Spirit Possession, havana, and the night : Listening and ritual in cuban fiction
2007; Western States Folklore Society; Volume: 66; Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2325-811X
Autores Tópico(s)Literature, Magical Realism, García Márquez
ResumoNo soy la escritora de esta novela. Soy el cadaver. I am not the author of this novel. I am the cadaver. -Valdes, Te De La Vida Entera, 1998[1996]:13 This tripartite essay deals with how epiphenomenal memory created through the experience and observance of spirit possession in Afrocaribbean religion suggests a mode of reading creative expression. I begin with an exploration of reading spirit possession in Northern Yorubaland, move on to how Cuban fiction re-inscribes similar performative voices in text, and end with a metaphysical consideration of the consequences of carrying such modes of discourse. In looking for a specific way to make such analogies, the bulk of this essay is centered on how ritual and folk religion are inscribed into the Cuban diasporic fiction of Zoe Valdes and Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Since these authors follow the sensibilities of disembodied as narrators of their texts, their writing suggests the mirroring of Santeria and Espiritismo traditions of spirit possession and communication with believers. In addition to how the authors speak from the beyond, the reading of textual instances of communication with ancestors and gods illustrated by these works follows Afrocaribbean audiences' receptive work that interprets material and magical beings in a polyvocal form. Necessary to unpacking such texts as Te Di La Vida Entera (1998 [1996]) and Tres Tristes Tigeres (1981 [1967]), are a personal vision of Cuban cultural history, knowledge of the traditions of Espiritismo and Santeria, and an accessible imaginary of Havana night life. As figures from folk ritual and mythology appear as narrators, characters, and of this kind of contemporary Cuban fiction, a continuum between folk religious practice and literature is created. This connection serves as a witness to history and experiences of dislocation and being left behind for an imagined community of Cubans. The muerto, or ancestor as narrator of the tale, helps create a textual bridge between the multiple Cuban communities, past and present, dispersed and separated from each other due to politics, geography, and time. Here I would like to note that such uses of traditional Afrocaribbean religious culture as models for the construction of narrative is by no means limited to Cuban contexts. Other Caribbean authors, like Conde and Chamoiseau, from Guadeloupe and Martinique, respectively, use these similar tropes of the [African] dead ancestor as a present and echoing voice that connects post-colonial histories with contemporary vernacular forms of expression and the political strife of the everyday (see Conde 2004:26-37; Chamoiseau 1999:110-119). The three main components I wish to discuss here are: 1) the of embodiment used by ancestors and Orishas, 2) the textual characteristics of the milieu of writing in Habanese used by the audiors that mirror the religious traditions by which they are influenced, and 3) the ramifications of viewing inhabitation-of body, text, and city-away from a static subjectivity. My hope is to show how the very present context of Orisha worship for multiple Cuban communities has provided a model for understanding memory, nostalgia, and the notion of return. 1. CHARACTERISTICS OF LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION IN SPIRIT POSSESSION Pierre Verger, in a small study of Nago-Yoruba spirit mediumship in Ilodo and Ishede, Nigeria, asserts an amazing concept that has held true in the context of spirit possession in Afro-diasporic quotidian religion: that there is a stability to the characteristics of an ancestor, an Orisha, a disembodied personality who inhabits a living recipient (Verger 1969:50-66). This makes these speakers reliable yet shifting narrators for audiences trying to gbo, hear or understand the language of their message.1 The character traits of Orishas, muertos, and other beings temporarily inhabiting the human form have their own idiosyncrasies. …
Referência(s)