{"id":724,"date":"2017-12-08T13:39:28","date_gmt":"2017-12-08T18:39:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/vlbrenna-rel095fall2017\/?p=724"},"modified":"2017-12-08T13:39:28","modified_gmt":"2017-12-08T18:39:28","slug":"the-disconnect-between-the-diaspora-and-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/vlbrenna-rel095fall2017\/2017\/12\/08\/the-disconnect-between-the-diaspora-and-the-west\/","title":{"rendered":"The Disconnect Between the Diaspora and the West"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the evening of Tuesday, November 28th, I attended a lecture by Paul C. Johnson, scholar and professor in the departments of History, Afro-american and African studies at the University of Michigan. Johnson has published a number of books and articles within several fields of study: theories of religion, ethnography, history of the study of religion, religion and race, and the modern history of Brazil. The title of the exhibit at the Fleming Museum, Spirited Things, is borrowed from Johnson\u2019s book by the same name. Johnson\u2019s lecture focused mainly on his studies involving Brazilian Candomble and the concept of spirit possession. He discussed the materiality of spirit possession, and how it related to gender. <\/span><\/p>\n

In Brazilian Candomble (and many diasporic religions), spirit possession is a common way for gods and spirits (orisha) to take form in the world of the mortals by occupying a human body as a vessel. Johnson stated in his talk that typically, women are most likely to be possessed. This is due to their \u201ccool\u201d nature. Gender in Candomble is quite complex, as traditional gender roles are replaced with the ideas of \u201chot\u201d and \u201ccool.\u201d Johnson described the \u201ccool\u201d as even-tempered, tranquil, and empathetic. In class, one of our readings was an except from Johnson\u2019s book, <\/span>Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomble. <\/span><\/i>In it, he discusses the relationship between traditional gender and \u201chot\u201d and \u201ccool\u201d: \u201cWomen are cool, reproductive, and contained\u201d (Johnson). I understand that this description of women is contextualized within the content of his lecture, but I couldn\u2019t help but feel uncomfortable with the way Johnson described women both in his lecture and in his book. He kept using words such as calm, tranquil, and <\/span>empathetic, <\/span><\/i>citing these traits as reasons why women were more likely to be possessed by spirits. These were all arguably good traits, but something about the way he grouped all women into this group made me a little angry.<\/span><\/p>\n

The generalization of women\u2019s characteristics bothered me, but I was conflicted–did I have a right to feel this way? Was it disrespectful of me to feel uncomfortable with the way Johnson was describing someone else\u2019s culture–one that I knew so little about? In class, we have spent a fair amount of time discussing the methods of translation from diasporic religions to Western culture. We came to a consensus with the idea that a lot of important concepts get lost and\/or misinterpreted when being translated from such complex religions–primarily because 1) they are so fundamentally different from Western religions and 2) it\u2019s extremely difficult to convey the meaning of certain concepts when they simply don\u2019t exist in the world we are familiar with. As I was listening to Johnson\u2019s lecture (and later on, reading an excerpt from his book), I felt skeptical and uncomfortable with what Johnson was saying. Mid-thought, I remembered this discussion and tried to think about what Johnson was implying with a more contextualized perspective. It\u2019s possible that I <\/span>did<\/span><\/i> have a reason to be uncomfortable, but I couldn\u2019t ignore the fact that maybe there was something more–something untranslatable from culture to culture that validated Johnson\u2019s statements and rectified the discomfort I was feeling. <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear that at some level, there is a disconnect between these two cultures. It\u2019s an interesting barrier that I hope to see broken down one day–possibly with the normalization of and further education on diasporic religions in the West.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the evening of Tuesday, November 28th, I attended a lecture by Paul C. Johnson, scholar and professor in the departments of History, Afro-american and African studies at the University of Michigan. Johnson has published a number of books and articles within several fields of study: theories of religion, ethnography, history of the study of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4548,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/vlbrenna-rel095fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/vlbrenna-rel095fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/vlbrenna-rel095fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/vlbrenna-rel095fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4548"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/vlbrenna-rel095fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/vlbrenna-rel095fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":725,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/vlbrenna-rel095fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions\/725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/vlbrenna-rel095fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/vlbrenna-rel095fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/vlbrenna-rel095fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}