Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Boxes
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Thinking with Imposters: The Imposter as Analytic
- 2 The Desire to Believe and Belong: Wannabes and Their Audience in a North American Cultural Context
- 3 A Menagerie of Imposters and Truth-Tellers: Diederik Stapel and the Crisis in Psychology
- 4 Learning from Fakes: A Relational Approach
- 5 Imitations of Celebrity
- 6 Natural Imposters? A Cuckoo View of Social Relations
- 7 Conjuring Imposters: The Extraordinary Illusions of Mundanity
- 8 States of Imposture: Scroungerphobia and the Choreography of Suspicion
- 9 The Face of ‘the Other ’: Biometric Facial Recognition, Imposters and the Art of Outplaying Them
- 10 Faking Spirit Possession: Creating ‘Epistemic Murk ’ in Bahian Candomblé
- 11 The Guerrilla’s ID Card: Flatland against Fatland in Colombia
- 12 Good Enough Imposters: The Market for Instagram Followers in Indonesia and Beyond
- 13 Thinking beyond the Imposter: Gatecrashing Un/Welcoming Borders
- 14 Postscript: Thinking with Imposters – What Were They Thinking?
- Index
10 - Faking Spirit Possession: Creating‘Epistemic Murk ’ in Bahian Candomblé
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 December 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Boxes
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Thinking with Imposters: The Imposter as Analytic
- 2 The Desire to Believe and Belong: Wannabes and Their Audience in a North American Cultural Context
- 3 A Menagerie of Imposters and Truth-Tellers: Diederik Stapel and the Crisis in Psychology
- 4 Learning from Fakes: A Relational Approach
- 5 Imitations of Celebrity
- 6 Natural Imposters? A Cuckoo View of Social Relations
- 7 Conjuring Imposters: The Extraordinary Illusions of Mundanity
- 8 States of Imposture: Scroungerphobia and the Choreography of Suspicion
- 9 The Face of ‘the Other ’: Biometric Facial Recognition, Imposters and the Art of Outplaying Them
- 10 Faking Spirit Possession: Creating ‘Epistemic Murk ’ in Bahian Candomblé
- 11 The Guerrilla’s ID Card: Flatland against Fatland in Colombia
- 12 Good Enough Imposters: The Market for Instagram Followers in Indonesia and Beyond
- 13 Thinking beyond the Imposter: Gatecrashing Un/Welcoming Borders
- 14 Postscript: Thinking with Imposters – What Were They Thinking?
- Index
Summary
I was driving Victor, Otávio and his boyfriend Jorge to a celebration of Candomblé in Alaketu, one of Salvador's old and famous terreiros (temples). Four gays in a rental car, all dressed in immaculate white, as Candomblé ceremonies require. The initiative for the outing had been mine. As always, Victor had been hesitant to accompany me. He dislikes the ceremonies, with their long hours of just sitting, watching the initiates dance to the drumming, and waiting for the orixá spirits to arrive and possess the initiates’ bodies. This time, however, he had figured this was an opportunity for me to meet his friend Otávio, who was ‘from Candomblé’, and might be of use for my research. I do not know what Victor had told Otávio about me, but I dare speculate that the prestige of a European-who-works-at-a-university-and-writesabout-Candomblé had piqued Otévio's interest in joining.
While driving, I explained that the terreiro we were going to visit was a very old one, of great repute and on its way to be recognized by the Bahian state as ‘cultural heritage’. Otávio, a chubby adolescent with straightened black hair wearing a rather risqué lace blouse, exclaimed “chiquééééérima”, which may be translated as “how fabulous”. Otávio lived in a distant suburb of Salvador, and although he was in the early stages of initiation into Candomblé, he had never been to this terreiro. He had not even heard of it. I was reminded, once more, that the Candomblé of anthropologists and the Candomblé of local practitioners pertained to different, only partially overlapping circuits.
Otávio informed us he had just taken a bath, to cleanse himself of the couple of beers he had drank earlier in the day. “With beer in my body, the orixá won't come,” he explained. When we arrived at the terreiro he said that the coming of a spirit called Iansá was certain for his body was restless. “It is as if waves of heat and cold go through my body.” The eyes of his boyfriend Jorge – a silent kid with the fluffy beginning of a moustache, who followed Otávio like a shadow – shone with excitement. Victor responded by saying that it would be a good thing if he got possessed, because that was the kind of stuff I was interested in.
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- Information
- The Imposter as Social TheoryThinking with Gatecrashers, Cheats and Charlatans, pp. 219 - 236Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2021