Crossroads of interpretation in the Umbanda.

Author(s)

Alice Costa Macêdo

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Ribeirão Preto.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (PCARP/BC)
• Defense date: 2015-12-10

Examining board members

Jose Francisco Miguel Henriques Bairrao; Valeria Barbieri; Fabio Scorsolini Comin; Carla Guanaes Lorenzi; Luciana Fernandes Marques

• Advisor: Jose Francisco Miguel Henriques Bairrao

Abstract

Umbanda is characterized as a possession cult, whose members, in a trance, incorporate spirits that appear in the terreiros (specific places for the religious ritual) on generally public ceremonies in order to \"work\" in the service of his faithful and consultants. The objective of this research was to investigate and describe the interpretative processes in Umbanda, from a ethnopsychological perspective. It is a case study of longitudinal type, based on the method of the participant listening, understood as the extension of the psychoanalytic method to field research, by using ethnographic techniques. The field research was accomplished in the Oxalá Umbanda Center (Ribeirão Preto - São Paulo - Brazil), where queries granted by spirits embodied by the father-of-saint were fully accompanied by records on the field diary. To achieve this purpose, the researcher was admitted into the place of father-of-saints Cambona, that is, an auxiliary of the ceremony. Psychoanalytic theory of interpretation assumed a heuristic value in this research, to enable the formulation of working hypotheses as guidelines that allowed the researcher to seek the understanding of the interpretative processes in Umbanda. The consultations showed the use of \"ingredients-things-significant\" that resemble a prayer but prayed performatively by the body, such as phrases that compose a poem whose interpretation is enunciated in the own umbandista symbolic system. It is suggested, therefore, that the interpretation in this context appear to present rich possibilities of combinations of features that are revealed beyond to the verbal. Psychoanalysis has proved an important tool for research regarding the field experience, the transference relationship and refinement of listening. The lacanian approach was useful in the sense that it comprises the interpretation that is present on the event and the event includes the interpretation; besides the possibility to analyze the symbolic register from the intersection of two axes, metaphor and metonymy, which facilitated the immersion of listening into the language of Umbanda spirits and, finally, it has allowed mapping interpretations that operate in materiality, to the letter and the bottom of thingsquite literally. Otherwise, it is clear that Freud\'s method of dream interpretation has not established approaches to what happens in the terreiros, because for Umbanda the interpretation does not seem to operate from manifest content access to latent content. In the case of Umbanda, the interpretation occurs in act, or rather is, the act itself, it is part of the body, reveals itself, but is a way to \"seeing\" that is close to the skin and not restricted to eyes. Furthermore, although it has been useful the idea that the author of dream interpretation is the dreamer himself, in the case of Umbanda, the subject interpreter is not only the medium, the spirit, the cambono or consultants. The subject of interpretation permeates all these characters, but resides in the proper symbolic system of Umbanda. Thus, it is proposed that spirituality is not disregarded, but treated as a resource for the development of new notions of protection that not only respect each other\'s culture, but above all that they can incorporate them to their care strategies. Although this research did not intend to investigate how african-Brazilian communities understand health and illness, suffering and care, it sought to contribute to an understanding of how, through interpretive procedures, this cultural universe refines listening and acceptance of those who turn to him. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 12/17036-5 - Crossroads of interpretation in Umbanda
• Grantee: Alice Costa Macêdo
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate