Confrontations and dispersions: agency, power and political action in Codó's Terecô (MA)

Abstract

Based on the fieldwork we conducted in the city of Codó (MA), in the company of terecozeiros and entities, we intend to extend the idea of confrontation to everyday practices from the cosmology of Terecô, a religion of african matrix. Reports of resistance such as a swinging dance, a laugh, a candle, and a spell are gestures and practices that are part of a know-how that goes beyond situations of attack or persecution of the religious. They indicate, rather, possible movements, particular forms of agency and assembly. By reclaiming accounts, listenings, experiences, and memories that we heard with the terecozeiros, we intend to explore their own modes of agency that complexify the relationships between the political and the religious, the public and the private, the human and the non-human.