Filosofia descolonial do Candomblé nagô

Abstract

This research does a decolonial analysis of the nagô Candomblé philosophy in Brazil, based on the cultural exchanges and theological resignifications resulting from syncretism. In this context, the syncretic Afro-Islamic, Afro-Catholic, inter-African and Afro-Indigenous influences, pre- and post-diasporic, are analysed as well as the effects of coloniality on the ways in which Candomblé members themselves think about their own sacredness and practices. It highlights how racial prejudice and ethnocentrism have seriously influenced distortions on religiosity and on Afro and Afro-Brazilian cultures. It also presents the processes of disrupting syncretism and the re-Africanization of Candomblé as social experiences of a strategy of resistance to the erasure imposed by the hegemonic/normative religions. Based on a hermeneutic analysis of Yoruba culture, the Author proposes reflections and presents his considerations on issues such as: the Creator, Èṣù, the notion of person, time, life, death, spirit, spirituality, faith, existential search, transcendence, destiny and trance. In this sense, it is also discussed the importance of the correct spelling of the Yoruba language as a counter-hegemonic strategy of epistemological and cultural reterritorialization.