Fetishes and Monuments

<p> One hundred years ago in Brazil the rituals of Candomblé were feared as sorcery and persecuted as crime. Its cult objects were fearsome fetishes. Nowadays they are Afro-Brazilian cultural works of art objects of museum display and public monuments. Focusing on the particular histories of objects images spaces and persons who embodied it this book portrays the historical journey from weapons of sorcery looted by the police to hidden living stones to public works of art attacked by religious fanatics that see them as images of the Devil former sorcerers who have become artists writers and philosophers. Addressing this history as a journey of objectification and appropriation the author offers a fresh unconventional and illuminating look at questions of syncretism hybridity and cultural resistance in Brazil and in the Black Atlantic in general.</p>