For over a hundred years, writers, artists, anthropologists and tourists have travelled to Bahia, Brazil, in search of the spirit possession cult called Candomblé. Thus, successive generations of cultists have seen a long, steady stream of curious outsiders coming to their temples with notebooks and cameras, questions and inquisitive gazes, or ogling eyes and the hope of inclusion. This study asks what seduced these outsiders to seek access to the Afro-Brazilian religious universe and, conversely, how did cultists respond to the overwhelming interest in their creed and to becoming an object of the outsiders’ imaginations.

Preface

Introduction: Avenida Oceânica: Candomblé, mystery and the-rest-of-what-is in process of world-making
1. On Immersion: Academics and the seductions of a baroque society
2. Mysteries are Invisible: Understanding images in the Bahia of Dr Raimundo Nina Rodrigues
3. Re-encoding the Primitive: Surrealist appreciations of Candomblé in a violence-ridden world
4. Abstracting Candomblé: Defining the ‘public’ and the ‘particular’ dimensions of a spirit possession cult
5. Allegorical Worlds: Baroque aesthetics and the notion of an ‘absent truth’
6. Bafflement Politics: Possessions, apparitions and the really real of Candomblé’s miracle productions
7. The Permeable Boundary: Media imaginaries in Candomblé’s public performance of authenticity
Conclusions: Cracks in the Wall: Invocations of the-rest-of-what-is in the anthropological study of world-making

Notes
Bibliography
Index