Zainabu Jallo

Dialectics of a Rooted Diaspora

Abstract

This paper evaluates the designation of “diasporic community” upon Afro-Brazilians which may sound ineligible. Diasporic consciousness in the case of Afro-Brazilians was immediate. The condition for the survival of this consciousness was based on the large numbers of enslaved persons who could share commonalities and bond within a religious practice. By the first quarter of the 19th century, Salvador de Bahia, a north-eastern state of Brazil, was primarily made up of people of African descent. Afro-Brazilian cultural identity began to shape the atmosphere of the capital, and cities like Rio de Janeiro experienced socio-cultural transformation following the abolition of the slave trade in Brazil. From this historical backdrop, this paper argues that Candomblé in Brazil comprises what I refer to as a “rooted diasporic community” that still considers Africa as the core source of spiritual reference. Driven by the theory that the diasporic way of being is characterised by “transactions, processes, mutations, practices” (During 6), which reveal a sense of nostalgia for the homeland (Safran1991), this paper shows the material ways in which diasporic consciousness has been produced, as anything but static, with examples of transformations of artefacts for over 400 years. In the specific context of Candomblé, this talk proposes the understanding of diasporic consciousness as a palimpsest of memories expressed in multiple ways, including its ritual objects. Following some momentous historical contingencies of Candomblé’s material Culture, this paper converges and analyses the cosmological, ontological and epistemological underpinnings of Candomblé’s ritual artefacts through the framework of semiotic ideology.

Bio

Zainabu Jallo is a Post-Doctoral Researcher and lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Basel, and the University of Bern, both in Switzerland. she is also a Visiting Researcher at the Department of Anthropology at USP - Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil. Jallo is one of the Principal Investigators of the” Sacral Architecture Africa” Project. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts England and a member of the UNESCO Coalition of Artists for the General History of Africa. Her scholarly interests include Museum Anthropology, Diaspora studies, Iconic criticism, and Material Culture.