XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Space-Time Travelers: Interstices of the Real, the Material, and the Imagined in the Valley of the Dawn

• In Event: Kinesthetic Knowledges: Corporeal Conjurings of Brazil Otherwise

Abstract

Since its inauguration in 1960, Brazil’s capital city, Brasília, has become an internationally recognized center for eclectic forms of modern mysticism. Among the dozens of New Age, Spiritist, esoteric, and occult communities that have sprouted in the city and its environs, the most spectacular is the Valley of the Dawn (Vale do Amanhecer). Valley members consider themselves the spiritual descendants of an ancient race of extraterrestrials originally sent to galvanize humanity’s cultural and spiritual evolution. Wearing dazzling garments that reference their past lives in different cultural eras, adherents perform daily ceremonies for karmic redemption and offer spiritual healing services free of charge to the public.


Karmically-significant episodes within the members’ mythical past are associated with particular space-times. These imagined space-times, or “chronotopes,” are materialized in the built environment; vocalized in chants; visually compressed into symbolic elements, clothing, and adornments, and experientially accessed in ritual performances. In this paper I examine how specific chronotopes are materialized through multiple sensory, aesthetic, and kinesthetic experiences. I argue that through this immersive process, Valley members come to experience their imagined past as a sensually perceptible reality that offers new possibilities for narrating the self and acting in the present.

Author

• Kelly Hayes, Indiana University