Deterritorialized bodies: new territory-body relationships in Umbanda liturgy
Intercom Revista Brasileira de Ciências da Comunicação January 1, 2023 Maurício Ferreira Santana, Geraldo Pieroni
When sacred territory is inseparable from the body, religious experience requires connecting bodies with their center of the world. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-21 made liturgical practice impossible for Umbanda practitioners, deterritorializing bodies from their sacred space. Disembedded bodies, as a form of identity resistance, exercise their liturgy online even with fragmentation of the egregore composed of spiritual entities, mediums, and consultants. The object of discussion is the online liturgies (giras) of the Adérito Simões channel on YouTube, broadcast between 2020 and 2021.