Afro-Cuban micro-mobilities: examining processes of movement, in other words

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this piece is to look at religious mobilities through their micro-cosmological particulars, using Afro-Cuban religious processes and espiritismo cruzado as case studies. Design/methodology/approach The author asks, first, what technology is in this context, and how it circumscribes what emerges as cosmology (persons, deities and messages), and second, what knowledge is and how it is experienced, particularly in espiritista rituals. Findings The author argues that we must reconceive of both, which in the Cuban case, defy common sense assumptions that divide message from transmitter, and knowledge from knower. Originality/value Technology here can be cosmogonic (world building) rather than mediatic (serving as a medium), and knowledge, ever emergent, can be the spirit (muerto) as well as the messages it brings.