Possessed by a slave, not slavery

Summary

In Cuban spirit possession, people express the historical trauma of slavery through three overlapping forms of imagination. The first, formulaic imagination, directly expresses slavery as trauma. The second, mimesis, adds the possibility of reversal and empowerment, turning the slave into an anti-slave. The third, apomimesis, introduces a negative dialectic through which the non-slave emerges, displacing but not replacing the earlier forms. The author proposes apomimesis as a theoretical concept to understand these layered historical and ethnographic dynamics.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The present paper is divided into three large steps around the themes of spirit possession and the historical imagination of slavery in Cuba. These three steps reflect both ethnographic dimensions of these themes and broader theoretical approaches towards them. The last step, ‘apomimesis’, is the one proposed by the author, not by way of replacement but displace­ment. The first step, ‘formulaic’ historical imagination, covers the ground of a direct expression of slavery as historical trauma through spirit possession. The second step, ‘mimesis’, displaces the first by adding into it the possibility of reversal, of empowerment, the slave becoming an anti-slave. The third creates another simultaneous condition. Through the negative dialectics of apomimesis the non-slave emerges.