Shortage and bounty: cosmological categories and subjectivity in festivals of the holy ghost among Portuguese immigrants in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)

Abstract

This article explores the Azorean immigrants’ native cosmology such as it is expressed in the festivals of the Holy Ghost in Rio de Janeiro/Brazil. In this cosmology, the relationship of men with the Holy ghost is crucial. Human beings are not defined by their “basic needs”, as they are with western cosmology and anthropology in the interpretation of Marshall Sahlins,1 but by their reciprocal relationship with the Holy ghost. It is only to the extent that they move away from this relationship that they can then be exposed to needs, hunger, sickness, shortage. The Holy ghost thus performs a fundamental mediating role: he is the mediator between heaven and earth, between the soul and the body, between God and men, soul and body, hunger and taste, containment and excess, shortage and bounty. In this cosmology the category “work” has a pervasive role. It appears simultaneously as an economic category and as a moral and religious one. It is through intense and disciplined work that shortage becomes bounty, where honor is maintained, and grace is granted. It is through this intermediary that the individual and collective self-consciousness is formed, and a balanced relationship is achieved between the soul and the body, between the supra-mundane and the mundane.