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Donald J. Cosentino 12 Repossession: Ogun in Folklore and Uterature he degree to which Ogun may be comprehended as a single deity with a common C.V., a particular iconography, a unique role in a complex cosmology has by no means been established by scholars of Yoruba religion(s). To be sure, the corpus of Ifa verse and other oral poetic texts, geographically rooted festivals, genealogical myths, and rituals largely controlled by initiated priesthoods have all worked to establish some consistent dimensions for the orisha on his home turf. But even there his uniqueness is contested, as Karin Barber noted: "Like other orisha, Ogun is distinct and yet not distinct, participating in a spectrum of and capabilities shared by the whole array of spiritual beings. The feature [most] commented upon, for example-Ogun's internal fusion of destructive and creative qualities-is in fact a central characteristic of all orisha, to different degrees and in varying proportions. Many of the specific qualities attributed to Ogun in oral poetry are attributed, in the same imagery, to other orisha as well. He exists in a complex shifting configuration of relationships, sometimes overlapping, sometimes separated, in some towns occupying one role, in others another" (199°:29°). If such variability describes an autochthonous Ogun, what determines his continuing evolution in non-Yoruba societies where orisha mythology persists? If Ogun may be considered an immigrant into Fon religion, he has been naturalized and given a sanctioned space within an official pantheon.1 But in New World societies such as Cuba, where orisha worship was disguised or folklorized ," or Haiti, with no Ifa corpus and the easy availability of Catholic imagery, what then becomes of Ogun? And in the United States, where worshippers of Santeria and of Vodou have confronted the bottomless emporia of Repossession 291 postmodern store-bought imagery and the profound anomie of a late capitalist society, under what conditions does this West African deity persist and develop? In the communities of the Atlantic diaspora, it is not simply that the old controls are gone, that the social and economic conditions of life are changed utterly. Rather, it is that these societies are relentlessly subject to the shaping pressures of new religions with new hagiographies, and the nearly incalculable cross-influences of new media. As Yeats suggested for twentieth-century Christianity , a rough beast is slouching toward Bethlehem to be born. But rougher beasts have stalked orisha-based religions in the New World since the sixteenth century, siring powerful hybrids in religion, art, and popular culture. Other gods have slipped from the sanctified hands of the priest into popular imagination and found a new life in new media. Myths and rituals of the Virgin Mary, or Krsna, have expanded from sacerdotal care to ecstatic popular elaboration. And those elaborations continue and grow more elaborate. Just this very process may be observed in the myths and ritual arts developed about the orisha Ogun. Under the revolutionary social, cultural, economic, and political circumstances of the Atlantic slave trade, his already complex persona was twisted and turned into fantastic new shapes. Reinventions of Ogun in disparate American societies have not occurred randomly. Rather, they proceed in accord with Barnes's definition of a polythetic principle in which no monotypic feature gives definition to all of a set, but a sufficient overlap in the features of each set establishes a chain of metonymic correspondences (1989:13). In the Americas, however, this principle operates without most of the political, ritual, or hierarchical referents availablein Africa.3 Each Ogun manifestation is contingent on the attributes of the last, attributes which may in fact have been aberrant or idiosyncratic. Innovation occurs outside dominant sociocultural norms, syncopated to changes in folk or pop culture. The process is centripetal, pushing out into new forms like a jazz riff. But a riff, no matter how fantastic, ultimately draws its meaning from a remembered theme. This has been the fate of the trans-Atlantic Ogun. His thematic significance has remained constant, but its modes of expression have been nearly unlimited. The Ogou of Vodou has been resettled in the ounfos of Port-au-Prince and Brooklyn. Coded as St. Peter holding the keys of heaven, Santeria's Ogun may be found attractively gift-wrapped for sale in every botanica from El Monte, California, to Hialeah, Florida. Decaled on votive candles, that same Ogun is now evenshelvedat the PigglyWigglies of safer,whiter neighborhoods throughout America. The Yoruba Ogun has made his literary debut in postcolonial literary...

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