Cultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic

257 Pages·2007·2.332 MB·English

by  Nancy Priscilla Naro, Roger Sansi-Roca, David H. Treece (eds.)

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Cultures of the Lusophone
Black Atlantic
Edited by
Nancy Priscilla Naro,
Roger Sansi-Roca, and
David H. Treece
CULTURES OF THE LUSOPHONE BLACK ATLANTIC
Copyright © Nancy Priscilla Naro, Roger Sansi-Roca, and
David H. Treece, 2007.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover ist edition 2007 978-0-230-60047-8
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
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First published in 2007 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-37003-0 ISBN 978-0-230-60698-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230606982
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cultures of the lusophone Black Atlantic / edited by Nancy Priscilla Naro,
Roger Sansi-Roca and David H. Treece.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Portuguese-speaking countries—Civilization—African influences.
2. Blacks—Portuguese-speaking countries—History. 3. Hybridity (Social
sciences) I. Naro, Nancy Priscilla. II. Sansi-Roca, Roger. III. Treece, Dave.
DT594.C85 2007
305.896′017569—dc22 2007006826
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: October 2007
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Contributors vii
Introduction: The Atlantic, between Scylla and Charybdis 1
Nancy Priscilla Naro, Roger Sansi-Roca, and David H. Treece
Part I Colonial Formations
Chapter 1
The Fetish in the Lusophone Atlantic 19
Roger Sansi-Roca
Chapter 2
Kriol without Creoles: Rethinking Guinea’s
Afro-Atlantic Connections (Sixteenth to
Twentieth Centuries) 41
Philip J. Havik
Chapter 3
Historical Roots of Homosexuality in the Lusophone Atlantic 75
Luiz Mott
Part II Migrations and Colonial Cultures
Chapter 4
Atlantic Microhistories: Mobility, Personal Ties, and
Slaving in the Black Atlantic World (Angola and Brazil) 99
Roquinaldo Ferreira
Chapter 5
Colonial Aspirations: Connecting Three Points
of the Portuguese Black Atlantic 129
Nancy Priscilla Naro
Chapter 6
Agudás from Benin: “Brazilian” Identity as a
Bridge to Citizenship 147
Milton Guran
vi CONTENTS
Chapter 7
Emigration and the Spatial Production of
Difference from Cape Verde 159
Kesha D. Fikes
Chapter 8
African and Brazilian Altars in Lisbon—Some Considerations
on the Reconfigurations of the Portuguese Religious Field 175
Clara Saraiva
Part III Hybridity, Multiculturalism,
and Racial Politics
Chapter 9
History and Memory in Capoeira Lyrics from Bahia, Brazil 199
Matthias Röhrig Assunção

Chapter 10
The “Orisha Religion” between Syncretism and
Re-Africanization 219
Stefania Capone
Chapter 11
Undoing Brazil: Hybridity versus Multiculturalism 233
Peter Fry
Index 251
Contributors
Matthias Röhrig Assunção (MA Paris 1979, PhD Freie Universität Berlin,
1990), Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, University of Essex.
His research deals with plantation society, slave and peasant revolts, and
popular culture in Maranhão, northern Brazil, as well as martial arts in the
Black Atlantic. His most recent book is Capoeira. The History of an
Afro-Brazilian Martial Art (Routledge 2005).
Stefania Capone (MA Anthropology UFRJ-Brazil and PhD University of
Paris X-Nanterre), Senior Researcher of the CNRS and has taught at the
University of Paris X-Nanterre since 1997. She is the author of many works
on candomblé, santería in United States and the transnationalisation of
Afro-American religions, including La quête de l’Afrique dans le candomblé.
Pouvoir et tradition au Brésil (Paris: Karthala, 1999) and Les Yoruba du
Nouveau Monde. Religion, ethnicité et nationalisme noir aux Etats-Unis
(2005).
Roquinaldo Ferreira (PhD UCLA, 2003), Assistant Professor, Department
of History, University of Virginia. He has been a fellow at the W.E.B. Du
Bois Institute for African and African American Research (Harvard
University); the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
(Harvard University); and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of
Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (Yale University). His research focuses on
Central Africa (Angola and Kongo) and the African Diaspora to Brazil. His
forthcoming book is provisionally entitled Angola and Brazil in the Atlantic
World : Trade and the Social and Cultural Landscapes of Slaving (ca.1680–
1830) and will be published by Cambridge University Press.
Kesha D. Fikes (PhD UCLA, 2000), Assistant Professor, Department of
Anthropology, University of Chicago. She has worked in Lusophone Africa
and Portugal on race and the bureaucracies of spatial mobility, the relationship
between colonial migrant labor projects and postcolonial/postindependence
migrant labor phenomena.
Peter Fry (PhD University of London, 1969), Professor of Anthropology,
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He has recently published A persistên-
cia da raça: ensaios antropológicas sobre o Brasil e a África austral (Rio de
viii CONTRIBUTORS
Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2005), “Cultures of Difference: The Aftermath
of Portuguese and British Colonial Policies in Southern Africa” (Social
Anthropology) and “O significado da anemia falciforme no contexto da ‘política
racial’ do governo brasileiro 1995–2004” (História, Ciências, Saúde –
Manguinhos).
Milton Guran (PhD UNICAMP, 1986), Photographer and anthropologist,
academic coordinator for the undergraduate course in Social Sciences and
the postgraduate course Photography as a Research Tool in the Social Sciences
in the Institute for the Humanities, Instituto de Humanidades da
Universidade Candido Mendes. He is the author of Agudás – os brasileiros do
Benim (Ed. Nova Fronteira / Ed. Gama Filho, 2000) and Linguagem
fotográfica e informação (Ed. Gama Filho, 2002, 3rd ed). He won the
VITAE Prize (1990), the X Marc Ferrez FUNARTE Prize (1998), and the
Pierre Verger Prize of the Associação Brasileira de Antropologia (2002).
Coordinator of FotoRio – Encontro Internacional de Fotografia do Rio de
Janeiro.
Philip J. Havik (PhD Leiden University, The Netherlands, 2004),
Researcher at the Centre for African and Asiatic Studies of the Instituto de
Investigação Científica Tropical (IICT) in Lisbon, Portugal, and visiting
professor at the Department of History, Federal University of Brasilia,
Brazil. Recent publications include “Silences and Soundbytes: The
Gendered Dynamics of Trade and Brokerage in the Pre-colonial Guinea
Bissau region” (Muenster 2004), “Les Noirs et les ‘Blancs’ de l’Ethnographie
Coloniale: discours sur le genre en Guinée Portugaise (1915–1935)”
(2005), and Creole Societies in the Portuguese Colonial Empire (coedited
with. Malyn Newitt, forthcoming).
Luiz Mott (PhD Unicamp, Brazil), Professor of Anthropology at the
University of Bahia and a political activist. He has worked extensively on
popular religion and the Inquisition in Brazil. His publications include Rosa
Egipcíaca: Uma Santa Africana no Brasil Colonial. (Editora Bertrand l993)
and Escravidão, Homossexualidade e Demonologia. (Editora Icone 1988).
He founded the Grupo Gay da Bahia and has worked on Gay rights and
AIDS prevention.
Nancy Priscilla Naro (PhD University of Chicago, 1981), Lecturer at the
Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (1976–1983), and the
Universidade Federal Fluminense Rio de Janeiro (1983–1995); currently
Reader in Brazilian History at King’s College, London and Co-Director of
the project “Cultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic” at the Centre for the
Study of Brazilian Culture and Society, King’s College London. She has
worked extensively on the transition from slave to free labor. She is the author
of A Slave’s Place, a Master’s World. Fashioning Dependence in Rural Brazil
(Continuum 2000); editor and contributor Blacks, Coloureds and national
identity in nineteenth-century Latin America (ILAS 2003).
CONTRIBUTORS ix
Roger Sansi-Roca (PhD University of Chicago, 2003), Lecturer, Department
of Anthropology, Goldsmith’s College, and Co-Director of the project
“Cultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic” at the Centre for the Study of
Brazilian Culture and Society, King’s College London. His publications
include “Catholic Saints, African Gods, Black Masks and White Heads:
Tracing the History of Some Religious Festivals in Bahia.” (Portuguese
Studies) and Fetishes and Monuments: Afro-Brazilian Art and Culture in
Bahia (forthcoming).
Clara Saraiva, Senior Researcher at the Lisbon Institute for Tropical
Scientific research (IICT) and Professor, Department of Anthropology,
Universidade Nova de Lisboa. She has carried out fieldwork in Guinea-Bissau
on funerary rituals and religion among the Pepel, and on issues of transnational
religion among migrants in Lisbon.
David H. Treece (PhD University of Liverpool, 1987), Camoens Professor,
Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies and Director of the Centre
for the Study of Brazilian Culture and Society, King’s College London. His
publications include Exiles, Allies, Rebels: Brazil’s Indianist Movement,
Indigenist Politics, and the Imperial Nation-State (Greenwood Press 2000)
and “Rhythm And Poetry: Politics, Aesthetics and Popular Music in Brazil
since 1960,” in Anny Brooksbank Jones and Ronaldo Munck (eds.), Cultural
Politics in Latin America (Macmillan 2000) He has done research on literary
Indianism and indigenous politics, Brazilian Cultural History; twentieth-
century Brazilian poetry and popular music; contemporary Brazilian fiction
and its translation. He is currently finalizing a manuscript on black music in
Brazil.