Page 57 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

42 Mattijs van de Port

prize for black writers) and “Clementina de Jesus,” and a great homenagem
(tribute) by the Bahian people in 1995 (. . .) To foreground her dedication
and activities to strengthen the Candomblé religion with its traditions of
thousands of years, Mãe Stella has now received from the Federal
Government the medal of the “Order of Cultural Accomplishment,” and
will see her terreiro of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá be declared to be part of the
National Historical Patrimony. (Tribuna da Bahia, 20 November 1999)
I can hardly think of a better demonstration of how the simple fact that
Candomblé has accessed the public sphere profoundly changed the sym-
bolization of priestly authority—indeed, just how much Mãe Stella
became dependent on public criteria to argue her authority as a religious
leader beyond the walls of her terreiro: in ethnographies (as well as in
Mãe Stella’s own publications) the sources of sacerdotal power and pres-
tige—and consequently, authority—are always explained in terms of the
seniority and genealogy of a terreiro, the reputation and stature of the
priestly lineage, and the length of someone’s initiation: authority is with
os mais velhos—“the oldest,” that is, those who are in the know (see
Castillo 2005).
In the public sphere, however, the authority of the priestess can no
longer be solely based on her having lived up to such religiously defined
criteria. If a priestess like Mãe Stella wants to be publicly recognized as an
authoritative voice, she needs to have recourse to a form of “impression
management” that stresses values that a much wider audience is able to
recognize and appreciate. And thus we are served this “cocktail of fame”
that mixes “worldwide recognition” (Mãe Stella’s election by the United
Nations, and invitations to travel to places around the world) with aca-
demic prestige (Harvard and other universities), state decorations, and the
full weight of Culture. Furthermore, the juxtaposition of Mãe Stella with
the Dalai Lama and Rabbi Henry Sobel is another clear instance that the
resources to construct a public notion of Mãe Stella’s authority differ
hugely from those that make up the display of authority in her own ter-
reiro: in the laudatio, the priestess comes to represent ethnic, traditional,
cultural, and socio-political values, rather than religious ones (cf. Van de
Port 2005d).
It is hard to miss the irony in all of this. More than anything, it was
Mãe Stella’s vision to “restore” Candomblé to its status of “African reli-
gion” that drove her to the public sphere. Out in the public sphere, how-
ever, she had to mobilize all kinds of extra religious qualities so as to create
a publicly recognizable profile of authority: what we find, then, is that her
authority as a religious leader is rooted in the culture politics of the Bahian
state, in her representing Afro-Brazilian culture, and—more and more—in
her being simply “famous.”