Feminismo, nacionalismo, e a luta pelo significado do adé no Candomblé: ou, como Edison Carneiro e Ruth Landes inverteram o curso da história

Abstract

Throughout the 1930's and 40's, Edison Carneiro, Arthur Ramos and Ruth Landes have met in candomble, and their dialogues- sometimes antagonistic, sometimes lovingly - changed this religion. Carneiro used Candomble as a symbol of the northeast; Ramos used it as symbol of Brazil; and Landes, as a symbol of international feminism. The debate on the meaning of Candomble was not merely academic, and it established a new gender pattern in Bahian temples leadership. Opposing to conventional history, Candomble - a religion that gave equal space for male and female priests in the 1930's - became for the first time in the decades following the meeting between Ramos, Carneiro and Landes a matriarchate. In terms of theoretical and transcultural matters, this case shows that imagining communities - including nation-state - is a transnational process. National identity results not only from the interaction between groups of nations, but also from the dispute between overlapping communities on the authority of defining certain shared symbols - as the ade priest, the homosexual. This interaction can change human lives as well as the course of history.