Page 58 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

“Don’t Ask Questions, Just Observe!” 43

Eloquent Silence

What we find, then, is that, on the one hand, the truth-unsettling work of
the simulacrum produces a call for an assertion of the boundaries of the
true and authentic community of Candomblé. On the other hand, how-
ever, all attempts by the priesthood to produce such an assertion in the
public sphere force them to “translate” their religious knowledge in pub-
licly accessible terms, thus fuelling the simulacrum even further.
The call “not to ask questions” is an attempt to deal with these issues:
attacking discursivity to bypass the “labyrinths” (as Mãe Stella phrased it
succinctly) of meaning production; just as Mãe Stella’s authoritative silence
in the face of the anthropologist’s endless stream of words at the opening
night of the Cultural Week was highly suggestive of the priestess having
access to greater, deeper truths. And this was indeed the suggestion made
by all the priests that I encountered: getting to know us is getting to know
our “deep truths,” and these can only be accessed through initiation. A
closer look at these “deep truths” may be necessary here.
The fact that Candomblé is a religion based on initiation means that its
performance of secrecy is crucial. This performance of secrecy is guided by
a great many rules and regulations, which determine who has access to
what knowledge, and at what time; who is allowed to speak and who is to
remain silent; who has the right to tread certain areas of the terreiro; who
is allowed to see sacred objects or witness ritual practices and who is not.
Breaking these rules and regulations may cause the wrath of both priests
and spirits (cf. Johnson 2002; and for Bahia, Castillo 2005).
The performance of secrecy is inextricably linked with—or rather
expressive of—a very particular understanding in Candomblé circles as to
what constitutes religious knowledge and how religious knowledge can be
transmitted. Candomblé holds that knowledge can only be obtained
through the “lived experience of interpersonal and group relationships,
through transmission and absorption of a força (force), and a gradual
development of symbolical and complex knowledge about all the collec-
tive and individual elements of the system at all levels” (Elbein dos Santos

1989, 17). What this means is that year in, year out, the cultists go through
the motions of the ceremonies and ritual obligations, and it is only
with the passing of the ritual cycles, with feeling the density of time itself,
that the experiential knowledge that Candomblé seeks to instill in its
adepts “sinks in.” Knowledge, in other words, comes with doing: with
observing the taboos, participating in the rituals, subjecting oneself to the
rigid terreiro hierarchy, respecting one’s commitments to the orixás.
People from Candomblé are resolute in saying that there is no other road