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The Light Inside: Abakuá Society Arts and Cuban Cultural History book cover

1st Edition

The Light Inside Abakuá Society Arts and Cuban Cultural History

By David H. Brown Copyright 2003
324 Pages
by Routledge

322 Pages
by Routledge

322 Pages
by Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
Originally published in 2003, The Light Inside is a ground-breaking study of an Afro-Cuban secret society, its sacred arts, and their role in modern Cuban cultural history. Enslaved Africans and creoles developed the Abakuá Society, a system of men’s fraternal lodges, in urban Cuba beginnings in 1836. Drawing on years of fieldwork in the country, the book’s novel approach builds on close... Read more

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Part I: "The Light Inside": Abakuá Society Arts and Modern Cuban Cultural History

Introduction: Meanings, Methods, and the Cultural Biography of Things Abakuá

2. The Abakuá Society and the African Society Diaspora

3. Abakuá Altar Arts: Ekue, Representation, and the Banner of Regla’s Efori Eñongo

4. Cloth and Signs: West African Ukara and the Iconography of Regla’s Efori Eñongo

5. Altars, Offices, and Multiple Meanings

6. "Symbolic Drums:" Innovations and Inventions

7. The Íremes and Their Sacos

Part II: El Nañígo "Graduates"

8. Pictures, Performances, and the Police: Changing Contexts for Costumbrista Arts

9. Struggle over Possession of the Secret: The Museuming of the Nañígos’ "Most Sacred Effects"

10. From Atavism to Modern Primitivism

11. From Primitivism to Folklore

12. We were Teaching How to Ask the Black Man About Very Private Personal Things: Afrocubana, the Triumph of the Revolution, and Socialist Folklore

13: "The Ethnographic Museum" and the Cuban Revolution

14. Conclusion: The Abakuá Society and the National Narrative

Notes

References

Index

Biography

David H. Brown

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