On the art of making gods: cosmotechnics of African-derived religions in Brazil

• Grant number: 23/01246-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: August 01, 2023
• End date: July 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Anthropology of Afro-Brazilian Populations
• Principal Investigator: Fernanda Arêas Peixoto
• Grantee: Lucas de Mendonça Marques
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 20/07886-8 - Arts and semantics of creation and memory, AP.TEM

Abstract

This project aims to carry out a study on the ways of creating and making characteristic of African-based religions in Brazil, seeking to explore an ethnographic theory of creation based on the relationship between people, things and gods. The purpose is to follow the creative process of two orixá blacksmiths: craftsmen linked to Candomblé who are dedicated to the production of the so-called "saint tools". These artifacts, after being made in the workshops and "prepared" in the candomblé temples, become the material expression of the gods on earth. The idea is to explore the overlap between technical and ritual practices present in the process of creating these artifacts. Furthermore, it seeks to follow the saint tools in their multiple processes of "individuation", either through the ritual preparations that took place in the terreiros - where the artifacts become the gods themselves -, or through the appropriation of these artifacts in museums and art galleries, where they become "artistic objects" and are inserted into a specific network of Afro-Brazilian art. Situated between two established fields in anthropology, the study of techniques and the study of Afro-Brazilian religions, the project seeks to explore the concept of cosmotechnic in the universe of religions of African origin, drawing attention to the more-than-human forces that permeate the technical processes. With this, we intend to demonstrate how, in these religions, technique and ontology (or technique and life) cannot be thought of separately: to make an orixá is to compose with the forces and materials that inhabit it, and each technical and ritual gesture is a way of composing energies (which, in Candomblé, are called axé), making materials, gods and people more and more alive.

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

LUCAS MARQUES. Os rastros de Changó no Pacífico Sul colombiano. Horiz. antropol., v. 31, n. 71, 2025-02-17. (20/07886-8, 23/01246-5)