Paper short abstract:

This paper explores spirit possession as a means for people to access a past landscape and way of life. By looking at incorporation as a "metonymic dance", the ethnographer shall attempt to unveil the unchanging element against the backdrop of that which is in constant process of becoming.

Paper long abstract:

Recently, in a lecture given at the University of Brasilia, the anthropologist Tim Ingold called attention to the fact that science has become so ingrained with the separation between figment and fact that it has lost some of its potential for understanding reality. There is a need to make space for what he described as the emic aspect of human existence, and for art and religion. This paper explores the role of Umbanda, an Afro-Brazilian form of religious expression with elements of both Catholicism and Kardecism, in a former fishing colony in the urban periphery of Rio de Janeiro.

The process of environmental degradation at Colonia Z-10 has irrevocably changed the community's way of life, thus it seems significant that its two terreiros of umbanda belong to some of the oldest fishing families in the colony.  The emergence of Umbanda in Brazil is associated with processes of industrialization, urbanization and class formation, as a way to bridge the resulting contradictions. Some researches have explored the notion of Brazilianness during transe, with the incorporation of spirits of slaves and the native indian, the latter representing a higher soul with profound knowledge of the forest. I hope to contribute towards this literature by investigating how spirit possession, and the specific bodily manifestation brought about by the incorporation of each entity which I here describe as 'metonymic dance', depicts a past and a landscape long gone.