Transatlantic Dialogue: Roger Bastide and the African American Religions

copy Koninklijke Brill NV Leiden 2007 DOI 101163157006607X211969

Journal of Religion in Africa 37 (2007) 336-370 wwwbrillnljra

Transatlantic Dialogue Roger Bastide and the African American Religions

Stefania CaponeDirecteur de recherches CNRS Laboratoire drsquoethnologie et de sociologie comparative MAEmdash

Universiteacute de Paris X 11 Alleacutee de lrsquoUniversiteacute 92023 Nanterre Cedex Francestefaniacaponemaeu-paris10fr

Abstract Th is article considers the role played by Roger Bastide in the development of studies of religions and cultures of African origin in Brazil Bastidersquos interpretation of syncretism in religious phe-nomena has left its imprint on Afro-Brazilian studies I will analyze two paradigms used by this author in his treatment of the logic of syncretism the lsquoprinciple of compartmentalizationrsquo and the opposition between material acculturation and formal acculturation I will show how within the Afro-American religious universe one finds two types of differentially defined syncretism an Afro-African syncretism prior to slavery that lays the foundation for the idea of a basic unity of African culture and an Afro-western syncretism that one must fight today Th e notion of lsquoritual panafricanismrsquo which accounts for this lsquopositiversquo syncretism between religions with a similar ancestry revives the Afro-Brazilian vision of lsquounity in diversityrsquo that is largely inspired by Bastid-ian theories

Keywords Roger Bastide Afro-Brazilian religions Candombleacute syncretism acculturation

Introduction

Roger Bastide was one of the scholars who have most influenced the develop-ment of studies on religions and cultures of African origin in Brazil Upon his arrival in Satildeo Paulo in the late 1930s he initiated an intense dialogue with Brazilian scholars of black cultures He took up interpretative schemes that were already in use at the time while elaborating a singular vision of syncretic processes in Brazilian society1 Following the example of his predecessors Bas-tidersquos work aimed to account for African cultural influences within formerly slaveholding American societies Th e problem of acculturation thus became a

Translated from the French by Adeline Masquelier Tulane University New Orleans USA

JRA 373_02_f2_336-370indd 336JRA 373_02_f2_336-370indd 336 7907 42238 PM7907 42238 PM

S Capone Journal of Religion in Africa 37 (2007) 336-370 337

recurring theme in his work which through notions like lsquosyncretismrsquo and lsquoreinterpretationrsquo attempted to grasp the processes that enabled the formation of African-American cultures In its multiple manifestations Afro-Brazilian culture was thus the lsquosociological laboratoryrsquo in which Bastide tested his theo-ries on cultural contact

But Bastidersquos work is also particularly important because it helps us think of American societiesrsquo relationship to Africa Th e emergence of studies on lsquoAfrican civilizationsrsquo in the Americas coincided in a significant manner with the abolition of slavery at the very same time when blacks were given citizen-ship Th e issue then was to find out whether or not blacks would be integrated into the nation could they be assimilated or were they instead bearers of a foreign lsquoculturersquo of modes of thought that would prevent their integration into western society For a long time an idea prevalent in African American studies was that blacks when they had managed to preserve African traditions belonged to another world and remained lsquoimpermeablersquo (to use Bastidersquos word) to lsquomodern ideasrsquo It was as if the perpetuation of an African memory and the commitment to onersquos origins enabled the societies which Bastide called lsquoAfrican societiesrsquo to escape history whereas lsquoNegro societiesrsquo on the other hand were permeable to history and change Th e formation of a domain of African Americanist knowledge was thus marked from the beginning by an unease an unease in regard to the very idea of physical and cultural mixing and the inevitable degeneration that would ensue as well as an unease con-cerning the severance from the original culture and the impossibility of con-vincingly retracing onersquos cultural origins Th e development of an African Americanist domain has thus been motivated by an obsessive quest that of African origins of a direct link with a territorymdashAfricamdashand with an original culture Th e African past thus becomes both a temporal and a spatial meta-phor that helps generate the idea of a fieldmdashthe African American fieldmdashwhose main classificatory concept is undoubtedly Africa As we shall see nevertheless this Africa is no longer a real Africa it is no longer a continent inhabited by men and women a place from where the ancestors of African Americans were snatched and to where African Americans now wish to return It is instead a lsquomythicalrsquo Africa a symbol that must be reactivated on American soil and a source of legitimation for those who have been initiated into African American religions In the discourse of the social actors and practitioners of these religions the link with Africa and the rupture brought about by slavery are constant points of reference Th e African Americanist domain thus develops around the tension between continuity and discontinu-ity between commitment to and betrayal of origins between lsquopurityrsquo and lsquodegenerationrsquo


338 S Capone Journal of Religion in Africa 37 (2007) 336-370

Nevertheless despite his reliance on prior works it is Bastidersquos interpreta-tion of syncretism in religious phenomena and in particular his famous lsquoprin-ciple of compartmentalizationrsquo2 that have left their imprint on Afro-Brazilian studies In this article I will show how Bastidersquos theory of syncretism is the product of an intense dialogue with Brazilian modernists (such as Mario de Andrade) with folklorists psychiatrists and physicians who studied Afro-Brazilian religions in the 1930s and 1940s (Edison Carneiro and Arthur Ramos in particular) as well as with scholars of African American cultures (such as Melville J Herskovits in the US and Fernando Ortiz in Cuba) Con-trary to what one might think at first glance Brazil did more than simply provide a terrain for a French sociologist arrived from Europe with his ideas and his interpretations of social facts ( faits sociaux) In reality the dialogue with Brazilian scholars was extremely important and Bastide was undoubtedly indebted to his Brazilian colleagues for the analyses of Brazilian reality they had elaborated

In Brazil the debate on Afro-Brazilian culture revolved around notions such as lsquosyncretismrsquo and lsquoreinterpretationrsquo until the end of the 1950s when Pierre Vergerrsquos work inaugurated a new phase in Afro-Brazilian studies that highlighted the links with African cultures Afro-Brazilian studies thus became the hunting ground of lsquoAfricanistsrsquo a new generation of Brazilian anthropolo-gists who inspired by Vergerrsquos work would look to Africa for evidence of the continuity of African tradition in certain Afro-Brazilian religious practices At a time when UNESCO-sponsored research on racial relations marked the beginning of a sociological phase in Afro-Brazilian studies in the Brazilian Sudeste (southeastern region) there was in the Nordeste (northestern region) a return to a culturalist approach aimed at emphasizing the continuity rather than the rupture with African cultures Today this foundational tension between the quest for African cultural roots and the sociological study of black populations continues to shape Afro-Brazilian studies and Vergerrsquos influence is still strong in Brazil among religious practitioners and anthropologists in search of Africa

Ever since the emergence of African American studies it has been a matter of finding Africa in America the methods and results varied but the founda-tional tension between these two poles was always there Th us for Arthur Ramos (1979 [1937] vxiii) who wrote the first book on black cultures in the New World in 1937 it was necessary to preserve the method of the school of Raymundo Nina Rodrigues (the precursor of Afro-Brazilian studies) by study-ing lsquoAfrican cultures to better understand blacks in the New Worldrsquo Roger Bastide (1971 [1967] 8) on the other hand wrote thirty years later that lsquothe best method of investigating African American social groups is not to start in



Africa and see how much of what we find here survives across the Atlantic but rather to study African American cultural patterns as they exist today and then work gradually back from them towards Africarsquo From Africa to America and vice-versa one cannot apparently make sense without the other

Th is has led among blacks of the New World to the identification of cul-tural paradigms that generated what might be called lsquoa geography of African culturesrsquo in which each culture has set the tone for onemdashand only onemdashregion of America (Bastide ibid 11) In the British colonies the dominant African culture was supposedly Fanti-Ashanti while Spanish and Portuguese colonies were allegedly influenced by Yoruba culture and French colonies by Dahomean culture3 But the quest for cultural origins is not simply the con-cern of anthropologists Th e discourse on origins is ubiquitous among practi-tioners of African American religions If there is a lsquoverificationist epistemologyrsquo (Scott 1991) in this domain it is already present at an embryonic though significant stage in the discourse of ritual actors Th is convergence of dis-coursesmdashone indigenous the other scholarlymdashruns across the entirety of the African American field (cf Capone 1999 Palmieacute 2002)

In order to show the range of this lsquotransatlantic dialoguersquo between the Bra-zilian lsquoAfricanistsrsquo and the French lsquoBrazilianistsrsquo in which Africa occupied a central place I will analyze two types of paradigm used by Roger Bastide when he considered the logic of syncretism the lsquoprinciple of compartmentalizationrsquo (principe de coupure) and the opposition between material acculturation and formal acculturation My analysis will shed light on two extremely important elements of Bastidian theory the negationmdashwith the principle of compart-mentalizationmdashof syncretism as a form of mixing and the reaction to the theory of the marginal man torn between two universes and personified by the African American in general and the Afro-Brazilian in particular We shall see that for Bastide there is a lsquogoodrsquo and a lsquobadrsquo syncretism the former retains classificatory distinctions while the latter irredeemably dissolves them In the first case Africa is preserved in the second it is dissolved in a new reality characterized by cultural discontinuity In Bastidersquos thought these two syncre-tisms set the stage for the tension between lsquoafricanitudersquo and lsquoneacutegritudersquo where Africa finds all its significance in relation to the African American present

With the principle of compartmentalization Bastide opened the way to the process of re-Africanization or what we could call the purification and legiti-mization of religious traditions Th e principle of compartmentalization and the notion of lsquocultural encystmentrsquo (enkystement culturel ) which leads one to accept the unreality of syncretism established the theoretical bases of current struggles against syncretism and of re-Africanization movements (Capone 1999) If there was an accommodation to the dominant civilization it was in



fact lsquocounter-acculturativersquo because accommodation was nothing but a simu-lacrum to better preserve African cultures and traditions Th e notion of syn-cretism was thus transformed into another notion that presently enjoys widespread currency in Brazil and the United States the notion of lsquoresistant accommodationrsquo Once having originated out of a transatlantic dialogue between Europe and Latin America it is from the United States that such theories of syncretism are nowadays re-emerging under different guises I will show how two types of syncretism are operating within the African American religious universe an lsquoAfro-Africanrsquo syncretism from which the belief in a basic unity of lsquoAfrican culturersquo originated and an lsquoAfro-westernrsquo syncretism that must be eliminated Th e notion of lsquoritual panafricanismrsquo which I propose to account for this lsquopositiversquo syncretism between two lsquosister religionsrsquo re-enacts the Afro-Brazilian dream of lsquounity in diversityrsquo that is largely inspired by Bastidian theories

Roger Bastide or the mirror of the other

Roger Bastide was born on 1 April 1898 in Nicircmes south of France the son of teachers He was raised as a Protestant and worked as a teacher of philosophy in several secondary schools in France Having long been fascinated by the Other he embarked in 1930 on his first sociological research on a group of immigrants in France and produced Les Armeacuteniens agrave Valence a study that appeared in the Revue Internationale de Sociologie in 1931 As Ravelet (1993) noted this first study on acculturation brings to mind the opening of his most famous work Les religions africaines au Breacutesil (1960) by raising issues that are at the heart of the Bastidian analysis of Afro-Brazilian cultures and religions the exile from the native soil the memory embedded in the hearts and minds of immigrants (Bastide would later speak of corporeal imprinting of collective memory) and the re-inscription of this memory in a new territory As he wrote lsquoA native land is above all about the soil when this soil is taken away from you can you build an artificial territory Armenians thought that they could keep Armenia alive by carrying in their hearts and minds images of the distant landrsquo (in Ravelet 1993) One already detects in this 1931 text the preoccupation with processes of acculturation that would underlie the entirety of Bastidersquos work until his death in 1974

In 1938 Bastide was invited to Brazil to take up the chair of sociology at the University of Satildeo Paulo vacated by Claude Leacutevi-Strauss Th e contract he signed with the university specified that he was to teach Durkheimian sociol-ogy and in reaction to Leacutevi-Straussrsquos resignation to conduct research among



the Nambikwara and the Bororo obliged him to confine his research to the vacation periods of the academic year Th is arrangement accounts for his lim-ited fieldwork In Le Candombleacute de Bahia (1958 14) Bastide admits that he did not spend more than nine months in total in the field A maximum of five months were spent in Salvador de Bahia spread over seven consecutive years from 1944 to 1951 His work thus took place through ongoing contacts with lsquolocal expertsrsquo rather than as an extended observation of the rituals he studied lsquo this meant that I could get to know well a [house of ] Candombleacute during the three vacation months Th e rituals that took place during the time when there were no vacations I could not learn about themrsquo (in Cardoso 1994 72)

Early in his stay in Brazil Bastide focused on his teaching and his intense work as a critic in several Brazilian publications Th e years from 1939 to 1945 were the most prolific of his career with four books 81 reviews and 217 arti-cles an output that translates into almost an article a week (Ravelet 1993) Bastide started reading the work of Brazilian sociologists and kept company with a number of intellectuals including Gilberto Freyre Sergio Milliet and Paulo Duarte But it is above all Bastidersquos affinities with the modernist group of Satildeo Paulo and especially with Mario de Andrade that shaped his first steps in Brazil Fernanda A Peixoto (1988) suggests that in his discovery of Brazil Bastide conducted himself as a lsquotourist apprenticersquo like his privileged inter-locutor Mario de Andrade (1996) who coined the phrase It is in his debate with the modernists that the French sociologist refined his gaze as the for-eigner searching for the lsquoBrazilian soulrsquo Th is intensive dialogue emerges in Bastidersquos writings on Brazilian art and especially in his musings on the baroque and the work of Aleijadinho the famous mulatto sculptor of baroque religious imagery during the eighteenth-century gold rush in Minas Gerais In his early writings one already finds Bastidersquos questioning the authenticity and original-ity of Brazilian culture and his particular concern for syncretism without which it is not possible to understand Brazilian reality Yet the analysis which Bastide put forward around what he called lsquoaesthetic meacutetissagersquo already carries within it its counterweight an lsquoaesthetic resistancersquo to the work not only in plastic arts but also in music in songs and in Afro-Brazilian rituals (Peixoto 1988 16)

It was not until early 1944 that Bastide made his first trip in the Nordeste from 19 January to 29 February During this trip in which he visited Recife Joatildeo Pessoa and Salvador de Bahia he met the novelist Jorge Amado who would become his cicerone in the world of Bahian Candombleacute Conversations with Candombleacute initiates thereafter took place through the great Bahian writer as an intermediary or through rather precarious linguistic exchanges where according to Amado lsquoFrench and Nagocircrsquo were intermixed since despite



having spent six years in Brazil Bastide did not speak Portuguese fluently (Luumlhning 2002 10)4 During the remainder of his stay in Brazil Bastide would return to Salvador only in January 1949 and August 1951 After return-ing to France he would make two other short trips a week-long trip in Sep-tember 1962 and another one in August 1973 accompanied by his former student Renato Ortiz (Ravelet 1993) During his second trip to Salvador in 1949 his good friend Pierre Verger was in Africa and could not accompany him on his visits to Candombleacute houses (Verger 1994) It was apparently during this trip that Bastide participated in his first divination session at the house of the pai-de-santo Vidal in the Brotas quarter and was told of his mythical bond with the orixaacute Xangocirc Ogodocirc5 In 1951 during his third trip in the famous terreiro (cult house) of the Axeacute Opocirc Afonjaacute Bastide carried out the ceremony of consecration of necklaces called lsquolavagem de contasrsquo (cleansing of the beads) through which a minimal commitment is established between a person and his protective divinity6 At that time Verger had already become his principal interlocutor he was a kind of local representative of the world of Candombleacute and a translator of the religious universe for his fel-low countryman

Upon his arrival in Brazil in 1946 after a long journey across Latin Amer-ica Verger had met Bastide in Satildeo Paulo Th e latter advised him to go to Bahia to find the imprints of Africa which Verger already knew because he had worked there as a photographer Verger arrived in Salvador on 5 August 1946 After falling under the spell of the city and its religious traditions he decided to settle there7 As Bastide (1958) puts it Verger was looking to highlight black Bahiansrsquo loyalty to Africa through a comparison between Africa and Bahia As the spiritual son of the matildee-de-santo (chief priestess) of the Axeacute Opocirc Afonjaacute Senhora drsquoOxum who had succeeded the famous matildee Aninha who had died in 1938 Verger was not very interested in anthropology during his successive trips to Africa he took notes only to lsquofulfill his role as a messengerrsquo and to be able to lsquotalk about Africarsquo to his Bahian friends (Meacutetraux and Verger 1994 62) In 1952 he left for Porto Novo (Benin) from where he made some brief forays into Nigeria It is during one of these short trips that he obtained a letter from the king of Oshogbo for Senhora (ibid 158)8

But the greatest token of recognition which Verger brought back from Africa for his Bahian matildee-de-santo was a letter from the Alaacuteagravefin (king) of Oyo to Senhora in which she was addressed as Igraveyaacute Nasoacute this was the oyegrave (honorific title) of the priestess in charge of the worship of Shangoacute in Oyo the former capital of the Yoruba empire as well as the name of the founder of Engenho Velho the first Candombleacute terreiro in Salvador de Bahia Senhorarsquos son Deoscoacuteredes M Dos Santos remembers this event



In August of 1952 Pierre Verger arrived from Africa with a xereacute and an edu ara Xangocirc that had been entrusted to him by the Ona Mogba (priest of Xangocirc) on orders from the Oba Adeniran Adeyemi Alafin of Oyo so that they could be delivered to Maria Bibiana do Espirito Santo Senhora Th ese gifts were accompanied by a letter that granted her the title of Iyaacute Nassocirc something that was confirmed in the terreiro of the Axeacute Opocirc Afonjaacute on August 9 1953 in the presence of all the lsquosonsrsquo [initiates] of the house the representatives of several terreiros intellectuals friends of the sect [sic] writers journalists etc Th is event marks the renewal of former religious relations between Africa and Bahia relations which later intensified because Matildee Senhora maintained a permanent exchange of gifts and messages with kings and other person-alities of the sect in Africa (Santos 1988 18-19)9

Th e symbolic value of this missive which the direct descendant of the god Shangoacute in Africa10 was addressing to Senhora was crucial to the assertion of her authority for she was matildee-de-santo of a terreiro of which Xangocirc was the protective orixaacute Moreover with this title Senhora became the legitimate heir to the lsquorealrsquo Nagocirc (Yoruba) tradition lsquoBy abolishing the past thanks to this distinction Senhora became spiritually the founder of the Candombleacute family of the Ketu [Yoruba sub-group] ldquonationrdquo in Bahia all of whom originated from Barroquinha (Engenho Velho cult house)rsquo (Verger 1981 30) Verger spent many years dividing his time between Brazil and Africa where in 1953 he had been initiated into the Ifaacute cult and become a babalawo (diviner) under the ritual name of Fatumbi lsquoIfaacute brought me back into the worldrsquo Th rough his comings and goings he facilitated a flow of information that symbolically connected Brazil to Africa11

Bastidersquos privileged relationship with Verger maintained through an intense correspondence between Satildeo Paulo and Salvador eventually led him to make his first research trip to Africa from 13 July to 22 September 1958 During the trip Verger played the role of cicerone as Amado had done in Salvador in 194412 It was a research trip carried out under the auspices of the Institut Franccedilais drsquoAfrique Noire for the purpose of lsquofinding [in Africa] the sources of Brazilian religionsrsquo (Ravelet 1993) Th us if Bastide helped Verger discover lsquoAfrica in Brazilrsquo during their 1946 encounter it was Verger who twelve years later showed him the lsquoinfluence of Brazil in Dahomey and Nigeriarsquo (Verger 2002 39) During this trip Bastide was wearing his consecrated necklace like a lsquopassportrsquo that would open the doors of communities of initiates of the Shangoacute cult to him Bastide was welcomed like a lsquobrotherrsquo by those initiates and received from them the name Aroselo malogbo which Verger (ibid 47) translates as lsquothe one who owns an oșe (a double-edged axe symbol of Shangoacute) will never grow oldrsquo

Th e trip took place shortly after the defense of his Doctorat drsquoEacutetat in 1957 and before Roger Bastide was offered the chair of social and religious anthro-



pology at the Sorbonne in Paris Bastide had returned temporarily to France in 1952 teaching in Paris from November to June and in Satildeo Paulo from June to November before returning to his native country for good in 1954 (Ravelet 1993) In 1952 he participated in the UNESCO Project on race relations in Brazil Initiated thanks to his friendship with Alfred Meacutetraux whom he met in Satildeo Paulo in 1951 this first collaboration would lead to new research on Afri-can students in France Th e African journey among Yoruba marked the end of his Afro-Brazilian fieldwork From then on Bastide would devote his research to social psychology In 1959 he created the Center for Social Psychiatry and following the death of Georges Gurvitch in 1965 became director of the Cen-ter for the Sociology of Knowledge13 In 1968 Bastide retired but this did not prevent him from continuing his activities at the Center for Social Psychiatry in Paris Before his death Bastide managed to return briefly to Brazil and made a last visit to Salvador in 1973 His lsquoadventure with the Otherrsquo finally ended on 10 April 1974

Th e lsquoprinciple of compartmentalizationrsquo or the negation of marginal man

Th e Bastidian vision of Afro-Brazilian religions and of Bahian Candombleacute in particular is strongly influenced by the work previously undertaken by Brazil-ian lsquoAfricanistsrsquo14 In his writings one finds a dualistic vision of Brazilian soci-ety that had already attained dominance in the studies of black cultures at the time of Bastidersquos arrival in Brazil Th is vision was already present in the turn-of-the-century writings of Raymundo Nina Rodrigues (1900) who distin-guished African blacks (former slaves born in Africa) for whom conversion was nothing but a lsquojuxtaposition of exterioritiesrsquo from Creole blacks (lsquothe Negroesrsquo) who were responsible for the degeneration of African religious prac-tices and their subsequent mixing15 Roger Bastide repeated those distinctions while formulating a theory of syncretism based on this essential difference between blacks who were members of lsquotraditionalrsquo Candombleacute and blacks who were members of lsquosyncreticrsquo cults For the former syncretism was but an illu-sion for the latter it led to the loss of African tradition and the fusion of dis-tinct cultural contributions

Th e keystone of the Bastidian theory of syncretism is undoubtedly the lsquoprinciple of compartmentalizationrsquo (principe de coupure) which allows for the alternation or cohabitation in a single individual or within a single group of logics or categories that are supposedly otherwise incompatible and irreduc-ible (cf Mary 2000) According to Bastide the principle of compartmental-ization should enable one to live simultaneously in two distinct and



contradictory worlds one can thus be a good Catholic while being at the same time a Candombleacute adept Th e western world and the African world can thereby coexist without mixing Th e principle of compartmentalization also implies the existence of two types of thought western thought lsquomodern and rationalrsquo and African thought lsquotraditional and mysticalrsquo Th is difference underlies the principle of compartmentalization only when a serious change of mentality occurs thanks to what Bastide (1970a) calls lsquoformal accultura-tionrsquo can these two types of thought merge Th e evolution of this concept from the 1950s to the time of Bastidersquos death is not without contradictions and unexpected reversals With the principle of compartmentalization Bas-tide tried to reconcile Leacutevy-Bruhlrsquos law of mystical participations and Durkheimrsquos law of classifications bringing together two theoretical positions that were hardly compatible Th e principle of compartmentalization aimed to demonstrate that rather than being generalized as Leacutevy-Bruhl claimed mysti-cal participation followed a very precise logic Nevertheless Bastide was caught in the same trap as Leacutevy-Bruhl (who assumed the existence of a primitive mentality that differed from that of the west) when he claimed that primitive classifications do not form classes that fit into each other lsquolike in our western thoughtrsquo because lsquothey do not permit the formal or concrete functioning of operational mechanismsrsquo (Bastide 1954 494) Th e notion of incompatibility between these two mentalities was to be further developed in the 1958 text where Bastide wondered about the limitations of the principle of compart-mentalization If compartmentalization were complete it would make action and thought impossible It was necessary therefore to identify a lsquowill to link the compartments of the realrsquo through the creation of a lsquodialectic of the cos-mosrsquo (Bastide 1958 241) Exu the divine trickster who enables communica-tion between the world of gods and the world of humans thus becomes this dialectical element that is the divinity that permits the lsquocommunicability of classificatory conceptsrsquo

Th e principle of compartmentalization can thus shed light on the problem of syncretism because on the one hand it enables a lsquoduality without marginal-ityrsquo (Bastide 1954 499) while on the other it negates mixing lsquoTh e term ldquosyncretismrdquo is proper but without explanation it can lead to confusion It is not about mixing it is about role substitution as in role playing depend-ing on whether one belongs to one compartment of the real or the otherrsquo (ibid 500) Th is introduces two extremely important concepts of Bastidian theory the negation of syncretism as mixing and the answer to the theory of marginal man torn between two universes Th is marginality is resolved by what A Mary (2000 186) rightly calls lsquothe magic of the principle of compartmentalizationrsquo16



Th e theory of marginal man had been central to the debates on the pro-cesses of acculturation in particular in the work of Park (1928) and Stone-quist (1937) Th is debate on acculturation was taken up in Brazil by Arthur Ramos who in 1937 published a final chapter on lsquoblack acculturationrsquo in his study of black cultures in the New World In this book he cited the Commis-sion for the Study of Acculturation formed by Robert Redfield Ralph Linton and Melville J Herskovits which had defined processes of acculturation as lsquophenomena resulting from direct and continuous contact between groups of individuals from distinct cultures and that provoke changes in original cul-tural models from one or several of the groups in questionrsquo (Herskovits 1938) Th ese processes of cultural and social change also provoke the disorganization and reorganization of individual personalities R Park (1928) used the expres-sion lsquomarginal manrsquo to designate the member of a cultural group who after coming into contact with another group lost his characteristics without becoming integrated into the dominant group He thus becomes lsquomarginalrsquo since he is at the margins of two cultures the culture that he lost and the other that he has not yet assimilated (Ramos 1979 244) According to these theo-ries cultural syncretism also apparently leads to a lsquopsychic syncretismrsquo Bas-tidersquos principle of compartmentalization was designed to challenge this link by showing that it is possible to live between two distinct and incompatible worlds without experiencing any tension

In his analysis of syncretic processes however Bastide was indebted not only to North American theories on acculturationmdashwith which he would interact until the endmdashbut also to analyses produced by Brazilian scholars in particular Arthur Ramos who at the time of Bastidersquos arrival in Brazil was the leading authority on Afro-Brazilian cultures and religions17 Without a doubt Ramos had a great influence on the future evolution of Bastidersquos thought in particular his interest in social psychology central as it was to theories of acculturation which posited that reaction against assimilation to a new cul-ture could result in lsquocounter-acculturativersquo movements18 In such contexts cultures of origin would keep their lsquopsychological strengthrsquo to compensate for feelings of inferiority as well as through the lsquoprestige bestowed upon individu-als when a reversion to former pre-acculturative situation occursrsquo (Ramos 1979 [1937] 245) We shall see that these ideas would be taken up by Bastide when he tackled the problem of lsquoNegro-African collective memoryrsquo and the move-ment of lsquoreturn to Africarsquo

In reality these exchanges with Ramos were but one facet of a more com-plex dialogue in which two other specialists on black cultures in the New World intervened as well the North American Melville J Herskovits and the Cuban Fernando Ortiz While Herskovits became as we shall see Bastidersquos



main interlocutor when Bastide tried to differentiate his work from the accul-turation theories elaborated by his great American rival Fernando Ortiz was one of the few Latin American researchers to make an original contribution to the discourse on acculturation processes Fernando Ortiz knew the work of Nina Rodrigues whom he cited repeatedly in his own writings (Ortiz 1939 86) and with whom he shared an interest in the theories of Italian criminologists Cesare Lombroso and Enrico Ferri Like Arthur Ramos and his master Nina Rodrigues Fernando Ortiz thought that it was necessary to study African cultures in order to understand the lsquosurvivalsrsquo of these cultures in America To do that however one should first study African American cultures and then retrace their African origins (Iznaga 1989 6) Like Arthur Ramos who had published Guerra e Relaccedilotildees de Raccedila in 1943 in order to challenge the notion of race by positioning himself against the racist theories of Nazism Fernando Ortiz wrote El Engantildeo de las Razas first published in 1946 in which he dem-onstrated the impossibility of studying Latin American cultures in terms of race Only syncretism and mixing could account for Latin American realities Ortiz (1940 136-137) has been the only one to elaborate a new concept to describe the encounter between cultures transculturacioacuten Th is Spanish neolo-gism permitted a certain freedom from a value system based on a set of norma-tive concepts tightly linked to the term lsquoacculturationrsquo as Malinowski (1940) rightly noted in his introduction to Ortizrsquos study Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azuacutecar Transculturation referred to lsquoextremely complex transmuta-tionsrsquo (Ortiz 1940 137) that give birth to a new culture in which the ele-ments in contact come to fuse an idea that calls to mind the lsquosociology of interpenetration of civilizationsrsquo that Bastide set out to develop in his study on Les religions africaines au Breacutesil (1960)

Syncretism refuted

Elsewhere (Capone 2001) I have shown how far from offering a possible interpretation of the processes of syncretism Bastidersquos principle of compart-mentalization appears instead to adopt prejudicesmdashdear to a certain anthro-pological traditionmdashthat equate mixing with a sign of degeneration from an original state of cultural purity Th e principle of compartmentalization is cer-tainly not about lsquomestizo logicrsquo Indeed according to Bastide in addition to the classical opposition between magical syncretism and religious syncretism there was another opposition between what he called lsquomosaic syncretismrsquo (within which the principle of compartmentalization can function) and the fusional syncretism which was instead condemned to mixing In the lsquomosaic



syncretismrsquo which characterizes the Nagocirc cult houses there is a separation rather than a fusion between the different rituals (Bastide 1971 [1967]) As in the case of the principle of compartmentalization one finds here the idea that there are different compartments of the real that form classes that do not fit with each other (Bastide 1954) Th e separation between different rituals gen-erates what Bastide called a lsquomosaic developmentrsquo which he saw as character-izing Africa Such a concept allowed for the maintenance of African traditions without the possibility of mixing and degradation as was the case in Maroon societies lsquoTh us the marrons had an African model available which would allow them to establish ethnically distinct cultsmdasheg the Kromanti winti and the Ewe vodousmdashon a basis of co-existence Th is they did by setting them up as separate fraternities with different music dances and languages for their chantsrsquo (Bastide 1971 [1967] 69) Th e process of mosaic formation thus does not imply a fusion of cultural features and rituals from different peoples What we have here is a syncretism without mixing

Yet when Bastide talks about lsquoBantursquo blacks or lsquoNegro societiesrsquo whom he sees as having lost their connection with their original culture and an African collective memory we are dealing with another type of syncretism it is the fusional syncretism in which the constituent elements cannot be identified An example of fusional syncretism is provided by Macumba another Afro-Brazilian religion which represents for Bastide lsquoa civilisation [sic] which is the result of cultural fusionmdashand one where the constituent elements have so far coalesced into a single whole that they are no longer individually recognisablersquo (ibid 82-83) On the other hand the Caboclo Candombleacute which is suppos-edly less traditional than the Nagocirc Candombleacute has managed to preserve an essentially African structure by maintaining a separation of ritual spaces lsquoIn the temple we find a sharp distinction between the ldquoterritoryrdquo allotted to the Indian spirits and the African sanctuary or peacutegi while during ceremonies the vodous or orisha are invoked in African languages the caboclos in Portuguesersquo (Bastide 1996c 89)19

Mosaic syncretism preserves the separation of classes while fusional syncre-tism confounds them For Bastide these two types of syncretism correspond to two types of African American society (one lsquoAfricanrsquo the other lsquoNegrorsquo) and two types of more or less traditional black (the Yoruba and the Bantu) Among the lsquoBantursquo there is no longer a principle of compartmentalization at work because syncretism has brought about a significant change of mentality

Despite the fluidity of Bastidersquos thought one finds here again the dualistic structure that opposes two types of black and two types of response to accul-turation the notion of compartmentalization for lsquotraditionalrsquo blacks a process which does not lead to a change of mentality and lsquoformal acculturationrsquo for lsquomodernrsquo blacks which leads to psychic transformations and the interpenetration



of structures of feeling ( formes de sentir) We have seen that this dualistic vision of Brazilian society was already present in the writings of Nina Rodrigues who opposed lsquoAfricanrsquo blacks and the Creole blacks (lsquothe Negroesrsquo) who were responsible for the degradation of religious practices Bastide takes up this distinction that had been reaffirmed in the works of Edison Carneiro and Arthur Ramos Th us despite the influence of theories on acculturation that underscored the impossibility of a complete cultural transfer an essential difference was posited in Afro-Brazilian studies between blacks with a differing degree of attachment to tradition (cf Capone 1999 2000) Arthur Ramos (2005 15) had already written in 1934 that African cultures had not been transplanted in their original purity but that they had been lsquomixed and trans-formed in a process that we now call acculturationrsquo Th e Brazilian school of Nina Rodrigues was in his opinion characterized by lsquothe study of the transformation of these cultures and in particular of religious syncretismrsquo In Nina Rodriguesrsquos book Lrsquoanimisme feacutetichiste des Negravegres bahianais one finds constant references to lsquohybrid associationsrsquo and lsquomixed beliefsrsquo that resulted from contact between African religions and Catholicism founding what he called lsquothe illusion of catechesisrsquo Yet this notion which is behind the Bastidian theory of the mask operates only among a certain category of blacks the lsquoAfricanrsquo blacks who have learned to preserve their traditions in the face of acculturative pressures

Bastidersquos entire work is thus structured around an unending play between two opposite poles resulting from this dualistic vision of Brazilian society Bastide progressively replaces the lsquoAfricansrsquolsquoNegroesrsquo dichotomy of Nina Rodrigues (taken up by Bastide in 1967 when he analyses the different models of social organization in Les Ameacuteriques noires) with another internal dichotomy lsquoNagocirc blacksrsquolsquoBantu blacksrsquo which generates an avalanche set of oppositions

1 mosaic syncretismfusional syncretism 2 puritydegradation 3 religionmagic 4 resistanceadaptation 5 traditionmodernity 6 African religious civilizationclass ideology 7 African societyNegro society 8 continuitydiscontinuity 9 material acculturationformal acculturation20

Th is opposition between mosaic syncretism and fusional syncretism calls to mind another oppositionmdashdeveloped in Bastidersquos 1960 studymdashbetween reli-gious syncretism and magical syncretism According to Bastide religion must



be distinguished from magic when we start dealing with the domain of collec-tive representations lsquoTh e law of religious thought is the law of symbolism based on mystic analogies or correspondences the law of magic thought is the law of accumulation intensification and additionrsquo (1978 [1960] 277) Religious syncretism thus operates through correspondence whereas magical syncretism works through addition In the first case the principle of compart-mentalization can be activated whereas in the second case mixing prevents any symbolic order

Yet for Bastide Brazilian blacks were characterized by differing relation-ships to religion and magic In his 1960 text he writes that lsquothe Bantu assign a more important place to magic in the activities of the Candombleacute than do the Yorubarsquo (ibid 280) Among the Bantu syncretism brings about a true change in mentality (ibid) Th e dichotomy between mosaic syncretism and fusional syncretism thus recovers another dichotomy between a culture that keeps its strength thanks to the principle of compartmentalization (lsquoNagocircrsquo in Brazil or lsquoLucumiacutersquo in Cuba) and one that is characterized by lsquoits assimilative powers its propensity toward syncretism and the fusion of civilizationsrsquo (the lsquoBantursquo culture)21

Th is idea is reaffirmed in his 1967 essay on lsquoblack Americasrsquo when Bastide refers to the laws of syncretism in Catholic America among them lsquothe ethnic lawrsquo According to this law syncretism is more pronounced lsquowhen we turn from the Dahomeans to the Yoruba and from them to the Bantursquo considered as lsquothe most susceptible of all to external influencesrsquo (Bastide 1971 [1967] 154) Th e different elements of the belief systems of the most conservative ethnic groups within which one finds mosaic syncretism constitute for Bas-tide objects of lsquosolid unalterable naturersquo (des solides indeacuteformables) (ibid) that do not lead to identification and are even less likely to produce fusion Th us in contrast to what he was writing in 1954 on the subject of Afro-Catholic syncretism in which the sincerity of Candombleacute initiates who were also fer-vent Catholics could not be questioned in 1967 Bastide wrote lsquoEven today the priests and priestesses of Brazil recognise that syncretism is simply a white mask superimposed upon black godsrsquo (Bastide 1996c [1967] 161) Where the mosaic syncretism is at work there is therefore no confusion and no mixing

Bastide also distinguishes two environments in which African American cultures were born the Catholic milieu and the Protestant milieu In the lat-ter mixing has not taken a syncretic form but instead the form of a process which Herskovits called lsquoreinterpretationrsquo22 Th e slave thus created lsquoa Negro (rather than an African) brand of Christianityrsquo in which the principle of com-partmentalization no longer operated On the other hand in Catholic Ame-rica one can observe the laws governing the formation of syncretism (Bastide



1971 [1967] 153) We have seen that for Bastide syncretism is lsquoethnically speakingrsquo more pronounced depending on whether one moves from the Dahomeans to the Yoruba and the Bantu the latter being considered as lsquomore responsive than most to foreign influencesrsquo (ibid 106) But from this perspec-tive there are also different syncretisms depending on the level examined one goes from the lsquomorphological planersquo (mosaic syncretism which excludes mix-ing) to the lsquoinstitutionalrsquo (among other things the system of correspondences between African gods and Catholic saints) and thence to the lsquoplane of events dependent on collective awareness [conscience collective] (the facts of reinter-pretation)rsquo (ibid 154) One finds here again the idea of classes that fit together and allow for the coexistence of different elements without leading to fusion or mixing lsquoSpatial syncretism has one highly characteristic feature On account of the solid unalterable nature of those objects which come within its orbit it cannot achieve true fusion but remains on the plane of coexistence between disparate objects Th is is what I earlier described as ldquomosaic syncretismrdquo and it is just as likely to be found in a broad context as in a restricted onersquo (ibid 154-55)

From this idea of syncretism without mixing Bastide develops his theory of the mask which will turn out to be central to the claim of ritual lsquopurityrsquo made by lsquoguardians of African traditionsrsquo Th e mosaic formation makes possible a reconsideration of Afro-Catholic syncretism lsquoMoments in time like objects in space can form solid clearly delimited points unchanging in the nature of their syncretism Th e Christian moment remains Christian the African moment African they come into juxtaposition solely as masses in spacersquo (ibid 159)

Between Africanitude and Neacutegritude

A few years later Bastide would devote a part of his book Le prochain et le lointain (1970a) to the analysis of formal acculturation and material accul-turation In this analysis one finds echoes of his original distinction between two types of syncretismmdasha distinction that is now rethought in accordance with the psychology of the form For Bastide material acculturation is about the diffusion of a cultural feature the change of a ritual the propagation of a myth Formal acculturation on the other hand is the acculturation of intel-lect and affect the lsquoacculturation of the psychersquo all the way to lsquothe transformations or the metamorphoses of sentiment and conscious apprehensionrsquo (ibid 139)

Formal acculturation allowed Bastide to replace the term reinterpretation used by his North American colleague Melville J Herskovits lsquoTh e term rein-terpretation can be taken to mean two things one can think of the reinterpre-



tation of African realities in western terms but one can just as well think of the reinterpretation of western realities in African termsrsquo (ibid) According to Bas-tide Herskovits was only interested in this second aspect when he analyzed the lsquodouble householdsrsquo (double meacutenage) as the reinterpretation of African polygamy (ibid)

Why this predilection One might think that this man however resolutely antiracist seems to unconsciously perpetuate a white ideology ascribing to black people an inability to think like Westerners he would thus perpetuate Nina Rodrigues by add-ing to the illusion of catechesis the illusion of assimilation this is what would explain why Herskovitsrsquos opponents are found mostly among black sociologists who like Frazier denounce in Th e Myth of the Negro Past a contemporary form of white preju-dicersquo (ibid)

Bastidersquos critique of the notion of reinterpretation was aimed straight at North American cultural theories and at Herskovitsrsquos work23 But Bastide falls back into the culturalist trap when he starts valorizing not culture in general or lsquocultural traitsrsquo in particular but religion in relation to global society One finds in his writings the idea previously elaborated by DuBois (1903) and Herskovits (1941) of religion as the African lsquocultural corersquo Th is ongoing con-frontation with his great rival at the time led Bastide to accuse Herskovits of perpetuating a white ideology according to which blacks were incapable of thinking like westerners Yet who more than Bastide has insisted on the difference of mental structures between blacks and whites and particularly between blacks of a lsquodifferent naturersquo And when he accuses Herskovits of believing in the lsquodouble indissolubilityrsquo (double indissolubiliteacute) of mentalities black as well as western is he not critiquing his own theory of the mask and his principle of compartmentalization24

To escape this ambiguity generated by his own use of the term lsquoreinterpreta-tionrsquo Bastide (1970a 140) suggested the use of the term lsquoformal acculturationrsquo which he thought was more neutral Th e expression lsquoformal acculturationrsquo had been conjured up by Bastidersquos encounter with future African administrators who had been trained in European universities at the time of decolonization In Bastidersquos opinion these Africans had experienced profound transforma-tions in their lsquoperceptive logical and affective structuresrsquo Bastide accused them of being lsquoEuropeanized intellectualsrsquo who celebrate an lsquoexoticrsquo Africa and above all a lsquowhite manrsquos Africarsquo Speaking of Aimeacute Ceacutesaire the Martinican advocate of neacutegritude he underscores the divorce that is now finalized between the real Africa and the image that remains of it in what he calls lsquothe myth of Neacutegritudersquo lsquo the poetrsquos Africa inevitably emerged as a product of imagina-tion put together from books by ethnologists who do not unfortunately



always give a very precise picture of the facts His neacutegritude is thus more of a quasi-political manifestation than a return to the only genuine Africa so faith-fully preserved by the African American lower ordersrsquo (1971 [1967] 220)

Th e transformation of Africa from lsquoa physical realityrsquo safeguarded in Amer-ica to a set of ambiguous contradictory images lsquoideologies for the intellectu-als messianism for the masses and more politics than mysticismrsquo (ibid 222) is for Bastide the unavoidable consequence of industrialization and moder-nity lsquo (at least in the capital cities) industrialization has intensified competi-tion on the labor market and the Negro has been forced to abandon Africa and become a citizen-at-large like anyone elsersquo (ibid 214) Th us while the slavery system led to marronage the competitive system produces lsquoits own ideological version of marronagemdashthe neacutegritude mythrsquo

At the very moment when faced by white refusal to accept him on an equal footing the Negro abandons Africa in order to achieve fuller integration he finds himself driven back to the continent of his ancestors But since in culture there is no lsquocollective uncon-sciousrsquo [inconscient collectif ] or hereditary factor but only what is inherited by appren-ticeship this Africa can be no more than an imaginary concept floating in the voidmdashunless that is (as we shall have occasions to observe) it becomes a subtle form of betrayal (Bastide 1996c 219)

Bastide thus sides with the lsquotruersquo neacutegritude in opposition to this ideology that serves as a vehicle for a lsquode-Africanized Africarsquo Th e neacutegritude of African or African American intellectuals turns out to be nothing more than an lsquoaware-ness of Africa by de-Africanized sensibilities and intellectsrsquo and if neacutegritude failed it is because it did not seek inspiration from initiates of religions of African origin in America

Which is what leads to a set of strange paradoxes the Africa of neacutegritude is an lsquoexoticrsquo Africa and one that is not organically rooted in the soul of those who celebrate it it is a system of mystical participations in the manner in which Leacutevy-Bruhl described primitive mentality to the point where I would be tempted to define neacutegritude in the following way it agrees with the vision which the West has of Africa and marks it with a positive sign whereas the Westerner marks it with a negative sign but there is only a simple change of values it remains a white manrsquos Africa Which means that neacutegritude is the first and most typical example that one can provide to show what formal acculturation isrsquo (Bastide 1970a 141)

Th e only blacks that are still lsquoAfricanrsquo are thus the adepts of traditional reli-gions preserved behind the mask of syncretism Th ey and they only can become the genuine leaders in the revival of African culture Th is is what Bas-tide (1971 [1967] 218) calls lsquoAfricanitudersquo in opposition to the term lsquoNeacutegri-tudersquo Only initiates are really able to understand Afro-Brazilian culture since



it is they who manifest the true neacutegritude lsquonot that which is nothing but a political ideologyrsquo but that which is a true lsquoexistential affirmationrsquo

it was obvious that even by entering Candombleacute as a lsquomemberrsquo rather than as a simple observer the law of secrecy which governs any initiatory religion still kept me too much as an outsider for me to be able to provide anything but an introduction to a certain Negro vision of the world Only a priest occupying a high rank in the cult hierarchy could have given us the work I expected Th is shows how much importance I attach to the work of Deoscoacuteredes M Dos Santos West African Sacred Art and Ritual in Brazil (1967) and to that of his wife Juana Elbein dos Santos Le Nagocirc et la Mort (1972) or to their collaborative writings such as Esu Bara Laroyeacutersquo (Bastide 1996a 18-19)25

Brazil and especially the lsquoblack and traditionalrsquo Brazil of Bahia thus becomes a true model for African elites for there religion constitutes the lsquocultural corersquo of African tradition To re-Africanize the African elites therefore requires a renewal of the spirituality that had been preserved in the diaspora Most para-doxically colonialism lsquoacculturatesrsquo and produces western mentalities in Afri-can bodies while slavery preserves African tradition within religious practices Africans are thus forced to find their traditions in religious communities that have preserved Africa in Brazil thanks to a cultural and social encystment

Cultural encystment or the return to roots

With the principle of compartmentalization Bastide paves the way for the process of re-Africanization or what we could call the purification and legiti-mization of traditions Th e principle of compartmentalization and the con-cept of cultural encystment which leads one to accept the unreality of syncretism and the theory of the mask lay down the theoretical bases of cur-rent struggles against syncretism and of re-Africanization movements lsquoTradi-tionalrsquo Candombleacute that is the Candombleacute Nagocirc of whom the Axeacute Opocirc Afonjaacute is the most prestigious representative constitutes for Bastide a closed society where there is no desegregating influence from a lsquoclass societyrsquo lsquoTradi-tionalrsquo terreiros thus represent lsquoaxiological communitiesrsquo that reproduce the religious values and norms of conduct associated with African tradition And it is around the maintenance of religious values or what Bastide calls the lsquores-toration of African civilizationrsquo that the differentiation between sacrality and ideology is negotiated the facts of acculturation and the desegregating impact of modernity promote the distortion of sacred values into ideologies Put differently they link these values to the interests of differentiated groups



Umbanda and Macumba embody that which Bastide defines as ideology On the other hand lsquotraditionalrsquo Candombleacute as community niche becomes the symbol of cultural encystment in the face of a dominating society lsquo the more closely integration adheres to the community type or the greater the social or cultural encystment within which it occurs the less profound the syncretismrsquo (1978 [1960] 283) However this cultural encystment does not prevent the social integration of the members of these lsquoaxiological communi-tiesrsquo because the principle of compartmentalization allows them to live lsquoin two separate value systems without being aware of their opposition and without having to make a choicersquo (ibid 385-6)

Bastide had already taken up this notionmdashthe principle of compartmental-izationmdashto implement his interpretation of the lsquophilosophy of the cosmosrsquo of Candombleacute Nagocirc (Bastide 1958 237) Now in his 1960 formulation the principle of compartmentalization is not limited to the organization of the lsquosubtle metaphysicsrsquo of Candombleacute but relates also to the relations that Can-dombleacute entertains with the dominant society It becomes therefore an lsquoinstinc-tive and automatic reaction a defensive posture against anything that might disturb onersquos peace of mindrsquo (Bastide 1978 [1960] 386) But this capacity to live in two worlds without experiencing contradictions turns out to be the monopoly of the great lsquotraditionalrsquo cult groups of the Candomble Nagocirc whereas in the southeast of Brazil class struggles the degradation of religious practices and racism prevent the survival of what should be one of the charac-teristics of African thought

In reality religious changes determined by the need to adapt to new con-tingencies are at work in lsquotraditionalrsquo Candombleacute as much as in the lsquosectsrsquo considered to be syncretic But according to Bastide in those cult houses that have managed to preserve African traditions mutations take place that follow rules of transformation within a certain Gestalt lsquoChanges that can affect reli-gious systems are nothing but processes of adaptation and rebalancing in relation to a reality that is not religious in nature Th ey are phenomena of ldquoreturnrdquo ldquorepercussionrdquo or ldquochain reaction within a Gestaltrdquorsquo (Bastide 1969 9)

To justify the emergence of new elements that previously existed in the Gestalt of lsquotraditionalrsquo religion Bastide utilizes Maurice Halbwachsrsquos notion of collective memory a memory that is inscribed in a determined space and linked to a particular social group For Halbwachs the immemorial past can-not be revived in its totality by collective memory because the present plays the role of a lsquomemory filterrsquo letting through only that which can adapt to new circumstances Tradition survives or is invoked only insofar as it can take root in individual or group praxis26 But for memory to be preserved it must be inscribed in matter in space Now Bastide substantially modifies the idea



of collective memory inscribed in space because from his perspective Halb-wachs cannot part with the idea of an external collective conscience that tran-scends individuals For Bastide collective memory is like the brain when it is taken as a well-defined organization of cells and networks When one speaks of collective memory what matters is not the group as such but its organiza-tion its structure for the group is nothing but a system of interpersonal rela-tions In Brazil oblivion thus follows from the impossibility of finding all the complementary actors in one single place in such contexts collective memory becomes an interrelated system of individual memories

But the lsquoholes (trous) in collective memoryrsquo (Bastide 1970b) can always be filled by drawing from the roots of African tradition Th ese lsquoholesrsquo are for Bas-tide configurations that are at the same time empty and full they are empty because they can no longer be filled by collective memory and full because they are not really an absence but a lsquofeeling of lossrsquo (ibid 95) By recreating bonds with an original culture it becomes possible to reconstitute the past It is a matter of filling the void left by the uprooting provoked by slavery and the structure of the secretmdashthat is at the base of African American religionsmdashsomething that is done by fighting against the progressive disappearance of African collective memory

Bastide translates this selection of lsquorevivedrsquo memories into another opposi-tion that distinguishes lsquotraditionalrsquo Candombleacute from lsquosyncretized sectsrsquo Th e latter chooses to purge that is to eliminate from the ancestral heritage lsquowhat-ever is too incompatible with modern society whatever shocks people by reminding them too brutally of barbarismrsquo On the other hand lsquotraditionalrsquo Candombleacute opts to purify a process that lsquonecessarily takes the form of a return to the true original tradition behind these decadent formsmdashto the primal sourcersquo (Bastide 1978 [1960] 340) lsquoTh is ldquoreturn to Africardquo to use the expres-sion of Couto Ferraz has been translated into action by uniting all the tradi-tional sects into one federation which then excommunicates ldquosyncretizedrdquo sects Today a movement is under way to purify the candombleacutes in reaction against the debasement of the macumba and to deepen the religious faith of their membersrsquo (ibid 169)

Th is movement back to Africa long present in Candombleacute and which is also at work in North American orisha-voodoo (Capone 2005) exemplifies the moment of a symbolic rather than actual re-enactment of lsquopurersquo tradition that must be reconstructed on American soil Th e journey to the sources of tradition plays an ever more important role in this strengthening of roots it now takes the form of a search for re-Africanization at all costs a process that is accomplished in Brazil or the United States through courses on Yoruba lan-guage and civilization or training in Ifaacute divinatory practices



Afro-African syncretism or lsquoritual panafricanismrsquo

We have seen that according to the theory of the mask among lsquotraditionalrsquo blacks syncretism was never effective Th e accommodation to a dominant culture was in reality a lsquocounter-acculturativersquo strategy to better preserve Afri-can culture and traditions Th e return to origins and the re-Africanization movement are thus nothing but new facets of this negated artificial syncre-tism At least for one category of black those lsquotraditionalrsquo blacks of Bahia or the keepers of Afro-Cuban traditions there was never any mixing which is what makes possible today this return to a lsquopurityrsquo of religious practices through a resistance against syncretism Th is fake lsquocounter-acculturativersquo syncretism belongs to the domain of material acculturation lsquoAs long as accumulation has not penetrated the mentality or as long as the principle of compartmentaliza-tion confines the change of mentality to the domains of politics and econom-ics and excludes it from the domain of religion reinterpretation always occurs in terms of the African values norms and idealsrsquo (Bastide 1978 [1960] 536) Th e principle of compartmentalization thus carries within itself the possibility of the erasure of syncretism It shows the artificiality of the phenomenon for syncretism is but a mask which to borrow A Maryrsquos (2000) felicitous expres-sion has not triumphed over the face

Th is questioning of the reality of syncretism enables us to rethink the basic unity of African culture in America Th e movement of return to origins which characterizes Brazilian Candombleacute as much as North American orisha-voodoo is a reactivation more symbolic than actual of an lsquoAfricanrsquo tradition that must be reconstructed in the lsquodiasporarsquo In both contexts one finds the same ten-dency to identify two types of syncretism that bear different connotations an lsquoAfro-Africanrsquo syncretism which precedes slavery and out of which originated the belief in a basic unity of African culture and an lsquoAfro-westernrsquo syncretism that must be resisted27 Th ese two types of syncretism raise two visions of the past and of African collective memory one that refers to the continuity between African and African American cultures the other that marks the dis-continuity produced by slavery and by the loss of connections real or sym-bolic with onersquos native land lsquoAfro-Africanrsquo syncretism thus represents lsquogoodrsquo syncretism that sets the stage for endogenous varieties in opposition to lsquobadrsquo syncretism the Afro-Catholic syncretism that is constituted by exogenous varieties lsquoAfro-Africanrsquo syncretism is the only lsquopositiversquo syncretism a true sym-bol of the unity between lsquosister religionsrsquo

Th is idea of a link between religious systems of African origins is what led to the creation in 1987 of the National Institute of Afro-Brazilian Tradition and Culture (INTECAB) by a group of Bastidersquos disciples most notably Juana Elbein dos Santos and Marco Aureacutelio Luz but also Deoscoacuteredes M Dos



Santos descendant of a long lineage of Candombleacute initiates Th is institute which has representatives in numerous Brazilian states aims to present the lsquodifferent traditions that carry on the heritage of African ancestors in the New Worldrsquo while preserving lsquothe spiritual heritage of African ancestors that consti-tutes the heart of Afro-Brazilian identity and existencersquo According to INTE-CAB this identity is based on tradition lsquounderstood as a continuous and dynamic renewal of the inaugural principles of the black civilizing processrsquo28

Now to affirm the existence of a lsquoblack civilizing processrsquo one must assume the basic unity of the black world as well as the continuity between African and Afro-Brazilian religions Marco Aureacutelio Luz thus classifies black religions according to their lsquomissionrsquo to concretize their African origins in Brazil thereby perpetuating the lsquoblack civilizing processrsquo Th is mission can only be accom-plished in religious communities that have most strictly preserved the lsquosym-bolic and ritual systems that they have inheritedrsquo that is the lsquotraditionalrsquo terreiros of Candombleacute Nagocirc in Bahia As for other terreiros the closer they are to lsquotraditionalrsquo worship centers the more the lsquocomplexity of the original reli-gious system is preserved in its entirety few gaps and therefore little or no symbolic or ritual variations that are exogenous to the original contextrsquo (Luz 1983 31) Traditional Nagocirc terreiros are thus the centers of excellence where a new culture of resistance takes shape as such they are true symbols of the construction of an lsquoAfrorsquo identity and the locus of Bastidian Africanitude

Black people thus become once again the protagonists of their own history capable of setting in place the strategies that have enabled them to lsquoact within the interstices of the systemrsquo Far from being a simple cover for blacks under slavery conversion to Catholicism becomes a strategic means of playing with the systemrsquos ambiguities lsquoAfro-Brazilian culture emerged either from original structures or from the void created by the limits of the reigning ideologyrsquo (Sodreacute 1988 124) Or else to underscore the oppositional character of this apparent adaptation lsquoBlack originality means having lived a double structure having played with the ambiguities of power and thereby having successfully introduced parallel institutionsrsquo (ibid 132)29 Th erefore if blacks have suc-ceeded in exploiting the system politically syncretism must necessarily change appearances it becomes a lsquodialectical answer to a long process of resistance-adaptationrsquo (Santos 1977 23)

But to posit a continuity between African religion and Afro-Brazilian reli-gion one must also emphasize the elements common to the different religious practices of African origin in Brazil that is the lsquoanalogy of their structural content and the continuitymdashwith jumps and gapsmdashof a system that has renewed the essential elements of an ancestral mystical heritagersquo (ibid 24) From this perspective syncretisms are nothing but lsquomechanisms responding to



variationsrsquo expressions of the continuity and expansion of the lsquoblack civilizing processrsquo Now this process is focused on religion which plays a lsquohistoric rolersquo in the creation of groups of communitarian nature that constitute themselves as lsquoorganizing centers of cultural resistancersquo (ibid) Here one finds an echo of Bastidersquos theories according to which there are only two possible reactions to the exploitation of one lsquoracersquo by another rebellion or acceptance In the first case resistance usually crystallized around lsquoAfrican priestsrsquo in the second case there is an acceptance at least on a level of appearances of Christianization (1978 [1960] 396)

We have seen that for Bastide (1996a) true neacutegritude implies an lsquoexistential affirmationrsquo and the lsquoexpression of the black communityrsquos ethosrsquo Th e essential values of this neacutegritude concretized as they are in religion have survived all kinds of pressure thanks to the lsquodialectic process of resistance-accommodationrsquo that has given rise to different forms of worship Th is is what Bastide (1996b) calls lsquodiscontinuity within continuityrsquo With that even syncretism becomes a form of resistance for it carries within its diversity a basic unity of black cul-ture Th is idea of lsquodiscontinuity within continuityrsquo was developed by Bastide during a colloquium organized by the Committee on Afro-American Cultures and Societies of the Social Science Research Council in 1970 in Jamaica With it Bastide had taken up George Gurvitchrsquos notion of lsquodiscontinued continuityrsquo or lsquocontinued discontinuityrsquo

But G Gurvitch simply noted the existence of a double dialectical movement between continuity and discontinuity we would like to go further and see if the African Amer-ican example could not help us discover an explanatory model (rather than simply a descriptive one) of this interpenetration of continuity in ruptures as well as of discon-tinuity within what appears to be pure preservation of the past (Bastide 1996b 77)

Even though Bastide stresses the ideological dimension of this lsquocontinuityrsquo30 and its nature as a cultural construction31 he asserts nonetheless the existence of lsquocultural conservationsrsquo (conserves culturelles)mdashthe Candombleacute Nagocirc cult housesmdashthat preserve a cultural continuity in the face of social discontinuity Some twenty years later this idea of lsquodiscontinuity within continuityrsquo would be echoed in INTECABrsquos motto lsquoUnity in diversityrsquo Different Afro-Brazilian religions thus become simple variations on account of the lsquoresistance-accom-modationrsquo strategies of a lsquobasic cultural complexrsquo Th e difference between Candombleacute and Umbanda is thereby reduced to the variables that these reli-gions have incorporated homogeneous variables that have spawned an lsquointer-tribal syncretismrsquo for Candombleacute heterogeneous variables originating in other cultural complexes for Umbanda To recover the lsquoblack civilizing processrsquo



common to the different religious practices that claim an African origin reli-gions like Umbanda must therefore re-Africanize their practices by taking Candombleacute Nagocirc as a model

Umbanda cults profess a deep and true respect for the terreiros that perpetuate tradi-tional forms of worship Despite liturgical differences variations and elements coming from other cultural systems by their structure and their way of life Umbanda cults fundamentally participate in and directly derive from an African heritage (Santos and Santos 1993 162-3)

Practices like Umbanda that are most distantly related to the lsquobasic cultural complexrsquo must align themselves with lsquomore Africanrsquo practices in order to lsquofor-tify themselvesrsquo So even the syncretism between Umbanda and Candombleacute designated by the deprecating term umbandombleacute is transforming itself into a resistance strategy lsquoIn this way Umbanda seeks to strengthen itself through the cosmogony of ldquosister religionsrdquo that participate in the same Afro-Brazilian civilizing process in Brazilrsquo (Luz 1993 106) If syncretism with Catholicism is nothing but the expression of a mestizo ideology and for this reason must be denounced syncretism between lsquosister religionsrsquo is the pathway to the redis-covery of Africa in America

A desire to revitalize African traditions and find a basic unity of African culture is also what prompted the foundation of Oyotunji Village in South Carolina (USA) and the creation by Oseijeman Adefunmi of a new modality of religious practice orisha-voodoo It is Adefunmi who for the first time in the US stressed the heritage common to all modes of worship of lsquoAfrican religionrsquo something which has spawned what I have called a lsquoritual panafri-canismrsquo (Capone 2005) Former militants of North American black national-ism Maluana Karenga Medahochi KO Zannu and Oseijeman Adefunmi (the former lsquoking of Yoruba in the USrsquo) were instrumental in generating this religious and cultural panafricanism In his book New Afrikan Vodun Meda-hochi thus insists that African Americans must find lsquounity in diversityrsquo

What exactly is the spiritual foundation of Afrikan people in the diaspora A people composed of at least 100 different ethnic groups stolen from the motherland are you going to tell me that lsquodoing workrsquo strictly from one Afrikan spiritual tradition is the only way to activate the healing transformation and ascension of the Afrikan-American spirit Th ere are certain aspects of the traditions that must be protected respected and upheld with the highest integrity But there is room for creativity expansion and evolution (httpmemberstripodcom~Vodunsiforstatehtml)

According to Medahochi tradition has always been parceled out there were always several ways of dealing with African reality and these are all equally



valid Th e idea of a lsquoNew Afrikanrsquo cultural and religious approach was born in 1968 during a meeting of black nationalists in Detroit32 Th e lsquoNew Afrikanrsquo approach acknowledged the importance of all African systems of belief African Americans had long ceased to be organized on the basis of tribalism and this new interpretation made it possible to integrate American experiences in lsquoneo-Africanrsquo spirituality But for this lsquoritual panafricanismrsquo to be operational Afri-can Americans must find lsquounity in diversityrsquo that is to say the points of commonality that make it possible to bring together ritual practices of different African belief systems such as Yoruba Kongo EweFon and Akan religions lsquoNeo-Africansrsquo must also venerate their ancestors their lsquogenetic ancestryrsquo as well as West African divinities that lsquorun in the bloodrsquo of African Americans An African American who is initiated in Akan religion will thus be able to worship the orisha without being perceived as breaking with tradition (Guedj 2006) A plurality of initiation thereby becomes the symbol of this cultural and religious panafricanism that has produced African American society a compelling sign of the basic unity of the lsquoAfrican culturersquo

Th e emergence of orisha-voodoo in the 1960s exemplifies clearly this idea of lsquoritual panafricanismrsquo Th e name itself symbolizes the intersection of different African religious practices since to express the needs of African Americans issued from different African ethnicities one had to mix elements from these various cultures while at the same time preserve the Yoruba model that supposedly predominated in African American religions Th e unity of lsquoAfricans from Africa and the diasporarsquo had to be proved through the identification of a dominant cultural model able to demonstrate the lost great-ness of the African people Since the foundation of the Yoruba Temple in Harlem Adefunmi (1962) was thus reproducing Herskovitsrsquos theses which assumed a basic unity of Yoruba and Dahomean cultures expressed by a reli-gious syncretism prior to the slave trade33 Th e members of Oyotunji Village founded in 1970 have thus lsquorevitalizedrsquo Yoruba customs as well as other Daho-mean traditions since orisha-voodoo constitutes in the opinion of its found-ers a lsquopan-African ritual system where all authentically African divinities are equally recognizedrsquo (Capone 2005 171) Without its ritual panafricanism and its use of Yoruba symbols and identity as signs of a re-conquered lsquoAfricanityrsquo orisha religion would not have experienced the expansion it is currently expe-riencing among African Americans (cf Clarke 2004)

Th is lsquoritual panafricanismrsquo is not limited to exchanges between African religions but involves also a quest for all the religious practices that have been lost in African American religions So repeated contacts with traditional Bahian Candombleacute cult houses contribute substantially to the process of re-Africanization in the US by deploying the same logic and the same strategies



on the one hand the progressive condemnation of any syncretic practice that sets the scene for lsquoexogenous varietiesrsquo such as Afro-Catholic syncretism on the other hand the emphasis on an lsquoethnicrsquo supposedly lsquopurerrsquo more lsquotraditionalrsquo origin the Yoruba origin Salvador de Bahia with its houses of Nagocirc Can-dombleacute is seen as one of the main centers of preservation of African traditions in the lsquodiasporarsquo and as a possible source of legitimation for African Americans who are initiated in orisha religion But Brazil is also the locus of a rediscovery of forgotten ritual practices

Th anks to trips back and forth between the US and Brazil some Cuban American initiates have reintroduced the worship of divinities that had disap-peared in Cuba such as Oxumarecirc and Lugunedeacute as well as the boriacute ceremony with the consecration of the ibaacute oriacute the material representation of the head (oriacute) Among these borrowings between religions that claim Yoruba origins the ceremonies held to create individual Candombleacute altars have been adapted to the practices of Lucumiacute religion (also known as Santeriacutea or Regla de Ocha) initi-ates Brazilian orixaacutes were lsquolucumizedrsquo when they were submitted to lavatorio and paritorio rituals34 Th e same holds for the preparation of diloguacuten (cowries for divination that are present on every Lucumiacute altar) Th ese innovations are currently responsible for the diffusion within the community of Afro-Cuban practitioners of ritual practices imported from a lsquosister religionrsquo Candombleacute

In the last few years these exchanges have not been limited to Salvador but have included also the larger metropolises of southeastern Brazil Rio de Janeiro and Satildeo Paulo Th e influence of Cuban babalaos (diviners) in Rio has already left its imprint on several Candombleacute cult houses that have adopted Afro-Cuban divination practices Cuban babalaos have replaced Nigerian babalawo who had reintroduced the practices of odugrave divination in Brazil (cf Capone 1999 277-84) In addition World Conferences on Orisha Culture and Tradition (COMTOC) carry the very idea of the basic unity of African religions across the world (cf Capone 2005 283-97) Once a link is estab-lished that underpins religions as different as Brazilian Candombleacute Cuban Santeriacutea or Trinidadian Shangoacutemdasha link that is symbolized by their Yoruba componentmdashit becomes possible to work toward their unification Regardless of their real origins these religions all become facets of lsquoYoruba religionrsquo and they can thus contribute to the creation of an lsquoorisha religionrsquo that concretizes once again the former Brazilian dream of lsquounity in diversityrsquo

Conclusion

In this search for lsquolost foundationsrsquo a vision of syncretism reemerges that is not necessarily negative As in Roger Bastidersquos theories we are confronted with



a lsquogoodrsquo and a lsquobadrsquo syncretism the former makes it possible to recreate a ritual and philosophical unity that was lost in the Middle Passage the latter under-mines forever the foundations of lsquoAfrican culturersquo

Th e quest for roots which characterizes Candombleacute as much as North American orisha-voodoo is thus the re-enactment more symbolic than real of a lsquopurersquo tradition that must be reconstructed in the lsquodiasporarsquo In their discourse Candombleacute and Santeriacutea practitioners have since the beginning emphasized the preservation of a cultural and ritual heritage But this dis-course cannot conceal the ongoing salvaging of all that has been lost a prac-tice that inevitably produces the mutation of that which should ideally remained unchanged Th is tendency to retain ancestral knowledge and to compensate for ritual loss is what fuels African American religions Any geo-graphical displacement any travel to the centers of African traditions is there-after perceived as a temporal regression towards that which was lost towards lsquotruersquo African tradition Fragments of this tradition have been preserved in Cuba Brazil and Nigeria where lsquopockets of cultural resistancersquo remain Th e reconstitution of this lost unity similar to what I have called lsquoritual panafri-canismrsquo (Capone 2005) is not a corruption of traditional practices but an attempt to find a common past and a shared tradition both of which are indispensable to the creation of a community of practitioners of orisha reli-gion Th e dialectic of discontinued continuity and continued discontinuity so dear to Bastide thus seems to reside at the very center of the African American world A rare case where well after his death a scholarrsquos theories continue to live in the practices of those he studied in a never-ending dialogue linking different centers of African tradition on American soil

References Abraham RC 1958 Dictionary of Modern Yoruba London University of London Press Adefunmi Oseijeman 1962 Tribal Origins of the African-Americans New York Yoruba

Temple Research DivisionGreat Benin Books Apter Andrew 2004 lsquoHerskovitsrsquos Heritage Rethinking Syncretism in the African Dias-

porarsquo In AM Leopold and JS Jensen (eds) Syncretism in Religion A Reader New York Routledge 160-184

Bascom William 1976 lsquoAfro-American Studiesrsquo In Actes du XLIIe Congregraves international des ameacutericanistes Paris 2-9 September 1976 vol VI 591-595

Bastide Roger lsquoLes Armeacuteniens de Valencersquo Revue Internationale de Sociologie 391-2 17-42 (Reprinted in Bastidiana 23-24 1998 11-37)

mdashmdashmdash 1953 lsquoAlgumas consideraccedilotildees em torno de uma ldquolavagem de contasrdquorsquo In R Bas-tide Estudos Afro-brasileiros Satildeo Paulo USP 61-73

mdashmdashmdash 1955 lsquoLe principe de coupure et le comportement afro-breacutesilienrsquo Anais do XXXL Congresso Internacional de Americanistas Satildeo Paulo (1954) Anhembi Satildeo Paulo vol 1 493-503



mdashmdashmdash 1958 Le candombleacute de Bahia (rite nagocirc) Paris Mouton mdashmdashmdash 1969 lsquoLe problegraveme des mutations religieusesrsquo Cahiers internationaux de sociologie

XLVI 5-16 mdashmdashmdash 1970a Le prochain et le lointain Paris Edition Cujas mdashmdashmdash 1970b lsquoMeacutemoire collective et sociologie du bricolagersquo LrsquoAnneacutee sociologique

III seacuterie XXI 65-108 mdashmdashmdash 1971 African Civilizations in the New World New York Harper amp Row [original

edition Les Ameacuteriques noires Paris Payot 1967] mdashmdashmdash 1978 Th e African Religions of Brazil Toward a Sociology of the Interpenetration of

Civilizations Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press [original edition Les religions africaines au Breacutesil Contribution agrave une sociologie des interpeacuteneacutetrations de civilisation Paris Presses Universitaires de France 1960]

mdashmdashmdash 1995 Images du Nordeste Mystique en Noir et Blanc Paris Actes SudBabel [origi-nal Brazilian edition 1945]

mdashmdashmdash 1996a lsquoEtat actuel des recherches afro-ameacutericaines en Ameacuterique Latinersquo Bastidi-ana 13-14 11-28

mdashmdashmdash 1996b lsquoContinuiteacute et discontinuiteacute des socieacuteteacutes et des cultures afro-ameacutericainesrsquo Bastidiana 13-14 77-88

mdashmdashmdash 1996c [1967] Les Ameacuteriques noires Paris LrsquoHarmattan Beylier Charles lsquoLrsquoŒuvre breacutesilienne de Roger Bastidersquo Th egravese de 3e cycle en sociologie

Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales Paris Capone Stefania 1999 La Quecircte de lrsquoAfrique dans le candombleacute Pouvoir et tradition au

Breacutesil Paris Karthala [English version forthcoming Duke University Press] mdashmdashmdash 2000 lsquoEntre Yoruba et Bantou lrsquoinfluence des steacutereacuteotypes raciaux dans les eacutetudes

afro-ameacutericainesrsquo Cahiers drsquoeacutetudes africaines 157 55-77 mdashmdashmdash 2001 lsquoRegards croiseacutes sur le bricolage et le syncreacutetisme Le syncreacutetisme dans tous

ses eacutetatsrsquo Archives de sciences sociales des religions 114 42-50 mdashmdashmdash 2005 Les Yoruba du Nouveau Monde Religion ethniciteacute et nationalisme noir aux

Eacutetats-Unis Paris Karthala mdashmdashmdash 2006 lsquoConversations au sein de lrsquoAtlantique noir Ou comment les diasporas

creacuteent leurs megraveres patriesrsquo Archives de sciences sociales des religions 136 93-102 Cardoso Irene 1994 lsquoEntretien avec R Bastidersquo Bastidiana special issue lsquoRoger Bastide

Claude Leacutevi-Strauss Du principe de coupure aux courts-circuits de la penseacuteersquo 7-8 69-73

Carneiro Edison 1986 [1948] Candombleacutes de Bahia Rio de Janeiro Civilizaccedilatildeo Brasileira mdashmdashmdash 1980 Ursa Maior Salvador UFBaCEAO Clarke Kamari 2004 Mapping Yorugravebaacute Networks Power and Agency in the Making of Trans-

national Communities Durham NC Duke University Press De Andrade Mario 1996 LrsquoApprenti touriste Paris Quinzaine litteacuteraireL Vuitton [origi-

nal Brazilian edition Satildeo Paulo Duas Cidades 1976] DuBois WEB 1989 [1903] Th e Souls of Black Folk New York Bantam Books Durkheim Emile 1912 Les Formes eacuteleacutementaires de la vie reliegieuse Paris Alcan Fry Peter 1984 lsquoGallus Africanus est ou como Roger Bastide se tornou africano no Bra-

silrsquo Folhetim Folha de Satildeo Paulo 15 July Gilroy Paul 1987 lsquoTh ere Ainrsquot No Black in the Union Jackrsquo Th e Cultural Politics of Race and

Nation London Hutchinson mdashmdashmdash 1993 Th e Black Atlantic Modernity and Double Consciousness Cambridge MA

Harvard University Press



Guedj Pauline 2006 lsquoLe Chemin du Sankofa Religion et identiteacute ldquoakanrdquo aux Etats-Unisrsquo PhD thesis Universiteacute Paris X-Nanterre

Herskovits Melville 1938 Acculturation Th e Study of Cultural Contact New York Augus-tin Publisher

mdashmdashmdash 1958 Preface to the First Beacon Edition In Th e Myth of the Negro Past by Mel-ville J Herskovits Boston Beacon Press xxix-xliii

mdashmdashmdash 1990 [1941] Th e Myth of the Negro Past Boston Beacon Press Iznaga Diana 1989 La transculturacioacuten en Fernando Ortiz Havana Editorial de Ciecircncias

Sociales Johnson Samuel 1921 Th e History of Yorubas London George Routledge amp Sons Leacutevy-Bruhl Lucien 1922 La mentaliteacute primitive Paris Alcan Luumlhning Angela 2002 lsquoIntroduccedilatildeorsquo In A Luumlhning (eacuted) Verger-Bastide Dimensotildees de

uma amizade Rio de Janeiro Bertrand Brasil 7-38 Luz Marco Aureacutelio 1983 Cultura negra e ideologia do recalque Rio de Janeiro Achiameacute Malinowski Bronislaw 1940 lsquoIntroduccioacutenrsquo In F Ortiz (ed) Contrapunteo cubano del

tabaco y el azuacutecar Havana Jesuacutes Montero Mary Andreacute 1994 lsquoBricolage afro-breacutesilien et bris-collage postmodernersquo In P Laburthe-

Tolra (ed) Roger Bastide ou le reacutejouissement de lrsquoabicircme Paris LrsquoHarmattan 85-98 mdashmdashmdash 2000 Le bricolage africain des heacuteros chreacutetiens Paris Editions du Cerf Matory Lorand J 2005 Black Atlantic Religion Tradition Transnationalism and Matriar-

chy in the Afro-Brazilian Candombleacute Princeton Princeton University Press Meacutetraux Alfred and Verger Pierre 1994 Le Pied agrave lrsquoeacutetrier Correspondance 1946-1963

Paris Jean-Michel Place (preacutesenteacute et annoteacute par Jean-Pierre Le Bouler) Mintz Sidney amp Price Richard 1992 [1976] Th e Birth of African-American Culture An

Anthropological Perspective Boston Beacon Press Motta Roberto 1994 lsquoLrsquoApport breacutesilien dans lrsquoœuvre de Bastide sur le candombleacute de

Bahiarsquo In P Laburthe-Tolra (eacuted) Roger Bastide ou le reacutejouissement de lrsquoabicircme Paris LrsquoHarmattan 169-178

Murphy Joseph M 1988 Santeriacutea An African Religion in America Boston Beacon Press Nina Rodrigues Raymundo 1900 LrsquoAnimisme feacutetichiste des Negravegres de Bahia Salvador Reis amp

Companhia Editora mdashmdashmdash 1935 O Animismo Fetichista dos Negros Bahianos Rio de Janeiro Civilizaccedilatildeo

Brasileira Oliveira W Freitas 1976 lsquoDesenvolvimento dos estudos africanistas no Brasilrsquo Cultura

MEC vol VII 23 110-117 Ortiz Fernando 1939 lsquoBrujos o santerosrsquo Estuacutedios Afrocubanos La Habana vol 3 1-4 mdashmdashmdash 1940 Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azuacutecar Havana Jesuacutes Montero mdashmdashmdash 1975 [1946] El engantildeo de las razas Havana Editorial de Ciencias Sociales Palmieacute Stephan 1995 lsquoAgainst Syncretism ldquoAfricanizingrdquo and ldquoCubanizingrdquo Discourses

in North American ograverigravesagrave Worshiprsquo In R Fardon (ed) Counterworks Managing of the Diversity of Knowledge London Routledge 73-104

mdashmdashmdash 2002 Wizards and Scientists Exploration in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition Durham NC Duke University Press

Park Robert Ezra 1928 lsquoHuman Migration and the Marginal Manrsquo Th e American Journal of Sociology 33 881-893

Peixoto Fernanda Arecircas 1988 lsquoDiaacutelogo interessantiacutessimo Roger Bastide e o modern-ismorsquo XXII Encontro Anual da ANPOCS GT Pensamento Social no Brasil Caxambu 27-31 October



Ramos Arthur 1936 Introduccedilatildeo agrave psicologia social Rio de Janeiro Joseacute Olympio mdashmdashmdash 1942 A aculturaccedilatildeo negra no Brasil Satildeo Paulo Companhia Editora Nacional mdashmdashmdash 1943 Guerra e Relaccedilotildees de Raccedila Rio de Janeiro Departamento Editorial da Uniatildeo

Nacional dos Estudantes mdashmdashmdash [1937] As culturas negras no Novo Mundo Civilizaccedilatildeo Brasileira Rio de Janeiro mdashmdashmdash 2001 [1934] O Negro brasileiro Etnografia religiosa Rio de Janeiro Graphia mdashmdashmdash 2005 [1950] lsquoOs Estudos Negros e a Escola de Nina Rodriguesrsquo In Edison Car-

neiro Antologia do Negro brasileiro Rio de Janeiro Agir 15-18 Ravelet Claude 1993 lsquoBio-bibliographie de Roger Bastidersquo Bastidiana 1 39-48 mdashmdashmdash 1996 Eacutetudes sur Roger Bastide De lrsquoacculturation agrave la Psychiatrie sociale direction

et lsquoIntroductionrsquo Paris LrsquoHarmattan Ribeiro Reneacute 1978 [1952] Cultos afro-brasileiros do Recife um estudo de ajustamento social

Recife MECInstituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais Santos Deoscoacuteredes M dos 1988 Histoacuteria de um terreiro nagocirc Satildeo Paulo Max Limonad Santos Juana E dos 1977 lsquoA percepccedilatildeo ideoloacutegica dos fenocircmenos religiosos sistema nagocirc

no Brasil negritude versus sincretismorsquo Revista de Cultura Vozes vol 71 7 23-34 Santos J E dos and Santos D M dos 1993 lsquoLa Religion Nagocirc geacuteneacuteratrice et reacuteserve de

valeurs culturelles au Breacutesilrsquo In Vodun les religions africaines comme source de valeurs de civilisation Paris Preacutesence africaine 151-173

Scott David 1991 lsquoTh at Event Th is Memory Notes on an Anthropology of African Diasporas in the New Worldrsquo Diaspora 1 261-284

Sodreacute Muniz 1988 A verdade seduzida Por um conceito de cultura no Brasil Rio de Janeiro Francisco Alves

Stonequist Everett V 1937 Th e Marginal Man A Study in Personality and Culture Conflict New York Scribnerrsquos Sons [Brazilian edition Satildeo Paulo Livraria Martins 1948]

Verger Pierre 1981 Orixaacutes Deuses iorubaacutes na Aacutefrica e no Novo Mundo Salvador Corrupio

mdashmdashmdash 1982 50 anos de fotografia Salvador Corrupio mdashmdashmdash 1994 lsquoRoger Bastidersquo Bastidiana 6 37-38 mdashmdashmdash 2002 lsquoAs muacuteltiplas atividades de Roger Bastide na Aacutefrica (1958)rsquo In A Luumlhning

(eacuted) Verger-Bastide Dimensotildees de uma amizade Rio de Janeiro Bertrand Brasil 39-54 [original edition in Revista da USP 18 1993 30-39]

Yelvington Kevin A (ed) 2006 Afro-Atlantic Dialogues Anthropology in the Diaspora Santa Fe NM School of American Research Press

Zannu Medahochi Koffi O Nd New Afrikan Vodun Rites of Spiritual Nationalism Foreword on line httpmemberstripodcom~Vodunsiforstatehtml

Notes

1 Th e metaphor of the dialogue has been extensively used in anthropological studies on lsquoAfrican diasporarsquo (cf Gilroy 1987 and 1993 Yelvington 2006) A discussion of this issue is beyond the purview of this article (cf Capone 2006)

2 Th e notion of lsquoprincipe de coupurersquo was translated in the American edition of Bastidersquos work African Religions of Brazil (1978 [1960]) as lsquoprinciple of compartmentalizationrsquo while in the American edition of his African Civilizations in the New World (1971 [1967]) it had been translated as lsquoprinciple of dissociationrsquo (ibid 25) We chose to use the first trans-lation as being closer to the original meaning In what follows we have re-translated a few



quotations from the original French texts since the published English translations at times come close to distorting Bastidersquos thought

3 Th ere have been multiple criticisms of this approach During the International Congress of Americanists held in Paris in 1976 William Bascom (1976 592) asserted in reference to the predominance of studies on African survivals in the New World that Afro-American cultures should be studied lsquoregardless of any questions of origins or of how much of African culture they have retainedrsquo In his opinion the study of Africanisms was never-theless required to show the cultural contribution from blacks to North American society in particular and thus to counter racial prejudices that denied the existence of an Afro-American culture More recently Stephan Palmieacute (2002 160) also criticized the tendency to attribute an African ethnic origin (that can rarely be justified by historical evidence) to certain lsquofeaturesrsquo of Afro-American cultures by using the metaphor of the lsquotheme park approachrsquo

4 A book based on this trip was published in Brazil in 1945 In it there are many noticeable errors in the terminology of Candombleacute and in the transcription of orixaacutes (divinities) names As well the famous pai-de-santo (chief priest) Joatildeozinho da Gomeacuteia Bastidersquos primary informant at the time becomes Joatildeo da Gaacutevea (Bastide 1995 63) More-over this book was not published in France until after Bastidersquos death with the consent of his widow

5 Th e Brazilian word orixaacute (Candombleacute divinity) corresponds to the Cuban word oricha and to the Yoruba word ograverigraveșagrave In the United States the English spelling of the word orisha is used but the pronunciation is the same as that of its corresponding Yoruba and Brazilian words

6 With Verger Bastide initiated the valorization of this Candombleacute terreiro beyond Brazilian borders becoming the defender of the model of lsquoAfricanrsquo tradition perpetuated within the religious group which he considered himself part of (cf Capone 1999) Regard-ing the ceremony of the lsquocleansing of the beadsrsquo see Bastide 1953

7 For more on Pierre Vergerrsquos itinerary between Brazil and Africa see Meacutetraux and Verger 1994

8 In his 1982 book of photographs Verger writes lsquoAtaoja king of Oshogbo whose dynasty was related to the worship of Oshun was delighted to know that this divinity was worshiped fervently in Brazil and through me he sent Senhora copper bracelets and river pebbles that came from Oshunrsquos altarrsquo (Verger 1982 258)

9 Th e xereacute and the edu ara brought back from Nigeria are attributes of the Yoruba god Shangoacute (or Xangocirc according to Brazilian orthography) Th e former is the ritual bell and the latter the consecrated stone used in worship

10 Th e Alaacuteagravefin of Oyo is seen as the descendant of Shangoacute According to oral tradition Shangoacute was the third king (Oba) of this town who had thereafter transformed himself into an orisha Th e worship of Xangocirc in Brazil reflects the worship of the ancestor of the royal dynasty of Oyo Th e close relation between the Alaacuteagravefin (king of Oyo) and the Igraveyaacute Nasoacute (the priestess of Shangoacute) is underscored by the obligation to carry out a series of ritual killings among them that of the Igraveyaacute Nasoacute at the death of the king ( Johnson 1921 Abra-ham 1958 19)

11 Early on in his career Verger felt no calling for anthropological work as he himself declared lsquoI was doing this research for myself and my friends from Bahia Th e idea of pub-lishing the results for a wider public had not occurred to me It was Monod who pushed me to writersquo (Verger 1982 257) Th eacuteodore Monod who in the 1950s was director of IFAN (Institut Franccedilais drsquoAfrique Noire) had invited Verger to publish a study on religions in



Brazil and Africa Th e book which was published in 1957 had the lsquoeffect of a bombrsquo according to Bastide (1996a) in a milieu where all the experts focused on questions of lsquoacculturationrsquo lsquosyncretismrsquo and social and cultural lsquochangersquo Candombleacute was becoming an lsquoAfricanrsquo religion at last Verger became a member of the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) in 1962 and was made directeur de recherches (senior scientist) in 1972 From 1963 to 1966 he worked as an associate researcher at the Institute of African Studies of the University of Ibadan (Nigeria)

12 Bastide had already traveled to Africa but only to attend colloquia or conferences during which he made far more contacts with Africanists than with Africans (Verger 2002 39) On the 1958 trip see Bastidersquos writings published in Luumlhning (2002)

13 Bastide maintained a very close relationship with Gurvitch ever since the latter spent a year in Satildeo Paulo in 1947 It was also Gurvitch who pushed him to complete his Doctorat drsquoEacutetat after his return to France Gurvitch left his mark on Bastidersquos work in his theory on syncretism and on lsquoNegro-African collective memoryrsquo in particular

14 It is interesting to note that after Bastide arrived in Brazil he became not only the first French lsquoBrazilianistrsquomdashsince Leacutevi-Strauss never wanted to become a scholar of Brazilian societymdashbut also an lsquoAfricanistrsquo a term used by his Brazilian colleagues to designate spe-cialists of Afro-Brazilian cultures and religions (cf Oliveira 1976) He was an lsquoAfricanistrsquo who until 1958 did not know Africa a situation which could have generated tension with his French Africanist colleagues Like Nina Rodrigues who did not know Africa except through the books of Colonel Ellis (Ramos 1950) Bastide learned about Africa through the mediation of Pierre Verger

15 While Nina Rodrigues never uses the term lsquosyncretismrsquo he often utilizes equivalent expressions such as lsquoduality of beliefsrsquo lsquojuxtaposition of religious ideasrsquo lsquoassociationrsquo lsquoequiv-alence of divinitiesrsquo and lsquoillusion of catechesisrsquo to designate Afro-Brazilian practices It is among mestizos and Creole blacks that Nina Rodrigues finds a loss of lsquopurityrsquo and a lsquobas-tardizationrsquo of religious practices with the reinterpretation of Catholic beliefs from an lsquoAfri-canrsquo and lsquofetishistrsquo perspective lsquoWith the creole black and the mestizo who have not been directly influenced by the education of African parents from whom they have distanced themselves because they do not speak the language and have grown closer to other mem-bers of the mixed and heterogeneous population of the State [of Bahia] fetishist practices and African mythology are starting to degenerate from their original state of purity Th ey are gradually forgotten and bastardized while the fetishist adoration that was once directed at the orixaacutes is now transferred to Catholic saintsrsquo (Nina Rodrigues 1935 170)

16 A reflection on the wrenching experience of black people who are forced to live in two incompatible worlds was already present in the writings of WEB DuBois in particu-lar in his theory of lsquothe Veilrsquo that marks the frontier between Afro-American culture and white culture (DuBois 1903) Th e notion of lsquodouble consciousnessrsquo and the use in DuBoisrsquos work of psychological concepts to capture the duality of the Afro-American experience resonate with the Bastidian principle of compartmentalization However the only refer-ence to WEB DuBoisrsquos work (so well known in the US) in Bastidersquos writings alludes to his role in the lsquoNiagara Movementrsquo (Bastide 1971 [1967] 215)

17 Arthur Ramos was the first Brazilian author to analyze syncretism from a culturalist perspective According to him the phenomenon of cultural juxtaposition among so-called lsquoAfricanrsquo blacks and the cultural fusion among Creoles or mulattos were two steps of the acculturation process that is two levels of syncretism For Ramos (1942) syncretism was the lsquoharmonious resultrsquo of any contact between culturesmdasha lsquocultural mosaic without conflictrsquo Where there was reaction to contact there was also counter-acculturation



something which would allow for the maintenance of original cultural traits in their lsquorela-tively purersquo form (Ramos 1979 [1937]) Th e use of the term syncretism in the writings of Ramos also influenced Herskovitsrsquos writings (1958 xxxvi)

18 Before Bastidersquos arrival Arthur Ramos had already published an Introduction to Social Psychology in 1936

19 In reality Bastide concedes that it is difficult to make a clear distinction between the Candombleacute de Caboclo Macumba and Umbanda lsquoWhat in fact distinguishes these vari-ous religious manifestations one from the other we might argue is the relative extent and development among them of syncretism Generally speaking in the first of the three we find a clear division between African and Indian ritual with each enjoying complete auton-omy whereas in the latter two they tend to coalescemdashthough by no means always in the same manner it is truersquo (ibid 86)

20 See also Fry 1984 and Capone 2000 21 Roberto Motta (1994 170) provocatively asserts that Bastide was lsquoabove all a unify-

ing force and an organizer His works on Afro-Brazilian religions are essentially based on secondary sources that is on the work of his predecessors most of them Brazilianrsquo While this is partly true given Bastidersquos limited fieldwork experience and his obvious debt to the studies of Brazilian lsquoAfricanistsrsquo one cannot limit these influences as Motta (ibid 174) does to the work of Gilberto Freyre Reneacute Ribeiro and Edison Carneiro As a matter of fact Roger Bastide took much further the interpretation of religious phenomena of African origin (already prevalent when he arrived in Brazil) that opposed lsquotraditionalrsquo blacks to lsquosyncretizedrsquo blacks No Brazilian author brought such complexity to their analyses of syn-cretism and acculturation processes

22 Th e phenomenon of reinterpretation is present also in Nina Rodriguesrsquos analysis but there it refers to the Africanization of European elements in particular the adaptation of Catholicism to lsquofetishisticrsquo beliefs In his study of formal acculturation Bastide (1970a 138) wrote that Nina Rodriguesrsquos illusion of catechesis had been the lsquoprelude to the theory of reinterpretationrsquo formulated by Herskovits

23 Paradoxically in 1960 Bastide called the concept of reinterpretation the most important of the notions formulated by cultural anthropology lsquoin the study of civilizational encountersrsquo without alluding at all to the work of Herskovits

24 In that same 1970 text Bastide wrote lsquoI am a great admirer of African traditional civilizations but the praise I gave them in front of African students [in France] earned me the following critique lsquoYou are a colonialist you do not want us to make progress on the contrary you want us to remain always at an inferior stagersquo (1970a 32)

25 Juana Elbein dos Santos is an Argentine anthropologist married to Deoscoacuteredes M dos Santos son of Matildee Senhora and leading worshiper of Egungun (deified ancestors) in Brazil She was a student of Bastide who supervised the doctoral thesis she defended at the Sorbonne in Paris in the early 1970s

26 J Lorand Matory (2005 282) justifiably criticizes the absence of the notion of agency in Bastidersquos conception of lsquocollective memoryrsquo For him cultural reproduction must be understood as a lsquostruggle for the possession of the signrsquo rather than as a simple form of lsquopreservationrsquo since the commemoration of the past is always lsquostrategic in its selection exclusions and interpretationsrsquo (ibid 283)

27 Melville J Herskovits was among the first to posit the existence of a lsquocultural gram-marrsquo that was shared by the different peoples of West Africa According to Herskovits this lsquocultural grammarrsquo enabled the formation of an Afro-American culture whose main refer-ences must be traced to Yoruba and Fon cultures Th is idea of an enduring African substra-



tum in which religion played a central role is also present in the lsquocreolizationrsquo model proposed by Mintz and Price (1976) See also Apter (2004)

28 All these citations are extracted from pamphlets edited by INTECAB Except for the obvious influence of Bastidian writings on the founding group of INTECAB one should not underestimate the impact of anthropological theories on practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions as has been demonstrated by Reneacute Ribeiro (1952) for Recife and by Arthur Ramos (2001 [1934]) for Rio de Janeiro See also Capone 1999

29 Th is double structure clearly recalls Bastidersquos principle of compartmentalization It is worth mentioning that Bastide trained an entire generation of intellectuals in Brazil among them Juana E Dos Santos the main ideologue of INTECAB Th e claims of a de-syncretization process as well as of a hegemonic mission of Candombleacute nagocirc are clearly inspired by the Bastidian theory of the separation of African and western worlds in the pockets of resistance of traditional Candombleacute (cf Capone 1999)

30 lsquoIndeed it is sometimes the case that ldquocontinuityrdquo does not really exist that it is but a simple ideology either of the white class (aiming to better distinguish itself from colored people) or of the black class (attempting to better assert its originality) whereas what really exists underneath in the domain of facts is on the contrary discontinuitymdasha pure and simple rupture with tradition In any case in every moment of rupture and everywhere discontinuity surfaces in the facts a compensatory ideology emerges at the same time that valorizes rootedness in the pastrsquo (Bastide 1996a 78)

31 lsquoIdeologies aimed at demonstrating the continuity that links todayrsquos Afro-American culture to the Afro-American culture of the past only highlight ruptures and discontinuities (Afro-American culture is a construction not a ldquosequencerdquo or a ldquocontinuityrdquo and as such it goes as far as betrayal thereby accentuating all the more for Africanists the element of discontinuity which these ideologies reveal even as they aim to conceal it)rsquo (ibid 85)

32 It is at this meeting that the provisional Government of the Republic of New Africa (RNA) was created a government whose co-ministers of Culture were Maluana Karenga Oseijeman Adefunmi and LeRoi Jones who at the time had already changed his name to Amiri Baraka (Capone 2005 200)

33 Herskovitsrsquos influence on the constitution of Yoruba-centered practices in the United States is obvious in Adefunmirsquos writings But one also finds Bastidersquos influence in books that are largely read by religious practitioners in the US such as Joseph Murphyrsquos (1988 122) study of santeriacutea

34 Th ese two rituals are intended to lsquogive birthrsquo to practitionersrsquo divinities During the lavatorio (cleansing) omiero (plants macerated in water to which are added certain elements that are specific to each divinity) is prepared and different parts of the individual altar are washed in it Th e paritorio (deliverance) ritual marks the filiation relation between the ori-sha that lsquois bornrsquo and the one who lsquoengendersrsquo it



recurring theme in his work which through notions like lsquosyncretismrsquo and lsquoreinterpretationrsquo attempted to grasp the processes that enabled the formation of African-American cultures In its multiple manifestations Afro-Brazilian culture was thus the lsquosociological laboratoryrsquo in which Bastide tested his theo-ries on cultural contact

But Bastidersquos work is also particularly important because it helps us think of American societiesrsquo relationship to Africa Th e emergence of studies on lsquoAfrican civilizationsrsquo in the Americas coincided in a significant manner with the abolition of slavery at the very same time when blacks were given citizen-ship Th e issue then was to find out whether or not blacks would be integrated into the nation could they be assimilated or were they instead bearers of a foreign lsquoculturersquo of modes of thought that would prevent their integration into western society For a long time an idea prevalent in African American studies was that blacks when they had managed to preserve African traditions belonged to another world and remained lsquoimpermeablersquo (to use Bastidersquos word) to lsquomodern ideasrsquo It was as if the perpetuation of an African memory and the commitment to onersquos origins enabled the societies which Bastide called lsquoAfrican societiesrsquo to escape history whereas lsquoNegro societiesrsquo on the other hand were permeable to history and change Th e formation of a domain of African Americanist knowledge was thus marked from the beginning by an unease an unease in regard to the very idea of physical and cultural mixing and the inevitable degeneration that would ensue as well as an unease con-cerning the severance from the original culture and the impossibility of con-vincingly retracing onersquos cultural origins Th e development of an African Americanist domain has thus been motivated by an obsessive quest that of African origins of a direct link with a territorymdashAfricamdashand with an original culture Th e African past thus becomes both a temporal and a spatial meta-phor that helps generate the idea of a fieldmdashthe African American fieldmdashwhose main classificatory concept is undoubtedly Africa As we shall see nevertheless this Africa is no longer a real Africa it is no longer a continent inhabited by men and women a place from where the ancestors of African Americans were snatched and to where African Americans now wish to return It is instead a lsquomythicalrsquo Africa a symbol that must be reactivated on American soil and a source of legitimation for those who have been initiated into African American religions In the discourse of the social actors and practitioners of these religions the link with Africa and the rupture brought about by slavery are constant points of reference Th e African Americanist domain thus develops around the tension between continuity and discontinu-ity between commitment to and betrayal of origins between lsquopurityrsquo and lsquodegenerationrsquo




















































Syncretism refuted
































































































Conclusion












































































Notes


































































































Syncretism refuted
































































































Conclusion












































































Notes













































































































































Conclusion












































































Notes

























































































































Notes
















































Transatlantic Dialogue: Roger Bastide and the African American Religions

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Transcript of Transatlantic Dialogue: Roger Bastide and the African American Religions