Afro-Cuban religiosity is likely to bring to mind beliefs and
practices with a visibly 'African' flavour - music, dance, spirit
possession, sacrifices and ritual language that have undergone a
transformation, on Cuban soil, under a strong Spanish and Catholic
influence. Much anthropological work has analysed Afro-Cuban
religion's 'syncretic' character in the light of these European
influences, taking as a given that each tradition is relatively
independent, and focusing on well-documented origins in specific
socio-historical environments. In this context, understandings of
religious innovation based on charismatic leaders have resulted in
a top down approach. However, this volume argues that there are
alternatives to cult-centred accounts, by looking at the
relationships between Afro-Cuban traditions, and indeed going
beyond 'traditions' to place the focus on creativity as an embedded
logic in everyday religious practice. From this forward-looking
perspective, ritual engagement is no longer a means of recreating
pre-existing universes but rather of generating, as well as
participating in, an ever-emerging cosmos. Traditions are not
perceived as given doctrines or mental constructs but as perceptual
habits and potencies beyond questions of spirit or matter, mind or
body. Offering a fresh, improvisatory ethnographic vision, this
book recasts the Afro-Cuban religious complex in the terms of the
experts and adepts who creatively sustain it and responds to the
significant fact, often overlooked or ignored, that many Cubans
engage with more than one tradition without any sense of conflict.
Amidst the cacophony of calls to 'creativity' and 'innovation' as
cultural commodities, here's a remarkable collection about the
power of creation as a condition of human existence, rather than
just its outcome. If you want to see what the world might be like
without the very distinction between creator and creation - or, for
that matter, between human beings and the worlds they inhabit -
then look at Afro-Cuban religious traditions, the editors tell us.
The sheer vivacity of the material is astounding, and suggests
altogether new ways to think about not just the classic concerns of
Caribbean anthropology with syncretism and cultural borrowings, but
also basic categories of anthropological thinking such as ritual,
technology, myth and cosmology. Martin Holbraad, Professor of
Social Anthropology, University College London Beyond Tradition,
Beyond Invention shows how far scholarship has transcended the
verificationist searches for origins, reification of traditions as
bounded entities, and sterile quests for typological coherence
that, for too long, dominated the anthropology of Afro-Caribbean
ritual praxis. The contributions not only vividly exemplify how
mechanistic conceptions of tradition and cultural change, or
pseudo-problems such as syncretism, can be overcome by ethnographic
means. They also point towards novel theories of the ever emergent,
hence thoroughly historical, nature of worlds shared by humans,
deities, and spirits. This book ought to inspire all
anthropologists working on complex and 'inventive' ritual
traditions. Stephan Palmie, Professor of Anthropology, The
University of Chicago"
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