How diasporic religious communities remember: Learning to speak the "tongue of the oricha" in Cuban Santería

American Ethnologist

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 108-126

  Wirtz, Kristina ^a  

^a Moore Hall Western Michigan University   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33846970212     PISSN: 00940496     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/ae.2007.34.1.108     Document Type: Article

References (132)

1. Abraham, Roy Clive 1958 Dictionary of Modern Yoruba. London: University of London Press.
2. Agha, Asif 2003 The Social Life of Cultural Value. Language and Communication 23(3-4):231-273.
3. Agha, Asif 2005 Voice, Footing, Enregisterment. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15(2):38-59.
4. Alvarez, Alexandra, and Enrique Obediente 1998 Sociolingüistica del español del Caribe: "Virtualidad" de las lenguas semicriollas. In América negra: Panorámica actual de los estudios lingüísticos sobre variedades hispanas, portuguesas, y criollas. Matthias Perl and Armin Schwegler, eds. Pp. 40-61. Madrid: Iberoamericana.
5. Angarica, Nicolas Valentin N.d.a Lucumi al alcance de todos. Cuba: Unknown.
6. Angarica, Nicolas Valentin N.d.b Manual de Orihate: Religion Lucumi. Cuba: Unknown.
7. Apter, Andrew 1991 Herskovits's Heritage: Rethinking Syncretism in the African Diaspora. Diaspora 1(3):235-260.
8. Apter, Andrew 1992 Black Critics and Kings: The Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
9. Apter, Andrew 2002 On African Origins: Creolization and Connaissance in Haitian Vodou. American Ethnologist 29(2):233-260.
10. Argüelles Mederos, Anibal, and Ileana Hodge Limonta 1991 Los Ilamados cultos sincreticos y el espiritismo. Havana: Editorial Academia.
11. Bakhtin, Mikhail 1981 The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Austin: University of Texas Press.
12. Barber, Karin 1990 Oriki, Women and the Proliferation and Merging of Orisa. Africa 60(3):313-337.
13. Barnet, Miguel 1995 Cultos afrocubanos: La Regla de Ocha, la Regla de Palo Monte. Havana: Artex y Ediciones Union.
14. Barton, David, and Mary Hamilton 2000 Literacy Practices. In Situated Literacies: Reading and Writing in Context. David Barton, Mary Hamilton, and R. Ivanič, eds. Pp. 7-15. London: Routledge.
15. Barton, David, Mary Hamilton, and Roz Ivanič 2000 Situated Literacies: Reading and Writing in Context. London: Routledge.
16. Bascom, William R. 1971[1950] The Focus of Cuban Santería. In Peoples and Cultures of the Caribbean. Michael M. Horowitz, ed. Pp. 522-527. New York: Natural History Press.
17. Basso, Keith 1974 The Ethnography of Writing. In Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking. Richard Bauman and Joel Sherzer, eds. Pp. 425-432. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
18. Bauman, Richard, and Charles L. Briggs 1990 Poetics and Performance as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life. Annual Review of Anthropology 19:59-88.
19. Besnier, Niko 1995 Literacy, Emotion, and Authority: Reading and Writing on a Polynesian Atoll. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
20. Blommaert, Jan 2004 Grassroots Historiography and the Problem of Voice: Tshibumba's Histoire du Zaire. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 14(1):6-23.
21. Bourdieu, Pierre 1977 Outline of a Theory of Practice. Richard Nice, trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
22. Brandon, George 1993 Santería from Africa to the New World: The Dead Sell Memories. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
23. Briggs, Charles L. 1995 The Meaning of Nonsense, the Poetics of Embodiment, and the Production of Power in Warao Healing. In The Performance of Healing. Carol Laderman and Marina Roseman, eds. Pp. 185-232. New York: Routledge.
24. Briggs, Charles, and Richard Bauman 1992 Genre, Intertextuality, and Social Power. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2(2):131-172.
25. Brown, David Hilary 2003 Santería Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
26. Buckley, Anthony D. 1976 The Secret - An Idea in Yoruba Medicinal Thought. In Social Anthropology and Medicine. J. B. Loudon, ed. Pp. 396-421. A.S.A. Monograph, 13. London: Academic Press.
27. Cabrera, Lydia 1958 Anagó, vocabulario lucumí. Havana: Ediciones C. R.
28. Cabrera, Lydia 1984 La medicina popular de Cuba. Miami: Ultra Graphics.
29. Castellanos, Isabel 1990 Grammatical Structure, Historical Development, and Religious Usage of Afro-Cuban Bozal Speech. Folklore Forum 23(1-2): 57-84.
30. Castellanos, Isabel 1996 From Ulkumí to Lucumí: A Historical Overview of Religious Acculturation in Cuba. In Santería Aesthetics in Contemporary Latin American Art. Arturo Lindsay, ed. Pp. 39-50. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
31. Castellanos, Jorge, and Isabel Castellanos 1988 Cultura afrocubana. 4 vols. Miami: Ediciones Universal.
32. Centro de Investigaciones Psicológicas y Sociológicas 1998 Panorama de la religión en Cuba. Havana: Editorial Política.
33. Chaudenson, Robert 2001 Creolization of Language and Culture. Salikoko S. Mufwene, ed., Sheri Pargman, Salikoko S. Mufwene, Sabrina Billings, and Michelle AuCoin, trans. London: Routledge.
34. Cole, Jennifer 1998 The Work of Memory in Madagascar. American Ethnologist 25(4):610-633.
35. Comaroff, John L., and Jean Comaroff 1987 The Madman and the Migrant: Work and Labor in the Historical Consciousness of a South African People. American Ethnologist 14(2):191-209.
36. Connerton, Paul 1989 How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
37. Crapanzano, Vincent 2000 Serving the Word: Literalism from the Pulpit to the Bench. New York: New Press.
38. Díaz Fabelo, Simeón Teodoro 1960 Olorun. Havana: Centro de Estudios Folklóricos, Teatro Nacional de Cuba.
39. Droogers, A. 1989 Syncretism: The Problem of Definition, the Definition of the Problem. In Dialogue and Syncretism: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Jerald Gort, Hendrik Vroom, Rein Fernhout, and Anton Wessels, eds. Pp. 7-25. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.
40. Du Bois, John W. 1986 Self-Evidence and Ritual Speech. In Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology. Wallace Chafe and Johanna Nichols, eds. Pp. 313-336. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
41. Du Bois, John W. 1992 Meaning without Intention: Lessons from Divination. In Responsibility and Evidence in Oral Discourse. Jane H. Hill and Judith T. Irvine, eds. Pp. 48-71. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
42. Gadamer, Hans-Georg 1987 The Problem of Historical Consciousness. In Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look. Paul Rabinow and William M. Sullivan, eds. Pp. 82-140. Berkeley: University of California Press.
43. Gee, James Paul 2000 The New Literacy Studies: From "Socially Situated" to the Work of the Social. In Situated Literacies: Reading and Writing in Context. David Barton, Mary Hamilton, and Roz Ivanič, eds. Pp. 180-196. London: Routledge.
44. Goffman, Erving 1981 Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
45. González Huguet, Lydia, and Jean René Baudry 1967 Voces "bantú" en el vocabulario "palero." Etnología y Folklore 3:31-64.
46. Granda, Germán de 1988 Lingüística e historia: Temas afro-hispánicos. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, Secretariado de Publicaciones.
47. Hall-Alleyne, Beverly 1990 The Social Context of African Language Continuities in Jamaica. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 85:31-40.
48. Hanks, William F. 1996 Exorcism and the Description of Participant Roles. In Natural Histories of Discourse. Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban, eds. Pp. 160-202. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
49. Herskovits, Melville J. 1937 African Gods and Catholic Saints in New World Negro Belief. American Anthropologist 39(4, pt. 1):635-643.
50. Herskovits, Melville J. 1945 Problem, Method, and Theory in Afroamerican Studies. Afroamerica 1:5-24.
51. Herskovits, Melville J., Robert Redfield, and Ralph Linton 1936 Memorandum for the Study of Acculturation. American Anthropologist 38(1):149-152.
52. Herzfeld, Michael 2004 The Body Impolitic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
53. Hill, Jane 1985 Grammar of Consciousness and Consciousness of Grammar. American Ethnologist 12(4):725-737.
54. Hill, Jane 1995 The Voices of Don Gabriel: Responsibility and Selfin a Modern Mexicano Narrative. In The Dialogic Emergence of Culture. Dennis Tedlock and Bruce Mannheim, eds. Pp. 97-147. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
55. Hill, Jane 2002 "Expert Rhetorics" in Advocacy for Endangered Languages: Who Is Listening and What Do They Hear? Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 12(2):119-133.
56. Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger 1992 The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
57. Holland, Dorothy, and Jean Lave 2001 History in Person: Enduring Struggles, Contentious Practice, Intimate Identities. Sante Fe: School of American Research Press.
58. Holloway, Charles E. 1997 Dialect Death: The Case of Brule Spanish. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
59. Inoue, Miyako 2004 What Does Language Remember? Indexical Inversion and the Naturalized History of Japanese Women. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 14(1):39-56.
60. Jakobson, Roman 1960 Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics. In Style in Language. Thomas A. Sebeok, ed. Pp. 350-377. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
61. Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger 1991 Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
62. Law, Robin 1997 Ethnicity and the Slave Trade: "Lucumi" and "Nago" as Ethnonyms in West Africa. History in Africa 24:205-219.
63. Lefever, Harry G. 1996 When the Saints Go Riding In: Santería in Cuba and the United States. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 35(3):318-330.
64. León, Argeliers 1971 Un caso de tradición oral escrita. Islas (Santa Clara) 39-40:139-151.
65. Lipski, John M. 1998 Perspectivas sobre el español bozal. In América negra: Panorámica actual de los estudios lingüísticos sobre variedades hispanas, portuguesas, y criollas. Matthias Perl and Armin Schwegler, eds. Pp. 294-327. Madrid: Iberoamericana.
66. Lohman, Roger Ivar 2001 Introducing Writing and Christianity: Differential Access to Religious Knowledge among the Asabano. Ethnology 40(2):93-112.
67. Mannheim, Bruce, and Dennis Tedlock 1995 Introduction. In The Dialogic Emergence of Culture. Dennis Tedlock and Bruce Mannheim, eds. Pp. 1-32. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
68. Martinez Furé, Rogelio 1979 Diálogos imaginarios. Havana: Editorial Arte y Literatura.
69. Mason, John 1985 Four New World Yoruba Rituals. Brooklyn: Yoruba Theological Archministry.
70. Mason, John 1992 Orin Orisa, Songs for Selected Heads. Brooklyn: Yoruba Theological Archministry.
71. Mason, Michael Atwood 1994 "I Bow My Head to the Ground": The Creation of Bodily Experience in a Cuban American Santería Initiation. Journal of American Folklore 107(423):23-29.
72. Matory, J. Lorand 1994 Sex and the Empire That Is No More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Oyo Yoruba Religion. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
73. Matory, J. Lorand 1999 The English Professors of Brazil: On the Diasporic Roots of the Yoruba Nation. Comparative Studies in Society and History 41(1):72-103.
74. McWhorter, John H. 2000 The Missing Spanish Creoles: Recovering the Birth of Plantation Contact Languages. Berkeley: University of California Press.
75. Megenney, W. W. 1992 West Africa in Brazil: The Case of the Ewe-Yoruba Syncretism. Anthropos 87(4-6):459-474.
76. Millet, José, Rafael Brea, and Manuel Ruiz Vila 1997 Barrio, comparsa y carnaval santiaguero. Santiago de Cuba y Santo Domingo: Ediciones Casa del Caribe y Ediciones Casa Dominicana de Identidad Caribeña.
77. Mintz, Sidney, and Richard Price 1976 An Anthropological Approach to the Afro-American Past: A Caribbean Perspective. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues.
78. Mintz, Sidney, and Richard Price 1992[1976] The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective. Boston: Beacon Press.
79. Moore, Robin 1997 Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920-1940. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
80. Murphy, Joseph M. 1988 Santería: An African Religion in America. Boston: Beacon Press.
81. Murphy, William P. 1998 The Sublime Dance of Mende Politics: An African Aesthetic of Charismatic Power. American Ethnologist 25(4):563-582.
82. Olmstead, David L. 1953 Comparative Notes on Yoruba and Lucumi. Language 29(2):157-164.
83. Ortiz, Fernando 1922 Los afronegrismos de nuestro lenguaje. Revista Bimestre Cubana 27:321-336.
84. Ortiz, Fernando 1970[1947] Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar. Harriet de Onís, trans. New York: Vintage Books.
85. Ortiz, Fernando 1995 Los negros brujos. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.
86. Ortiz López, Luis A. 1998 Huellas etno-sociolingüísticas bozales y afrocubanas. Frankfurt: Vervuet Verlag.
87. Otero, Solimar 2002 Orunile; "Heaven Is Home": Afrolatino Diasporas in Africa and the Americas. Ph.D. dissertation, Folklore and Folklife Program, University of Pennsylvania.
88. Palmié, Stephan 1995 Against Syncretism: "Africanizing" and "Cubanizing" Discourses in North American Orisa Worship. In Counterworks: Managing the Diversity of Knowledge. Richard Fardon, ed. Pp. 73-104. London: Routledge.
89. Palmié, Stephan 2002 Wizards and Scientists: Explorations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
90. Pedroso, Lázaro 1995 Obbedi. Cantos a los Orisha: Traducción e Historia. Havana: Artex.
91. Peel, J. D. Y. 1989 The Cultural Work of Yoruba Ethnogenesis. In History and Ethnicity. Elizabeth Tonkin, Maryon McDonald, and Malcolm Chapman, eds. Pp. 198-215. London: Routledge.
92. Peñalver, Fr. José María 1795 Memoria que promueve edición de un diccionario provincial de la isla de Cuba. In Memorias de la Real Sociedad Patriótica de la Habana. Pp. 106-114. Havana: Imprenta de la Capitanía General.
93. Pichardo y Tapia, Esteban 1875[1836] Diccionario provincial casi razonado de voces y frases cubanas. Havana: Imprenta El Trabajo.
94. Piedra, José 1997 From Monkey Tales to Cuban Songs: On Signification. In Sacred Possessions: Vodou, Santería, Obeah, and the Caribbean. Margarite Fernandez Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, eds. Pp. 122-150. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
95. Powers, William K. 1986 Sacred Language: The Nature of Supernatural Discourse in Lakota. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
96. Robbins, Joel 2001 God Is Nothing but Talk: Modernity, Language, and Prayer in a Papua New Guinea Society. American Anthropologist 103(4):901-912.
97. Rodríguez Reyes, Andrés 2001 La lengua ritual de la Regla de Ocha. Del Caribe 35:45-48.
98. Rutherford, Danilyn 2000 The White Edge of the Margin: Textuality and Authority in Biak, Irian Jaya, Indonesia. American Ethnologist 27(2):312-329.
99. Samarin, William J. 1972 Tongues of Men and Angels: The Religious Language of Pentecostalism. New York: MacMillan.
100. Saussure, Ferdinand 1996 Course in General Linguistics. Roy Harris, trans. Chicago: Open Court.
101. Schieffelin, Bambi B., and Rachelle Charlier Doucet 1994 The "Real" Haitian Creole: Ideology, Metalinguistics, and Orthographic Choice. American Ethnologist 21(1):176-200.
102. Schwegler, Armin 1996 Chi ma nkongo: Lengua y rito ancestrales en El Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia). 2 vols. Frankfurt: Vervuet Verlag.
103. Schwegler, Armin 1998 El vocabulario (ritual) bantu de Cuba (1ra Parte): Acerca de la matriz: Africana de la "lengua congo" en El Monte y Vocabulario congo de Lydia Cabrera. América Negra 15:137-185.
104. Sharp, Lesley A. 1993 The Possessed and the Dispossessed: Spirits, Identity, and Power in a Madagascar Migrant Town. Berkeley: University of California Press.
105. Shaw, Rosalind 2002 Memories of the Slave Trade: Ritual and the Historical Imagination in Sierra Leone. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
106. Shaw, Rosalind, and Charles Stewart 1994 Introduction: Problematizing Syncretism. In Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis. Rosalind Shaw and Charles Stewart, eds. Pp. 1-26. London: Routledge.
107. Silverstein, Michael 1979 Language Structure and Linguistic Ideology. In The Elements: Papers from the Parasession on Linguistic Units and Levels. Paul R. Clyne, William F. Hanks, and Carol L. Hofbauer, eds. Pp. 193-247. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
108. Silverstein, Michael 1993 Metapragmatic Discourse and Metapragmatic Function. In Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics. John A. Lucy, ed. Pp. 33-58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
109. Silverstein, Michael 1998 Contemporary Transformations of Local Linguistic Communities. Annual Review of Anthropology 23:401-426.
110. Silverstein, Michael, and Greg Urban 1996 Natural Histories of Discourse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
111. Simpson, George Eaton 1978 Black Religions in the New World. New York: Columbia University Press.
112. Stoller, Paul 1995 Embodying Colonial Memories: Spirit Possession, Power, and the Hauka in WestAfrica. New York: Routledge.
113. Stromberg, Peter G. 1993 Language and Self-Transformation: A Study of the Christian Conversion Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
114. Sutton, David 2004 Ritual Continuity and Change: Greek Reflections. History and Anthropology 15(2):91-105.
115. Tambiah, Stanley 1968 The Magical Power of Words. Man (n.s.) 3(2):175-208.
116. Tomlinson, Matt 2004a Perpetual Lament: Kava-Drinking, Christianity, and Sensations of Historical Decline in Fiji. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 10(3):653-673.
117. Tomlinson, Matt 2004b Ritual, Risk, and Danger: Chain Prayers in Fiji. American Anthropologist 106(1):6-16.
118. Tomlinson, Matt N.d. Whose Waves Roared: Christianity, Power, and Loss in Fiji. Unpublished MS, Department of Anthropology, Monash University, Australia.
119. Trawick, Margaret 1988 Ambiguity in the Oral Exegesis of a Sacred Text: Tirukkovaiyar (or, the Guru in the Garden, Being an Account of a Tamil Informant's Responses to Homesteading in Central New York). Cultural Anthropology 3(3):316-351.
120. Urban, Greg 1996 Entextualization, Replication, and Power. In Natural Histories of Discourse. Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban, eds. Pp. 21-44. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
121. Urban, Greg 2001 Metaculture: How Culture Moves through the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
122. Valdés Bernal, Sergio 1987 Las lenguas de Africa subsaharana y el español de Cuba. Havana: Editorial Academia de Ciencias de Cuba.
123. Valdes Garriz, Yrmino 1991 Ceremonias funebres de la Santería afrocubana. Hato Rey and San Juan, Puerto Rico: Sociedad de Autores Libres.
124. Warner-Lewis, Maureen 1984 Yoruba Songs of Trinidad. London: Karnak House.
125. Warner-Lewis, Maureen 1990 Trinidad Yoruba: A Language of Exile. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 85:9-20.
126. Wenger, Etienne 1998 Communities of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
127. Wertsch, James V. 1998 Mind as Action. New York: Oxford University Press.
128. Wirtz, Kristina 2003 Speaking a Sacred World: Discursive Practices of Skepticism and Faith in Cuban Santería. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.
129. Wirtz, Kristina 2004 Santería in Cuban National Consciousness: A Religious Case of the Doble Moral. Journal of Latin American Anthropology 9(2):409-438.
130. Wirtz, Kristina 2005 "Where Obscurity Is a Virtue": The Mystique of Unintelligibility in Santería Ritual. Language and Communication 25(4):351-375.
131. Wortham, Stanton 2001 Narratives in Action: A Strategy for Research and Analysis. New York: Teachers College Press.
132. Yelvington, Kevin A. 2001 The Anthropology of Afro-Latin America and the Carribbean: Diasporic Dimensions. Annual Review of Anthropology 30:227-260.