Faking Spirit Possession: Creating ‘Epistemic Murk’ in Bahian Candomblé

Abstract

In the Afro-Brazilian candomblé religion, faking spirit-possession is a well documented phenomenon. The practice is associated with young male homosexuals, and has often been understood as a kind of gender bending: dressed in the attire of female spirits, the imposters dance in front of an appreciative audience. This chapter seeks to complicate the analysis of the phenomenon by highlighting the multiple interpretative frames that come together in Candomblé ceremonies. In their co-presence these frames produce an overall uncertainty about the real of things, a blurring of clear-cut boundaries between fiction, fact, performance, imagination, reality. This ‘epistemic murk’, as Michael Taussig once called it, contributes to an awareness of the mysteries that are at the core of Candomblé’s religious practices. It signals that the human capacity to grasp the world is limited, and that there is a beyond to our knowing.