Possessed by a slave, not slavery
Suomen Antropologi April 14, 2022 Anastasios Panagiotopoulos 2 citations
This paper examines spirit possession in Cuba as a way of imagining the history of slavery. It proposes three conceptual steps. The first, 'formulaic' historical imagination, treats possession as a direct expression of slavery as historical trauma. The second, 'mimesis', adds the possibility of reversal and empowerment, where the slave becomes an anti-slave. The third step, 'apomimesis', introduced by the author, displaces the previous two by creating a condition where the non-slave emerges through negative dialectics. The argument draws on ethnographic material and broader theoretical approaches, aiming not to replace but to displace existing frameworks.