| Kamari M. Clarke | Yale University |
Kamari M. Clarke is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Yale University.
She was trained in Political Science-International Relations at Concordia University,
International Law at the Yale Law School, and Anthropology at the New School for Social Research and the University of California-Santa Cruz,
where she completed her Ph.d. in 1997. Her areas of research are in Nigeria as well as Yoruba Communities in the United States.
Her forthcoming book, Mapping Yoruba Networks: Power and Agency in the Making of Yoruba Communities (Duke Press, 2004)
reflects her work on Yoruba religious movements and globalization.
Currenly, she is working on a book on religious nationalism and legal regulation in which she is examining the relationship between religious,
legal, and cultural movements in global contexts.
The book in progress, entitled, Local Justice and International Courts: the International Criminal Court and the New Cultural Politics,
combines data on the ways that religious groups and revivalist organizations justify claims to homelands, ancient civilizations,
and enforce particular determinants of a moral economy justice, and "punishment". |
Kamari M. Clarke Associate Professor Yale University Department of Anthropology 51 Hillhouse Ave. PO Box 208277 New Haven, CT 06520 203-432-3685 kamari.clarke@yale.edu |
The Cultural Politics of Oyo-Sango Aesthetics in North American Orisa Revitilization |
This paper will explore how in the context of Orisa worship in American cities, struggles over what kinds of Sango practices are "authentic" or "traditional" and what kinds are not are struggles over the global economic and cultural processes by which particular regulations of gender difference are taking shape. My geographical area of study is in networks of orisa worshippers on the Eastern seaboard of the United States. I examine the multidirectional forces shaping the formation of a vibrant occult movement throughout the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. By focusing on the ways in which a particular rendition of a Sango figures with mature noble characteristics that references Sango of the Oyo homeland, rather than the popular culture rendition of Sango of the Americas as possessing youthful cunning, and virility, I explore how the transformation of Sango in the Eastern seaboard Orisa network is reflective of the transnational conditions of slavery as well as the early capitalist formations that shaped notions of racial value, redemptive desire, and particular forms of sexual fixity. |
Ultimately, by examining the aesthetic representations of Sango in both secular and non-secular contexts, I chart the strategies used by practitioners as they adapt particular gendered aesthetics to suit their purposes. Here, we see the emergence of a gendered ritual space that is highly organized along deeply spatial and temporal lines. I end by arguing that the transformation of ritual practices in the late twentieth century must be framed in terms of current debates on globalization, the underground nature of the Santeria-occult in the Northeast coast, as well as the teachings of Yoruba rituals to American communities as both a form of social protest and redemptive movement. These forms of aesthetic transformation have acquired visibility due to the recent globalization of religious nationalist practices. Thus, understanding the making of the virility of Sango in American Orisa practices involves understanding the link between aesthetics and politics, the private and public sphere as a site of mutual production. |