Fetishes and Monuments 1

7/28/2019 Fetishes and Monuments 1

1/46

Fetishes and Monuments

Iconoclasm, agency and materiality in a public art project in Bahia, Brazil.

Dr. Roger Sansi-Roca

Department of Anthropology, Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Keywords: Iconoclasm, Candombl, agency, materiality.

Abstract:

In 1998, a new monument to the Orixs, the gods of the Afro-Brazilian religion Candombl, was

inaugurated in Bahia. The project was subject to all kinds of reactions and private criticisms, but none as

public as the violent attack on a Pentecostal group which identified the images with the Devil. This paper

analyzes the controversial construction, the attack and other particular appropriations of the monument. In

more general terms, the objective of this article is to reflect upon the relevance of thinking about the

materiality of objects beyond theories of value and distributed agency.


2/46

Fetishes and Monuments

Iconoclasm, agency and materiality in a public art project in Bahia, Brazil.

This is the short but intense story of a monument in its infancy. In spite of its young age,

this monument has already been the object of suspicion, criticism, derision, and verbal

and physical abuse, including an iconoclastic attack with a hammer.

The monument is a group of sculptures called Orixs de Bahia at the Dique de

Toror, a park in the center of the city of Salvador de Bahia in Brazil. The Orixs are the

gods of the Afro-Brazilian religion Candombl, and they are one of the more public

images of Bahia nowadays. In May of 1998, the monument was inaugurated as the

emblem of the renovated park of Toror. Sectors of the artistic class in Bahia, and some

of the people in Candombl1 themselves, received it with a certain skepticism. But what

really threatened the existence of the monument was the unexpectedly violent reaction of

a Pentecostal Church, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG). The church

organized rallies around the images and some of its members attacked them physically,

because they saw them as Devils. The attack only stopped when the local political chief,

Senator Antonio Carlos Magalhes, intervened personally, calling the leadership of the

church to stop or attend the consequences. Only then, the UCKG recognized their error:

they had mistaken a perfectly legitimate and innocuous work of art for an idol of Devil

worship.

In the next pages, I explain the origin, construction and intricate early life of this

2


3/46

monument, giving voice to all the different points of view. First, the official discourse

that defines it as a work of art and a legitimate cultural symbol, a monument. Then the

critical perspectives that define it as a commodity for tourists, an idol of Devil worship or

a reification of hegemonic power in all cases, I argue, presenting the monument as a

fetish, or an object of false consciousness that masks relations of domination. Through

these different perspectives, I discuss the implications of the case in the complex relations

of religion, politics and culture in Bahia.

But the final objective of this paper goes a little beyond these perspectives. In

many ways, the official and the critical views share some basic assumptions on the

way that people relate to these kinds of objects, either defined as monuments orfetishes.

In spite of their apparent dissimilarity, I argue that both are based on the common

assumption that the relation of people to things is immediate. They dont necessarily

consider that there are modes of relation of people and things that imply territoriality and

historicity; in other words, the relationship of people and things is transformed in

unpredictable ways in relation to time and events, regardless of the values that humans

give on them. In accusations of fetishism in particular, there is a certain sense of

emergency: it is necessary to destroy the fetish before it becomes something else.

This is a relatively straightforward point, but it is an important one, and I would

contend that it hasnt received enough attention in the anthropological literature on the

life of things. Some years ago, Appadurai (1987) defended the possibility of a

methodological fetishism2, arguing that objects can be seen methodologically as

focal points form which we can analyze a social context looking at the disputes and

3


4/46

movements they provoke, the values put into play by them. And yet sometimes things

may not simply be the bearers of human values. Alfred Gell (1998) alleged that objects,

especially art objects, can have agency, and not just methodologically. Gells bold

statement is contradictory with the modern discourse of anti-fetishism, in Latours

(1991,1996) terms: the denial of social agency to any non-human entity is constitutive of

modernity and its split between society and nature ( see also Keane 1998, 2002). This

contradiction could be the reason why Gell moderated his statement behind another

methodological excuse, methodological philistinism: the fact that people believe in

the agency of objects doesnt mean that anthropologists do. The ultimate consequence of

this philistinism is Gells complicated formula of abduction: people abduct agency

in objects when they recognize that they have a mind in ways similar to the human

mind. This mind of things, in any case, is always a surrogate of the human mind:

objects with agency are only delegates or indexes of the distributed person of the humans

who make, exchange, and worship them.

Both theories of value and agency see things as surrogates of human action,

ultimately activated by humans. Theories of value3 see things as bearers of human

action, but at the same time, they are essentially different from humans; theories of

agency, on the other hand see things as parts of the person, extending its will beyond its

immediate physicality. But in both cases, the social life of things is always a surrogate

of human life. These perspectives may obscure the fact that some times things are

relevant, and acquire a life, precisely because they are objects: not just because we

imprint our values on them, or we see them as part of us, or we think they have a mind,4


5/46

or a soul; but on the contrary, they are powerful because they have a body, because of

their physical presence. This body can be substantially different from the human body,

in its movement in space (since objects dont move by themselves) and time (since

objects dont die, at least not in the same way that humans do). What defines an object, as

Whitehead said (2000:144), is that it can be again: it is something that appears more

than once, and therefore we recognize in it a continuous existence out there

independently from our perception or will. Their life, in these terms, is substantially

different from ours; it is in fact quite the opposite. The relevance of the materiality of

things therefore comes from the resistance they offer to our values and abductions , in

their persistence, their particular relation to space and time.

In his seminal work on The problem of the Fetish(1985), William Pietz already

introduced the question of the untrascended materiality of the fetish, its

territorialization. Strictly linked to this territorialization, Pietz insisted on the question ofhistoricity:the fetish is always a meaningful fixation of a singular event; it is above all

an historical object, the enduring material form and force of an unrepeatable event

Pietz (1985:12). The radical historicity of the fetish is the result of the singular realities

generated by events that cannot be reduced to the list of elements that make a part of the

situation before they happen (Latour 2001:131). New realities which are not reducible

neither to processes of attribution or value or abduction or agency.

As Latour (2002) has shown, iconoclasm is a particularly interesting arena to test

the limits and ambiguities in our relationship with objects and images, their values and

5


6/46

agencies The immediacy of the accusations of fetishism, and the emergency of

iconoclasm in particular, can be seen in many ways as a preemptive attack against the

resistance of objects. Before they start resisting it is necessary to strike, to demonstrate

the preeminence of humans over things. But in spite of the dogmatic impetus of the

iconoclastic attack, often the attack itself creates ambiguous situations, in which it is not

clear who is the subject and who is the object. The objective of this paper is not to

unravel this confusion, but on the contrary, to reflect on the effects of this ambiguity.

The Monument as a Work of Art

The project of the Orixs of Toror was conceived as the hallmark, the emblem, of the

revitalization of the Toror area. The Dique de Toror is a small artificial lake in the

center of the city of Salvador, right behind the hills where the old city was set. It is an

area of intense traffic, between the Lapa central bus station and the Fonte Nova football

Stadium, linking the downtown with middle-class beach districts to the east and poor

suburbs to the north. The area around the lake houses lower-rent neighborhoods. When

the Department of Tourism of the State of Bahia and the City Council of Salvador

decided to transform the Dique de Toror into a park, they endorsed the idea of

furnishing it with a monument in honor of the Orixs. Toror has always been much

related to Candombl: the lake has been used at least since the 19 th century as a sanctuary

of Oxum, goddess of love, luxury and fresh water. Many Bahians have made offerings in

6


7/46

the lake: flowers and fruits, sometimes with little notes asking for Oxum for help in their

love lives.

Official institutions perceived Toror as both a small natural reserve and a reserve

of the Afro-Brazilian traditions of Bahia. In fact, these two values are seen as intertwined

because Candombl is often defined as a nature cult. Thus, the sculptures of the Orixs

would enhance the natural landscape since they are mystical entities linked to nature.4

The commission of the monument was given to the sculptor and decorator Tati Moreno,

who presented a project of building seven Orixs of gigantic dimensions (about 7 m. tall)

to be placed on the lake, in circle around a fountain.

The project of Toror has several political implications. First, it is trying to

revitalize and beautify an area in a poor neighborhood, with the political objective of

giving a new option of leisure to neighbors and passersby. At a more abstract level, the

project seeks to create a sense of citizenship amongst Bahians on the premise that

cleaning, improving the view and redesigning the city would instill public pride on them.

This in turn would produce an awareness of their responsibilities as citizens. 5 This

identification of citizens with the city and its facilities in this case was supposed to be

enhanced by furnishing the park with public art, cultural referents and symbols like the

Orixs which are close to the experience and the culture of the popular classes,6 like the

Orixs. The purpose then is to strengthen citizenship through the promotion of local

cultural identity.

I think that this point, although apparently obvious, needs to be explained. In the

next lines I go into some detail on the philosophical foundations of our contemporary

7


8/46

idea of art, to make explicit what mode of relation to objects does the Western discourse

on esthetics imply, before I discuss other modes of relation.

This idea of promoting citizenship through art is very linked to the image of the

public sphere, that as Mitchell says, provides the space in which disinterested citizens

may contemplate a transparent emblem of their own inclusiveness and solidarity, and

deliberate on the general good, free of coercion, violence, or private interests (Mitchell

1990:35). More specifically, public art is supposed to stimulate the esthetic sensibility

of citizens, their judgment of taste, which after Kant, is defined as a very particular form

of relating subjects to objects. In the Critique of JudgmentKant defines esthetic judgment

as free of need and finality: object and subject are independent and the subject has no

interest in the object by itself, but only in its appearance. For example: when you look at

an apple because it is beautiful not because you are hungry. Furthermore, judgments of

taste are universalizing: we want everyone to share them; we see the beauty of the apple

as an objective quality that everybody else should see. But paradoxically, we recognize it

as a subjective taste, our own take, and we know other people may have different tastes.

Therefore, esthetic judgment is a form of relationship of objects and subjects

based on detachment and free of need and interest: one does not look at the utility or need

of the thing, the price of the apple or the hunger one feels, to follow with the minimalist

metaphor. On the other hand it also prefigures a relationship between subjects based on

tolerance and mutual understanding (the acknowledgement of each owns taste), but also

having the aspiration of a final agreement, a universally shared taste, a sensus communis.

Kant described beauty as a symbol of freedom, because esthetic judgment is based on

8


9/46

disinterestedness and tolerance. Following Kant, Schiller proposed that this sensus

communis, this shared taste and sensibility, may lead to the formation of public interest

-as a transcendent goal that is not limited to individual interest. In his On the Aesthetic

Education of Man Schiller reflects on how the exercise of esthetic judgment can lead to

the formation of citizenship as a consciousness of public responsibilities independent

from private interests: only the communication of the Beautiful unites society because it

relates to what is common to them all (Schiller, 1954:138). The exercise of this public

consciousness is constitutive of what Habermas calls the public sphere7. Citizens in the

public sphere have the right to freely exercise their judgment autonomously from other

concerns The very existence of the public sphere depends upon the autonomy of a

cultural or artistic field, as it has been theorized in classical sociology (from Weber to

Bourdieu), an autonomy allowing for the construction of a cultural system of value

independent from other forms of social value or interest (e.g. religious, or economic).

The Monument as a religious-cultural symbol

Beyond the question of citizenship, the project of the Orixs is also making claims to

promote cultural identity: choosing a subject of the popular Afro-Brazilian religion,

Candombl, the promoters were seeking an object that the people of Bahia could identify

with. The first question at this point is to what extent these artistic representations are

accepted by its participants? The opinion of Candombl peoplein regards to the project is

difficult to account for, since Candombl is not a centralized religion with official

9


10/46

representatives, but a myriad of independent cult houses. But the reaction of the people of

Candombl I did fieldwork with to the project was cautious, in various ways. First of all,

it was not clearwhich Orixs were to be represented, and how; but particularly it was not

clear why. The problem resides, first of all, in the fact that the status of visual

representation in Candombl is not that obvious.

The Candombl of Bahia is a religious complex resulting of the synthesis of cults

of West-African origin, cults of worship to the Orixs or Voduns, the Saints. The

presence of the Orixs in the cult takes various forms according to the different rituals

involved. The more well known are the public rituals of possession, in which the initiates

embody the Orixs in the dance. But hours before the public rituals of possession, in

private, the Orixs have to be called, and their force (ax) has to be awakened, from the

altars where they are kept, with offerings and sacrifices. These containers or altars

(assentos) seldom contain images, and in any case images are not central to its force. The

altars are centered around the fundamentos (foundations) which in general are stones

(otan), sitting in dishes, pots or other kinds of kitchenware filled also with water and

leaves. These objects were called fetishesby the Afrobrazilianist literature.8

The otan stones, are used ritually in several ways: as absorbers of the blood of

sacrifices; as hammers to smash magical herbs; their ritual washing (ox) is also a

fundamental form of communion with the Orix. The ota is not the Orix, but its

house, its repository. Through sacrifices and offerings, the spiritual forces (ax)

contained in the stone are activated, allowing the incorporation of the initiate - the

transference of the Orix to the head (or). The story of the initiation of the person, and of

10


11/46

its deepening into the ritual knowledge and practices of the Orix cult (what Apter (1992)

has called deep knowledge) is the story of the accumulation of spiritual life in the otan.

It is not strange at all to hear this popular saying in Candombl: stones grow. And this

growth is strictly related to the growth of the Orixa in the head and body of the person. In

these terms, the Ota can be see as a part of the distributed person (Gell 1998) of the

initiate9.

Images in Candombl dont have the centrality that they have in Catholicism. We

could say that Candombl believes more in the power of concealing than ofdisplaying.

This means that the foundations are systematically hidden from strangers, even from

initiates in the lower levels of knowledge, which are not allowed to look at them directly.

The progress in initiation is also an opening of doors and an allowance to see the

containers of spiritual power. There is no doubt that the immanent power of these fetishes

is intensified in this sightless experience, by this ritualized invisibility. On the contrary

Catholic images maximize their display, their absolute visibility to show their power. In

Brazil, the Catholic religious image has a place of privilege in the church, in the house, in

the street; it is remarked, elevated, focalized as the visual axis of worship.

But it is also true that images were one of the paths through which Catholicism

entered into Candombl houses, because of the so-called syncretism of the Saints to the

Orixs. It was common until not so long ago to have Catholic images in Candombl

altars, as part of the attributes of the Orix- like other forms of decoration: vessels, beads,

cloths, perfumes, leaves, flowers and meals, which extended the indexical series of the

altar10. But they were not the center of worship, just a complement to the altar. The

11


12/46

situation has been slightly changing in the last years: a growing anti-syncretism

movement amongst the more intellectualized practitioners of Candombl has explicitly

asked for the renounce to Catholic images.11 In these terms, Candombl practitioners

didnt necessarily see the project of the Orixs of Toror as a faithful representation of

Candombl.

This skepticism was in fact stimulated by the technical problems occurring

during the development of the project. The artist Tati Moreno wanted to fix the sculptures

on the lake, over balancing platforms which would move with the waves, giving thus an

impression of movement. The idea was that the Orixs would look like dancing 12. But

the structures were too heavy, and the experiments of Moreno made in the lake

repeatedly failed, resulting in the sinking of the structures. Any initiate in Candombl

would think that the responsible for these failures was the owner of the lake, the Orix

Oxum, was manifesting her disagreement.

Tati Moreno was aware of this and so decided to do it the right way. Although

not exactly an initiate, Moreno is an Ogan13 in the Gantois since the time when Me

Menininha congregated around her a court of politicians and artists. Moreno decided to

go to the Gantois and ask the Orixs about the project, which one does by consulting the

oracle of the bzios (the cowry shells).14 According to the oracle, the Orixs had nothing

against the project, but they also dictated how many Orixs should be represented, and

which. With the authority of Gantois, Moreno had apparently solved the problem of

legitimacy for his work amongst Candombl people. He also decided to give up on

floating platforms, to instead set the sculptures on solid concrete pillars and to place the

12


13/46

supplementary sculptures that the Orixs had required on the shore.

The Monument as a tourist commodity

Besides Candombl people, what did other artists think about the sculptures? Tati

Moreno has been known in Bahia for his sculptures of the Orixs of smaller dimensions.

Some artists privately criticized his appointment because of his close links with the

political establishment. Still, one of the more reputable art critics in Bahia told to me

plainly that Moreno was probably the only artist capable of building such a monument:

since the early 1980s, the city council had commissioned him to make the street

decorations of Carnival, and this gave him the experience and resources to develop

projects of monumental dimensions, like the Orixs of Toror.

Tati Morenos use of the iconography of the Orixs is not exceptional among

artist in Bahia. Images of Candombl have been used since in the 1940ies the first

generation of Modernist artists, writers, and social scientists vindicated the Afro-

Brazilian culture of Bahia as a source of inspiration (Sansi-Roca 2003). Until then, the

Bahian elites had attempted to obliterate and repress the overwhelmingly African past of

the city. But with the nationalist political and cultural revolution of the 1930ies, the

vindication of the mixed-race origin of the country became a source of pride, a mark of

modernity and ultimately a state policy. Native and foreign artists like the writer Jorge

Amado, the painter Caryb, and the photographer Pierre Verger spread through the world

their stories and images of vibrant Candombl rituals.

13


14/46

However, what started as a project of cultural modernity with time became

standardized. In the 1960, the first governments of the military regime identified cultural

policies with tourist promotion (Santos 2000, Sansi-Roca 2003) By the 1970ies, the

images of exotic Candombl rituals had clearly become an object of tourist consumption.

Tati Moreno started to work in that period, producing little brass images of the Orixs

that he first sold to the visitors of the Candombl house of Gantois.

The project of Toror can certainly be seen in this context: the park was obviously

not only addressed to Bahians, but also to national and international tourists, one of the

citys main sources of income. Building a monument to the Orixs that could eventually

become a postcard was totally consistent with the policies of the Department of Tourism,

which has stimulated the commodification of Candombl as a tourist attraction.

When I talked to people of the younger, more progressive generations of

intellectuals and artists of Bahia about the monument, they often manifested their

criticism in these terms: they saw it as a commodity for the tourists. Implicit in this

criticism is the assumption of the contradiction between art and commodity values:

artistic value in our culture is defined as a inalienable possession with a transcendent

cultural value( Myers 2001) something that bears the soul of a people. Accusing the

Orixs monument of being a souvenir does not only deny its esthetic quality, but it

states that it is precisely the contrary from a work of art.

And yet these are not the only criticisms that the monument received. Worse

things were yet to come, when it was finally inaugurated in May of 1998. At that time, an

unexpected and extremely violent attack came from another religious congregation: the

14


15/46

Igreja Universal do Reino de Dus.

The Monument as an idol of Devil Worship

The rise of the Igreja Universal do Reino de Dus (IURD) and other new Pentecostal

churches is one of the more astonishing and relevant phenomena in the recent history of

Brazil, a sign of the enormous contradictions and the cultural transformations of this

country. The IURD has carried out a noisy propaganda in the mass media, through direct

participation in politics, and by physically occupying public spaces where they perform

their spectacular ritual sessions. It has gained a wide success, particularly amongst the

lower classes, offering a shelter for the victims of violence, alcoholism, drug-

dependency, and poverty in general. In exchange, the IURD asks for two things: first, the

economic help of its followers, based on the slogan that for every dollar they gave, God

would give ten dollars back; and second, an extreme combativeness against other

religions, Catholicism and particularly the Afro-Brazilian cult, accused of idolatry and

Devil worship (Macedo 2000).

This combative public presence is reflected in IURD temples, which are seen by

some researchers also as theaters and markets of faith (Campos 1996). The attack on the

traditional religions is, arguably, what has provoked most of the outrage of the Brazilian

establishment and intellectuals, who see Catholicism and Candombl not only as

religions, but as a part of Brazilian cultural heritage (Kramer 2001). The IURD and other

Pentecostal churches seem to be challenging the traditional relationship between religions

15


16/46

in Brazil, in which Catholicism occupied the public sphere, while leaving Candombl to

the private and the backyard. The IURD does not seem to vindicate only its own place in

the public sphere: its combativeness against Catholicism raises the suspicion that in fact

its objective is to attain hegemony in it.

One of the more combative features of the IURD is its iconoclasm- its explicit

attacks to the worship of images of the saints. An extremely polemical instance of this

iconoclasm came on a television program when a pastor of the IURD, facing the cameras,

kicked an image of Nossa Senhora Aparecida, the patron saint of Brazil on her holy day

(Johnson 1997; Kramer 2001). The public outrage against this attack stretched official

religious tolerance to the breaking point.

If the iconoclastic attacks against Catholicism are symbolically violent, the

relationship between the IURD and Afro-Brazilian cults has arrived at extremes of

physical violence (Soares 1992). Even more than with Catholicism, the war with Afro-

Brazilian cults is a holy war against the forces of Evil. One of the more important public

rituals of the IURD is the performance of exorcism for former members of Afro-Brazilian

cults who are considered to be possessed by the Devil. These converts are obliged to

ritually break with their past in Candombl by burning, breaking or throwing away all the

ritual paraphernalia of the Afro-Brazilian cult. Their houses are also cleansed ritually

with holy oil, chasing the Devil, who is commanded to leave (sai, Diabo, leave Devil).

If the convert is a Candombl priest, the cleansing attains the dimensions of

annihilation, even the ground is dug up to extirpate and throw away the foundations

(fundamentos) of the Orix cult that were buried there.

16


17/46

In this sense, the IURDs iconoclasm conflates Catholic images and Candombl

fundamentos as instruments, maybe even incarnations of the Devil. Whether these objects

are thought to be only false projections or are actually inhabited by the Devil, is unclear.

The lawyers of the IURD pastor that kicked the saint Aparecida argued was that he was

only using the image as a rhetoric device, to exemplify visually his rejection of idolatry

and therefore exercising his right to express his religious faith (Kramer 2001). Yet, in the

everyday practices of iconoclasm of the IURD such a didactic justification is hard to

apply; there is a certain ambiguity. If we look closely at the ritual practices of the IURD,

it seems that they give a lot of importance to the actual material destruction of objects and

images, and it is difficult to understand the violence of their actions only as a symbol of

rejection. The violent cleanings of the terreiros are not public acts to be showed in TV,

but ritually effective operations that are actually kicking out the evil spirits that inhabit

that place. In other terms: they acknowledge the personhood attributed to altars and

images by other religions. In this sense, they are certainly very far from the classical

model of Calvinist Protestantism, with its insistence on the fact that things dont have

agency as described for example by Keane( 2002).

It is also interesting to point out their forced esthetic blindness - saying that an

image is just a piece of wood doesnt only deny its religious value, but also its value as

art, and its visual qualities: it is just matter, and matter only has instrumental value. This

iconoclasm is not only a rejection of the wrong faith, but also a rejection of sensuality

and sensitivity, reducing human action to two inter-connected goals: the achievement of

spiritual elevation and the achievement of material wealth. In this scheme, the material

17


18/46

world can only be seen as an enemy (because of its temptations) and an instrument (to

achieve your goals).This is very different from Candombl. Although Candombl is also

a totally pragmatic, trouble-solving ritual practice, the submission to the Orixs requires

precisely a deep intimacy with material things in the world, and a very refined esthetic

sense to satisfy the exquisite taste of the Orixs- since nothing pleases them more than

beauty; the beauty of offerings, the beauty of their house, the beauty of their dress and

jewels, of the dance, music, good food. This is not an inner beauty, but a real, visible,

material one.

However, this concern with beauty and the sensuous cannot be reduced to

sensuality and a religion of pleasure. The submission to the Orixs is lived by many as

a form of slavery, because the level of obligations (obrigaes) and taboos (quizilas) can

be excruciatingly high for initiates. The conversion to Protestantism may seem, on the

other hand, liberation from this servitude and the establishment of an alliance with a

higher power. I have heard several times in Bahia that a good prayer is more powerful

that any sorcery (feitio15).

From the perspective of classical Protestantism, the change from a heavily ritualized

and esthetic (sensuous) relationship to the Orixs to a more internalized, verbalized

system of communication with God can be also correlated to a change in the notion of the

person, from the subjugated slave whose life was to serve the Orixs, to the Protestant

Christian who is in control of his will and who establishes his allegiance with God freely,

through faith (Soares 1994, Keane 2002). A faith that shall not be the trust to a patron,

like it is in the case of the cult of saints, but the acceptance of a whole ideological system

18


19/46

that postulates a certain supernatural truth beyond experience. This rejection of the

sensuous, of images, is a rejection of the world as a fiction that hides a truth that can only

be reached internally through faith: iconoclasm would be then a manifestation of and

individualist, subjectivist asceticism. The asceticism of the converted involves a rejection

of a past life, which has extremely important consequences in the social life of the new

believer. He unilaterally excludes himself of many aspects of the public life of the city.

Catholic celebrations and Candombl rituals, of course, and not only the more public

ones, but also the domestic celebrations to saints, or to the Orixs, which constitute the

web of social exchanges in the neighborhoods.

And yet, in these new Pentecostal groups, particularly for the IURD, the

achievement of spiritual freedom and subjective consciousness is not so evident to the

external observer. More traditional Pentecostal groups like Assemblia de Deus have a

more cohesively ascetic behavior: they dont watch TV, they dress with modesty butdignity, all alike, men with long pants, long shirts and a tie, women with long skirts, and

they dont cut or dye their hair. In more general terms, they do no to interfere in public

life and politics. But the IURD has not strictly followed this asceticism. Its followers are

relatively free in their dressing styles and they dont have a sexually repressive morality.

And they participate combatively in the public sphere; in fact they have become a little

empire of the mass media.

This is particularly clear in our case. In Salvador, opposing the project of the

Orixs in Toror was an exceptional opportunity because of its possible impact in the

19


20/46


21/46

This recognition is one of the more interesting aspects of this case, since it was not by

any means the only time evangelicals have opposed public artworks that make reference

to the Orixs: there are at least three other cases. First was a mosaic by Bel Borba,

representing the mermaid Iemanj, Orix of the sea. Borba is famous in Bahia for his

mosaics, halfway between graffiti and sculptures, which are genuine works of public art -

since they are not commissioned by any private party. Borba generally executed them on

the rocky sides of the many hills in the urban landscape of Bahia, or in the outer walls of

abandoned houses. In this case, it was on the wall of an abandoned movie theater in the

Rio Vermelho neighborhood. Rio Vermelho is famous for its festa in honor of the Orix

Iemanj, so Borba made a huge four-meter long mermaid. Shortly thereafter, the IURD

bought the theater, and the first thing they did was to smash the tiles and paint the walls.

However Borba told me that he could not complain:19 that was their building now, and

although he was sad about it, he could do nothing.

Thus the disappearance of Bel Borbas mermaid went unnoticed, at least in the

media. That was not the case of a mural in the lobby of another theater, which featured

paintings and sculptures by Juarez Paraiso. In 1982, the owner of the Art Theater asked

him to decorate the lobby, and Paraiso made an allegory of the myth of the Orix

Oxumar that covered two walls of the hall, a space three meters high and ten meters

long. However, in 2000 an evangelical church, Igreja Renascer, bought the theater. On 5

May 2000, a neighbor saw that the mural in the lobby was being destroyed. According to

his testimony, the evangelicals were painting slogans over it proclaiming God is

21


22/46

true(Deus fiel), Nothing Satan(Nada Satanas[sic]) and Resist the Devil until he

flees (resista o Diabo at ele fugir), and they covered the breast of a naked sculpture

with a plaster brassiere. The neighbor went to tell the author Juarez Paraiso, who lives

nearby, but by the time he found him it was too late. Juarez called the newspapers, but

when they got there the sculptures had already been destroyed with a hammer and the

walls were being covered with white lime . The journalists attempted to interview the

head of the church, who at first seemed surprised by the presence of the press and a bit

ironic20, saying he didnt notice that the mural was a work of art and he didnt know the

author (this was a work of art? It looked of pretty bad taste to me. And you say that that

guy [the painter] is still alive?21). But when the second journalist showed up he was

more impatient and aggressive, saying that the journalists were there because a band of

gays had complained, that the church had bought the theater and he had nothing else to

say.22

In fact he was right; there was nothing else to say. Paraiso had been paid when the

then-owner of the Art Theater asked him to make a mural. He is certainly the author, but

not the owner of the mural, and he had no legal rights on it at the moment of its

destruction. He was very upset by the barbarism of the evangelicals, but he also was

upset because the government was not taking care of these cases: the government should

declare of public interest the art works that are in public places. What happened to me

can happen to any artist.23

There is thus a common problem then in the Borba and Paraiso cases: these are

their works but they dont own them, and according to the laws, the owners of the space

22


23/46

where these works are installed can do what they please. So even if the destruction of art

works may be considered as barbaric by the intellectual elite, the legal system does not

provide any protection, unless these art works are public property or at least of cultural

interest: unless they become monuments.24

As for the third case, in May 2000, the IURD blocked the installation in Rio de

Janeiro of a sculpture of the Orix Ex by the renowned Bahian artist Mario Cravo Jr.

Among the Orixs, Ex is the more associated with the Devil, and Evangelicals consider

a public image of Ex an absolute execration. This project, like the Orixs of Toror, was

public, so it would have the guarantee of being protected as a monument and as public

property. But in Rio, as a matter of fact, the IURD has an extraordinary political power. 25

Precisely for this reason the project never got to be realized: because the government of

the city of Rio would not concede the category of local monument to an image of the

Devil.

In Bahia, however, the situation is different. The political power of Protestants is

still not significant. Moreover, the ruling party and its leader, Magalhes (ACM), have

always encouraged the promotion of the image (and the images) of Afro-Brazilian culture

in order to promote tourism and local identity. The IURD has had to accept not only the

official position but also the official discourse: an attack on the Orixs of Toror is an

attack on Afro-Brazilian culture; and whoever opposes Afro-Brazilian culture goes

against the people of Bahia and their great leader, Antonio Carlos Magalhes.

The Monument as a Fetish of Power

23


24/46

This is the happy end of the story: since it is a work of art, or better, a public monument,

religious considerations do not apply. Since it belongs to the field of culture, battles in the

religious field are out of the question. Public art appears here as a clear example on how

the discourse and the institution of culture, in modern Brazil have more legitimacy than

religion: they are even more untouchable than the sacred. If religious values can be

disputed at a certain level, cultural values may not be disputed, since they represent the

true soul of the nation. This point may help us understand the public reaction to attacks of

Catholic religious symbols by the same infamous IURD, particularly the case of the

kicking of the saint Nossa Senhora Aparecida, patron of Brazil, which I mentioned in

chapter 1. The arguments of the intelligentsia and the mass media against this attack were

not formulated as a defense of Catholic religion, but more of Catholic traditions, and

particularly the image of Aparecida, as a very important part of the history and culture of

Brazil. Attacking Aparecida, the IURD was attacking a precious cultural image of the

nation, a national monument. Therefore, they argued the Nation should respond with the

full weight of the law.26

Yet it is interesting to see which ideas of culture, and whose consensus are we

talking about here, because as we have seen, this structural predominance of culture over

religion, has not applied in other cases- like the sculpture of Ex in Rio de Janeiro. Why

is Bahia different from Rio? Because the Pentecostals didnt have the same kind of

political power there. In Bahia, the power was then in the hands of ACM.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the objectives of the project of Toror would be to

24


25/46

promote citizenship and identity. Did the project of public art in Toror succeed in

promoting citizenship, did it produce a public sphere? Not apparently. The artists, for

example, were only gossiping, prejudging the art work as a commodity for tourists;

Candombl people maintained an attitude of suspicion; and the IURD attacked the

monument without any consideration to art or culture, but to religion and the eternal fight

of Good and Evil. This dialogue of the deaf was cut off by the authoritative voice of the

owner of the slot (o dono do pedao), ACM. Imposing his will ACM closed any

possibility of public discussion, any exercise of the prerogatives of the public sphere. In

fact, ACM acted as, and probably was, the owner of Bahia. In this situation,

citizenship, and public interest are bourgeois ideals very remote to the daily reality of

this city. We can perceive it clearly in the behavior of the people of Candombl, who

know that most Bahians are not seen as citizens, but as little people (povo 27). What

the little people can hope for is not the democratic respect, but the paternalist affection

of the established power. This image of public power as an extension of paternalist

family relations is not at all unfamiliar to the sociology of Brazil (from Gilberto Freyre

1946 and Buarque de Hollanda 1936 to Da Matta 1991), and it still holds perfectly true in

Bahia. It is certainly opposed to bourgeois notions of the public sphere.

Instead of talking about democratic public art, maybe we should talk about the

power of monuments as state fetishes, as objects that not only represent but also

produce and reproduce the power of the State. From this perspective, the monument

would not simply stand for the Devil, or for commodification, but for Magalhes himself,

as an embodiment of local power: it is part of his extended agency (see Taussig 1997

25


26/46

Gell1998).

This could be the conclusion of this paper: what is presented as a work of public

art that builds up citizenship in reality is a fetish of power. And it would be a right

conclusion, probably, but maybe it is not enough. But that is what we, social scientists,

always expect to find as critical, pessimist intellectuals: the ugly truth of power as usual

lays hidden beneath the pretty masks of culture. As Taussig says, this is a bit of a trick:

we know the answer to the question before we ask. efore we start, we know that

regardless of the cultural practice we describe, at the end we will unmask it to reveal the

truth of power. As if we knew all along that what we have seen, all we have talked about

are just images, fictions, shades in the cave.

Let me note that this may not be so different from the discourse of the

Pentecostals. In fact, all the critical perspectives I have presented, including them, share

some common assumptions. All see the monument as a reification of something other-

which is hidden behind the fetish. Either a commodity fetish, a fetish of power, or an idol

of Devil worship the monument is hiding something other. The objective of the

monument, from all these perspectives is to control the ignorant masses through

fetishism. Who is behind? that is the question for the critical thinker. The answer can

be Capitalism, the Devil, or ACM, it depends it could be all of these together in fact.

The iconoclasm of the IURD in these terms is not substantially different from the

iconoclasm of intellectuals, even if the forms of the latter are more subtle and

enlightened. But all assume a radical criticism on something that shouldbe changed. As

Latour has ironically pointed out (1999; 2002), the critical move can be seen as an

26


27/46

iconoclastic discourse that tries to show the hidden hand behind the false fetishes that

enslave the masses. What if we suspend for a moment the crushing blow of the hammer

(Latour 1999:268)? What if we try to find other forms of relation to this object that may

not adjust neither to the official model of the monument or the critical model of the

fetish? The sculptures of Toror take their inspiration in what is called popular culture,

and attempt to display experience-near references to the people of the city. Maybe we

should turn to some of the people in the city and see what they say.

Beyond anti-fetishism: Appropriation

What did the people think about the monument of the Orixs of Toror? That question

intrigued me for a certain time. I asked many people, but I assumed that most of my

friends and acquaintances were not representative: they are either upper-class

intellectuals or people of Candombl or both, and I have already laid out their answers.

So I decided to head to the Dique de Toror to talk with people randomly. This was not a

rigorous survey, but still some of the things people told me were interesting. In general, I

found a difference between tourists and locals. The first often liked the Orixs as a part of

the culture or folklore of Bahia. The plaque on the shore, which explains the attributes of

each Orix, helped them greatly. On the other hand, locals expressed little interest, some

liked the statues and some did not. In general for both locals and tourists, the Orixs of

Toror are very linked to the park in general - the lake and its landscaped shores- and in

that respect public opinion is positive, although some complain that money is being spent

27


28/46

in building parks before solving more urgent problems.

Some people who worked in the Dique gave me lengthier, more specific answers.

Two were particularly interesting: a policeman and a park security guard. The policeman,

Mr. Coelho, is a small but strong mulatto with a moustache and a martial expression that

combines aloofness, irony and menace. He first explained to me how the kids in the

neighborhood told him that they had nightmares of the Orixs, dreaming that the

sculptures were walking out of the lake with their swords and axes. I could picture it,

considering the resemblance of the Orixs with the Japanese cartoon robot monsters these

kids avidly watch on TV. Mr. Coelho confessed that he did not generally care much

about Candombl and that the statues were not to his liking, either. He didnt belong to

any Church, but he liked reading the Bible, and thought that everything would be so

much easier if everybody did. The Bible says the same in all languages. Dont they also

read it in Australia? he asked rhetorically. All this stuff about the Orixs is confusing

and probably wrong, he suspected. In fact he started disliking all of it, and particularly

those sculptures he saw every day, once he read the information plaque by the shore. He

took me there to show it to me and read aloud a paragraph referring to the Orix Logum

Ede: ... here it says: Logum Ede is a man half of the year, and a woman the other half...

He looked at me in silence, mutely saying, OK, I had enough; he was not interested in

transsexual gods.

Another interesting opinion came from a security guard, Paulo, a young black

man. In reference to the sculptures of the Orixs he told me: I have nothing against

them...And if I did, nothing would change anyway. Interestingly, he is a member of the

28


29/46

IURD, but he did not participate in the rallies in the Dique because he did not belong to

the church at that time yet. He repeated the official discourse of the IURD when he said

with indifference that they were just big painted dolls. Curiously enough, an important

part of his task as a guard is to ensure that nobody makes a mess with sacrifices in the

lake. Offerings of flowers and fruits are allowed, but not animals and blood because they

smell bad and are unsanitary. The park is a place to jog, not to kill chickens.

However, after talking with him for a while a very curious discourse emerged.

Paulo started explaining to me how Candombl, like Catholicism, was a misreading of

the Bible. All the Orixs, in fact, can be found in the Bible. For example Oxal in the

Bible is the name of the language of the angels, and Candombl people worship an

Angel, confusing him with an Orix. This is meaningful because the Holy Spirit is

incorporated by the evangelicals, and one of its manifestations is speaking in tongues.

This theory is interesting because it gives a more sophisticated view of the identity of

Orixs, besides the Manichean reduction to the Devil. If the Orixs are biblical figures,

Angels, then the Devil is responsible for the confusion of images, but the practice may

not be ill intentioned, but only mistaken. Thus Candombl becomes somewhat more

acceptable for the Pentecostals. Oxal, in his pure whiteness, may appear to Paulo at

some point as an image of an angel. Why not? Syncretism has so many paths...

In these two cases we can find a confirmation of the points I have made in

relationship to citizenship. Neither the policeman nor the security guard wanted to

express their opinion as citizens the beginning. In particular Paulo said: Nobody

would care about what I think. This is a very self-deprecatory attitude: he is nobody, his

29


30/46

judgment is irrelevant. It is an attitude of neither assent nor dissent, butof conformity,

especially meaningful since he is a Pentecostal, and as we have seen, his leaders

emphatically denounce this attitude.

Yet, his conformity does not mean that his mind stops working. Although I found

Paulo very young and a bit naive, he is neither a Protestant thug nor had he been

brainwashed by the Universal Church. He is just a regular guy, with his theories, his ways

of seeing, and his own syncretisms, his personal synthesis of knowledge and experience.

He is appropriating the sculptures of the Orixs to fit his own knowledge, using the

expression of De Certeau (1984). By appropriation, or reappropriation, De Certeau

meant the processes of making things ones own, making them similar to what one is

(166:1984). Through appropriation, common people like Paulo overcome and

(involuntarily) mock both the official and the critical discourses on the monument. They

dont recognize their alienation, neither they try to mimic a taste that is being imposed

over them. They dont feel like subjects of fetishism. Quite the contrary: they make

their own story with objects like the sculptures. On the other hand, they are not only

resisting because they are not aware of opposing an official interpretation; they are

producing something else, something new, inscribed in a time and a space. We could say

the same about Mr. Coelho and the kids he talks about who have nightmares of the

statues as cartoon monsters: Mr. Coelho projects his homophobia, seeing the sculptures

as a crazy gay parade. They are all appropriating the Orixs of Toror through their

particular imaginations.

30


31/46

This is a particularly relevant point: how people appropriate objects in the urban

landscape in their own stories of the city, indexes of their own life. This attitude of

appropriation goes beyond either iconoclasm or esthetic judgment, because appropriation

is not deployed in the abstract immediacy required by them but it involves a personal

relationship to the object through time. Let me explain this point further : it looks like for

either for esthetics or iconoclasm, the object is seen as an image presented to our senses,

asking for a direct response, either negation and attack for iconoclasm or detachment and

pure sensibility for esthetics. Even if theses two responses are radically different, they are

comparable in a very basic point; for both find necessary to save the distance between

object and subject. For iconoclasm, the destruction of the idol is necessarily immediate

because the very presence of the idol threatens the autonomy of the subject who might

become an idolater. For esthetics, the immediate detachment from the object is a pre-

requisite for the judgment of taste; if the subject gets involved in the object if they

become familiar, too close, too intimate, the esthetic judgment is denaturalized. If the

subject becomes too close to the object, the esthetic experience becomes kitsch (Giesz

1960).

Iconoclasm and esthetics cannot give any time to objects, they risk becoming

idolatry and kitsch. This is a risk of being seduced by objects, of getting involved to

them, loosing the sacred unity of the self and its irreconcilable distance form

objects.Appropriation brings to consideration how time and everyday events influence

the relationship of objects and subjects. The way that people see things changes, almost

imperceptibly perhaps, sometimes through minor events. Everyday processes of sensual

31


32/46

appropriation are somewhat less explicit than the highly conscious ideas of esthetic

judgment or iconoclasm; they seem to operate in a more entangled, implicit sphere of

action. For example, we could think about our daily trajectories, in the recurrence of

certain elements that become our indexes: your coffee pot, a certain building, that bench

you pass by constantly; your neighbors loud boom-box. They may even appear

randomly in your dreams, become intertwined in your personal history, wrap themselves

in your memory, and acquire personal meanings that nobody else could deploy, maybe

even acquire an agency in the story of your life: you belong together. The low intensity of

esthetic perception is offset by the high intensity of intimacy precisely because

appropriation builds context, whereas esthetics and iconoclasm keep objects out of it.

AGENCY?

Conclusion: Fetishes and Monuments

I came back to the Dique de Toror two years after my initial research, in 2003. I talked

to seu Raimundo, also known asJacar (caiman), a former boxer who rents little boats to

tourists and visitors in the Dique. Seu Raimundo was the leader of the neighborhood

association for the ecological protection since the reurbanization and the foundation of

the park. But in his words, the association has slowly faded away, by lack of interest,

both of neighbors and institutions. The Orixs need to be repainted urgently. The city

council does not provide as much security and policing as it used to, and the result is that

the park is suffering with the actions of vandals.

For example the sign by the side of the lake, explaining each Orix, was covered

32


33/46

with graffiti. The city council took it away, and it never got there back. Who were these

vandals who trashed the sign? It was not clear. Raimundo introduced to me one of the

cleaners of the park, an initiated in Candombl, who may know something about that.

Raimundo jokes with him, saying that he is a son of Logun Ed, six months a woman,

six months a manand he laughs ( it is interesting to note how Raimundo remembers

this information from the panel; it was not only the policeman who was shocked by this

information). The cleaner, a bit uncomfortable, says that he is actually a son of Nana, but

that most of anything he believes in God. The cleaner said that the vandals were probably

soccer hooligans coming out of a game: the soccer stadium is right by the side of the

park, and they often trash it and burn garbage cans when their team looses a game. Now,

the tourists sometimes ask Raimundo which Orix is which and so on, but he doesnt

always remember.

What will happen with the monument to the Orixs? Maybe Brazil will have a

final religious and cultural revolution and it will be demolished. If the Pentecostals seize

political power in Bahia one day, they may finally destroy the Orixs of Toror. In the

meantime, they fade away, in the reflections of the sacred lake, loosing their shiny colors

by oxidation. The sign has already disappeared, the first effective victim of an act of

vandalism that apparently had no more motivation than the rage of a hooligan it cant

even be considered iconoclasm (Gamboni 1997).

The monument is being incorporated to the landscape of the city, like old

monuments to the heroes of Abolition and independence. Maybe some years from now

people will pass by and not even notice it. Time, that greatest of all iconoclasts, as

33


34/46

Latour says (1999:272).

Monuments often undergo the most curious process of disappearance: when built,

they are meant to stand as the symbol of a city or nation, the pride of a government and a

gift to the people; but then they gradually become a part of the landscape, as they get

dusty, one more spot in the everyday trajectories of people going to and fro. Once they

were a framework for overt or private argument, a field of battle, then they become

harmless ghosts of a forgotten past.

Modernism in this century has been extremely critical with monuments, as it has

been critical with the ideologies they embody. Lewis Mumford saw monuments as a

mummification of the past. For him, stones give a false sense of continuity, and a false

assurance of life (Mumford 1935:435).28

The relationship of monuments with time is an interesting question. It seems like

the aspiration to timelessness only leads to an invocation of death. And this death is a

public death: they are dead because nobody looks at themWe could consider it in

relation to the value of invisibility of Candombl altars, the assentos, what the

afrobrazilianists called fetiches. We could say that assentos and monuments like public

sculptures have a totally different relationship to time, memory, and people. The

inalienable possessions (Weiner 1992) that constitute the life of a house, the assentos, are

enacted by their constant participation in cycles of ritual activity; they are constantly

being reenacted, feed, cleaned, used, re-wrapped They are embodiments of collective

memory in a very particular way: they participate in a process of transformation and

growth, a process of life, and their participation is very active since they are also alive: it

34


35/46

is said that stones grow; and this is said in quite literal terms. And why shouldnt we

accept it? We have to consider that the constant ritual feeding, the extended relationship

with the initiate, establishes a highly determined and determinant relationship between

assento and initiate, to the extent that the ot stone almost becomes an exterior organ of

her body, a part of her distributed person(Gell1998).

Mumford was totally wrong in that case: here, stones give a true sense of

continuity, and a realassurance of life. The stones of the assentos dont seem to behave

like regular stones, especially not like those we find in monuments. If the ideologies

originally inscribed in monuments aspire to eternity in their severe solidity, which

paradoxically condemns them to oblivion, the living force of Candombl, ax, in its

continuous and lively transformation, is very successful at preserving memory by fixing

it precisely into a ritual time. At this point we could ask, how different are the forms of

appropriation of public monuments and assentos? The position of both kinds of objects

could get curiously reversed - because it is very clear that the relationship of ax and

initiates in Candombl is highly determined and determinant. In fact, the initiate belongs

as much to the assento as the assento belongs to the initiate; their relationship is very

ritualized, and the relative degrees of invisibility of the assento is built precisely to

enhance this rigidity, avoiding too overt a display, to allow a certain degree of intimacy

of the Orix and a secrecy that is indispensable for the continuity of its mysterious power.

On the contrary, the monument is totally open, totally visible in the public space. In a

way we could say that where assentos are indexes of the particular relationship of

devotees and Orixs, monuments are made to be permanent symbols of a certain

35


36/46

collective, abstract idea, like Afro-Brazilian culture, for example. And yet this publicity

is unquestionably its major weakness. Despite their big volume, solidness, and apparent

arrogance, they are just dead stone and metal. Even if the public authorities protect them,

they cannot respond to aggression, cannot avoid being mocked and time always works

against them.Assentos, with their intimate relation to the initiate, is much more in control

of its integrity and its identity, and it can only be appropriated in a very restricted,

prescribed number of ways.

But nobody can control the ways in which people will appropriate public

monuments in their vagaries, in ways that may contradict its original premises. Here

resides the paradox: monuments are much more opened to the pleasures of imagination,

sometimes in the most ironic, random ways. It is then that its dimensions of temporality

and historicity appear more clearly. Besides their apparently permanent symbolism, they

can also become indexes of the peculiar trajectories of individuals. What city planner or

sculptor could have imagined that somebody would think of the Orix sculptures as

cartoon monsters, transsexuals or fallen angels? And yet they cannot avoid it. Over time,

it might well happen that the Orixs of Toror become part of the memory and the

personal history of many people, thus acquiring a range of meanings and possibilities that

have not been predicted in this article. And it is also possible, indeed probable, that they

become invisible to most passersby.

In these terms, the monument can aquire an autonomy from the intentions who

built it, he may even manifest a resistence to these intentions. We may think that the

agency of the object, then is not just an extension of the distributed person of its creators

36


37/46

or promoters, but a result of a particular relationship with time and space, and the

resistence that this relationship awakes.

Essa definio da agncia dos objetos radicalmente diferente da hiptesis de

Gell, para quem os objetos tem agncia s como delegados dos humanos, que atribuiem

neles uma intencionalidade, uma mente. Para Gell, dizerpessoa distribuida a mesma

coisa que dizermente distribuida. Eu defenderia, pelo contrario, o que Gell define como

uma teoria externalista(11), na qual reconhecemos a agncia na prtica social

independentemente de si vem de uma mente interior ou alma. Mas indo ms longe de

Gell, eu no acho que uma aproximao externalista precise da noo de mente

exterior. De fato no acho que seja preciso falar de mentes, nem de psicologia

intencional para falar de agncia ou simplemente de ao. En certos casos, a agncia das

coisas no resulta do fato que elas temham uma mente e uma intencionalidade, mas da

evidencia da presena fsica delas, na sua relao como os humanos. No por que as

coisas tem mente, mas por que elas tem corpo, e esse corpo radicalmente diverso do

corpo humano, que elas podem participar na ao social en formas radicalmente

diferentes dos humanos.

Nesse sentido importante destacar a irredutvel materialidade ou

territorializao do monumento, para usar os termos de Pietz (1985:12). Objetos como os

monumentos tem uma relao absolutamente diferente com tempo e espao que os

humanos. Eles so fixos e, tendencialmente, imperecveis. Eles podem sobreviver os

governantes que os construram e o seu contexto original, perdendo completamente o

sentido ou incorporando sentidos novos. nessa materialidade, nessa obstinada presena,

37


38/46

onde as vezes encontramos a agncia das coisas, a sua resistncia a serem reduzidas a

smbolos dos nossos valores, ou delegados da nossa pessa.

Com o tempo, pode acontecer que os Orixs do Toror sejam reapropiados,

destruidos, ou simplesmente esquecidos. Quem sabe? Si as pedras falassem...

38


39/46

Bibliography

Apter, Andrew

1992Black Critics and Kings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Brown, David

1996

Holanda, Srgio Buarque de, 1902-Raizes do Brasil.

Rio [de Janeiro] J. Olympio, 1936.

Campos, Leonildo Silveira

1997 Teatro, Templo e Mercado- Organizaao e Marketing de um

empreendimento Neopentecostal. Petrpolis: Vozes

Durham, Eunice Ribeiro

1986 A cidade vista da Periferia in Revista Brasileira de Cincias Sociais,1( 1):24-31

Eiss and Petersen, Introduction: Values of Value, in Cultural Anthropology

Fish, Stanley

1980 Is there a text in this Class? The authority of interpretative communities.

Cambridge: Harvard U.P.

Freyre,

Gilberto,1900-

The masters and the slaves (Casa-grande & senzala) a study in the development of Braziliancivilization by Gilberto Freyre; translated from the Portuguese of the fourth and definitiveBrazilian edition by Samuel Putnam.

New York, Knopf, 1946.

Freyre, Gilberto

39
http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?SC=Author&SEQ=20060205155824&PID=12754&SA=Holanda,+Se%CC%81rgio+Buarque+de,+1902-http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?SC=Author&SEQ=20060205155824&PID=12754&SA=Holanda,+Se%CC%81rgio+Buarque+de,+1902-http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?SC=Author&SEQ=20060205155600&PID=4911&SA=Freyre,+Gilberto,+1900-http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?SC=Author&SEQ=20060205155600&PID=4911&SA=Freyre,+Gilberto,+1900-http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?SC=Author&SEQ=20060205155600&PID=4911&SA=Freyre,+Gilberto,+1900-http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?SC=Author&SEQ=20060205155824&PID=12754&SA=Holanda,+Se%CC%81rgio+Buarque+de,+1902-http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?SC=Author&SEQ=20060205155600&PID=4911&SA=Freyre,+Gilberto,+1900-http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?SC=Author&SEQ=20060205155600&PID=4911&SA=Freyre,+Gilberto,+1900-http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?SC=Author&SEQ=20060205155600&PID=4911&SA=Freyre,+Gilberto,+1900-


40/46

1961 Casa Grande e Senzala. Rio de Janeiro: Jose Olympio

Gamboni, Dario

1997 The Destruction of Art. Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French

Revolution. New Haven: Yale U.P.

Gell, Alfred

1998Art and Agency. London: Clarendon Press

Giesz, Ludwig

1960Phnomenologie des Kitches Heidelberg: W. Rothe.

Graeber, David,

Towards and Anthropological Theory of Value.Habermas, Jrgen

1989 The historical transformations of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Harvard

UP.

1992 (1985) The Philosophical discourse of Modernity. Cambridge: MIT Press,

Hollanda, Sergio Buarque de

1988Raizes do Brasil . Rio de Janeiro: Jose Olympio.

Jauss, Hans Robert

1982 Toward an Aesthetic of reception. Brighton: Harvester.

Johnson, Paul C.

1997 Kicking, stripping, and re-dressing a saint in Black. Visions of public space

in Brazils recent Holy War. History of Religions, November 1997. Pp.129-

163.

Keane, Webb

Calvin in the Tropics

Protestantism etc.Kant, Immanuel

1951(1790) Critique of judgment.New York: Hafner Pub. Co.

Kramer, Eric

2001 Law and the Image of a Nation: Religious conflict and Religious Freedom

40


41/46

in a Brazilian Criminal Case.Law and Social Inquiry, Volume 26, N.1. Pp.35-

62.

Latour, Bruno

1999 Pandoras Hope. Essays on the reality of Science Studies. Cambridge:

Harvard U.P.

2002 What is Iconoclash? Or is there a world beyond the image wars? In

(ed.)Iconoclash Cambridge: MIT Press. Pp 14-37.

Macedo, Bispo Edir

2000 Orixs, Caboclos & Guias, Deuses ou Demnios? Rio de Janeiro. Ed.Grfica Universal Ltda.,

Matta, Roberto Da

1985A casa e a rua .Sao Paulo: Brasiliense

1991 Carnivals, rogues, and heroes : an interpretation of the Brazilian dilemma... U

of Notre Damme Press. Indiana

Mitchell, W.J.T. (ed.)

1990Art and the public sphere. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Mumford, Lewis.

1938 The Culture of Cities. New York: Harcourt, Brace&World Inc.

Myers, Fred (ed.)

2001 The Empire of Things. New York: SAR press.

Pietz, William

1985 The Problem of the Fetish, inRes 9, Spring , Pp.5-17.

Sahlins, Marshall1994 Waiting for Foucault. Prickly Pear Press, Cambridge.

Santos, Joclio Telles dos

1987 As imagens esto guardadas: reafricanizao Comunicaes do ISER,

n.4.Pp.50-8

41


42/46

2000 O poder da cultura e a cultura no poder: a disputa simblica da herana

cultural negra no Brasil. PH.D. Thesis, Universidade de So Paulo.

Schiller, Friedrich

1954 On the Esthetic Education of Man, in a Series of Letters . London: Routledge

Soares, Luiz Eduardo

1992 A guerra dos pentecostais contra o afro-brasileiro: dimenses democrticas

do conflito religioso no Brasil Comunicaes do ISER, n.44, pp.43-50.

Weiner, Annette

1992Inalienable Possessions. The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving.Berkeley :University

of California Press.

Whitehead, Alfred North

2000 (1920) Concept of Nature Cambridge U.P.

Other sources( newspapers):

JornalA Tarde

Correio da Bahia

Tribuna da Bahia

42


43/46

1I use the expression Candombl people to translate the Brazilian povo do santo.

2 Even if our own approach to things is conditioned necessarily by the view that things have no meaning apart from those

that human transactions, attributions, and motivations endow them with, the anthropological problem is that this formal

truth does not illuminate the concrete, historical circulation of things. For what we have to follow the things themselves, for

their meanings are inscribed in their form, their uses, their trajectories. It is only through the analysis of these trajectories

that we can interpret the human transactions and calculations that enliven things ( Appadurai 1987:5)

3 It would be unfair to give the impression that nothing substantial has been written about value since Appadurais The

Social Life of Things. On the contrary some of the more interesting and innovative research in the last years has been

based on this question, specially from a Marxist perspective ( See Graeber 2000, Myers 2001, Eiss and Petersen 2004. But

the focus of this paper is not to attack- or defend a certain theory of value, but to consider some aspects of materiality

that are often left aside consideration by theories of value.

4As esculturas representando os Orixs(...) enriquecem a paisagem natural na medida em que so entidades

msticas ligadas natureza Dique de Toror,A Tarde, 29/3/1998.

5Following the urban revitalization plans of for example, Barcelona, that has become a raw model for urban

planners in Brazil and in other Latin American countries (personal communication of Javier Alfaya, president of the

Camera de Vereadores of Salvador). Further on in the article I will discuss how these operations of estetization of the city

are related to notions of a bourgeois public sphere.

6 Popular classes is a common expression in Brazilian sociology, including the vast majority of the population

that lives around the level of poverty- from the working class to the lumpen. It rephrases the traditional idea of povo,

the people, the mass of unprivileged people. It can be criticized as a populist term, but on the other hand it is more

inclusive and less deterministic, more historical and experience-near than Marxist ideas of the working class which

dont fit so well the Brazilian situation ( see i.e. Durham 1986)

7 In Habermas own words, Schiller stresses the communicative, community building and solidarity-giving force

to art, which is to say, its public character (Habermas, 1992:46).According to him, Schiller is in fact prefiguring the idea of

the independent logics of the value spheres of science, morality, and art. ( Habermas, 1992: 50)


44/46

8

Ruth Landes (1947)in the forties still used that terms fetish and fetishism, but it was abandoned afterwards

because of the negative connotations that these terms acquired.

9 For a more detailed description of the Otan, see Sansi-Roca 2005

10 In David Browns words, in reference to Santeria thrones: It is possible to see() created orich objects as an

associated/associatable, mimetic or indexical series, without the assumption that conceptual blueprints of extended abstract

reflection upon meanings intervene in their production. Some practitioners associate more concretely, and others more

abstractly(Brown, 1996: 99)

11In theIle Axe Opo Afonja, the Candombl house that more radically defended the return to African roots, the

Catholic images were retired from public display and sacred settings. Still, after some years, many Candombl houses, like

the traditional Casa Branca, still keep a place for Catholic images, even if they subscribed the Manifesto against syncretism

(See Santos 1987).

12 Tati Moreno, Personal communication, March 2000.

13 An Ogan is a Lord, a man who normally does not incorporate Orixas- and therefore is not a filho or filha de santo.

It is a position of honor for men who help the house in different ways with their work, money or prestige. Many important

figures of Bahian society have become Ogans in Candombl houses- who traditionally have been interested in attracting

important men as protectors and patrons.

14The play of cowrie shells, coming from the Ifa oracle system in West Africa, is integral to the Orix cult- despite

of what it has become extremely popular in Brazilian society way beyond the cult.

15 feitio should not be confused with fetiche. If the feitio is an action, the fetiche is a thing. Again for

references on the etimology of these words, see Pietz 1986.

16 Tati Moreno, personal communication, March 2000


45/46

17 Mr. Coelho, policeman, personal communication, January 2001.

18 Tati Moreno, personal communication, March 2000.

19 Bel Borba, personal communication: May 2000.

20The man was described by the journalists as a paulista, somebody from So Paulo, the south of the country.

The Pentecostal groups have spread through Brazil from the metropolis of the south, So Paulo and Bahia. As we will see,

their arrival to Bahia is read by the intellectuals, journalists, and politicians in Bahia also as an invasion from people from

the south that doesnt understand the culture and the traditions of Bahia.

21 uma obra de arte? Para mim de muito mal gosto(...) sse cara e vivo?Tribuna da Bahia 5/6/2000.

22

A Tarde 5/6/2000.It is clear that the journalist had a parti pris for Bahian art and that they had a certain

confrontation with this protestant from So Paulo...

23 O governo poderia tombar essas obras, que tem um carater pblico, o que aconteceu comigo pode acontecer

com qualquer artista.A Tarde 5/6/2000.

24 With all, two years after that event (2000), the artist Juarez Paraiso sued the church and won his case for moral

damage: The church was condemned to compensate the artist with 170 minimal salaries (less than 1000 dollars at the

exchange rates of 2003) . SeeA Tarde 22/2/2003.

25

In fact the governor of the state, Garotinho, depended on their political and financial support to a great extent.

26And so one of the Legal Petitions against the Pastor of the IURD that had kicked the saint was: the Pastor in

question offended the Motherland, the struggle against slavery, the saga of the Afro-Brazilian nation, the reverence to

humility, the respect for poverty, the origin of the colors of the flag, the Brazilian cultural patrimony, and the armed forces.

(Quoted in Kramer, 2001:28)


46/46

27Povo does not mean little people, but big people. Still, povo is a menacing brute mass of

undifferentiated (black and poor ) people. The big is therefore not superlative, but diminutive.

28 Some authors pointed out how easily the spectacularity of monuments becomes invisibility in everyday life.

Robert Musil said that monuments are impregnated against our attention and retired from our senses (quoted in Gamboni

1997:51). More recently Paul Veyne commented that public monuments are generally an art without a public, which awakes

a very low degree of attention (Gamboni, 1997:51). Going even further, Hans Robert Jauss comments how monuments are

opposed to true works of art, since monuments monologically reveal its untemporal essence, while works of art are

fundamentally dialogical and historical (Jauss, 1982: 22).

Fetishes and Monuments 1

Documents

Transcript of Fetishes and Monuments 1