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Turning Outside In: Infolded Selves in Cuban Creole Espiritismo
Author(s) -
Espírito Santo Diana
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
ethos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.783
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1548-1352
pISSN - 0091-2131
DOI - 10.1111/etho.12085
Subject(s) - creole language , context (archaeology) , constitution , personality , expression (computer science) , sociology , process (computing) , psychology , aesthetics , psychoanalysis , history , law , linguistics , political science , art , philosophy , computer science , archaeology , operating system , programming language
Practitioners of Cuban Creole espiritismo conceive of the spirits they work with as parts of their extended Selves: paradoxically both present from birth, manifest as aptitudes and personality traits and as needing to be “made” through their development as mediums. In continuity with other practices of the Afro‐Cuban religious environment in which it is immersed, espiritismo sustains a spiritual cosmos that is porous and capable of absorbing and transforming its potentially dangerous Other—such as “foreign” spirits or those sent by witchcraft. This is accomplished through processes associated with the development and expansion of the Self. However, through the expression of these spirits (both innate and foreign) in, and through, bodies, things, and actions, they are integrated into the Selves of their mediums (“infolding”) as they are simultaneously personified and differentiated from them (“outfolding”). I argue that this process of “outfolding” affords a largely unique model of Self‐making in this context, one that can be better understood through a look at how aspects deemed to be potentials of the Self ́s internal constitution are carefully worked into becoming instantiated, lived components of it, outside of it .