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Zusatztext "...throughout this excellent ethnography, Ochoa takes the reader inside Palo, providing the best account available to date of its felt reality and its actual practices, songs, and sayings, as well as the textures of gender, ritual family, race, and class; the struggles of everyday Cuban life (and death); and all the emotional and interpersonal dramas that play out in and through Palo." Informationen zum Autor Todd Ramón Ochoa is a cultural anthropologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina! Chapel Hill. Klappentext "Todd Ochoa's important text immediately transposes us into a Kongo-Cuban sacred world of summoned ancestral forces—Lucero, Sarabanda, Mama Chola, et al. The dead are honored on altars in ways that represent a profound creolization of the 'medicines of God' (minkisi), core elements of the classical religion of the kingdom of Kongo. Ochoa makes clear that Palo is a world faith with all the depth, narrative excitement, and cultural vitality that such a status implies. I enthusiastically recommend this book."—Robert Farris Thompson, author of Tango: The Art History of Love and Aesthetic of the Cool "The subtle accomplishments of this intensive work are evident in the empirical richness, in its attention to the intertwinings of performance, materiality, and power, and in the deeply engaging voice that resonates throughout the manuscript. This is a singular achievement and will provide the first thoroughgoing account on Palo in English, written with a keen ethnographic sensibility, but much more broadly accessible—poetic and lucid, interpretive and grounded, challenging and engaging."—Don Brenneis, UC Santa Cruz "Ochoa takes us swimming into the unseen sea populated by the dead in Kongo-Cuban traditions. This nuanced and penetrating study reveals how the dead are divinity's potential, the generative spark that animates the many branches of what Ochoa terms 'African-inspired' practices. Evocative and masterfully written, I could hardly put the book down. It's sure to be a necessary text in any course on Afro-diasporic religions, Caribbean theology, and on ethnographic method and writing."—Elizabeth McAlister, author of Rara!: Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora Zusammenfassung Explores Palo, a Kongo-inspired 'society of affliction' that is poorly understood at the margins of Cuban popular religion. This title draws upon the critiques of Western metaphysics, revealing what this little known practice can tell us about sensation, transformation, and redemption in the Black Atlantic. Inhaltsverzeichnis Acknowledgments Introduction Part One. The Dead 1. Isidra 2. Kalunga! the Ambient Dead 3. Little Corners 4. Responsive Dead Part Two. Palo Society 5. Emilio O'Farril 6. Teodoro 7. Palo Society 8. Decay 9. A Feast Awry 10. Virtudes Part Three. Prendas-Ngangas-Enquisos 11. Lucero Mundo 12. The Cauldron 13. Reckoning with the Dead 14. Nfumbe 15. Insinuation and Artifice Part Four. Palo Craft 16. Struggle Is Praise 17. Cristianas 18. Judías 19. Tormenta Ndoki 20. Storms of Lent Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index ...
