trance-nationalism: religious imaginaries in the black atlantic

Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 13:1–20, 2006Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1070-289X print / 1547-3384 onlineDOI: 10.1080/10702890600839801

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Trance-Nationalism: Religious Imaginariesin the Black Atlantic

Kenneth RoutonDepartment of Anthropology, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, Illinois, USA

Matory, James Lorand 2005. Black Atlantic Religion: Tradi-tion, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy in the Afro-BrazilianCandomblé. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Clarke, Kamari Maxine 2004. Mapping Yoruba Networks:Power and Agency in the Making of Transnational Communi-ties. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Ayorinde, Christine 2004. Afro-Cuban Religiosity, Revolution,and National Identity. Gainesville: University Press ofFlorida.

The theoretical economy of anthropology, as with any discipline, is char-acterized by recurring cycles of conceptual chic, conventionalization, andcritical rethinking. This not only propels research in exciting new direc-tions but also invites us to rediscover paths once considered exhausted bythe ethnographic imagination. The interdisciplinary field of transna-tional studies is no exception. Now that the intellectual fervor that firstmade it a fashionable disciplinary buzzword in the early 1990s has givenway to focused ethnographic research, transnationalism is now subject tomore sober disciplinary reflections and critical reevaluations. The ethnog-raphies reviewed here, all of which focus on the practice of orisha worshipin the supra-local “black Atlantic” (Gilroy 1993), make original contribu-tions to the burgeoning literature on transnationalism. Among the mostnuanced ethnographic studies of transnational religious communities todate, they call our attention to the multiple ways in which religionsinscribe their own particular mappings of memory, history, and networksof belonging onto the global cultural landscape.

Challenging the conflation of geographic space and social identity,transnationalism refers to the social networks created by the flows of

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people, money, and technology across geographic, cultural, and politicalborders (Basch et al. 1994). The transnational circuits opened up byglobal economic forces and technological developments have notmerely led to increased mobility but to the deterritorialization of cul-tural identities and nation-states. Identities are no longer exclusivelyattached to specific territories and locales but are increasingly shapedby global forces that transcend local, regional, and national borders.Thus, constructions of gender, racial, ethnic, class, and national differ-ences all have to be re-examined in light of the fact that immigrantsand global travelers negotiate the hegemonies of both their home andhost societies (Glick Schiller et al. 1999).

Much of the impetus for studies on transnationalism has comefrom the Caribbean and the Caribbean diaspora in the United States(e.g., see Mintz 1985, 1998; Sutton and Chaney 1987; Chamberlain1997; Foner 1997; Robotham 1998; Olwig 1999; Glick-Schiller andFouron 2001). Formed throughout centuries of transatlantic slavery,migration, global flows of technology and capital, and characterizedby what Clifford calls “discrepant cosmopolitanisms” (Clifford 1997),the Caribbean has stubbornly defied conventional localizing strate-gies depicting cultures as bounded communities. The ethnographiesdescribed below once again turn our attention to the hyper-diasporiczones of the circum-Caribbean by exploring the role of religiousimaginaries in the formation of transnational communities. Theytake a critical look at the ongoing formation of a relatively “old” (pre-World War II) transnationalism, that of Yoruba-influenced orishaworship in the transborder spaces of the greater black Atlantic. Byexamining the Yoruba-derived religions of Brazilian Candomblé(Matory 2005), African American Yoruba revivalism (Clarke 2004),and Cuban Ocha-Ifá, or Santería (Ayorinde 2004), these scholarsprovide ethnographically nuanced, comparative portraits of the tran-snational processes of identity formation. They note, for instance,that Yoruba-derived religion, whose origins are in southwesternNigeria, has been more or less transnational since at least the latterhalf of the nineteenth century. Yoruba religious networks have beenforged since the slave trade through criss-crossing transatlantictravel, and more recently by the hosting of cultural exchanges andinternational conferences, pilgrimage tourism, international mailinglists, the global market in orisha literature, online chat rooms, andvirtual divination websites.

James L. Matory (2005) not only challenges a long history of schol-arship on the African Diaspora that presumed a one-way process ofcultural diffusion (i.e., cultural flows originating along the West Afri-can coast spread outward toward the Americas via the transatlantic

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slave trade). Rather, he offers compelling evidence of the co-construc-tion of African and African diasporic cultures by focusing mainly onCandomblé cult houses in Bahia, Brazil. His research provides anethnographic corrective to Paul Gilroy’s (1993) rather ironic back-grounding of Africa as a relatively marginal cultural influence in theblack Atlantic (also see Piot 2001). Kamari M. Clarke (2004) callsattention to the conflation of race and culture among the Yorubarevivalists of Oyotunji Village in Beaufort, South Carolina. Shedescribes how deterritorialized networks reconfigure ritual labor asan expression of transnational ethnic and racial politics. In her studyof the relationship between Ocha-Ifá religion, Marxist-Leninist polit-ical ideology, and national identity in post-revolutionary Cuba,Christine Ayorinde (2004) suggests that despite its increasing globalvisibility this religion remains tied to nationalist imaginings.Together, these scholars make significant contributions to the litera-ture on transnationalism through ethnographically rich and theoret-ically sophisticated explorations of black Atlantic religiousimaginaries. They challenge us to not only interrogate shifting geog-raphies of identity through ethnographic rigor but to also considerthe translocal roots of all nationalist imaginaries.

Old transnationalisms and black Atlantic religion in Brazil

James L. Matory’s (2005) Black Atlantic Religion describes the histor-ical longevity of African diasporic translocalisms. Noting that theblack Atlantic is centuries older in its translocalism and defiance ofnation-state borders than what today passes as “transnationalism”(i.e., the primarily post-World War II global circulation of peoples andcultures), Matory accuses transnational cultural theorists of eitherignoring Africa in particular or the past in general (e.g., Appadurai1996; Hannerz 1996; Sassen 1998; Ong 1999) (2). This is so, he suggests,because these scholars have been so impressed with post-World War IIflows of people from underdeveloped nations to Europe and the U.S.that they have overlooked South-South transnationalism. Moreover,he argues, Africans and Afro-Americans were neither passive normarginal to the emergence of the imagined communities of territori-ally bounded nations. Neither were their religious and political imagi-naries entirely exhausted by nationalist seductions (35). But Matorywants to do more than just bring African and African diasporic historyinto the discourse on transnationalism. He also wants to disruptdeeply entrenched anthropological presuppositions about the isolationof local cultural units by arguing that territorial boundedness hasnever monopolized the loyalty of people in any culture. Translocalism

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not only predated but also provided the conditions of possibility for theemergence of nationalism (2).

Matory begins by interrogating an old, implicit chronotype associatedwith diasporic studies: the assumption that, “homelands are to theirdiasporas as the past is to the present,” and that, “Africa is to theblack Americas as the past is to the present” (38). AlthoughHerskovitsian lineal approaches to collective memory, retention, andcontinuity, and their appeal to general causal mechanisms and nomo-thetic principles, would suggest so, Matory begs to differ. He arguesinstead that Diasporas create both their homelands and, to someextent, the nation-state itself (3). His strongest example is the Lago-sian Cultural Renaissance of the 1890s in Lagos, Nigeria. The culturaland political identity of the various ethnic groups of southwesternNigeria known today as the Yoruba was the result of a transatlanticdialogue with the Afro-Latin diaspora. This dialogue brought the peoplesof this region into contact with a large group of both Afro-Cuban and -Brazilian returnees who began settling there as early as the nine-teenth century. A third group who participated in this movement werethe Saros, Africans who were captured on slaves ships by the Britishand returned to Freetown, Sierra Leone who later resettled in Lagosaround the same time (52–53). Although Christian missionaries alsoplayed a role in amplifying claims of Yoruba superiority in the region,the Lagosian cultural renaissance was mainly a movement of journal-ists, tract writers, and composers who promoted “traditional” Africanhistory and culture. These cultural nationalists stressed race as muchas they did culture. Lagosian cultural nationalism and Yoruba ethno-genesis was then a racial nationalism inspired by the sociopoliticalexperiences of transatlantic slavery (57–59).

The chief exponents of this cultural nationalism in Lagos werepart of a dynasty of Brazilian-Lagosian travelers, entrepreneurs,and possession priests who criss-crossed the Atlantic beginning inthe late nineteenth century (61). These African-Brazilian travelers,in particular, were a highly literate group of entrepreneurial elitesand the chief informants, translators, and hosts of missionary societ-ies in Lagos. According to Matory, they capitalized on their transat-lantic interconnections, providing Africans with Brazilian-madereligious goods and services and vice versa. Both their national iden-tity and economic well-being depended on the construction, mainte-nance, and defense of Yoruba sacredness, superiority, and African“purity” (65). In light of this, it is interesting to note that Matory fol-lows Benedict Anderson (1983) in privileging the centrality of liter-acy in enabling imagined communities (71). It is here that Matorymakes a less convincing argument:

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None of this is meant to suggest that the agency of literate nationalistshas been the lone or sufficient vehicle of black Atlantic cultural reproduc-tion. Powerfully mnemonic ritual song and dance genres are the most con-spicuous reminders of the African legacy and emblems of community inthe African diaspora. However, these bodily practices possess no intrinsichistorical meaning and embody no self-evident program for communitybuilding. Rather, they are almost always selectively reproduced accordingto what is practically allowed and needed by powerful contemporary polit-ical actors. . . . It was a long-running, transnational literary movementthat differentiated an extraordinarily successful black nation, like theYorùbá, from a merely successful one, like the Congo/Angola nation (71).

Literacy is certainly a major player here but to relegate bodily knowl-edge and experience to mere “emblems” of verbal assertions of belongingis one of Matory’s major mishaps. Nationalist writers, he admits,depend on and reinterpret bodily practices, “to substantiate their ownnovel and interested visions of community” (71). Indeed, their depen-dency on the embodied dimensions of ritual practice indicates that thebody is not itself devoid of intrinsic historical meaning and sociallymeaningful patterns of intimacy and belonging (e.g., see Hall 1990).

Matory continues his argument with another, more complicatedexample, that of the Candomblé “nation” known as Jeje. The term Jejewas in use for a century in Brazil before it shows up in accounts of WestAfrica in 1864 where for the first time it was used to describe the Gbèdialect cluster speakers as one ethnic group in the former kingdom ofDahomey (80). Matory’s attempts to explain the discontinuities ofBahian Jeje religion in Brazil and the term’s intermittent use along theWest African coast lead him to question the notion that capitalist logicand technology are the only vehicles of transnationalism. Rather, reli-gion, nationalists’ projects, and low-tech strategies of import marketingare also powerful vehicles of transnational identity. Although Matory’sview that print technology has been fundamental to the formation oftransatlantic identity owes much to Anderson (1983), he disputes theclaim that territorially bounded nationalist imaginaries replaced otherforms of belonging and is itself being replaced by deterritorialized cul-tural formations. With the examples of the Yoruba and the Jeje nation,Matory wants to show that, “translocalism is the precondition of nation-alism,” and that, “[f]ar from prefiguring the demise of the Andersonianterritorial nation, these and other such transnational phenomena havebeen critical to its very constitution” (79). National identities, contraAnderson (1983), are constituted less by their appeal to territorialboundedness than by strategic alternations between assertions of“indignenism” and “diasporism” that selectively construct communitythrough memory, ritual, and text (109).

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Next, Matory asks why, in an era in which hybrid identities are cel-ebrated, do Cuban Ocha-Ifá and Brazilian Candomblé devoteesemphasize ritual “purity” even when this is absent from Nigerianorisha ritual idioms. This is especially puzzling given the fact thatboth Cubans and Brazilians tend to promote racial/cultural hybridityas mestizaje nationalism (115). Ritual idioms of purity, Matory argues,create solidarity in the diaspora and are connected with the role ofmerchants in making diasporas endure as communities (116). He dis-putes that his is an argument based on economic determinism or theinevitability of idioms of purity as a means of social control in diasporicgroups. Rather, ritual idioms of purity concern the convergence ofsocial conditions and class interests that have made religious purismhegemonic (117). It was Bahian class interests, in other words, thatconverted the Lagosian literary and commercial discourses of “purity”into the ritual logic of Candomblé. Matory does not seem to entertainthe possibility that this happened the other way around. He questions,for example, Paul Connerton’s (1989) premise that bodily practicesexempt the social memories they embody from contestation and rein-terpretations of the past. He suggests, in contrast, that those Brazilianand Cuban ritual leaders who made “purity” hegemonic used “tenden-tious verbal reinterpretations of the past” that effectively redesignedthe corporeal practices of large groups of people (117).

One issue here is that Matory does not adequately address the ritualpolitics and ideological maneuverings within Brazil’s Candomblé‘sreligious communities, especially during those periods when ritualprotocols were being standardized. Not only does this leave open thequestion of how idioms of ritual “purity” came to be the defining fea-ture of this particular religious complex but also whose version of ritual“purity” was finally accepted—for example, were these conscious re-designations of discourse into bodily practices or the reconstitutedbodily practices of different ritual styles that then gave rise to competingverbal assertions of religious orthodoxy as various interests competedfor local control and prestige (e.g., see Ramos 2003). Moreover, headmits that Candomblé ritual idioms of purity are not reducible totheir historical relationship to the commerce between Brazil and WestAfrica (133)—namely, the economic success of transatlantic merchantsdepended on convincing their clients of the authenticity and African“purity” of their wares. If there are other factors, however, hementions none of them (e.g., the crisis of identity caused by the socialdisruptions and ethnic confusions of transatlantic slavery, racist con-structions of blacks as uncivilized and by extension dirty/unclean, thepolluting and diluting forces of urban life where these religions seemto thrive, etc.).

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Matory then turns to a discussion of how the light-skinned bourgeoisieelite appropriated subaltern forms of knowledge and cultural practices tofit their ideological agenda. He describes nationalist constructions ofCandomblé as a “folk” emblem of the allegedly racially democraticnation-state (149–150). He explains how Candomblé has moved frombeing perceived as an atavistic threat to a central symbol of Braziliannational identity; how, since the 1970s, the state has unintentionallyreinvigorated forms of black nationalism (149); how devotees’ imaginar-ies of transnational belonging have been fueled by northeastern literaryregionalism (152); how the racial sensualisms and nostalgic innocence ofthese representations distract from the racial terrors obscured by themyth of racial democracy (155–156); the light-skinned bourgeoisie elites’appropriation of subaltern cultural capital (158); and how the religionhas been affected by the unevenness of state policies (160–164), thenationalization and state co-option of Candomblé (166–181), and thequestion of the religion’s sociopolitical autonomy (182–187).

The remaining chapters focus on the gendered dimensions of Candom-blé ritual practice. First, Matory describes twentieth-century changes inthe gendered leadership of Candomblé. Here, the role of national andtransnational scholars such as United States anthropologist Ruth Landesin creating what is believed to be the primordially African tradition of“cult matriarchy” in Candomblé is given critical treatment (191). He con-nects this gendered construction to the question of how male possessionpriests are often described in Brazil as “passive homosexuals” and “untra-ditional.” Matory suggests that West African ritual metaphors of “mount-ing” were reinterpreted by Brazilian sexual logic, making the male priest(symbolically penetrated during possession) into a kind of “passive homo-sexual” (209). In the last major chapter, Matory describes the spiritualafflictions and personal struggles of one male priest in Bahia’s female-dominated Candomblé leadership, as well as his own personal involve-ment within these religious communities. He also tackles the themes ofBahian religious prestige, re-Africanization, feminization, Ifá diviners’claims of ritual sovereignty, and white converts in São Paulo who chooseto travel to Nigeria instead of subordinating themselves to Bahianpriests. In these last chapters, Matory demonstrates how transforma-tions in Yoruba religious practices have been central to the constructionand development of gender relations both in Nigeria and the diaspora.

The transnational ritual politics of racial belongingin the United States

Kamari M. Clarke’s (2004) Mapping Yoruba Networks directs us to theimaginative coevalness that produces multiple and sometimes conflict-

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ing “mappings” of Yoruba religious networks. She focuses on Oyotunjivillage, a reconstructed “traditional” Yoruba village located in the ruralregion of Beaufort, South Carolina whose members reject United Statescitizenship through ritual claims of a pre-state African identity (12).Clarke departs from Matory’s (2005) emphasis on literacy in the con-struction of transnational belonging in the black Atlantic. Despite theirreliance on textual constructions of Yoruba “traditional” religion, sheargues, Oyotunji revivalist constructions of African ancestry, “highlightan embodied notion of ancestors living through them” (my emphasis;12). Clarke is not merely interested in the fact of transnational belong-ing and mobility but “how ideological circuits of knowledge and power”shape how those interconnections are defined, legitimated, and institu-tionalized as de-nationalized and territorially autonomous practices(38). She focuses her critical attention, in particular, on the dubious con-flation of blackness and Africanness by Yoruba revivalists, and how“deterritorialized” imaginings of belonging sometimes reinscribe theexclusionary practices they are designed to contest. She attests to thedifferences between those who approach orisha worship with, “the feverof reclamation rather than the banality of the everyday” (xxvii).

Clarke begins her study with an anecdote taken from her trip toNigeria with members of the Oyotunji community. Despite their claimsof homecoming, their arrival in Lagos in 1995 was met with the recog-nition by locals of their difference and status as outsiders. An awkwardconfrontation in the airport between an African American Oyotunjimember and a young Yoruba girl demonstrates that both appeal tocontrasting imaginaries of belonging. Although the man claims he isnot American but African, the girl undercuts his claim by calling himòyìnbó (a white man or outsider). While the man draws on the symbolicunity of blackness to claim a shared identity, the girl links belongingto local ethnic identity and her ancestral hometown. Moreover,although the African American invokes the authority of divination asa legitimate confirmation of his racial membership, the girl ties hersto the sanctity of ethnic kinship. In other words, as Clarke notes, weare not only dealing with diverse imaginaries of belonging but with thefields of power and authority that shape identity claims and, throughinstitutionalization, make them real (xi–xiii).

Clarke both builds on those approaches to globalization as arecent, mostly post-Cold War reorganization of financial markets andintensification of mass communication across the borders of nation-states and those approaches that doubt the novelty of recent globaltrends and their alleged rupture or break from the early historicalexpansion of capitalism. She departs, for example, from Appadurai’suse of the imaginary by focusing on the ways in which religious and

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racial imaginaries in the black Atlantic are mediated by specific mate-rial, historical, and ideological conditions of possibility (35). The reli-gious and racial imaginaries of belonging in the black Atlantic andelsewhere are fundamentally influenced by institutions of power andknowledge that both circumscribe and enable the production of thereal. Rather than assuming that particular imaginaries of belongingare enabled by “unlimited conditions of global possibility,” Clarke callsattention to how social imaginaries are, “embedded within particularaxioms of power,” that shape the ways in which they claim legitimacyand become socially real through forms of institutionalization (36).

The first part of Clarke’s ethnography describes the historical andpolitical conditions that led to the development of Yoruba networks,focusing mainly on the conflation of origin narratives and institutionalregulation (57). The Oyotunji revivalists’ remapping of Yoruba roots isorganized exclusively around ritual practice (58). It is not so much thereligion itself that legitimizes Oyotunji identity because the religiondoes not intrinsically express the politics of racial belonging set againstthe background of slavery. Rather, they use religion in a redemptivestrategy that deploys, “the moral force of freedom from slavery and thelogic of reclamation of lost ‘culture’ to establish their transnationalalliance to West Africa” (63). Because Oyotunji revivalism views contem-porary Africa as distorted by transatlantic slavery and American racism,their version of Yoruba revivalism is built around an imaginary, pre-state Africa (66). Nigeria, however, is not the only sacred geo-culturallocus of revivalist imaginings. Cuba, with its large community ofOcha-Ifá (Santería) constitutes another foundational node in the net-works of the Oyotunji religious imaginary.

Oyotunji’s founder, Serge King, was first initiated to Changó(Sàngó) in Matanzas, Cuba in 1959. Divination readings discouragedKing from initiating others and sharing the religion’s secrets withnon-initiates and non-Cubans. King interpreted this as a form of whiteCuban racism and claimed that, “white Cubans are afraid that blackAmericans will enter the Santería priesthood and Africanize it” (72).By the mid-1960s, influenced by black nationalism, King had becomeincreasingly dismissive of what he saw as the contamination of CubanSantería by centuries of slavery and Catholic influence. He advocatedstripping the religion from what he saw as racist-inspired distortionsof a “traditional” African religion. He adopted an African name andclothing, routinized practices that emphasized the aesthetics of Oyo-Yoruba grandeur and performative nobility, and deliberately blackenedand broadened the physical features of the Afro-Cuban images of theorishas. King and his followers eventually came to believe they possessedthe only truly authentic Yoruba religion and, therefore, the only ones

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with the authority to legitimately change ritual protocols (73). Theirisolation and distancing from Afro-Cuban Santería meant that theyhad little access to the ritual knowledge that had until then sustainedtheir movement, some of which ironically included tape recordings of theritual speech of a white Cuban-American Ocha priest in Miami (e.g.,see Palmié 1995). In 1972, King traveled to Nigeria and was initiatedinto the Ifá divination cult (77). Upon his return, he became the leaderof the racially segregated Oyotunji village. Roots narratives then, accord-ing to Clarke, “reinforce particular modernities of blood and nationhoodand enforce geographies of race as the basis for black American con-nections to Africa” (105).

Clarke then turns to a discussion of the cultural heritage industry.Here, she avoids a celebratory tone by interrogating the tensionsinherent in racial imaginaries of African belonging. Describing thehistory of black nationalism in the United States, Clarke argues thatnew ways of imagining belonging and producing collective memoryarose toward the end of the cold war. Initially propelled by members ofthe black middle class, these new narratives essentially reimaginedbiological notions of race typical of slavery, segregation, and other formsof discrimination, as cultural imaginaries of racial belonging thatemphasized African nobility and pride. The result was the develop-ment of cultural blackness as a heritage identity. Propelled by institu-tions of higher learning (e.g., ethnic studies departments), this newway of imagining belonging in the African Diaspora was thenexploited by global markets that enabled these communities toexpress their blackness through consumption (e.g., see Ebron 2000).This shift from Black Power nationalism to African American consum-erism of things “African” is reflected in Oyotunji economic practices.Today, over 60 percent of the Oyotunji’s gross income comes fromtourism. In the late 1980s they began catering to outside demandsrather than the black segregationist politics that characterized thecommunity’s first decade of existence. In the early 1990s, what Clarkecalls the market-driven “African homeland imaginary” was obviousamong Oyotunji revivalists, who were attempting to finalize businessplans to create the Oyotunji Big Continent African Theme Park(148–149).

Finally, Clarke describes the institutionalization of Yoruba revival-ism. She examines, for instance, the role of literary production in insti-tutionalizing processes by noting how British colonial codes fashionedby Christian missionaries have now become the canonical texts for Oyo-tunji reclamation. Here, she shows how, despite complaints by commu-nity members, revivalist leaders’ attempted to explain why thecommunity could not provide an honorable burial for a member who

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committed suicide by appealing to the textual authority of these publi-cations (197). Clarke, however, diverges somewhat from Matory (2005)in his emphasis on the importance of literacy and “dialogue” over bodilyways of constructing historical meaning and building community. Sheargues, for example, that despite the reliance on texts and efforts tolearn the Yoruba language by the Oyotunji establishment, “the politicsof primordial attachments and the structure of ritual forms (e.g., ritual-ized notions of African ancestry such as possession) still continue tocharacterize the boundaries of citizenship and ritual legitimacy” (43).She describes how the Egúngún Festival to honor the dead ends with atrip to the Atlantic coast, where the symbolic power of ritual language isperformed in order to both remember and forget through strategicinclusions and elisions. Although the immorality of slavery and “theexperiential value of ritualized spiritual engagement” (210) are remem-bered, the influence of Cuban Santería and whiteness are minimized orforgotten altogether through the performance of ritual genealogical rec-itations that fail to mention prominent Cuban priests (226). Clarke thenexplores the role of divination in shaping membership and belongingthrough what is known as “roots reading,” which provides clients withAfrican names and attempts to discern their ancestral African ethnici-ties (233). Finally, gender inequality at Oyotunji is critically examinedto show how village rules/laws are ultimately secondary to the hierar-chical order of male authority that governs the Oyotunji community(262). By noting how Oyotunji social organization privileges male domi-nance, Clarke demonstrates that gender continues to be a central idiomof power underpinning transatlantic religious formations.

Race, revolution, and religious imaginaries in Cuba

Christine Ayorinde’s (2004) Afro-Cuban Religiosity, Revolution, andNational Identity is motivated by the question of how Ocha-Ifá(Santería) has managed to maintain its vivacity after centuries of reli-gious repression and persecution and a Marxist-Leninist revolutionbuilt on the tenets of scientific atheism (xii). She examines, in particular,the ambiguous status of Afro-Cuban religions in articulations ofnationalist imaginaries (1). The increasingly global and transnationalnature of orisha possession religions, Ayorinde argues, “makes itpossible to pinpoint the particularities of the Cuban situation andexamine them within a global context” (4). Despite the globalization ofOcha-Ifá, facilitated by exile, tourism, and local initiations of foreignvisitors, and even some examples of the re-Africanization of ritual proto-cols, Ayorinde’s research indicates that the religion has for the mostpart remained linked to nationalist, not transnationalist, imaginaries (6).

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The first part of Ayorinde’s study describes the ways in which therelationship between race, religion, and citizenship have been bothimagined and contested throughout Cuba’s history. Summarizingexisting literature, Ayorinde covers slavery and the colonial prohibitionsof the nineteenth century, the nationalist imaginings of José Martí,the witchcraft scares of the early republic that targeted Afro-Cubanreligious devotees and denounced them as obstacles to Cuban moder-nity, the presence of Afro-Cuban religious symbols in political campaignsand rallies, the primarily white bourgeoisie afrocubanismo movementthat identified black cultural forms as what made Cubans distinct,Fernando Ortiz’s contention that Cuba was a “homeland without anation” and his call for racial integration as the way to create a senseof national belonging, and the influence of both black cultural national-ism and mestizaje ideologies of racial democracy. What emerges fromthis discussion is that while revolutionary cultural policy may have, insome ways, reproduced older stereotypes that described Ocha-Ifá as a“black problem” associated with atavism, marginality, and delinquency,it has never been entirely unyielding. Rather, Afro-Cuban religionshave both benefited from and been marginalized by their associationwith the exploited classes in post-revolutionary Cuban society.

Both ideological and socioeconomic concerns have motivated revolu-tionary policies toward Afro-Cuban religions (83). On one hand, theassociation of these religions with the exploited classes (as opposed to,e.g., the Catholic Church) created unprecedented opportunities.Through both the creation and funding of folklore ensembles, museums,and ethnological research, Afro-Cuban religions were seen as contrib-uting expressions of national folklore, although this did entail a processof secularization and sanitizing purges. On the other hand, the Marxist-Leninist insistence on race as an epiphenomenon of class meant thatany expression of racial consciousness was considered divisive and anti-revolutionary. Official state ideologies of scientific atheism meant thatAfro-Cuban religions continued to be marginalized as atavistic formsof “religious obscurantism” (114), “antiscientific barbarities (118), andthe criminal underworld (120–121). Some argue, for instance, that theregime was attempting to infiltrate and undermine the local authorityof Afro-Cuban cult houses and secret societies during the first fewdecades of the revolution. Religious devotees were not only excludedfrom membership in the Cuban Communist Party but were alsounable to obtain certain kinds of employment and educational opportu-nities. In short, despite their contributions as folk emblems of nationalidentity, Afro-Cuban religions were treated as obstacles to socialistmodernity, as “a dead weight attached to the heel of the Revolution”(119). Racial consciousness and religious beliefs and practices, as

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expressions of false consciousness, would eventually whither awaywith socialist reforms. In fact, it was this belief in the inevitably of theirdemise with socialist reforms that provided the impetus for projects byfolklore groups, museum directors, and ethnologists to “recover” andpreserve them as national heritage.

Although there was transatlantic contact between Afro-Cubans andWest Africans beginning in the nineteenth century (see Serracino1988; Otero 2002), it was never as intense or as sustained as it wasamong, for example, Afro-Brazilians. Rather, Afro-Cuban familiaritywith the African continent since the revolution has been shaped not byvoluntary travel but by Cuban military interventions in Angola.Despite the revolution’s failure to completely eradicate racism at home,Fidel Castro made it a priority to support black movements abroad.Castro has often been explicit about acknowledging the nation’s linksto the African continent; “the blood of Africa,” he once declared, “runsdeep in our veins.” When Nelson Mandela visited the island in 1991 heremarked, “look how far we slaves have come” (94). It was in 1975,during Cuban military interventions in Angola, that Castro describedCuba as an “Afro-Latin country.” Castro is even rumored to haveundergone ritual initiation in Guinea at this time. And even while CheGuevara himself complained that Angolans would not fight withouttheir “medicines” (magic), he himself grudgingly admitted having calledon the services of a muganga (sorcerer/healer) during his time there(95). While some of Castro’s critics note his political manipulation ofinternationalist campaigns and question why half of all Cuban troopssent to Africa were black, a disproportionate percentage of the country’smilitary force as a whole, others expressed pride in these ventures.One babalawo told Ayorinde that Cubans underwent ritual initiationsin Angola and Angolans were initiated by Cubans during this time. Inan article entitled, “Going Home Again,” an Afro-Cuban teacher whoserved there described Cubans and Angolans as “brothers in history”and how Cuba was helping to turn the former slave route into a “routeof life” (94). The article’s title, “Going Home Again,” however, was areference to his return home to Cuba (94).

The first significant migratory flows of Yoruba-descended peoplesfrom Cuba to Lagos, Nigeria began during the latter half of the nine-teenth century. It was during this period that Ocha-Ifá ritual protocolswere initially formalized (12) during an apparently contentious period ofreligious infighting and separatism known as the “Division ofHavana” (see Ramos 2003). Interestingly, it was primarily the Oyo-Yoruba ritual protocols that gained currency during this time despitethe existence of rival forms, recalling similar Oyo-centric religioushegemonies that both Matory (2005) describes among Bahians in Brazil

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and that Clarke (2004) notes among Yoruba revivalists in the UnitedStates. The reproduction of Ocha-Ifá ritual practice, contrary to con-ventional scholarly speculation, appears to have been facilitated lessby Africanized Spanish institutions such as the cabildos, or mutual-aidorganizations organized by slaves from similar regions along the WestAfrican coast, than by the relatively independent and loose network ofprivate cult houses across the island (also see Brown 2003). As Ayorindenotes, the acephalous nature of Ocha-Ifá has contributed to its abilityto endure waves of religious persecution throughout Cuba’s history.The religion’s lack of an organized, institutionalized structure initiallyled revolutionary officials to conclude that it did not constitute a directpolitical threat. Just before and continuing after the collapse of theformer Soviet-bloc, however, the revolutionary Cuban state has madeconcessions toward the religion. Some suggest they have tried to takeadvantage of the religion’s lack of an institutionalized hierarchy throughforms of political co-option and manipulation.

The first major concession the current regime made toward theOcha-Ifá community was in 1987 when they extended a formal invita-tion to Alaiyeluwa Oba Okunade Sijuwade Olobuse II (the ooni of Ife),the official babalawo of the sacred Nigerian city of Ile-Ife, to visit theisland. Although his visit was welcomed by many, the event did not takeplace without controversy. Only a select group of Cuban babalawoswere allowed to meet with the Nigerian ooni, unlike the Pope’s verypublic visit eleven years later, and some claimed the event was manip-ulated by state officials (126). The most controversial moment of hisvisit, however, came when he allegedly commended Cubans for havingretained most but not all of the Yoruba religion and declared Cuba’sOcha-Ifá community to be “a subsidiary (subsede) of Ile-Ife” (2000:79–80). He also encouraged Cuban babalawos to visit Nigeria. A num-ber of white babalawos volunteered but the Nigerian delegationseemed opposed to this. The government’s representatives were worriedabout sending a delegation of older black babalawos because theywere “uncultured” and there were concerns that they might not return.So, the ooni‘s trip was not followed up with the planned culturalexchanges between the two countries (126).

Two international workshops, however, were organized after theooni‘s visit, one of which hosted heated debates on the “yorubizaciónde la santería” (the Yorubization of Santería) and the return to ritualorthodoxy through the purging of syncretic elements and placing thereligion under the dictates of the ooni and the Nigerian philosopherand babalawo Wande Abimbola, the Yoruba-appointed official spokes-person of the Ifá divination priesthood. These worries were exacer-bated when in 1991 the state officially licensed the Yoruba Cultural

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Association (YCA), a move that highlighted the very public split in theIfá community in Cuba. Two separate groups of Ifá diviners now per-form the important annual divination ceremony known as the Letter ofthe Year, one of which receives official government support andnational press coverage whereas the other, performed by the MiguelFebles Commission, does not. These have been increasingly divisiveissues within the Ocha-Ifá community in recent years.

Three major tendencies and concerns within the Ocha-Ifá commu-nity in the past couple decades can be identified. First is the desire onbehalf of some to organize new associations. Second, there have alsobeen attempts to recuperate older ritual practices of which there aretwo main variants; the first seeks to rescue ritual forms typical of thecolonial and republican era by limiting initiation to those in need ofhealing an illness or for material and spiritual improvement. This modeof selecting eligibility for initiation is intended to limit the increasingcommercialization of the religion, which has led to a dramatic rise inwhat some believe to be unnecessary and even fake initiations. The othervariant suggests the adoption of the Yoruba mode of initiation inNigeria, which only involves “seating” one orisha in the head of an ini-tiate rather than several as is done in Cuba. For example, VictorBetancourt’s Ifá Irán Lowó society has recently begun performing thehead-and-foot initiation style characteristic of early initiations on theisland believed to be of African origin. Fran Cabrera and Taiwo Abim-bola, the son of Wande Abimbola, who lives in Havana, founded the IleTun Tun society in his attempt to “re-africanize” Cuban Ocha-Ifá (seeBrown 2003: 162). Finally, some advocate forming schools and acade-mies to ensure the “proper” transmission of ritual knowledge andpractices (see Fernández Robaina 2001).

Since the apertura, or the country’s opening up after the demise ofthe former Soviet bloc (which entailed among other things lifting pro-hibitions that excluded religious devotees from membership in theCuban Communist Party), the most contentious issue surroundingOcha-Ifá has been the threat of commercialization. As tourism re-emerged once again during the 1990s as Cuba’s primary source ofhard currency, the possibilities of manipulating the religion for profitmultiplied with some being accused of staging outlandish ceremoniesfor and fake initiations of foreigners. Rumors have even circulatedabout the existence of state-managed initiations, a potentially lucra-tive industry since individual initiations costs thousands of dollars(161–162). The apertura has fueled anxieties concerning the potentialfor state exploitation of the religion. Scholars have long noted themanipulation of popular religious symbols by the Cuban politicalestablishment (133–136). Now, it appears some religious leaders and

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devotees are also appropriating state ideologies and political theoriesinto their belief systems. “Some babalawos,” according to Ayorinde,“have even incorporated dialectical materialism into their religiousdiscourse” (136).

The attitude of “en mi casa mando yo” (I rule in my house), how-ever, has clearly worked against institutionalization (2000: 79).Apparently, only a minority of Cubans have shown an interest ininstitutionalization, ritual orthodoxy, and “re-Africanization,” and itappears that the majority of these have been babalawos who like tostress the distinction between Ocha and Ifá by arguing that the latteris more “African” because of its ritual purity and the former more“Cuban” because it is more syncretic (2000: 81). This contestation overthe relative Africanness and Cubanness of Ocha-Ifá religion has hadserious implications for the articulation and expression of nationalidentity in Cuba. If popular religions of African origin are going to bepromoted as unique expressions of cultural identity in Cuba then thefigure of Africa cannot be allowed to prevail over nationalist imaginar-ies (2000: 83). Others suggest that “Yorubization” reflects an identitycrisis that originates not so much in Nigeria but in the United States.The visits to Cuba by Yoruba revivalists from the United States haveallegedly raised Cuban anxieties about ritual orthodoxy (185). Stillothers dismiss debates about transnational ethnic identification alto-gether as a non-issue:

Some argue that Cubans did not need to invent Africa, as they had keptit inside themselves. In Cuba, the presence of obvious ‘Africanisms’ indaily life may partly explain the absence of a romantic back-to-Africamovement. . . . In this context, even the re-Africanization of [Ocha-Ifá]has less to do with skin color than with a search for authenticity. Being‘Yoruba’ does not mean being or wanting to be African (194).

Also, Ayorinde continues, the experience in Angola may have effec-tively killed any romantic visions Afro-Cubans once held of the conti-nent. Yet, although Ocha-Ifá is increasingly moving towards almostuniversal acceptance as the national religion in Cuba (186), Ayorindeargues, it still remains a potential vehicle for racial mobilization(187).

Multisited ethnography and scholarly positionings

As these ethnographies demonstrate, the methodological shift in eth-nographic research that George Marcus (1995) identified a decade agoas multisited ethnography is beginning to bear its scholarly fruits.

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These scholars defy the theoretical conventions that once privilegedrelations of dwelling over travel in processes of cultural formation(Clifford 1997). The result of tireless, long-term research projects,these ethnographic studies required an unprecedented level of per-sonal investment and commitment. Traveling back and forth acrossthe circum-Atlantic areas of the black Atlantic and the borders of variousnation-states over the course of several years, these authors are redefin-ing how ethnographic research gets done in a world on the move.Despite their convergences, the relative situatedness of each of thesethree authors has some relevance to the overall tone and theoreticalpositioning of their studies.

Matory (2005) is an African American anthropologist-orisha devotee.His ethnographic forays into the transnational networks of Yorubareligion between Bahia, Brazil and West Africa are characterized by arefusal to disassociate the racial, academic, and religious dimensionsof his own identity. Matory’s narrative of self-disclosure toward the endof the book—i.e., as a “son of Ogum” (a Brazilian Candomblé orisha),and “as a child of the Atlantic slave trade . . . on my journey home”—goes a long way in explaining the somewhat celebratory tone of hisethnographic study (2005: 246–248). Although he admits that all racialand religious imaginaries of belonging in the black Atlantic as anywhereare both situated and strategic (also see Yelvington 2001), these themesdo not receive sustained critical attention. Overall, the co-construction ofAfrican and African diasporic culture that Matory so desperately wantsto demonstrate seems to be driven just as much by his ethnographicprofessionalism (i.e., his commitment to ethnographic rigor) as it is byhis desire to belong and feel personally connected to these diasporichomelands. That is, although Matory’s personal investment in thistransatlantic religion may explain the overall celebratory tone of hisbook, it in no way compromises the veracity of his ethnographic analysis.Matory’s study is a brilliant and nuanced account of black Atlanticreligious transnationalism, sure to become an instant ethnographicclassic in the field.

If Matory’s book is ultimately more celebratory than apprehensiveabout the political differentiations that characterize the contemporaryvivacity of these old transnationalisms, Clarke (2004) is, by contrast,more explicitly suspicious. Clarke’s intellectual and racial positioningdiffers noticeably from those of her interlocutors. She describes herself as:

the ethnographer . . . a non-Yorùbá, nonreligious practitioner, an aca-demic—a cultural outsider whose family narrates its ancestral roots notfrom Africa at all, but from Canada by way of the Caribbean from a line ofJewish diamond traders from then-Palestine . . . . Although I shared my

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interlocutors’ desires for black solidarity, at the time, as a recent immi-grant from Canada to the United States, I was neither comfortableclaiming cultural solidarity nor satisfied with the unqualified descriptionof me as either African or African American (2004: xiii–xiv).

Nonetheless, to her interlocutors Clarke was “black,” and “a victim ofracist America [and] thus in need of redemption” (2004: xiii–xiv). Whatprompted her interest in the black cultural nationalists of OyotunjiVillage and their participation in a post-Black Power movement wastheir conflation of “blackness” with “Africanness” (2004: xiv). Clarkethen is critical of the tendency of her interlocutors and some AfricanAmerican scholars to equate racial imaginaries of blackness withcultural sameness.

Finally, Ayorinde describes herself as being from “mixed parentage,”with one side of her family being Nigerian Yoruba (2004: xii). Begin-ning with a description of a visit to her grandfather’s house inAbeokuta, Nigeria, Ayorinde describes how at least one member of herfamily was captured, transported to Bahia, Brazil as a slave, andeventually returned to Nigeria (2004: xi). She describes her visit toAbeokuta, a trip made after the completion of her fieldwork in Cuba,as the completion of a “personal transatlantic circle” (2004: xi). Herlargely atheoretical, yet substantive account of the relationshipbetween Ocha-Ifá religion, Marxist-Leninist political ideology, andnational identity in post-revolutionary Cuba is compellingly argued. Hermain contention is that, “while in other parts of the Americas, orishaworship can reflect a negotiation between an African and a New Worldidentity, . . . both practitioners and scholars for the most part recog-nize [Ocha-Ifá] as an essentially Cuban form” (2004: 6).

Rethinking transnationalism

Together, the ethnographies reviewed here forge new directions in thefield of transnational studies in general and the black Atlantic in partic-ular. They call on us to rethink certain core notions of transnationalstudies. First, these studies make a strong case for the need to considerforces other than capitalism (in this case, religion) as the mediumsthrough which transnational identifications are forged. Matory (2005),perhaps, makes the strongest case for the historical depth of Yorubatransnational networks and the need to take seriously South-Southmigratory flows. Second, these scholars caution against assuming thattransnationalism has led to the deterritorialization of culturalformations. Rather, as Clarke (2004) notes, transborder cultural identi-fications are “complexly territorial” (10). Finally, these ethnographies

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demonstrate that transnationalism does not necessarily threaten thesurvival of the territorially bounded nation-state (also see Ong 1999). Insome instances, the nation-state can be seen as benefiting from the cul-tural formations that extend beyond its borders.

These ethnographers also reinvigorate studies of the Africandiaspora. First, they challenge the assumptions of generations ofscholarship on the black Atlantic and diaspora studies in general thatcultural flows are unidirectional, moving from homelands outwardsinto diasporic migratory circuits. As Matory (2005) so eloquently illus-trates, homelands and their diasporas are not only coeval but diaspo-ras sometimes crystallize identities back home. Second, we should becareful to avoid privileging textual and dialogic constructions oftransnational identities over other media of building community. Forinstance, although literacy and dialogue have certainly been majorvehicles of black Atlantic cultural reproduction, possession religionscontinue to channel these translocal circuits of historical meaning andcommunity building primarily through the vehicle of the sentientbody. Finally, a close reading of these ethnographies encourages us toavoid the more celebratory tones characteristic of some of the literatureon transnationalism. Rather, we need to pay close attention to multipleways in which so-called “de-territorialized” imaginaries of belongingattempt to institutionalize their own exclusionary practices andhegemonies of knowledge and power.

Notes

Received 27 October 2005; accepted 1 February 2006.

Address correspondence to Kenneth Routon, Department of Anthropology, Mailcode4502, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, IL 62901, USA. E-mail:[email protected]

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