Ruy Llera Blanes
I am a Spanish anthropologist, currently working at the University of Bergen (UiB), Norway, as a Postdoctoral Researcher. I am also Associated Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon (ICS-UL), Portugal, where I received my PhD (2007).
My current research site is Angola, where I explore the topics religion, mobility (diasporas, transnationalism, the Atlantic), politics (leadership, charisma, repression, resistance), temporalities (historicity, memory, heritage, expectations), knowledge and gender.
I am currently the Project Leader of the Collaborative Research Project Currents of Faith, Places of History: Diasporas, Connections, Moral Circumscriptions and World-making in the Atlantic Space (CURRENTS), funded by the HERA consortium.
I am also co-Editor of the journal Advances in Research: Religion and Society, edited by Berghahn, and Associate Editor of the journal HAU - Journal of Ethnographic Theory.
My current research site is Angola, where I explore the topics religion, mobility (diasporas, transnationalism, the Atlantic), politics (leadership, charisma, repression, resistance), temporalities (historicity, memory, heritage, expectations), knowledge and gender.
I am currently the Project Leader of the Collaborative Research Project Currents of Faith, Places of History: Diasporas, Connections, Moral Circumscriptions and World-making in the Atlantic Space (CURRENTS), funded by the HERA consortium.
I am also co-Editor of the journal Advances in Research: Religion and Society, edited by Berghahn, and Associate Editor of the journal HAU - Journal of Ethnographic Theory.
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Books by Ruy Llera Blanes
Drawing on cases from South America and Europe, contributors apply key insights from religious studies debates on the genealogies and formations of both religion and secularism. They explore the spaces, persons, and places in which these categories emerge and mutually constitute one another.
No «Prefácio» pode ler-se: «Este livro não foi propriamente pensado num divã, mas começou a ser esboçado em conversas discorridas nos sofás de um conhecido instituto de ciências sociais. Nos pequenos debates, que decorriam (e ainda decorrem) normalmente a seguir ao almoço, discutia-se de tudo um pouco (umas vezes muito, outras quase nada) antes de cada um voltar para os seus afazeres científicos. (...) Até que um dia - há sempre um dia que aprisionamos para estas ocasiões, apesar de já não nos lembrarmos propriamente qual foi - um dos organizadores da presente obra sugeriu a ideia de se fazer um livro que, dentro do possível, reflectisse o ambiente das conversas tidas no sofá. Ou seja, um livro que conciliasse a ciência com o debate a partir do cruzamento de várias disciplinas. Um livro que questionasse o mundo sem se virar de costas para ele. Um livro aberto que nos permitisse pensar o mundo a partir dos nossos estados particulares. As investigações que cada um leva a cabo mas, também, as diversas experiências de vida (vividas ou não) seriam o ponto de partida para a escrita de cada texto. Em certa medida, podemos dizer que o sofá se transformou numa espécie de divã a partir do qual "introspectivamos" o "redor".»
Articles by Ruy Llera Blanes
Palavras chave: Profetismo; Carisma; Liderança; Classificação; Angola.
The Leader is the Prophet, the Prophet is the Leader. Continuities and Discontinuities of Charismatic Leadership in the Angolan Context.
Abstract: In this text I propose to debate the problem of religious leadership as it is played out within Angolan Christian prophetic movements. I will discuss the permanent permutability between the political and religious concepts of leadership, using the concept of charisma as a destabilizing element of that relationship, through its participation in the process of definition of the category of prophetism. I argue that charisma is a mechanism of regeneration from socio-political continuities, and not so much an iconoclasm in its pure state, as Max Weber famously argued.
Keywords: Prophetism; Charisma; Leadership; Classification; Angola
This article discusses, from the case study of the Tokoist Church, the dialectic between processes of “presence” and “absence” in prophetic movements in Angola and the Angolan diaspora. It revisits classic Weberian theses on charisma and routinization of leadership, in order to explain, through the dialectics of presence/absence and generation/memory, the transformations experienced in this church in post-war Angola.
Palavras-chave: religião; política; repressão; memória; Angola.
From confusion to irony. Expectations and legacies of the pide in Angola. In this article I propose to describe some examples of dialectics of repression and resistance between the pide and other police authorities in Angola, and an indigenous religious movement, the “Tokoist Church” between the 1950s and 1970s. Firstly, I describe the motivations, fears and expec- tations of the agents of the pide, contrasted with the reactions of leaders and followers of this church who were subject to the campaigns of “securitization” of the colony. And secondly, I will portrait the legacy of the memory that emerged within this movement in contemporary Angola, in which the experi- ence of colonial repression produced a “history of suffering” that reverberates today through narratives of resilience and the particular reaffirmation of an “Angolan-ness” that was often marked by reversals and ironies.
Keywords: religion; politics; repression; memory; Angola.
In this article I propose a discussion on an ‘anthropology of repression’. Following previous proposals set forth by French anthropologist Marc Augé, I reflect upon the pertinence of repression for the study of political and experiential dimensions of social life. For this, I draw a conceptual itinerary of repression from an anthropological point of view, and then propose a discussion of two of its underlying problems: that of temporality and dialectics."
Drawing on cases from South America and Europe, contributors apply key insights from religious studies debates on the genealogies and formations of both religion and secularism. They explore the spaces, persons, and places in which these categories emerge and mutually constitute one another.
No «Prefácio» pode ler-se: «Este livro não foi propriamente pensado num divã, mas começou a ser esboçado em conversas discorridas nos sofás de um conhecido instituto de ciências sociais. Nos pequenos debates, que decorriam (e ainda decorrem) normalmente a seguir ao almoço, discutia-se de tudo um pouco (umas vezes muito, outras quase nada) antes de cada um voltar para os seus afazeres científicos. (...) Até que um dia - há sempre um dia que aprisionamos para estas ocasiões, apesar de já não nos lembrarmos propriamente qual foi - um dos organizadores da presente obra sugeriu a ideia de se fazer um livro que, dentro do possível, reflectisse o ambiente das conversas tidas no sofá. Ou seja, um livro que conciliasse a ciência com o debate a partir do cruzamento de várias disciplinas. Um livro que questionasse o mundo sem se virar de costas para ele. Um livro aberto que nos permitisse pensar o mundo a partir dos nossos estados particulares. As investigações que cada um leva a cabo mas, também, as diversas experiências de vida (vividas ou não) seriam o ponto de partida para a escrita de cada texto. Em certa medida, podemos dizer que o sofá se transformou numa espécie de divã a partir do qual "introspectivamos" o "redor".»
Palavras chave: Profetismo; Carisma; Liderança; Classificação; Angola.
The Leader is the Prophet, the Prophet is the Leader. Continuities and Discontinuities of Charismatic Leadership in the Angolan Context.
Abstract: In this text I propose to debate the problem of religious leadership as it is played out within Angolan Christian prophetic movements. I will discuss the permanent permutability between the political and religious concepts of leadership, using the concept of charisma as a destabilizing element of that relationship, through its participation in the process of definition of the category of prophetism. I argue that charisma is a mechanism of regeneration from socio-political continuities, and not so much an iconoclasm in its pure state, as Max Weber famously argued.
Keywords: Prophetism; Charisma; Leadership; Classification; Angola
This article discusses, from the case study of the Tokoist Church, the dialectic between processes of “presence” and “absence” in prophetic movements in Angola and the Angolan diaspora. It revisits classic Weberian theses on charisma and routinization of leadership, in order to explain, through the dialectics of presence/absence and generation/memory, the transformations experienced in this church in post-war Angola.
Palavras-chave: religião; política; repressão; memória; Angola.
From confusion to irony. Expectations and legacies of the pide in Angola. In this article I propose to describe some examples of dialectics of repression and resistance between the pide and other police authorities in Angola, and an indigenous religious movement, the “Tokoist Church” between the 1950s and 1970s. Firstly, I describe the motivations, fears and expec- tations of the agents of the pide, contrasted with the reactions of leaders and followers of this church who were subject to the campaigns of “securitization” of the colony. And secondly, I will portrait the legacy of the memory that emerged within this movement in contemporary Angola, in which the experi- ence of colonial repression produced a “history of suffering” that reverberates today through narratives of resilience and the particular reaffirmation of an “Angolan-ness” that was often marked by reversals and ironies.
Keywords: religion; politics; repression; memory; Angola.
In this article I propose a discussion on an ‘anthropology of repression’. Following previous proposals set forth by French anthropologist Marc Augé, I reflect upon the pertinence of repression for the study of political and experiential dimensions of social life. For this, I draw a conceptual itinerary of repression from an anthropological point of view, and then propose a discussion of two of its underlying problems: that of temporality and dialectics."
Keywords: Memory; Biography; Ethnography; Tokoist church; Angola
One of the most impacting theories in the anthropology of Africa of the last decades has been Georges Balandier’s theorization of the “colonial situation”, and namely his portrait of the development of messianic and prophetic religious movements with a strong political accent in the Lower Congo region. In this article I propose to revisit Balandier’s main theories through the case study of two prophetic movements of this region – Kimbanguism and Tokoism – with which, together with my colleague Ramon Sarró, I have developed fieldwork in Portugal and Angola. This essay is also an appraisal of the current pertinence of Balandier’s proposals for the study of these movements in contemporary transnational and postcolonial times.
KEYWORDS: Georges Balandier; Religion; Prophetism; Congo; Angola.
In this special issue we propose to discuss anthropological approaches - ethnographic or theoreti- cal - to human interactions and processes of imagination and creativity. Inspired by the proposals set forth by Bourriaud’s concept of the ‘microtopia’, we challenge colleagues to mobilise an understand- ing of diverse forms of social interactivity as artistic practice whereby processes of interaction are understood as generative, transformational, poïetic microtopias. We thus propose to move beyond the concrete sphere of artistic production, seeing microtopias as part of our morphogenetic élan vital (Bergson 1907), the creativity and improvisation of our unscripted everyday lives (Hallam and In- gold 2008) that is however and necessarily framed as political act produced within historical context (Geuss 2009). Our goal is thus to engage with microtopias as ‘concrete utopias’ (McGuire 2011): examples - from artistic collaborations to architectural configurations, political localisms, economic partnerships, religious community makings, etc. - of the collective elaboration of meaning, temporal redefinition, and new social interstices.
We therefore welcome submissions that explicitly address the concept of microtopia through em- pirical case studies emphasising art, relationality, and/or creativity, such as social movement mobili- sations, spiritual/ethical projects of the self, contemporary art practice, creative processes of labour, instances of community performance, state sponsored cultural politics, architectural projects, urban- ist understandings of revitalisation, etc.
Guest editors:
Ruy Blanes (University of Bergen), Alex Flynn (University of Durham), Maïté Maskens (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Jonas Tinius (University of Cambridge)
Submission guidelines see: http://cadernosaa.revues.org/
Accepted languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish, French