Devir macumbeiro and the Oiá-Iansã’s corporeality

Religious alterity in our festival rituals

Abstract

We cannot ignore that our academic productions reflect the tensions caused by our daily lives. In the disputes between Brazil as a nation and Brazilianness, multiple, diverse, and plural forms of knowledge are (re)elaborated based on transgressive politics and poetics. For this reason, we propose rethinking the places of academic concepts, understanding that the street is fundamental so that our science is not just an allegory of society, but originates from it. In this article, we will work with the concept of becoming a macumbeiro and the corporeality of the mythopoetics of Oiá-Iansã practiced in three different environments: December 4 in Salvador, the samba theme of Mangueira in Rio de Janeiro, and the samba theme of Barroca da Zona Sul in São Paulo, both for the 2025 carnival. In common, these three rituals of Brazilianness exalt the orisha Oiá-Iansã and offer us an alternative to the simplicity of the concept of religious syncretism, broadening our perceptions to something more consistent with Brazilianness: religious otherness.