Rachel E. Harding, A Refuge in Thunder: Candomblé and Alternative Spaces of Blackness. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000. Pp. XIX + 251. $37.95.
The central thesis of A Refuge in Thunder is that blacks in Brazil were involved in a continual process of transformational engagement with the assigned spaces and the signified identities imputed upon them by the dominant slavocratic and racist society. Using a variety of means--ritual, communal, familial, aesthetic, etc.--African and their descendants created alternative spaces and alternative definitions of themselves and of the meaning of their presence in the New World [xvii].
Consonant with its subtitle, Candomblé and Alternative Spaces of Blackness, the book examines the development of Candomblé in terms of the elements, experiences, and meanings which lie at its foundations in nineteenth-century Bahia. Harding outlines her authorial task as "looking at the nature and experience of slavery in Brazil (and particularly in the north-eastern captaincy/province of Bahia); the specific conjunction of Africans and Brazilian-born blacks in Salvador and the Bahian Recôncavo; the role of freedpeople in the leadership and development of the religion; networks of support and repression; the complex of magico-pharmacopoeic, ludic, divinational, and relational elements which came to comprise Candomblé; and especially, the role of the religion in the development of alternative meanings of human community and black identity within the matrix of slavery [xvii]." The book is a worthwhile study in New World study of religion as resistance to cultural hegemony and modern capitalism.
Harding presents a unique perspective on Candomblé. While she recognizes, and critically engages the work of other scholars in the field, like Roger Bastide, she departs from their perspective. She argues that "a perspective which emphasizes the significance of slavery and its creolizing or Americanizing effect on the African body, personal and collective, will suggest analyses of Candomblé which focus more on the development of a pan-African Black Brazilian tradition of alternative orientation rather than on a search for "uncorrupted" African origins in the religion" (66).
Harding develops her distinctive interpretation of Candomblé in the introduction, eight chapters, Coda, Glossary, Appendix, Notes and Bibliography of Refuge in Thunder. In identifying the different factors which led to the construction of Candomblé she weaves a portrait of Candomblé as a complex religious tradition whose fabric and multiple layers can only be understood as a response to Afro-Brazilian slavery, cultural dislocation, colonialism, and the subaltern position of Blacks in Brazilian society and culture. The result is that within the chapters of Refuge in Thunder one reads about the construction of Candomblé as an African Diasporic home for dislocated Africans and their descendants in Brazil. The text of Refuge in Thunder draws on archival and other sources to testify to the emancipatory visions that have emerged from the crucibles of massive cultural dislocations that followed Atlantic slavery and colonialism. Candomblé is thus to be understood as means to healing; the cultivation of axé (life force) and the creation of alternative orientations in the context of slave-based societies" (79). Harding's work pays homage to the human activity of Brazilian blacks under oppressive and humiliating conditions and salutes their indomitable resilience as defeated, forgotten, and undervalued people on the journey to recover freedom from the jaws of slavery. The homelessness produced by Brazilian New World slavery and colonialism became the foundation of a new tension in postcolonial Brazil between categories and philosophies that sustain conventionality and religious cultural philosophies marked with a transcultural vision which Harding often refers to as pan-Africanism.
This book is a worthy addition to the wealth of material on the role of religion in the construction of alternative spaces for Diaspora Blacks in the New World. One merit of Harding's book is that it gives agency to slaves and free Blacks in colonial Brazil in creating alternative spaces of subversive autonomy and freedom for themselves in the context of Brazilian slavery. Harding's work therefore important in understanding the role of Candomblé in Brazilian society. Nevertheless, certain aspects of the book raise concern.
Whereas Harding frequently uses the term pan-African in her book she does not list it in the index. This omission is notable because Harding uses the term emphatically and consistently throughout her work. She implicitly brought the African-American experience, religiously defined, into dialogue with the Afro-Brazilian and wider African Diasporic religious experience in the Americas. The pan-African omission is interesting because pan-Africanism, and other forms of Black Nationalism, religious or secular, have been built on the diasporic sense of homelessness and cultural alienation to which Candomblé is a response.
It must also be asked whether Harding imposes an external theoretical construct onto Candomblé, namely, the model of the African-American Christianity? Several aspects of the work raise this question. The Coda at the end of the book makes one wonder whether Harding is writing about the North-American African-American experience under the guise of Candomblé. Is she bringing to the forefront common themes in Candomblé and the African-American experience which can be the basis of structuring a pan-African-American religious worldview? If so Refuge in Thunder demonstrates that Candomblé belongs to the cognate group of African Diasporic religious traditions such as Haitian Vodun, Cuban Santeria, Shango in Grenada and Trinidad, and Guyanese Comfa. Furthermore one cannot help noticing Harding's application of an African-American theology or theodicy of suffering to Candomblé; in which those who have suffered the ravages of slavery are chosen to mediate a better humanity. In addition did she apply the Gandhian model of passive non-resistance to Candomblé? These questions indicate that the book establishes emancipatory connections and generates feelings of solidarity that can flow into a pan-African ethic for those who have been "downpressed" under New World slavery and colonialism.
While Harding tries to de-emphasize Africa in her study of Candomblé, it persists throughout her work. The emergence of Candomblé is rooted in the experience of those who were determined to preserve their African-centered existence in the Brazilian Diaspora. Her study raises the question of the status of "Blackness" in Brazilian society and culture. Is Candomblé a form of "double-consciousness" for the uprooted African and other peoples in the urban environment of Brazil? In the creation of their own African spaces Candomblé devotees preserved their sense of Africanness beyond the traumas of the Middle Passage. Indeed, Harding's work intimates that a nineteenth-century Brazilian society which looked for its models in European norms and Positivism was doomed to be schizophrenic. Candomblé therefore provided an important healing function in Brazilian culture. The question can be asked as to what is the contemporary role of Candomblé in contemporary Brazilian society? What challenges do the rise of Pentecostalism pose to Candomblé in Brazil? Should Harding have desisted from exploring these questions which her work raises? The author has laid a firm foundation should she decide to explore those questions in other works.
It can be argued that Harding overstates her central argument. Nevertheless, she succeeds in writing a noteworthy work on the Afro-Brazilian experience. Written with deep sensitivity and obvious appreciation for Afro-Brazilian culture, Refuge in Thunder, with its capacity to become rooted in one's consciousness, will rank high in the canonical literature on Candomblé. It will make a vital contributions in the fields of African Diasporic Studies; especially religion, as well as Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Women Studies, and Atlantic Studies.
Leslie R. James, DePauw University