Seminário "Race-politics in Afro-Cuban religions: why it should not always matter"
Abstract
This paper reconsiders the way race-politics are made manifest in Afro-Cuban religiosity. Approaching critically the existing literature, it tries to argue that an active effort to make explicit issues of race and how they have mattered historically co-exists with a seemingly contradictory but equally active effort to express that race should not (always) matter. This latter effort, rather than historically, it is materialized mythically and practically or, as Sahlins would have it, mythopractically. Nevertheless, this is not done in competition to the historical dimension but adds to it a very critical edge that has been lacking in conventional understandings of race-politics.
Bionote
Paper presented by Anastasios Panagitopoulos. Post-doctoral researcher in CRIA/FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Anastasios did his B.A. in Sociology at the University of Crete, Greece. Then went on by doing his M.A. and PhD at the University of Edinburgh, UK. In his current postdoctoral position, he is focusing on the relation of Afro-Cuban religions and Cuban politics, as well as the transnational dimensions of the former.
