Spiritist Boundary-Work and the Morality of Materiality in Afro-Cuban Religion

This article explores the significance of notions of materiality in the practice of Cuban espiritismo and in the Afro-Cuban religious cults of santería and palo monte. In particular, it pursues an understanding of the kinds of relations that are seen to emerge between the practitioners of these cults and the spirits of the dead — relations produced through their varying interpretations and uses of ‘matter’, in which corresponding moral implications obtain. The author further examines the importance of ‘things’ and their absence through an ethnographic analysis of the radically diverging discourses on the nature of spirit mediumship among competing spiritist groups in Havana. At one end of the spectrum lies the highly syncretic practice of espiritismo cruzado (crossed spiritism), characterized by its cosmological and ritual inclusivity, while at the other end is the doctrine-based espiritismo cientifico, where a popular concept of science places stricter limits on what can be understood as legitimately ‘spiritual’.