XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Repatriation efforts through public scholarship: Ruth Landes’ photographic archive (1938-1939) and the Terreiro Gantois (Ilê Axé Iyá Omin Iyamassi)

• In Event: Interdisciplinary approaches to fieldwork in Brazil: ethnographic engagement through public scholarship, community organizing and cultural immersion

Abstract

The City of Women (1947) by the North-American Anthropologist Ruth Landes based on her research among Candomblé temples in 1938-1939 Bahia became a classic ethnography in Brazilian Anthropology. She invoked the concept of matriarchy to document Black women’s power based on the prominent priestesses she interacted with during her field research among historic Ketu-Nagô temples in Salvador. Landes documented and deposited these interactions, relationships and fieldwork experiences through her photo collection, field notes and correspondences at the Ruth Landes Papers in Washington, DC. This paper reflects on the process of working with Landes’ archive in collaboration with present-day Candomble practitioners, particularly at the Terreiro Gantois (Ilê Axé Iyá Omin Iyamassi), to consider modes of translation, dissemination and repatriation between bi-national institutions. I ask, how can objects of cultural patrimony, such as photographs of Candomblé terreiros and leaders, become accessible to the communities from which they originally derived? The discussion considers the role of the anthropologist as intermediary and the ethics of accountability and legibility across national, cultural and linguistic differences.

Author

• Jamie Andreson, Pennsylvania State University