1. “Trinbagonian” refers throughout to traditions and practices spanning the twin-island of Trinidad and Tobago, whereas “Trinidadian” emphasizes the island of Trinidad alone. No diacritics are used here for any of these Afro- and Indo-Caribbean materials, since they are largely irrelevant in this West Indian context. On Orisha Worship, See Henry 1983, 2003; Holland and Crane 1987; Houk 1995; Hucks 2006; Hucks and Stewart 2003; Lum 2000; McNeal 2010; Mahabir and Maharaj 1996; Mischel 1957, 1959, 1965; Mischel and Mischel 1958; Simpson 1980; Trotman 1976; Warner-Lewis 1990, 1994. On Shakti Puja, See Guinee 1990, 1992; Klass 1961; McNeal 2003, 2010, 2011, 2012a, 2012b; Mahabir and Maharaj 1985; Niehoff and Niehoff 1960; Vertovec 1992.
2. The terminology of impersonation is used here to mean the embodied personification of specific divinities in trance performance. This is a profound religious experience and my notion of impersonation resists the pejorative Anglophone connotations of pertaining to “mere” play-acting, simplistic mimicry, or dissimulation. The original meaning ofpersonain Latin was “mask” (Carrithers, Collins, and Lukes 1985) and masking traditions the world over have been deeply intertwined with practices of trance and mediumship (Emigh 1996; Young-Laughlin and Laughlin 1988). Bastide (1978) uses the term of “persona” when discussing orisha manifestations. Similarly, Bourguignon (1973, 1976), Lawal (1977), Àjàyí (1998), and Desmangles (2001) all employ “impersonation” or “personification” in speaking about masquerade, trance performance, and spirit mediumship.
3. Though I am not pursuing conventional Herskovitsean questions, this analysis may in fact be ultimately connected to the pioneering work of Melville J. Herskovits, regarded as the founder of Afro-American Anthropology as well as African Studies in the United States. Glossed as “motor behavior,” Herskovits studied body movement, gesture, and patterns of expressive culture as persisting elements of African heritage in the Americas in connection with his effort to deconstruct the racist “Myth of the Negro Past” (1958), by recognizing and legitimating the African legacy of Afro-American cultures through innovative comparative research. He used film and photography to document and analyze rhythm and movement as culturally and historically transmitted patterns of behavior. Indeed, Herskovits found dance to be one of the strongest and most distinct forms of “Africanisms” throughout the Americas. He turned to visual analysis of Afro-American “motor behavior” as a methodological strategy for dealing with the problem of recognizing Africanisms in acculturated or hybridized sociocultural forms. He emphasized the tendency of New World blacks to “dance the song” and attributed the integration of dance and music in Afro-Atlantic traditions to African cultural historical origins. In this sense, the emphasis on studying Afro-American “danced religions” may be said to stem at least as far back as Herskovits. see John Homiak's (1990) discussion of motor behavior and the imaging of Afro-American culture in the work of Herskovits. My discussion assumes—rather than attempts to establish—the African character of Orisha Worship in Trinidad and Tobago and moves in a direction complementary, but ultimately orthogonal, to Herskovitsean inquiry.
4. In Trance and Modernity in the Southern Caribbean (McNeal 2011), I extensively document these two levels of trance performance in both Orisha Worship and Shakti Puja, arguing that the expansion of baseline ecstasy at the popular level and hyper-therapeutic focus of individuated spirit mediumship reflect democratization and the subaltern liberalization of these traditions as a result of their precociously modern experience in the Caribbean.
5. This discussion derives from a modified Peircean distinction between indexical icons and indexical symbols—on which, See Burks (1949) and Tambiah (1985); on indexicality and symbolism in ritual more generally, See Rappaport (1979). J. Lowell Lewis (1995) reminds us that representation and embodiment are not opposed in the thought of Charles S. Peirce, but in fact processually unified.