Page 56 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

“Don’t Ask Questions, Just Observe!” 41

These attempts, however, only exacerbate the dilemmas Ilê Axé Opô
Afonjá is facing in its claim to be the one-and-only authentic voice of
Candomblé. Mãe Stella seems to be well aware that the public sphere is
the arena where the fight for sovereignty has to be fought and although a
visibly media-shy figure, she does seek publicity to pursue her politics. She
has published a number of books, gives public speeches, appears on TV
and in the newspapers, organizes debates and scholarly meetings, has ini-
tiated a museum on the terreiro’s compound, and has participated in
international conferences on the religion of the Orixás. This move to the
public sphere forces the terreiro to explain itself in the terms, media for-
mats, and styles that govern the public sphere. In other words, to make
her arguments and demands understood to a public at large, she will have
to seek recourse to vocabularies and media images she imagines to be
understandable for that public at large. And this is where sovereignty
sought becomes sovereignty lost. In its attempt to make itself understood,
the terreiro constantly resorts to comparisons of Candomblé with a
Christian blueprint of religion (“It is clear that we are a religion, because
we have a theology, we have a liturgy, and we have dogmas. These are
three characteristics of all religions,” Mãe Stella, in Pretto and Serpa
2002, 26; see also De Witte in this volume); conceptualizes the orixás in
a New Age vocabulary as “ancient energies”; and stresses the importance
of education and knowledge (Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá founded a school on the
terreiro grounds, and is highly active in organizing seminars and scholarly
meetings).
Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá is certainly successful in foregrounding itself as
the legitimate representative of Afro-Brazilian religion (“we are now
always invited to religious meetings,” Mãe Stella says, “we may not
always go, but we are always invited!”). Yet the prize that is being paid
for public recognition is that the public understanding as to what
Candomblé is all about does not transcend the horizons of what the
public finds imaginable. This is well illustrated in the following lauda-
tio for Mãe Stella that I found in a Bahian newspaper. The text men-
tions, among other things, that

. . . the priestess was chosen by the United Nations to represent the tradi-
tion of the Orixás in Rio de Janeiro, next to the most diverse religious
leaders such as the Dalai Lama of Tibet and Rabbi Henry Sobel. As a rec-
ognition of the utmost importance of the cultural and social work that
Mãe Stella has done in Bahia and in Brazil she has been invited to confer-
ences at universities and international institutions such as the Brazilian
Contemporary Arts in London, Harvard University in Washington, and
the Caribbean Institute in New York. The priestess also received the med-
als “Maria Quitéria” and the “Ordem do Cavaleiro,” the trophies “Esso” (a