Page 52 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

“Don’t Ask Questions, Just Observe!” 37

Figure 1.1 Statue of Iemanjá, Candomblé goddess of the deep seas, in serial
production. Photo by Mattijs van de Port.

Bahian state, as an ideal blueprint for the reorganization of business organi-
zations (Vergari and Helio 2000), as a proto particle theory (Correia 1999),
and—with the booming of Pentecostalism—as devil worship.
Responses in the Candomblé community to these developments are
deeply ambivalent. As the opening of the Cultural Week already indicated,
there is a lot to gain by all the attention. The prestige that comes with vis-
iting statesmen, professors, and celebrities opens up alleys for material
profit and political influence. Terreiros like Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá openly
court these possibilities. In fact, the text that was read by anthropologist
Vivaldo Costa Lima at the opening night discussed “the councel of the
twelve oba’s” and the honorary title of the oloiês or ojoiês (Yorubá for “friend
of the house”)—inventions (or “restorations,” depending on one’s perspec-

tive) that help to link ever more influential and affluent outsiders, “writers,
deputies, painters, university professors, merchants, industrials, medical
doctors and foreigners who live in Bahia,” in da Costa Lima’s words (Lima
1966, 101) to the religious community. Next to these prestigious bonds,
terreiros like Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá successfully profit from revenues that
follow from being labeled “cultural heritage”: state subsidies to keep up the
premises, NGO funding for “social” activities, and revenues from tourists
visiting the terreiro compound.