Searching for Africa in Brazil: Power and Tradition in Candomblé (review)

Notions of authenticity and purity have a long and turbulent history within the Afro-Brazilian spiritual world. Stefania Capone’s Searching for Africa in Brazil unravels decades of this history to reveal how such concepts have been mediated, altered, and ultimately invented. Capone approaches the question of invented traditions by tracing the path of the powerful spiritual mediator, Exu, from Africa to the Americas. As she shows, Exu is a paradoxical figure whose associations with magic proved a liability for leaders of Candomblé at different historical moments. Yet curiously, practitioners of Umbanda, who historically shied from associations with Africa, often embraced Exu for his abilities to intervene in the problems of their daily lives. This puzzle serves as the point of departure for Capone, who aims to demonstrate that the idea of African roots in Afro-Brazilian religion has always been a malleable ideal propagated by, and useful to, both scholars and worshippers alike.

Capone’s original study was published in French in 1999 and translated into Portuguese in 2004. This latest translation, for the most part admirably done, will provide an important entry into (often intricate) debates largely inaccessible to an English-reading audience. The long trajectory of the work, however, inevitably causes the reader to wonder how the author might now respond to scholars, such as Luis Nicolau Parés and J. Lorand Matory, who have treated similar questions in the years since the original publication. Ultimately, however, the pioneering nature of the work justifies the decision not to update, and the volume still stands admirably on its own.

Capone’s work not only deconstructs the idea of African authenticity, it also aims more broadly to redirect research of Afro-Brazilian religion from a path now well-trod by many anthropologists, foreign and Brazilian alike. The literature, as she reveals, has shown a disturbing tendency to study only Yoruba-based faiths, to restrict scholarship to three principal terreiros, and to focus on Bahia at the expense of other regions. To address these biases her work must necessarily trace some of this complex terrain and its long academic trajectory. The result is a fascinating survey of the history of the field. This historiography, as it were, is especially valuable as it addresses not only the principal academic scholars of Candomblé, but also leaders of the religion itself. Indeed, throughout the work Capone shows that traditions often have been fashioned in a cooperative effort. Religious leaders are active agents in her story, as are the practitioners who have driven the leaders to make practical adaptations within a competitive religious market.

Capone is especially illuminating in her reading of anthropology and its reification of tradition (the canonic Roger Bastide comes under sharp criticism here). Furthermore, as she often remarks, the dilemma for the field has been that the principal (male) scholars of Candomblé have become initiates of the religion they have studied. Faced with disapproval from their adopted community if they write critically, and bound by promises of ritual secrecy, these scholars have not always been forthcoming about their compromised position. The reality of constructed tradition and political maneuvering has thus been slow to emerge. Capone’s frank reflections on the field are thought provoking and important, although one is still left curious about her own position. How has she, as a female anthropologist (inevitably a member of this venerable heritage, yet also somewhat outside of it) ultimately addressed these issues? And, how, precisely, did her own experience of trance in Candomblé, which she refers to only briefly in the introduction, shape her work? Capone’s careful reflectiveness is by no means silent on these questions, but could have been pushed a bit deeper.

As the author notes in her preface, the study of Candomblé is dangerous work: a subject fraught with ideological and personal tensions, the field is difficult to negotiate without giving offense, either to other scholars or to practitioners...