Embodied Narratives of Candomblé’s Afro-Bahian Caboclos : Dark ecologies and critical kinetics

Abstract

At a ritual compound in Salvador, Bahia's capital city in Northeastern Brazil, the Caboclo Sete Flechas dances a sinuous samba, his bare feet marking time on the leaf-covered floor. With a serpentine spine and syncopated steps that turn on a polymetric beat, Sete Flechas rides out on the horse that is Mãe Oba's body. A priestess in the Afro-Brazilian religio-cultural matrix of Candomblé, Mãe Oba, cultivates Yoruban-oriented divinities, the Orixá, as well as Caboclo, hybrid Brazilian gods identified with indigenous histories and healing traditions. At ceremonial sessions like the one described above, Caboclos use locally harvested leaves to remove ailments and dispel negative energy. Rowdy, masculine entities that embody female, male and trans-identified practitioners, Caboclos also dance circular sambas that narrate and revel in living histories of emancipation, nationalism, eroticization and racial contact. This paper places critical ethnographic fieldwork and choreographic analysis in dialogue with Timothy Morton's dark ecologies to develop what I call dark horse kinetics: a counter-hegemonic praxis activated through Caboclo performance. I suggest that Caboclos use dark horse kinetics to unfix, critique and revise dominant constructions of race, nation, gender and sex. Thinking about dark ecologies through performance, I ask if dark horse kinetics can move dark ecology towards a performance praxis, or a praxis that performs, in an efficacious and theatrical manner.