The Light Inside

Abakua Society Arts and Cuban Cultural History

By: David H. Brown

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Paperback | 30 September 2021 | Edition Number 1

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Originally published in 2003, The Light Inside is a ground-breaking study of an Afro-Cuban secret society, its sacred arts, and their role in modern Cuban cultural history. Enslaved Africans and creoles developed the Abaku¡ Society, a system of menâs fraternal lodges, in urban Cuba beginnings in 1836. Drawing on years of fieldwork in the country, the bookâs novel approach builds on close readings of dazzling Abaku¡ altars, chalk-drawn signs, and hooded masquerades. It looks at the art history of Abaku¡ altars, not only tracing changing styles but also how they evolve through cycles of tradition and renovation. The Light Inside reflects the essence of the artistsâ creativity and experience: through adornment, altars project the powerful spirituality of Abaku¡ practice, an aesthetic strategy. The book also traces a biography of Abaku¡ objects â" their shifting forms and meanings â" as they participated in successive periods of Cuban cultural history. The book constructs close rhetorical and visual analyses of changing representations of the Abaku¡, spanning nineteenth-century arts and letters, modern ethnographic texts, museum displays, paintings, and late twentieth century commercial kitsch. This interdisciplinary work combines art history, African Diaspora, cultural studies and cultural anthropology with Latin American.

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