A Refuge in Thunder: Candombl? and Alternative Spaces of Blackness

"[An important] detailing of the development and evolution of a major institution of the African Diaspora [and] of Brazilian and Afro-Brazilian identity." --Sheila S. Walker

The Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé has long been recognized as an extraordinary resource of African tradition, values, and identity among its adherents in Bahia, Brazil. Outlawed and persecuted in the late colonial and imperial period, Candomblé nevertheless developed as one of the major religious expressions of the Afro-Atlantic diaspora. Drawing principally on primary sources, such as police archives, Rachel E. Harding describes the development of the religion as an "alternative" space in which subjugated and enslaved blacks could gain a sense of individual and collective identity in opposition to the subaltern status imposed upon them by the dominant society.

"[An important] detailing of the development and evolution of a major institution of the African Diaspora [and] of Brazilian and Afro-Brazilian identity."

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Slavery, Africanos Libertos and the Question of Black Presence in Nineteenth-Century Brazil

2. Salvador: The Urban Environment

3. The Bolsa de Mandinga and Calundu: Afro-Brazilian Religion as Fetish and Fetiçaria

4. "Dis Continuity," Context and Documentation: Origins and Interpretations of the Religion

5. The Nineteenth-Century Development of Candomblé

6. Healing and Cultivating Axé: Profiles of Candomblé Leaders and Communities

7. Networks of Support, Spaces of Resistance: Alternative Orientations of Black Life in Nineteenth-Century Bahia

8. Candomblé as Feitiço: Reterritorialization, Embodiment and the Alchemy of History in an Afro-Brazilian Religion

Coda: Abolition, Freedom and Candomblé as Alternative Cidadania in Brazil.

Glossary

Appendix: Selected Documents from the Arquivo Público do Estado da Bahia

Notes

Bibliography