The Candomblés seen from their political-epistemic contributions

Abstract

The religious identity—as well as the knowledge kept, produced and updated within Candomblé—has been called up in the speeches and actions of activists and researchers. There is a whole ethical and cosmogonic foundation that guides its actions, managing a whole network of meanings and subjective and epistemological repositionings that inform the politics and knowledge production of adepts and initiates in religion. Using a bibliographic review, we consider, at least, five notes that can help us understand this scenario: (ⅰ) Candomblés as an exercise in decoloniality; (ⅱ) Candomblés as an exercise in another family organizational model; (ⅲ) Candomblés as an exercise in affectivity; (ⅳ) Candomblés as an exercise in self-assessment and self-definition; and (ⅴ) afro-brazilian religious epistemological foundations. We conclude that Candomblés, as non-formal spaces of education, as well as politics, have assumptions that constitute them as vectors that offer remarkable decolonial stimuli in the formation of subjects, denoting religious expression and life as dimensions that can lead to processes of subjectivation, stimulating the agency and processes of disidentification and political action.