Abstract

In this presentation, I intent to revisit anthropological debates on the issue of belief and rationality. Historically, this matter is fundamental to the establishment of anthropology as a study field. Today, however, we realize that there is a constant production, both in the scientific and religious fields, of discourses about "knowledge", "truth", "proof" and "evidence", to state an irrevocable opposition between scientific and religious knowledge and, also, to offer continuities and symmetries between them - from the "new atheism" of Dawkins, Dennet and Harris to the "intelligent design" theories promoted by North-American .creationists This also applies, as I intend to argue, to certain prophetic movements, which are constitute themselves as rational systems producing sets of knowledge about the world. Within this context, what sometimes seems to be a binding frontier, other times is a field populated by dialectics and ambivalences. I will explore this dialectic through the case study of a Christian movement of Angolan origin, the Tocoísta Church, where the so called "vates" (as in prophets) develop their prophecies through tabernacles.


Biographic Note

Ruy Llera Blanes, anthropologist, is, currently, a post-doctoral researcher at the Social Sciences Institute of Lisbon University and visiting fellow at the Department of Anthropology of London School of Economics. He concluded his doctoral degree in 2008, with a dissertation on music and identity among Evangelic gypsy groups in Portugal and Spain (published by Social Sciences Press (ICS) in 2008). Nowadays, he is working with Christian movements in Africa and Diaspora, particularly about an Angolan prophetic movement (the Tocoísta Church). He published several papers in international journals like Social Anthropology, History and Anthropology, Terrain, Campos, Religião & Sociedade and Etnográfica, and, in co-authorship, in Politique Africaine and African Diaspora. He is also the Book and Film Review Editor at the journal Religion and Society: Advances in Research (Berghahn).


Note:

Discussant:  Clemens Zobel (CES)