This thesis focuses on the significance and articulation of divinatory practices in Cuba a place where a number of different religious traditions (mainly of African and European origins) have come to coexist. Reflecting on the particularities of my ethnography, I concentrate on three such traditions: Ocha/Ifá, Palo Monte and Espiritismo. However, rather than engaging with them as different ‘traditions’ or assuming their syncretic character, I attempt to explore the way in which they constitute distinct but related perspectives on human destiny or, as my friends and informants put it, on people’s ‘path’ (camino) perspectives, that is, which continuously constitute and recalibrate each other. Echoing the work of authors such as Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, I try to illustrate the nature of these perspectives by bringing to the fore the ways in which different divinatory practices instantiate and embody the efficacy or ‘point of view’ of different ‘other-than-human’ beings be they deities or the dead. Thus, while in the case of Ocha/Ifá and its oracles, I concentrate on the relation between ‘humans’ and the orichas (deities), my discussion of divinatory practices within Palo Monte and Espiritismo places the emphasis on the relation between ‘humans’ and various kinds of the dead (muertos). Treating these relations as an exchange of perspectives between ‘humans’ and ‘other-than-human’ entities, I argue for the need to focus on ‘ontology’ and the indigenous understanding of these entities’ ‘nature’ in order to avoid both ‘reductionist’ and ‘constructivist’ renderings of divination; in other words, to avoid the theoretical limits of ‘syncretic’ or ‘purist’ readings of the (Afro-)Cuban spirit world and its efficacy. This emphasis on ‘ontology’ leads me to construe divination as ‘perspectivism’ and to treat it as both a theoretical strategy and an ethnographic challenge.

Cette thèse a pour objet le palo monte, culte initiatique d’origine bantoue que l’on pratique aujourd’hui sur tout le territoire cubain. Ses adeptes, les paleros, se lient rituellement à certains esprits des morts, les nfumbis, afin de bénéficier de leurs pouvoirs extraordinaires. Religion peu prescriptive, le palo monte laisse à ses adeptes une grande latitude en matière d’innovation rituelle et d’improvisation. En l’absence de corpus mythologique, de textes sacrés, de liturgie fixe et de toute autorité institutionnalisée, chaque groupe initiatique définit sa méthodologie religieuse de façon autonome. L’objectif de cette thèse est d’expliciter comment des pratiques religieuses se créent, se légitiment et se transmettent dans un contexte de variabilité extrême. Je porte d’abord une attention particulière à la matérialité du culte et tout particulièrement aux interactions quotidiennes entre les paleros et leur nganga, chaudron qui condense la présence du mort : objet-sujet omniscient, la nganga médiatise un réseau relationnel complexe qui permet l’émergence en continu des pratiques du palo monte. Je m’intéresse ensuite aux rites paleros en tant que performances au cours desquelles les prêtres forgent leur réputation en créant une sorte de cosmologie personnalisée. Tout en proposant une analyse interactionnelle de ces rituels, je montre comment certains aspects de la personnalité des adeptes interviennent dans la définition de la forme rituelle de chaque groupe. Enfin, je montre comment les actes réflexifs des paleros, omniprésents sous la forme de critiques, de justifications, de confrontations, etc. sont constitutifs de la transmission et du renouvellement des pratiques. / This thesis is on palo monte, a Cuban initiatory religion of Bantu origin, widespread over all Cuban territory. Its worshippers, the paleros, establish ritual bonds with determined spirits of the dead, called nfumbis, in order to receive their supernatural powers. Imposing a small number of prescriptions, palo monte enables its devotees to operate a wide range of ritual innovations and improvisations. Indeed, the inexistence of a mythological corpus, a sacred text or a strict liturgy, and more generally of any kind of institutionalized authority, allows every initiatory group to define its religious methodology in an autonomous way. The aim of this research is to explain how these religious practises are created, legitimized and transmitted in a context which allows for extreme variability. In this perspective, the analysis focuses primarily on palo monte’s materiality and more specifically to the daily interactions between the paleros and their nganga, a cauldron condensing the presence of a dead man. I argue that the nganga, as an omniscient object-subject, mediates a complex relational network and enables a constant reinvention of palo monte’s ritual practises. I focus thus on palero rituals as performances through which priests make a name for themselves by creating a kind of customized cosmology. By putting forward an interactional analysis of these/their rituals, I show how determined aspects of the adepts’ personalities intercede in the definition of each groups’ ritual patterns. Finally, I point out how paleros’ reflexive acts – in the form of pervasive critique, vindication, debates, etc. – are constitutive of their practices’ transmission and renewal.

Minkisi (sing. nkisi) were sacred objects that housed ancestral spirits and were used for divination, healing and social justice by the Kongo people of Central Africa. When the Kongo were brought as slaves to the New World, they contributed significantly to the development of African American artistic and spiritual culture. In the Caribbean, aspects of minkisi have been retained in the creolized spiritual beliefs of Haitian Vodou, Cuban Palo Monte Mayombe and Brazilian Candomble. In North America, evidence of Kongo influence is apparent in examples of folk art and culture, including quilts, mojo hands, Afro-Carolinian face vessels, memory jugs and burial sites. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, artists appear to have recontextualized elements of minkisi within their work, among these James “Son Ford” Thomas, James Van Der Zee, Betye and Alison Saar, Willie Cole and Renee Stout, creating a link between the Kongo past and the American present.