Ecstatic encounters
Subtitle: Bahian Candomblé and the quest for the really real
By: Mattijs van de Port
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Amsterdam [Netherlands]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 300
ISBN-13: 9789089642981
Subjects: Candomblé (Religion); Religion; Blacks; History
Other titles: Bahian Candomblé and the quest for the really real; Quest for the really real
Description: "Reality does not comply with our narrations of it. And that is most certainly the case with the narrations produced in academia.  An anthropologist in Bahia, Brazil, fears to become possessed by the spirits he had come to study; falls madly in love with an 'informant'; finds himself baffled by the sayings of a clairvoyant; and has to come to grips with the murder of one of his best friends.  Unsettling events that do not belong to the orderly world of scientific research, yet leave their imprint on the way the anthropologist comes to understand the world.  REflecting on his long research experience with the spirit possession cult Candomblé, the author shows, in a probing manner, how definitions of reality always require the exclusion of certain perceptions, experiences and insights.  And yet, this 'rest-of-what-is' turns out to be an inexhaustible source of amazement, seduction and renewal." --P [4] of cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 273-293) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: Avenida Oceânica : Candomblé, mystery and the-rest-of-what-is in process of world-making; title: On Immersion : Academics and the seductions of a baroque society; title: Mysteries are invisible : Understanding images in the Bahia of Dr Raimundo Nina Rodrigues; title: Re-encoding the primative : Surrealist appreciations of Candomlé in a violence-ridden world; title: Abstracting Candomblé : Defining the 'public' and the 'particular' dimensions of a spirit possession cult; title: Allegorical worlds : Baroque aesthetics and the notion of an 'absent truth'; title: Bafflement Politics : Possessions, apparitions and the really real of Candomblé's miracle productions; title: The permeable boundary : Media imaginaries in Candomblé's public performance of authenticity; title: Conclusions: Cracks in the wall : Invocations of the rest-of-what-is the anthropological study of world-making.