A religion of nature? Anthropology of sacred artefacts and cyborg gods in Afro-Brazilian religions

Gellner Seminar

Giovanna Capponi (CEFRES/FSV UK) will give a lecture within the Gellner seminar organized by the Czech Association for Social Anthropology (CASA– Česká Asociace pro Sociální Antropologii), the Czech Society of Sociology, in cooperation with the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and CEFRES.

When: 1st April 2019, at 4:30 pm
Where: CEFRES Library (Na Florenci 3, Prague 1)
Language: English

Abstract

A religion of nature? Anthropology of sacred artefacts and cyborg gods in Afro-Brazilian religions

Afro-Brazilian Candomblé, the worship of the West African deities which spread around Brazil as a consequence of the Atlantic Slave Trade, is often described by its followers and by the anthropologists who studied it as a “religion of nature”. Indeed, Candomblé deities (called orixás) are closely associated with natural elements in the landscape; but they are also associated with human temperaments and with different stages of life and matter. In the attempt to problematize and understand what kind of “nature” is implied in this context, I will analyse the sacred artefacts that constitute a central part of the ritual practice, the so called assentamentos.

The rules of fabrication of these mysterious factishes, using Latour’s neologism, are often surrounded by secrecy and sacredness as they constitute the physical “bodies” and “mouths” of the orixás where sacrifices and offerings are performed. Involving animal blood, vegetable substances, and other materials like wood, iron or copper in the making, the assentamentos are made by humans as a means of condensing and manipulating axé, the sacred force that is infused in natural elements. Trying to escape the colonial narrative that long described these practices as “fetishism”, I would argue that these artefacts can be understood as powerful “technological” devices and channels of communication between the visible and the invisible world. Moreover, these receptacles mirror both the deity and the heads of the novices who undergo the initiation ritual, which starts a lifelong bond between the orixá, the artefact, and the human.

Using Haraway’s metaphor of the cyborg, I analyse how these artefacts transcend and challenge the dichotomies of Western thought. Being it at the same time alive and inert, natural and technological, human and animal, infused with life force and mere vessel, the assentamento subverts these categories and sheds a light on the ways in which humans, gods, animals and elements of the landscape are made and perceived.

Historical policy-making in Poland and the political role of historians

Historical policy-making in Poland and the political role of historians

Lecture by Valentin Behr (Warsaw University, The Robert Zajonc Institute for Social Studies and Centre for French Studies)

Where: CEFRES Library, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
When: 28 March 2019, 2 pm
Organizers: CEFRES
Language: English

Abstract

This lecture will be dedicated to historical policy in Poland. I will first explain why I use the notion of “historical policy” and how it differs from the more common notion of “memory politics”. I will also illustrate my thesis by recalling the history and activities of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), which is somehow similar to other institutions in postcommunist countries such as the German Gauck Institute or the Czech Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (USTR). Then, I will show how historical policy shapes some kind of official narrative about the past, by evoking some of the IPN’s publications. Finally, I will propose a more general reflection about the role and contribution of historians to the political uses of the past, by sketching a broader historical perspective, from the end of WWII onwards.

Foucault’s concepts applied to Early Modern theatre and science

The seventh session of IMS / CEFRES epistemological seminar will be hosted by

Sophie Bouvier (PhD candidate FF UK)
Foucault’s concepts applied to Early Modern theatre and science

Where: CEFRES Library – Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
When
: Wednesday 20 March 2019 from 4:30 pm to 6 pm
Language
English

Text:

  • Michel Foucault : The order of things; chap. 3.II and 3.VI

What Is an Archive in India and Europe?

International Workshop

Organizers: Benedetta Zaccarello (CEFRES) & Kannan Muthukrishnan (French Institute in Pondicherry)
Partners: CEFRES & French Institute in Pondicherry
Where
: French Institute in Pondicherry, India
When: 7 & 8 March 2019                                                                                    Language: English

Programme

March 7th, 2019

9:30 AM Opening remarks

Prof. Frédéric Landy, director, IFP

Session 1: Methodological, historical and theoretical standpoints
  • Dr. Benedetta Zaccarello, CEFRES (CNRS-MEAE, Prague) and Mr. Kannan M. (IFP), introductory remarks

11 AM Coffee break

11:15 AM

  • Dr. Jayanta Sengupta (secretary and curator at Victoria Memorial, Kolkata), on the intercultural issues related to archival practices
  • Prof. Subbarayalu (IFP), on archives and inscriptions: an historical overview

1 PM Lunch

2 PM

Living memories: past and present of some Indian archives

  • Mr. Peter Heehs (historian, former archiviste, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives), on the history of Sri Aurobindo’s Archives
  • Mr. Rengaiyah Murugan (Librarian, MIDS, Chennai), on Tamil manuscripts and archives
  • Dr.  Roland  Wittje  (IIT,  Chennai),  collections  and  archives: history of science and technology

4 PM Coffee break

4:15 PM

  • Dr. Anupama K. (IFP), on interrelated collections at the Ecology Department of IFP
  • Mr. Venkat Srinivasan (Archiviste, IIS, Bangalore), on the digital representation of the archives at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

Visit of the IFP collections (palm leaf manuscripts with Dr. Devi Prasad, collections of photographs with Mr. Ramesh Kumar and collections of Ecology with Dr. Anupama K.)

7.30 PM Dinner at IFP

March 8th, 2019

Session 2: Archives beyond borders and mindsets

Archives: trans-cultures and post colonialisms

9:30 AM

  • Prof. Albert Dichy, IMEC, Caen, France, head of literary collections
  • Dr. Chandramohan (Curator, GOML, Chennai), on the colonial period and the palm leaf and paper manuscripts from the “McKenzie” collection

11 AM Coffee break

11:30 AM

  • Mr. Richard Hartz (Researcher, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives), on the intercultural aspects of Sri Aurobindo’s manuscripts
  • Dr. G. Sundar (Director, Roja Muthaiah Research Library, Chennai), on archiving 20th century Tamil

1 PM Lunch

2 PM

Oral traditions and visual heritage in the age of digital archives

  • Dr. C.S Lakshmi (director, SPARROW, Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women, Mumbai), on archiving women’s testimonies and archives of orality
  • Mr. Prashant Parvatneni (Kabir Project, Bangalore), on building the “Kabir Project” Archive
  • Ms. Ranjani and Mr. Faizal (Keystone Foundation), on the creation of the Keystone Foundation Resource Centre, Nilgiris

4 PM Coffee break

4:15 PM

  • Dr. Alexandra De Heering (IFP), on accessibility to visual archives
  • Mr. Gopinath Sricandane (IFP), on the visual medium of archives
  • Dr. Pierre Triomphe (Institut National du Patrimoine, Paris), on heritage and archives

5:30 PM Roundtable discussion

Sovereignty

The sixth session of IMS / CEFRES epistemological seminar of this year will be hosted by

Ekaterina Zheltova (IMS FSV UK / associated at CEFRES)
Pavel Baloun (FHS UK / CEFRES)
Topic: Sovereignty

Where: CEFRES Library – Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
When: Wednesday 6 March 2019 from 4:30 pm to 6 pm
Language: English

Text:

  • Humphrey: „Sovereignty“, A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics (ed. David Nugent, Joan Vincent), Malden-Oxford-Victoria, Blackwell, 2007, 418–436.
  • Jennifer Illuzzi, “Negotiating the ‘state of exception’: Gypsies´ encounter with the judiciery in Germany and Italy, 1860-1914”, Social History 4/2010, p. 418-438.

Becoming Refugees, Becoming Survivors? Reframing Jewish Children’s Experiences in Transnational, longue durée Perspective

A lecture by Laura Hobson Faure (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3) in the frame of the seminar on Modern Jewish History of the Institute of Contemporary History (AV ČR) and CEFRES in partnership with the Masaryk Institute (AV ČR).

Where: CEFRES library, Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Prague 1
When: from 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm
Language: English

Abstract

Since the 1990s, historians have sought to incorporate Jewish children’s experiences into the historiography on the Holocaust (Dwork, 1991, Stargardt, 2006), seeking out child-produced sources to write child-centered histories. Childhood as a sub-field of Holocaust studies has continued to develop, and now includes works on Jewish children’s experiences in Occupied Europe, as well as in the countries to which they fled (Michlic 2017, Gigliotti and Tempian, 2016, Cohen 2018, Ouzan 2018). However, historians have often constructed their work within local or national frameworks, remaining staunchly attached to a narrow periodization, focusing either on the war years or the postwar period. My current research, on a small group of about 300 children who fled from Central Europe to France in 1938-39, and from France to the United States in 1941-42, proposes a new reading of this history by considering children’s lives in transnational perspective, over a period of time that includes both the Holocaust and its long aftermath. By following the process through which children became refugees, I will shed light on little known child-evacuation schemes, but also question how these children, as adults, shaped the rise of contemporary Holocaust memory, as Holocaust survivors. This project thus proposes a microhistory of children’s networks, with the hope of raising larger questions of how individuals and families responded to persecution collectively, how social work practices and organizations shaped children’s lives, and how former child victims shaped the rise of Holocaust memory in Western Democracies.