Developing the Dead: Mediumship and Selfhood in Cuban Espiritismo

Diana Espirito Santo, "Developing the Dead: Mediumship and Selfhood in Cuban Espiritismo"


2015 | ISBN-10: 0813060788 | 304 pages | PDF | 2 MB

Despite its powerful influence on Cuban culture, Espiritismo has often been overlooked by scholars. Developing the Dead is the first in-depth exploration of contemporary Espiritismo in Cuba. Based on extensive fieldwork among religious practitioners and their clients in Havana, this book makes the surprising claim that Spiritist practices are fundamentally a project of developing the self. When mediums cultivate relationships between the living and the dead, argues Diana EspYrito Santo, they develop, learn, sense, dream, and connect to multiple spirits (muertos), expanding the borders of the self. This understanding of selfhood is radically different fromEnlightenment ideas of an autonomous, bounded self and holds fascinating implications for prophecy, healing, and self-consciousness. Developing the Dead shows how EspiritismoAEs self-making process permeates all aspects of life, not only for its own practitioners but also for those of other Afro-Cuban religions.

nitroflare

Slavery Behind the Wall: An Archaeology of a Cuban Coffee Plantation

Theresa A. Singleton, "Slavery Behind the Wall: An Archaeology of a Cuban Coffee Plantation"


2015 | ISBN-10: 0813060729 | 224 pages | PDF | 3 MB

Cuba had the largest slave society of the Spanish colonial empire and thus the most plantations. The lack of archaeological data for interpreting these sites is a glaring void in slavery and plantation studies. Theresa Singleton helps to fill this gap with the presentation of the first archaeological investigation of a Cuban plantation written by an English speaker. At Santa Ana de Biajacas, where the plantation owner sequestered slaves behind a massive masonry wall, Singleton explores how elite Cuban planters used the built environment to impose a hierarchical social order upon slave laborers. Behind the wall, slaves reclaimed the space as their own, forming communities, building their own houses, celebrating, gambling, and even harboring slave runaways. What emerged there is not just an identity distinct from other NorthAmerican and Caribbean plantations, but a unique slave culture that thrived despite a spartan lifestyle. SingletonAEs study provides insight into the larger historical context of the African diaspora, global patterns of enslavement, and the development of Cuba as an integral member of the larger Atlantic World.

nitroflare