Topological modeling of possession: subject and alterity in Umbanda

Author(s)

Daniela Bueno de Oliveira Americo de Godoy

• 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: 2012-03-14

Examining board members

Jose Francisco Miguel Henriques Bairrao; Maria Thereza Ávila Dantas Coelho; Maria Helena Villas Boas Concone; Geraldo Jose de Paiva; Leda Verdiani Tfouni

• Advisor: Jose Francisco Miguel Henriques Bairrao

Abstract

This work aims to assay applications of topological structures psychoanalytically interpreted to the study possession trance in Umbanda, which is comprehended as a kind of enunciation irreducible to strictly verbal. The subject (enunciative instance) and the Other (in this case, materialized in the spirits world) are considered as different functions that alter themselves in a moebian (one-sided) surface. The Lacanian psychoanalysis method is used in social contexts after reconceptualizing the ethnographic method, now denominated participant listening. The researcher participated and interacted in Umbanda temples in the capacity of consultant. Based on the general theorem of surfaces that, through homeomorphic transformations equals three projective planes into a projective plan plus a torus, two analytical versions were developed from the mapping of the significant chain webbed in the transferencial relationship. One relies on the interior eight cut and the other one on the hole (structural to the surfaces composition). In a point of view, the possession can be understood as derived from the unconscious logic (fantasy) that relates the operations of the subjects production (alienation and separation) with the cut operation that modifies the structure, presenting the divided subject but not in two pieces. From another point of view, the possession can be thought as an enunciative form that describes a fantasy, which is not restricted to the hearing strict sense, but includes the gaze and the kinesthetic associated with the movement. After this modeling, social research and analytical listening are amplified to space-time enunciation processes released from consciousness, from individual psychism and from the subordination of an interiority psychic conception. They are also disentailed from the social and the history comprehended as exterior to the subject. (AU)