Page 50 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

“Don’t Ask Questions, Just Observe!” 35

Mãe Stella’s proud assertion that her religion is so “strong” and “myste-
rious” as to garner the attention of outsiders signals the assertiveness of
some members of the Bahian priesthood. The opening scene to this chap-
ter illustrates that there are grounds for her pride: from a forbidden and
persecuted religious practice of African slaves and their descendants,
Candomblé has become a highly prestigious and well-respected religion,
which ranks as the prime cultural heritage of the Bahian state, and attracts
ever more variegated audiences (cf. Santos 2005; Van de Port 2005a).
However, Mãe Stella’s performance of silence in front of a huge audience,
as well as her explicit call “not to ask questions,” is emblematic of a deep
concern in certain Candomblé circles that, for all of the successes that have
been booked in Candomblé’s long struggle for social and political recogni-
tion, another kind of threat looms large at the horizon that urges the priest-
hood to police the boundaries of their imagined religious community ever
more rigorously.
Due to the overwhelming interest in Candomblé, the cult has become
the object of literary interpretation, artistic elaboration, philosophical
meditation, and anthropological explanation (not to mention commercial
and political exploitation). There is, in other words, a hyperproliferation of
discursive knowledge about Candomblé, and ever more people (and presti-
gious ones at that) are involved in the production of this knowledge as to
what is Candomblé. In the eyes of the priesthood, this development poses
a serious threat to what they call the cult’s “deep truths”: its segredos
(secrets), mistérios (mysteries), and fundamentos (fundaments). In
Candomblé, it is understood that “deep truth” only reveals itself during the
time-consuming path of initiation. Deep truths “come to you with time,”
as one initiate phrased it succinctly: with submitting one’s body to the ini-
tiation procedures and the yearly cycle of rituals; with the observation of
the many do’s and don’ts of terreiro life; and finally, with opening up the
body for divine possession. “Deep truth” is an understanding of things
that is, in its essence, inarticulable.
Both Mãe Stella’s silence and her call “not to ask questions” seek to
express this inarticulability: it is a demonstration of the belief that there is
an incommensurable difference between saying “the initiation cycle lasts

seven long years” (a phrase of seven words, which produce their meaning
in a split second) and the experience of living those seven long years of
energies given and energies received. Highlighting that difference, instruct-
ing outsiders “not to ask questions,” is a refusal to surrender to the prolif-
eration of discursivity, to other people’s interpretations, explorations,
meditations, and explanations of the cult. What should be discussed in
this chapter, then, is how the notion of nondiscursive “deep truths,”
grounded in a prolonged immersion in the ritual cycle, has come to play a