Paper short abstract:

Efforts of the Brazilian state to turn its Gypsies into multicultural citizens are characterised by a number of contradictions. Built around outward expressions of emotions, the Calon sociality destabilises the world and questions those notions of identity and transcendence underlying the project.

Paper long abstract:

A 2010 meeting of "traditional communities" in Bahia, Brazil, included for the first time representatives of the Ciganos (Gypsies). It became clear that, unlike the maroons, indigenous peoples, and Candomblé practitioners, the Calon (a Cigano subgroup) had no tradition of grass-roots self-organisation, nor history of a struggle for land-rights or their "Culture". Rather, Cigano representatives in attendance had been identified and selected by state authorities and their presence thus reflected the multiculturalist aspirations of the state.

As such, the meeting marked a particular moment in state-Cigano relations. But the hesitations and contradictions that surfaced at the meeting were not the result of mere lack of experience. They arose from the Calon sociality, in which expressions of emotions provide a chain of questioning through which an individual's behaviour is recognised as truthful and meaningful. Building on fieldwork I carried out among the Calon, I show that being a Calon requires a relationship with others and that this particular form of sociality constantly destabilises their world.

Hence at the meeting the silences and absences were telling: individuals did not attend because of blood-feuds; respect for the dead displayed through individualised silences resulted in an inability to fully participate in the opening ceremony. This unique historical situation suggested the limits of the potential for the state to "capture" the Ciganos. It questions the usefulness of talking about the Calon identity at all, and I impugn the extent to which our understanding of certainty depends on notions of transcendence.