Os Sentidos de Cura: Religião, saúde e performance na Barquinha de Niterói-RJ

Abstract

The present research, located in the areas of performance, religion and health, investigates the healing rituals that take place in the Rio de Janeiro branch of the Centro Espírita Obras de Caridade Príncipe Espadarte, the Barquinha de Niterói (specifically Obras de Caridade and Prestação de Contas), focusing on the relation between the therapeutic and performative aspects. The intention is to understand how the conceptions of healing are constructed, negotiated and shared in the constitution of this religious and therapeutic space. For this, I propose a look at the subjectivity involved in the rituals through a greater commitment to the subjects and their relationships. In this way, healing works are here problematized from their constitution as religious practices aimed at therapeutics, taking ritual performance as an instrument of construction of symbolic systems in the midst of the individual and collective experiences experienced by its participants. Rather than approaching curing effectiveness abstractly as a belief system, attention is drawn to the attempt to understand the elements of performance and the role they play in building a particular belief / credit.