The Light Inside : Abakuá Society Arts and Cuban Cultural History / David H. Brown.
Originally published in 2003, The Light Inside is a ground-breaking study of an Afro-Cuban secret society, its sacred arts, and their role in modern Cuban cultural history. Enslaved Africans and creoles developed the Abaku Society, a system of men's fraternal lodges, in urban Cuba beginnings in...
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| Online Access: |
Full Text (via Taylor & Francis) |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Abingdon, Oxon :
Routledge,
2019.
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| Series: | Routledge revivals.
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| Subjects: |
| Summary: | Originally published in 2003, The Light Inside is a ground-breaking study of an Afro-Cuban secret society, its sacred arts, and their role in modern Cuban cultural history. Enslaved Africans and creoles developed the Abaku Society, a system of men's fraternal lodges, in urban Cuba beginnings in 1836. Drawing on years of fieldwork in the country, the book's novel approach builds on close readings of dazzling Abaku altars, chalk-drawn signs, and hooded masquerades. It looks at the art history of Abaku altars, not only tracing changing styles but also how they evolve through cycles of tradition and renovation. The Light Inside reflects the essence of the artists' creativity and experience: through adornment, altars project the powerful spirituality of Abaku practice, an aesthetic strategy. The book also traces a biography of Abaku objects - their shifting forms and meanings - as they participated in successive periods of Cuban cultural history. The book constructs close rhetorical and visual analyses of changing representations of the Abaku, spanning nineteenth-century arts and letters, modern ethnographic texts, museum displays, paintings, and late twentieth century commercial kitsch. This interdisciplinary work combines art history, African Diaspora, cultural studies and cultural anthropology with Latin American. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (325 pages) |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781000001341 1000001342 9780429283789 0429283784 9781000008180 1000008185 9781000014709 1000014703 |
| Source of Description, Etc. Note: | Source of description: Description based upon online resource; title from PDF title page (viewed May 19, 2020) |