Abstract
Abstract The article presents the folklorist, essayist, journalist and anthropologist Edison Carneiro (1912-1972) and situates him among the "lineages" or intellectual affiliations in the context of studies on Afro-Brazilian religious groups. Describing the life of Edison Carneiro, his relationship with American anthropologist Ruth Landes and his participation in the folkloric movement, I look to situate Carneiro among the various intellectual trends found within the study of Afro-Brazilian religions. I argue that the author occupied an ambiguous position in terms of the African presence in the constitution of Afro-Brazilian religions, showing close proximities to Ruth Landes, Franklin Frazier, Ruth Benedict, Donald Pierson and Robert Park on the one hand, and Melville Herskovitz, Roger Bastide and Arthur Ramos on the other. Carneiro's studies of Candomblé de Caboclo express this double bind.
Highlights
It was at the Campanha de Defesa do Folclore Brasileiro (CDFB) that I met one of its most important founders, Edison Carneiro, a member of the group of so-called folklorists – or the folkloric movement, as they liked to label themselves
I must have committed a faux pas: my question referred to the African origins of the cults and the reply from Edison Carneiro – who I began to understand better after reading his work and, above all, after learning more about him through the wonderful book by Ruth Landes (2002), The City of Women – was not friendly
I forgot what he said, but while his emphatic, not to say authoritarian, tone made me recoil from my idea of studying Brazilian folklore, but it did inspire me to look for an answer to my query
Summary
I was very young when I saw Edison Carneiro for the first time. It was my second year of high school, in 1962, and I had no idea about the existence of anthropologists, still less of anthropology. I first encountered Edison Carneiro in the inaugural class of a course on folklore It was a stimulating lesson and I, still a college student, ventured to ask a question about the origins of the cults he was analysing. That day I felt extremely ignorant and regretted asking a question that had perhaps offended my teacher During this period from 1962 to 1964, which I spent on afternoons reading in the Library of the CDFB, many things changed in my way of thinking. The lesson given by Edison Carneiro, a key figure in my life, remained vivid enough in my mind to persuade me to study not folklore but the socalled Afro-Brazilian religions, a theme on which I have focused throughout my career since my master’s dissertation in 1975 (see Maggie, 2001). This is the perspective from which I intend to discuss Edison Carneiro’s contribution to the study of so-called Afro-Brazilian culture. article | yvonne maggie
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