RT Article
T1 The Ontogeny of Dolls: Materiality, Affect, and Self in Afro-Cuban Espiritismo
JF Material religion
VO 15
IS 3
SP 269
OP 292
A1 Espírito Santo, Diana
LA English
PB Taylor & Francis
YR 2019
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1670192229
AB Objects are fundamental components of cosmology in Afro-Cuban religions; they serve to represent, pay homage to, and feed a constellation of covetous spirits. In a moral universe of practitioners materiality allures and potentially corrupts; it grounds personal and collective ritual agency; mediates thoughts-feelings; materializes the immaterial; and invariably transcends all these dichotomies and becomes gods, parts of people, concepts. In this article I wish to understand "things" as continuous with the unfolding of selfhood, but more contentiously, with and as affects. Drawing on my long-time research with practitioners of Cuban Creole espiritismo in Havana, for whom "representation" objects are essential to the development of spirits, muertos, and thus extended selves, I argue that the dolls and figurines that mediums regularly fabricate and care for are less "representational" than they are affective forms themselves. Dolls are not symbols for feelings-for-spirits made material or registers of affective perception towards one's muertos; in a very real sense they are affects that may grow roots and bloom. In the ethnography I will describe these relations as a system of affectively invested selfhood, one that encompasses the very muertos in question.
K1 Cuban creole spiritism
K1 Affect
K1 Dolls
K1 Materiality
K1 Selfhood
DO 10.1080/17432200.2019.1603067