierarchy, and authority; title: pt. II. Iconographic innovation; title: 4. Royal iconography and the modern Lucumí initiation; title: 5. "The palace of the Obá Lucumí" and the "Creole taste" : innovations in iconography and meaning; title: Conclusion; title: Appendix 1. Fredrika Bremer's description of a Sunday afternoon drumming in a Havana Lucumí Cabildo, 1853; title: Appendix 2. Irene Wright's description of her visit to an "African Cabildo" in El Cerro, 1910; title: Appendix 3. The "regular" Ifá-Centric initiation versus the Ocha-Centric initiation; title: Appendix 4. The Oriate's counternarrative to Ifa-Centric Ocha practice; title: Appendix 5. Calendar of Oricha and Saint Feast Days; title: Appendix 6. Oral data from fieldwork : interviews, personal communications, and correspondence.