Nietzsche and Shango: Two Myths of Skepticism and Unveiling

• Autores: José Jorge de Carvalho
• Localización: Journal of Latin American Anthropology, ISSN 1085-7052, Vol. 4, Nº. 2, 1999, págs. 238-267
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This article will try to establish a comparison between two cultural texts: the famous passage on the death of God by Nietzsche, a Western myth that celebrates science's capacity to unveil whatever is secret, and a story from an Afro�Brazilian religion. In it, the god Shango decided to publicly denounce the nonexistence of Eguns, or spirits of the dead, who are believed to come back and establish ties when invoked in a secret ceremony. Shango's betrayal of the cult's secret is also told secretly, so that the relationships between truth and lie, revelation and silence, the visible and invisible all become oblique and open�ended, whereas Nietzsche's declaration aims at destroying the possibility of an ambiguous relationship with reality. I use the comparison to analyze some contemporary expressions of the loss of myth and enchantment in modern life.