Reconvergence

The Afro-Brazilian religion Candomble has long been recognized as an extraordinary resource of African tradition, values and identity among its adherents in Bahia, Brazil. Outlawed and persecuted in the late colonial and imperial period, Candomble nevertheless developed as one of the major religious expressions of the Afro-Atlantic diaspora. Drawing princially on police archives, Harding describes the development of the religion as an alternative space in which subjugated and enslaved blacks were able to cultivate a sense of individual and collective identity that stood in opposition to the subaltern status imposed upon them from the dominant society.