Premium
Liquid sight, thing‐like words, and the precipitation of knowledge substances in Cuban espiritismo
Author(s) -
Espírito Santo Diana
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of the royal anthropological institute
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.62
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1467-9655
pISSN - 1359-0987
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9655.12252
Subject(s) - sight , object (grammar) , cognition , creole language , epistemology , psychology , linguistics , sociology , history , aesthetics , philosophy , physics , astronomy , neuroscience
This article argues that in Cuban Creole espiritismo practices, ritually generated ‘knowledge’ has ontological, rather than just epistemological, effects, independent of the role of cognition. I will show that knowledge is experienced as a fluid, moving ‘substance’ external to the body that can accumulate, weigh down, hang suspended, and dissipate; it is also responsive to mediums‘ descriptive speech, becoming an object of vision‐knowledge at the same time that it is seen and spoken of collectively. I will also show that the circulation of knowledge ‘substances’ should be seen not as metaphorical but as tied to processes of making people, and ask whether knowledge can figure not just as something intersubjective or relational but as something substantive, even physiological.