Wednesday, April 26, 2023 - As part of the T&T Gnoseologies Series, CSWR Research Associate Giovanna Parmigiani engages in a fascinating conversation with Black Feminist ethnographer and African diaspora studies scholar, Assitant Professor N. Fadeke Castor.
Multiple Subjectivities & the Ethnographic Study of Lived Religion: Conversation with Fadeke Castor
SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.
SPEAKER 2: Multiple Subjectivities and the Ethnographic Study of Lived Religion. April 26, 2023.
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: My name is Giovanna Parmigiani, and I'm the host of this series organized within the Transcendence and Transformation Initiative at the CSWR here at Harvard Divinity School. This series focuses on ways of knowing that are often labeled as nonrational, traditionally referred to as gnosis in Western philosophical and religious traditions, and often understood in contraposition to science.
These ways of knowing are becoming more and more influential in contemporary societies, popular culture, and academic research. What is the place of spirit possession, divination, and experiences perceived out of the ordinary in our lives? How can we study and approach this type of phenomena? Going beyond dichotomies such as body and mind, ordinary and extraordinary, reason and experience, and matter and spirit.
This series holds scholars of different disciplines and practitioners interested in exploring and expanding the boundaries of what counts as knowledge today. This series is not conceived for a public of academics only. So students, students at heart, nonexperts, curious, perplex even, you're all welcomed here. So it is with immense honor and pleasure that I introduce you today the fabulous scholar and friend Dr. Ferric Castor.
Dr. Castor is a Black feminist ethnographer, an African Diaspora Studies scholar, with research and teaching interests in religion, race, performance, and the intersectional politics of decolonization. As a Yoruba Ifa initiate of Trinidadian heritage, they're inspired by African spiritual engagements with Black liberation imaginaries and the Black radical tradition.
She is the author of Spiritual Citizenship-- Transnational Pathways from Black Power to a Fight in Trinidad, published with Duke University Press, and the recipient of the very prestigious Clifford Geertz prize in 2018, which argued that centering the Ifá racial religion in the Black radical tradition and Trinidad's Black Power revolution illuminates decolonization practices and performances in the postcolonial Caribbean.
The writings can be found in cultural anthropology, field in religion, Tarka, and the Black Scholar. Her current research focuses on an exploration on how Black spiritual praxis draws from nonChristian religious and spiritual ontologies and epistemologies to shift our centers of being and ways of knowing towards collective care, healing, and social transformation.
As part of this larger project called Digital Ancestral Altars, Remembrances of Trinidad Ifá/Orisha Elders, founded by a community story grant from the Crossroads Project at Princeton University. They will create a digital multimodal repository and archive to commemorate Trinidad's ancestral Ifá/Orisha elders.
Currently, she is an assistant professor of religion and Africana Studies at Northeastern University and a visiting scholar here at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. So welcome, Fadeke. I'm so happy that you could be here with us.
N. FADEKE CASTOR: Thank you so much, Dr. Parmigiani, for having me. And I would like to thank the Center for the Study of World Religions and all the organizers behind the scenes who are helping to support this event here today. I'm so happy to be here for this conversation and so excited for our topic.
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Wonderful. So am I, have to say. So let's start from a back story. The audience of gnoseologies knows that I am very always interested in back stories. So differently from other scholars who have been here in gnoseology space, you are very straightforward in sharing with your readership some of your personal engagement with your research.
Like for example, in the preface of the book. And I have an excerpt that I could read, but it's way better if you can tell us maybe the story how you got interested and involved in what you are currently studying and studying in the past. How did you come into academia?
N. FADEKE CASTOR: I came into academia through spirit, through the ancestors, and through my engagement with Yoruba spiritual practices. I was in Oakland, California and I was a cashier at a pagan bookstore. And I had an interaction with Oshun that actually starts-- the preface of the book starts with her words, her voice. And its four words, save her, she's mine.
And the finger is very important because it comes with this finger. And people have had interactions with Oshun. They know her look and her finger, right? So it's a different type of energy. And that started me on the pathway to the Orisha tradition and to being in spiritual community. And in the spiritual community, I joined--
The first thing they did as you started to be considered a possible member of the spiritual community is they had you go to a class on the ancestors and on venerating the ancestors and setting up your first ancestor shrine. So the Oshun and the ancestors were my introduction to the religion. And then I had also a first Ifá reading. And I tell that story in the introduction.
And in that Ifá reading, the Babalawo told me that Ogun would be very important to me. And when he said, it I had no idea who or what Ogun was. And Ogun is the spirit of iron and innovation and settlements and warriorship. And also in some realms, kingship. And so those three energies, Orisha-- those three energies of the Orisha religion, the ancestors Ogun and Oshun, have stayed with me constantly for the past several decades and guided me.
And the short version of the long story is the ancestors sent me to graduate school, in a sense, to study the ancestral practices of the Yoruba people and its impact in the diaspora. And I went to the University of Chicago and got a PhD in cultural anthropology, literally at their behest. Is that--
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Wonderful.
N. FADEKE CASTOR: I can go on but--
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: No. No, of course I'm happy if you want to share anything else about this. I'm happy to hear it. So you say, actually very adamantly, in the introduction and the preface that differently from people like me who-- anthropologists who went on the field and then felt somehow cold.
You actually were sent on the field or sent into academia by the spirits, right? Do you think that this changed the way you approach your academic study and how?
N. FADEKE CASTOR: Yes. I think it changed the way I understood. It changed the way that I understood, right? And our first year of graduate training is on what-- at Chicago is on Western social theory. And there is a presumption that that Western social theory is your center, but that Western social theory was not my center.
And my initial evaluations noted that I had an uneasy relationship to theoretical discourse. And yes, it was uneasy to me because it felt hostile. Because it was the theoretical discourse that informed a system that said that people like me were not supposed to be in rooms like that, learning that, getting this degree, right? So it was a system that negated the humanity of Black people.
So yes, I had an uneasy relationship to it. So my family is Trinidadian. So I say that I have Trini roots and US wings in a sense, in which I've had opportunities that you get through being in the States. But I'm very clear that my roots are diasporic. My roots are Caribbean. My roots are Trinidadian.
And those are the two pillars, the Trinidadian roots and the grounding in spirit that kept me anchored in resisting the centering of my thinking in Western epistemologies.
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Wonderful. And talking about your roots-- today, we're here to talk about multiple subjectivities, and in particular, about an article that you wrote entitled Subjectivity, Offerings from African Diasporic Religious Ethnography. Well, it's very interesting for a number of reasons, including-- right at the beginning, and we're going to talk about that in a minute.
But also because you write a whole article using the pronouns I/We, which I found extremely potent. And I have two quotes just to let the audience get into the feel of the article. I/We propose an exploration of subjectivity where ethnographic approaches to the study of religious expressions raise questions of our relation to each other and to the divine, and indeed if they are separate at all.
And the other quote is that, One implication of multiple subjectivities is the need to take up decolonizing anthropology calls to decenter the researcher under gaze as a singular subject, thus breaking down the ethnographic power relation that objectifies the people and communities we work with. So what do you mean by multiple subjectivities? Do you want to tell us the story about Oshun driving? Yes, so let us know about how this article came to be.
N. FADEKE CASTOR: All right. So I was talking recently with somebody about those friction points-- those points of interaction as you're doing research in your communities with the people that you've developed relationships, where something happens that moves beyond your understanding. And while you may seem confused or perplexed, maybe the people around with you are like, this is every day. This is quotidian. This is just normal, right?
And so these points stick with me. And I often will ruminate on them over time. And one such point became a story that I used to open the article called Oshun Drives. I had mentioned it in passing in the book. But I hadn't elaborated it because I hadn't worked out that friction, that tension, between what happened in my understanding or lack of understanding of what happened.
So when the opportunity to write an article on subjectivity came-- and this came out of a panel on critical concepts in anthropology or ethnography of religion at AAR, the American Academy of Religions. And I want to thank the organizers for putting together that panel and giving me an opportunity to think through this sticky point. So let's set the stage first for the sticky point.
My research was in Trinidad over two decades and I worked in many places in Trinidad. But one of my primary places where I did research and where I was located was Ile Eko Sango/Osun Mil'Osa, the shrine that we call IESOM in the back of the Santa Cruz Valley. So important for the story is that it is a bit off the beaten track, right?
So it's in a valley and then off to at the base of some foothills. And I was there as they got ready to do a conference. And I was there to see a friend-- to find a friend that I hadn't seen in a long time. And so as I waited for my friend, I was paying attention to all the ongoings. And I was specially paying attention to the cars that were coming.
And this car pulls up. It has dark tinted windows. And I'm like, is in there? Is he in there? And nobody moves. Like, usually when a car pulls up, the doors open. People get out. There was this pause. And I was like, what's going on? And then the door opened and somebody called my name, Fadeke, come here. And it was my spiritual godmother, Iya Sangowunmi.
Shango is the one that's the leader of the shrine. [? Ibai, ?] who just transitioned to the spiritual realm about 27 days ago now-- so we remember her and call her name as she makes her journey to the ancestral land. And we're going to see her in a little video clip that I'm going to show. So she gets out. She asked me to help her stand.
And she's a bit unsteady on her feet. So she seems to be both here and there, right? Not fully present. She seems to be somewhat traveling and engaged. There's an energy coming off of her. And it makes me aware and come to find out when I make an inquiry about who's in the car. What she tells me is the reason for the friction.
She says, is Oshun there? Is Oshun driving? And at that moment, it hit my brain. What? Wait, what did she say? Did she say Oshun's driving? And then the car door opened and I see a figure get out. And my social scientist brain wants to classify it as a person on the shrine with a name. And I look at that person and I look at their face.
When they turn and I realized, it's not that person. It is indeed Oshun. While the person was driving from the airport with somebody who they went to pick up-- who was a sacred eminent person-- that ashe in the car called spirit. And Oshun manifested as-- so manifestation is the Trinidad term for possession, right?
So the driver became possessed by Oshun. And Oshun finished the drive into the hills, down the dirt road. And let me show a little video clip. I'm going to show 30 seconds. So I was caught off guard. And I wasn't recording when Oshun came out of the car. So this video is about a minute or two after Oshun had gotten out of the car. But you'll see the car on the left and you'll see Oshun in white on the other side.
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: And maybe you have to remind the audience that Oshun is the Orisha of creativity, sweet water, femininity, right? So as a spirit, right?
N. FADEKE CASTOR: Yes. Yes.
[PERCUSSION MUSIC]
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Wonderful. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot. I love how the girl went and hug.
N. FADEKE CASTOR: Yes. She went straight to Oshun, right? And she knew Oshun. She recognized Oshun, right? And Oshun is also-- people pray to Oshun for children, right? And she provides the Orisha Yemoja. The Oshun is known as the mother who raises the children. It's Oshun who conceives in her role as creatrix. So Oshun is the source of all creativity and potentiality.
So Oshun gives the boon to women of conception and fertility to all people with wombs who wanted their children. And she does and she looks after children in a very special way. So that friction point of Oshun driving is what generated this article that we're referencing on multiple subjectivities. Because it made me realized that there was-- I had a limit on how I thought about Orisha and the divine and spirit as active agents in the world.
It had never crossed-- I was used to seeing them in ritual. I had been seeing possession for over 10 years, personally and in my research. But I always saw them within of a ritual frame. I had seen them do healing work. So it wasn't that I didn't think of Orisha as having autonomy. I just did not think of Orisha as having embodied agency with skills for things that are difficult, like driving, right?
And trying to think through that puzzle led me to thinking about multiple subjectivities-- led me to think about what does it mean for our methodologies, our theories, our politics, and our ways of living together in community if we are to center spirit in the Earth, as we organize to unify, recognizing our diversity as a character of our singularity, but not as the central component of the singularity.
And so I offered that it would mean taking seriously the consideration that it is in other realms than those immediately apparent to the "Western gaze," perhaps in the spiritual realm, that freedom codes-- ways of being and relating that are non-dependent on the European individuated "rational, political subject to the state," that are not dependent upon that-- that that is where the answer lies, is moving beyond a singular subject, moving beyond singularity as a point of departure, and, in fact, embracing multiplicity.
And when you think about decentering the eye and recognizing that within me-- when you're speaking with me, you're speaking with-- yes, Fadeke, the self that is Fadeke.
But you're also speaking with other selves, other subjects. So you're speaking with Ifá. You're speaking with Obatala. You're speaking with Oshun. You're speaking with Agbe. You're speaking with Ogun, right? So these are the ashes that I carry within me that allow for that multiplicity of divine presence to be shared. So both disembody, multiply body, and embody, depending upon the temperament. Does that--
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Yes. I think we have to unpack a little bit. I think the potential-- and I'm sure that the students and my students in the audience know why this is so important for so many reasons. Also, for them-- for the study of religion today. First of all, thank you for stressing how real and existent are not synonyms.
We often assume that they're always synonyms. But there are instances like this one in which it's evident that they're not. And this is a very important starting point, I think, of the conversation. Really setting the stage for all the development of the arguments that you elaborate with and in your article.
But what are the ethnographic consequences for anthropology, for ethnography, of assuming fully vocal subjectivity, multiple subjectivity, as the subject of anthropology and the object of ethnography?
N. FADEKE CASTOR: So I think that one of the immediate consequences is an increased capacity to share the worlds of the people that you're in community with, right?
So I realized that my attachment to a singular subjectivity was blocking me from seeing the full richness and scope-- the full vernacular organization-- the full ways that people not only live their lives but thought about their lives and were in relationship not only with each other, but in relationship with the divine in a very active way in an ongoing way, right?
So it was like I was in a room but I wasn't hearing all the participants in the conversation, as if I had selectively muted certain voices. And once I embraced polyvocality and a multiplicity of subjectivity, it allowed for me to hear more voices, literally, in the room and understand better the fullness that my community was engaged with.
And that they were engaged in multiple realms simultaneously, so that they were moving between the every day, going to the store, getting something. But as they were going to the store, Oshun was saying, oh, pick up some of this for me. I would like some of this. Right? So it was impacting and informing how they moved in the world. Does that-- so--
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: I'm so happy-- yes --that you brought out the ordinary everyday dimension of this, because I think it's often not treated with due consideration and respect. Well, it's essential in the experience of the people and of us ethnographers. So thank you for pointing this out. Is your relationship with your Orishas informing also your work? How you do your work, what you see, how you are an ethnographer, how you are an anthropologist, how you write articles--
N. FADEKE CASTOR: Yes. Yes. And you know M. Jacqui Alexander is one of my favorite writer and thinker and theorist in pedagogies of crossing in a section called Pedagogies of The Sacred, which I highly recommend. She talks about writing blocks as spiritual issues, right? Because--
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Can you repeat? I missed. Writing blocks as?
N. FADEKE CASTOR: Spiritual issues, right? Writing blocks as spiritual issues because when we're writing, we are engaging with self and we are engaging with all selves, right? And if you have blocked your access to all the many selves that are within you, then you don't really have the access to the communication and to do the translation work that communication demands, right?
So it's been really a blessing for me to think about that because writing this way has been challenging. I won't say that it's an easy path. It has been very difficult. It's not necessarily the way that I was trained to write. I was trained to write from a singular objective stance, which is I went, I saw, I know. This is I went there, I saw this, and now I know this.
But instead, what's happening is the spirit is asking me questions. Spirit is pushing me to say what would happen in our writing and our academic knowledge production if we were to cite spirit-- if we were to give credit to the voices that are informing our knowledge and are shaping our world? So that's an article that I'm working on right now.
And my interlocutor for this piece is Orisha of writing from Ile-Ifé, Oluorogbo, right? So it's not a very widely known Orisha. But Oluorogbo was the first scribe for the first [INAUDIBLE], which was the first Orisha in Yoruba cosmology in their origin story who were on Earth.
And he would go to their meetings, take notes, and go to report the notes to Olodumare, which is-- let's say, an all-seeing, all-knowing, but more remote divine force that often gets translated as God. That is not the only god. So I am working with Oluorogbo in doing this article, but that means that it takes unexpected turns.
And it means that I have to sometimes be willing to move aside my ego, and step aside from anxiety and self-doubt and trust, right? And trust that this engagement with spirit is producing a form of knowledge that is going to resonate and that is going to speak to how people live in the world, right?
So I come from a religion's perspective, where we are really looking not just at what the theory says but what are people doing, right? And how is that shaping the world? And that is going to also perhaps offer some new ways of thinking. Going back at the beginning, I asked that question about freedom codes, right? Looking at [INAUDIBLE] codes at a spiritual level.
What would it take for us to construct an otherwise world that so many of us say that we want? And what would it take for us to move into that world? And for me, the answer for that comes through a serious engagement, theoretically whisper.
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Thank you so, so, so much for sharing this. I think it's a space of vulnerability that you shared with us. And you also mentioned a preface. And it's that vulnerability is very important to me as well in my ethnographic practices. And I am often asked by students, are you a scholar practitioner? Which is actually a definition that I don't fully like, at least in my case.
I'm an ethnographer. And of course, all of me is in my work-- in my ethnographic practice and in my anthropological research. So I'm a practitioner and I'm a scholar. And of course, some of my writing practices, some of the things I'm attracted to in the field are guided by my own practice, by my own spirit. So I don't work with Orishas, but I am because this is part of me.
This is the filter that I use. It's part of me. And this is the richness of ethnography and probably its limitation also. So thank you for sharing this. I am very much having a similar approach to ethnography. That is not very common, I have to say, more and more so. But thank you for sharing this. We have a question from the audience. I'm curious to understand more about how the speaker discerns that the voices are from spirit.
N. FADEKE CASTOR: That's an interesting question. And I would say that that question comes from experience, right? So I have been in the Yoruba tradition, Isese L'agba. And you hear me hesitating because I'm considering using the term religion.
And I am shying away from using the term religion not because the Yoruba tradition isn't as fully formed as most Americans think of when they think of the category religion, which they usually relate to Christianity, but because it's more formed. It's beyond. It's greater than the limits of the term religion because it is also a way of life, a way of being. And it's also a philosophy.
It's also a moral and ethical system, which exists-- yes --within religions. But it's not constrained to certain practices, right? It is all encompassing. So it's holistic in that sense. It's also a healing system. It is also contained within the corpus of Ifá history, a pharmacopeia, et. cetera.
And also, the Yoruba indigene-- the 30 million Yoruba speaking people-- many of them what they call traditionalist, which is the term that is used within the community, primarily in Nigeria, even though this is a community that spans many nations, also make a discernment between codified religions. I say that to say that experience is one way to know.
The other way to know is training. And the third way to know is at that intersection of experience and training. So without getting too technical in my initiation-- when I was initiated, I was introduced to that energy and given the spiritual resources to access that energy. And it's sort of like being able to know the differences between the notes of a bell.
So when you're introduced, you feel the resonance and the timber of that particular energy. And so you know that energy when it speaks to you.
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Wonderful metaphor. I will use it. I will quote you. That, I think, it's wonderful. So we have another question by [INAUDIBLE], who was also a guest speaker in this series. [INAUDIBLE] says, yeah, this is wonderful. Thank you. Do you think multiple subjectivities only apply to people who are initiated and who hold the energy of the Orisha or any practitioner or spiritual person?
N. FADEKE CASTOR: That's a question that I have been thinking with and I don't have a definitive answer. I have the start of my answer. And my start of the answer is that everybody has access to their ancestors, right? And both-- we talked about family as being given and chosen. And I would like to think about ancestors that way, as being given and chosen, right?
So I never met Audre Lorde. But I work with her in her writing, in her work. And I walk with her in her spirit. And I would call Audre Lorde an affinity ancestor, right? And now this is stepping outside of the orthodoxy of Isese L'agba. All right. But this also comes informed by both a Black feminist and a diasporic perspective, in terms of having affinity ancestors.
But we all have the ancestors of our progenitors-- of the people who we came from-- and the people who raised us, right? Including people who are adopted, who were raised by people that were not their blood relatives, right? I don't want to essentialize blood kinship. There are many different forms of kinship, right?
But from a Yoruba perspective, part of the kinship of care is as relations of care. And those relations of care go back generations. And you don't need to be initiated to have access to those energies because those energies are literally relations of care that care about you and the work that you do. Not work in terms of job, but work in terms of the divine labor that you were tasked with in this incarnation. Does that make sense? I gave more of a spiritual answer than an academic answer. I hope that's OK.
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: I would like to add-- since you mentioned the ancestor --the beautiful dedication of your book. You wrote, this book is for all of those who came before, who paved the way, whose footsteps I walk in and shoulders I stand on. This is for you. Mo dupe lopo lopo. I think it was so beautiful. Sorry for my pronunciation. But you know--
But I think this is so, so, so beautiful. So thank you for this. I have a question for you. Thinking about scholar practitioners and inhabiting the academic space in this original way-- So how was it first? Did it change? What do you think of this positionality? How do you think it changes ethnographic practices? Do you have any consideration and thoughts to share with us?
N. FADEKE CASTOR: It was difficult at first, leaving Oakland, California and moving to Hyde Park, Chicago and leaving a spiritual community and moving to an academic community. And I paused there because I feel like those were two different resonances of the word community, right? It was difficult. But at the same time, I felt-- first of all, I was trusting the ancestors. They told me to do this, so I was doing this.
I wanted to leave at one point. And I went to them for permission because I was at their mandate. And they were like, no, you can't go. You have to stay. And I was like, what do you mean? I want to go back to California. They're like, no, you have to stay. You have to finish. And so we had a conversation where I asked them if they were going to make this day to work it out-- work out some of the difficulties that I was having.
So they helped work it out. And it was when I got funding. I got a Fulbright and I won a grant dissertation research award to go to Trinidad to do research. And I wasn't only researching Yoruba religion in Trinidad, which the book comes out of. I was really-- the dissertation turned out to be on Afro-Trinidadian cultural citizenship in different forms. So looking at carnival and emancipation--
It was when I got to Trinidad that I realized what the ancestors are up to. That they had provided me access to the tools and resources that I needed to return home and to engage home at multiple levels. So the multiplicity that I'm talking about isn't just subjectivity. It's a multiplicity of the registers of knowledge production. So DeSoto and Purdue helped me to understand what I was seeing in turn of that, right?
It's not that I don't theoretically engage with scholars that come out of Western modernity. And the training I have is-- I'm pointing to six feet of books that I'm currently engaged with. And part of being academic is being in dialogue. So I feel like there's a liminality that I occupy, which is betwixt in between. I'm an American trainee, right? I am.
And yes, I'm also an easy [INAUDIBLE] practitioner because it has within its construct an acceptance and reproduction of a bicameral construction that juxtaposes the two, as if they're not synonymous-- as if they can't occupy the same space, right? So yes, I bring all of me to my work. So the short version to answer your question, Dr. Parmigiani, is that it's something that I've matured into.
And I would say that it's taking my work to interesting places and it's taking my writing to interesting places. And it has informed perhaps a rhythm of my scholarly progress and my academic progress that may, on the outside, look different than other people's rhythms.
But my rhythm isn't only beholden to Western productivity dynamics and measures, right? My rhythm is also beholden to the spiritual realms that I work within and to the charge that I was given in this lifetime.
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Thanks a lot. I like always when people challenge neoliberal assumptions about how we should handle our time. I just want to mention, since I'm a scholar of magic, that I would refer to mainstream Western modernity because there were many, and some of them did not imply this relationship with us and with spirit.
N. FADEKE CASTOR: Can I say yes? Can I say yes to that? And I was recently engaging a Sylvia Wynter article that she wrote in 1977 called We Know Where We Are From, The Politics of Black Culture from Myal to Marley. So she is referencing here Myal, which is a Jamaican Indigenous-- African-Jamaican religious expression. And then many of us know Bob Marley's work.
But in the article, she's doing all the things that I just mentioned. She's bringing in Western theorists. She's talking about Wallerstein. She's talking about Baudrillard. She's bringing in Jamaican cultural production. And then, Giovanna, what did she bring in? She brought in the Gnostics, right?
And to make her point-- and her point was very much that this counter to Christianity that came up at the same time that Christianity was coming up. The Gnostic tradition offered a counter symbolic order, in much the same way that Myal and Marley do. So yes.
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Yeah. Wonderful. Wonderful.
N. FADEKE CASTOR: I think that's so important for us to remember. And I think your work is so important for that very reason. Can I use this moment to say that I'm so looking forward to your book that is coming out?
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Thank you. Thank you. It's going to come out in the fall. Fingers crossed. Thanks so much.
N. FADEKE CASTOR: What was the title?
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: The Spider Dance, with Equinox.
N. FADEKE CASTOR: Spider Dance. Everybody, look out for it. We all need.
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Thanks a lot, Fadeke. That's so nice of you. There's only 10 minutes left. And I'm sorry because I would love for this conversation to go on for two hours or so. But I'm very invested in my students' projects. And so I have different students who are interested in the possibility of inhabiting the ethnographic space and doing ethnography off and with spirits.
So what would be your suggestion, advice? What shout outs, tips for students or scholars interested in pushing a similar research? Do you have any tips to share with us and with the students?
N. FADEKE CASTOR: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'll give you the charge that one of my readers gave me in the reports on the first version of the book. They said, be bold, Fadeke. You have earned it. I share that with you and your students as a gift. Be bold. You have earned it. By virtue of your engagements, you have earned it.
And what does being bold mean? Being bold means to sit with your own truth and be willing to communicate that through. Now here is an issue, which I think we can all agree with, is that English is a very limited language and that we are thinking in concepts that are beyond what is easily communicable in the English language. Which is why I think some academic writing is so dense-- is so difficult to work through.
Somebody in a recent conversation I was in was like, why did they have to write like that? And we write like that because we're trying to write against and through and with. We're trying to push the language. And I want to give the concept of the break and language being broken. So there's a notion of language being broken and being broken apart, right?
And in breaking the language and pushing it-- so what I did in that article was experimental. I don't write everything that I write in I/We as a compound. It was a short article because I think it can be hard to read over a period of time. But I was doing it as an argument, as a part of the polemic.
And I was also doing it to bring very present with the reader to ask them to think about the voice they were hearing as being in multiple registers and as having multiple subjectivities. But take chances like that. Look at the work of people like Alexis Pauline Gumbs, right? Her writing has been inspirational to me because she breaks with tradition.
She breaks with form in the structure, not only of her narrative and her poetry, but how she structures her voice, right? So think beyond words. Look beyond disciplines like anthropology and religious studies. Look at performance studies. Look at embodied knowledge, right? When I get stuck, I go to the spirit or I go to my body.
The body knows. The body is a knowledge producer, right? And so the body can express. And so look to creative forms of expression. And even if you don't think of yourself as an artist, if you are a thinker, you're an artist, right? So Dr. Parmigiani, is that what you're thinking of?
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: It's amazing. Thank you. And I actually wrote down "Be bold. You earned it." And I will write it on my planner and my agenda. So I want to mention briefly because I think it's a direct consequence of you taking the chance of being bold. But Tina Schmidt, who is a very renowned anthropologist, basically wrote about your book.
The book does not reveal any secret sacred knowledge of the Faurecia in Trinidad but keeps the focus on the author's personal journey and her reflection of knowledge and events that are in the public scene. It will become a great example of a new kind of anthropology that decolonizes not only knowledge, but also fieldwork methods that are at the heart of anthropology.
And I have goosebumps when I read this because I think that she recognized the real transformative, revolutionary potential of your work, also in terms of decolonization practices. So do you want to add something about this very important dimension of your work, past, current, and future?
N. FADEKE CASTOR: I want to thank the reviewer for reading between the lines in some cases and really understanding part of what I was doing and trying to do in that book. A first book is always difficult. A first ethnography, doubly so I think. And so you're both-- this goes to your question that your students were asking about how do you do the work, but do it in an innovative way.
Do it in a way that's true to yourself. But you have these structures, right? So a book has structures. A book is, by nature, linear. We haven't talked about temporalities. But my work is also engaging in a multiplicity of temporality and temporalities which includes embracing non-linear temporality. So if you're working on non-linear temporalities, then how do you write a straight narrative? A straight ethnography?
How do you position if the standard ethnographic frame to just that you situate yourself-- and then move yourself out of the frame and focus on the people in the community that you worked with, which I think is a wonderful thing to do. But what happens when your presence changes the dynamics of what you're looking at? Then you have to be attentive to the fact that at that point, you have to move yourself back into the frame because your very presence change the situation and change the understanding of the situation.
And so I think that that collapsing of the subjective-objective divide is part of something that's really important to do in anthropological practices, ethnographic practices that take seriously the calls from Black feminist ethnography, from queer ethnography, from Indigenous ethnography, from decolonizing ethnographic methods that we pay attention both to the very material relations of power that are going on in the field-- and at the same time that we avoid centering the work on ourselves, right?
This is not an ethnography of my navel. So not doing navel gazing. But at the same time, we have a rich both/and perspective, where you're able to situate yourself in the field in relationship and in kinship with the people that you work with-- that you're not an absent other, right? And at the same time, you're not othering them. You're not also not othering yourself.
And I think that storytelling practices are really integral to these methodologies and something to be attentive to, right? And I'm cognizant of time, so I'll stop there.
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Thank you, Fadeke. There's many questions. And unfortunately, I cannot-- we don't have time to consider. I hope we can able to copy them and send them over to you, to us. And again, if you want to reach out to us, please send me an email after the event. And I will forward your email to Professor Castor. It's time to wrap up now.
So thank you very much, Dr. Castor Fadeke, for your participation and wonderful conversation here. And thank you all for having been with us. Please stay tuned on the activities of the CSWR, the Transcendence and Transformation Initiative-- of gnoseologies. You can find all this information in the CSWR website and in the chat box, including, very importantly, new episodes of a new podcast that my colleague, Matt Dillon, hosts called Pop Apocalypse.
So you can find information in the chat box. Please stay tuned. Thank you for having me with us. I hope to see you all next year, with a new season of The Gnoseology series. And I wish you, Fadeke, and all a great rest of the day. Bye bye.
N. FADEKE CASTOR: Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you everybody who came and participated in real time or you're watching this recording after the fact. Thank you for the Center for having me. And special thanks to Dr. Giovanna Parmigiani for organizing this and being such a wonderful dialogue partner. Thank you so much.
GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Bye. Bye bye.
SPEAKER 2: Sponsor, Center for the Study of World Religions.
SPEAKER 1: Copyright 2023. The President and Fellows of Harvard College.