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Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People
Queering Black Atlantic Religions: Transcorporeality in Candomblé, Santería, and Vodou
In Queering Black Atlantic Religions Roberto Strongman examines Haitian Vodou, Cuban Lucumí/Santería, and Brazilian Candomblé to demonstrate how religious rituals of trance possession allow humans to understand themselves as embodiments of the divine. In these rituals, the commingling of humans and the divine produces gender identities that are independent of biological sex. As opposed to the Cartesian view of the spirit as locked within the body, the body in Afro-diasporic religions is an open receptacle. Showing how trance possession is a primary aspect of almost all Afro-diasporic cultural production, Strongman articulates transcorporeality as a black, trans-Atlantic understanding of the human psyche, soul, and gender as multiple, removable, and external to the body.
- GenresReligionNonfiction
296 pages, Hardcover
Published May 10, 2019
13 people are currently reading
227 people want to read
About the author
Roberto Strongman
4 booksRoberto Strongman is Associate Professor in the Department of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. in Literature from the University of California, San Diego in 2003. Dr. Strongman's interdisciplinary approach encompasses the fields of Religion, History, and Sexuality in order to further his main area of research and teaching: Comparative Caribbean Cultural Studies. Dr. Strongman's trans-national and multi-lingual approach to the Caribbean cultural zone is grounded in La Créolité, a movement developed at L'Université des Antilles et de La Guyane in Martinique, where he studied as a dissertation fellow. In addition to his research in Martinique, Dr. Strongman has conducted archival research in Aruba, Colombia and Haiti in connection to his ongoing interest in the literatures of Creole languages. His articles have appeared in Journal of Haitian Studies, Journal of Caribbean Studies, Journal of Caribbean Literatures, Callaloo, Kunapipi, WadabageiJournal of Latin American Cultural Studies. Dr. Strongman’s first book Queering Black Atlantic Religions: Transcorporeality in Candomblé, Santería and Vodou (Duke 2019) is a Lambda Literary LGBTQ Studies Award finalist.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 21, 2019
"Enter the igbodu," Roberto Strongman invites us in his new book Queering Black Atlantic Religions: Transcorporeality in Candomblé, Santería, and Vodou. The book attempts to use the igbodu, the initiatory chamber of Lukumí (Santería) and other Yorùbá-derived/inspired faiths, as a stylistic container in mirror both to the religions themselves and to his central idea of transcorporeality. This term refers not to trans embodiment, as any reader of queer and gender studies might assume, but to a new way of conceptualizing the body of initiates in Afro-Diasporic religions - not as singular personhoods being invaded through possession, but rather as concave receptacles for multiple personhood, rejecting the Western philosophical positions on the subject.
Strongman elucidates the concept of transcorporeality through the three most widely-researched Afro-Diasporic religions: Haitian Vodou, Cuban Lukumí/Santería, and Brazilian Candomblé. Where this book is particularly strong, and stands out among Afro-Atlantic religious studies texts, is Strongman's engagement with multiple languages. By the end of the book, you truly wonder if there are any languages Strongman can't speak, given that Spanish, Portuguese, French, Haitian Kreyol, German, and Italian are all brought in at various points throughout.
But puzzlingly, Strongman seems not to have put these languages to much use beyond reading and translating ethnographies, novels, and films. Despite almost sharing a title with the earlier Queering Creole Spiritual Traditions, which the present book references, Queering Black Atlantic Religions couldn't be further from such sociological and ethnographic material. This book instead focuses more on literary criticism than it does on the actual practice of the religions being referenced. As a result, we walk away from the book not with a more nuanced understanding of the religions, but rather a grappling with the previous scholars in the field.
Even that engagement, though, is full of surprising analytic omissions. For example, in the chapter of Wifredo Lam, Strongman rightly pushes back against the previous critical tradition of de-Africanizing Lam and de-emphasizing the role of Lukumí in his work. Simultaneously, Strongman himself gives no engagement with Lam's Chinese heritage, nor any discussion at all of the Afro-Chinese community in Cuba and its relationship to Lukumí religion and aesthetics (a troubling omissions given the extremely interesting work of Dr. Martin Tsang on this subject).
The most glaring omission throughout the entire book, though, is the almost total absence of discussion of trans people within Afro-Atlantic religions. Strongman's 'queer' does not encompass these subjects, though it makes room alongside gay cis men for sex workers, spirits, spirit mediums, bigamy, and anyone doing 'non-procreative' sex (essentially refiguring many straight people as queer subjects). Actual trans people receive only a brief mention in the chapters on Candomblé, but this mention consists of a Kulick quote that incorrectly downplays the level of participation they have within these religions. While this bothers me as a trans practitioner of one of the religions studied, it's also just a bit of a bizarre missed opportunity given that so much of the book speculates on the role of cross-gender identification in spirit possession. And this cannot be attributed to a lack of existing scholarship for Strongman to engage with, given that there are multiple documentaries and books on the subject, one of which Strongman quotes from more than once (the aforementioned Queering Creole Spiritual Traditions).
We can't fault the book for not doing things it never intended to do, but one does wonder why Strongman appears to have not bothered to speak to any of his informants about the ideas he is working through. The ethnographic sections of this book don't amount to much of anything, particularly in the Santería/Lukumí section where they could simply be excised and no difference would be made to the text. In the final chapter on Candomblé, there is some interesting fieldwork around Candomblé in Portugal, but there isn't much that comes out of it beyond Strongman's theorizing about the introduction of Candomblé to a mostly white European audience. Whereas the scholars whom Strongman both depends on and criticizes - Lydia Cabrera, Maya Deren, Pierre Verger, Hubert Fichte, etc. - drew their conclusions from interviews with practitioners and participation in ceremonies, Strongman instead draws much of his from popular film depictions.
We exit the book as an ushering out of the igbodú, "dreamy, yet awake," though much like the new initiate while we leave this womb-like environment changed, we do so without much new knowledge.
In total, this a book that requires a fairly vast knowledge of existing scholarship on Vodou, Santería/Lukumí, and Candomblé to keep up with. And while there are some interesting ideas, it's omissions and seeming lack of engagement with living practitioners undermines what could have been a much deeper discussion.
Strongman elucidates the concept of transcorporeality through the three most widely-researched Afro-Diasporic religions: Haitian Vodou, Cuban Lukumí/Santería, and Brazilian Candomblé. Where this book is particularly strong, and stands out among Afro-Atlantic religious studies texts, is Strongman's engagement with multiple languages. By the end of the book, you truly wonder if there are any languages Strongman can't speak, given that Spanish, Portuguese, French, Haitian Kreyol, German, and Italian are all brought in at various points throughout.
But puzzlingly, Strongman seems not to have put these languages to much use beyond reading and translating ethnographies, novels, and films. Despite almost sharing a title with the earlier Queering Creole Spiritual Traditions, which the present book references, Queering Black Atlantic Religions couldn't be further from such sociological and ethnographic material. This book instead focuses more on literary criticism than it does on the actual practice of the religions being referenced. As a result, we walk away from the book not with a more nuanced understanding of the religions, but rather a grappling with the previous scholars in the field.
Even that engagement, though, is full of surprising analytic omissions. For example, in the chapter of Wifredo Lam, Strongman rightly pushes back against the previous critical tradition of de-Africanizing Lam and de-emphasizing the role of Lukumí in his work. Simultaneously, Strongman himself gives no engagement with Lam's Chinese heritage, nor any discussion at all of the Afro-Chinese community in Cuba and its relationship to Lukumí religion and aesthetics (a troubling omissions given the extremely interesting work of Dr. Martin Tsang on this subject).
The most glaring omission throughout the entire book, though, is the almost total absence of discussion of trans people within Afro-Atlantic religions. Strongman's 'queer' does not encompass these subjects, though it makes room alongside gay cis men for sex workers, spirits, spirit mediums, bigamy, and anyone doing 'non-procreative' sex (essentially refiguring many straight people as queer subjects). Actual trans people receive only a brief mention in the chapters on Candomblé, but this mention consists of a Kulick quote that incorrectly downplays the level of participation they have within these religions. While this bothers me as a trans practitioner of one of the religions studied, it's also just a bit of a bizarre missed opportunity given that so much of the book speculates on the role of cross-gender identification in spirit possession. And this cannot be attributed to a lack of existing scholarship for Strongman to engage with, given that there are multiple documentaries and books on the subject, one of which Strongman quotes from more than once (the aforementioned Queering Creole Spiritual Traditions).
We can't fault the book for not doing things it never intended to do, but one does wonder why Strongman appears to have not bothered to speak to any of his informants about the ideas he is working through. The ethnographic sections of this book don't amount to much of anything, particularly in the Santería/Lukumí section where they could simply be excised and no difference would be made to the text. In the final chapter on Candomblé, there is some interesting fieldwork around Candomblé in Portugal, but there isn't much that comes out of it beyond Strongman's theorizing about the introduction of Candomblé to a mostly white European audience. Whereas the scholars whom Strongman both depends on and criticizes - Lydia Cabrera, Maya Deren, Pierre Verger, Hubert Fichte, etc. - drew their conclusions from interviews with practitioners and participation in ceremonies, Strongman instead draws much of his from popular film depictions.
We exit the book as an ushering out of the igbodú, "dreamy, yet awake," though much like the new initiate while we leave this womb-like environment changed, we do so without much new knowledge.
In total, this a book that requires a fairly vast knowledge of existing scholarship on Vodou, Santería/Lukumí, and Candomblé to keep up with. And while there are some interesting ideas, it's omissions and seeming lack of engagement with living practitioners undermines what could have been a much deeper discussion.
July 9, 2021
This book is too academic for me. Strongman is a polyglot and has a nearly unfathomable vocabulary, but I wish there was more of an effort to make this writing accessible. That being said, there's one passage that I found so important, so crucial to why books like this and others are so necessary, so I'll share it in full here:
"While there were few national laws anywhere in the world protecting queers, there is an Afro-religious community that welcomes and protects its queer members. Black diaspora cultures have papers away for full inclusion of queer peoples in discourses of the nation, instead of the highly mediatize representation of homophobic black peoples and enlightened, progressive white, upper-middle-class peoples."
I promise you'll learn a lot! I sure did.
"While there were few national laws anywhere in the world protecting queers, there is an Afro-religious community that welcomes and protects its queer members. Black diaspora cultures have papers away for full inclusion of queer peoples in discourses of the nation, instead of the highly mediatize representation of homophobic black peoples and enlightened, progressive white, upper-middle-class peoples."
I promise you'll learn a lot! I sure did.
December 11, 2022
this is the most beautiful academic writing i've read in my entire life
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews