Santería Copresence and sensing diaspora

• In Event: What spirit possession “does”: the production of cosmology and change in Afro-Latin religions II

Abstract

In Santería priesthoods, practitioners are “made” into African diaspora bodies in what is called “making santo.” These embodied epistemologies reveal, not only the complex historical practices that emerged through process of racialization and enslavement, but also, how, a body-logic resituates the formations of diasporic feeling and sensing. This paper argues that Santeria body-logics, show how “copresence” is activated, where somatic renderings allow for us to explore the sensing of diaspora. I suggest that these diasporic sensings, resituate anthropological universalisms, arguing for a disruption in the debate between “mediation” versus “practice” in anthropology of religion. Rather than assuming notions of presence, copresence allows for an intervention that hails Santeria’s embodied epistemology as a form of diasporic sendings.

Author

• Aisha M Beliso-De Jesus, Harvard University