The Devil And Commodity Fetishism Analysis

Over the course of this class we have traveled the globe via different authors telling different stories of ritual practices, myth, In this essay I will first examine and then explain how Michael Taussig, Marshall Sahlins, and Karen Richmand illustrate the ways in which ritual practice/mythical beliefs are inextricably linked to processes of historical transformation. In The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America author Michael Taussig explores religion, colonialism, and capitalism and the way these topics play out in the lives of free, previously enslaved, African peasant farmers in the southern part of Cauca Valley, Colombia who are being forced into capitalist agriculture. Using two different examples, that of the Devil
One of the most important is the death of Captain Cook. Every year a group of Hawaiians living on the big island of Hawaii would gather together to perform the ceremony of the Makahiki, or the Hawaiian New Year Festival. During the ceremony, large wooden staves were formed in the shape of the cross and covered in white symbolizing the god Lono, who is to come and ensure fertile fields and rain. After the cross is made and draped in fabric a procession that walks the cross around the island ending at the temple in Kealakekua Bay, the procession ends with a confrontation between the islands King and Lono in which a mock battle ensures and Lono is sacrificed and sent away returning control of the land back to its King, signifying the transformation from dead time of year to the life-giving time of the year. However, in January 1779 Captain James Cook is traveling the waters around the Hawaiian islands just as the Makahiki is starting to take place. He arrives on a big ship with wooden masts covered in white sails, he travels around the island in the same direction and the procession, and comes to anchor at Kealakekua Bay, where he and his crew receive an exceptionally joyous welcome. Hundreds of canoes stuffed with gifts and food filled the water. On the shore, he was draped in ceremonial red tapa cloth and led to the temple of Hikiau. For the Hawaiians, Capt.
Lwa are defined as “anthropomorphic spirits who are inherited through family lines among land-holding descent groups. Lwa have power to help or harm the heirs” (302). While the pwen are “the essence of relations or situations... an undetermined message coded in speech, song, a name or a visual image... a magical power that makes fast money” (303). The book mostly follows the life of Ti Chini, aka, Little Caterpillar, a Haitian man settled in agricultural labor camps in the Southeastern United States after leaving Haiti in June of 1980. Little Caterpillar and his extended family in Haiti became Richman’s subjects after they met at a labor camp in 1981 and bonded over Haitian ritual music. Richman explains that Little Caterpillar, like many other Haitian migrants, corresponded with his family back in Haiti through ritual songs, poems, stories, etc., recorded on audio cassettes. As Richman points out, there is a great importance placed on cassette technology as a “prominent, ‘multivocal’ symbol--a model of and for--this transnational, mobile society”( 213). These cassette letters are part of the way these migrants in the US kept their connection to their Haitian roots in addition to wage remittances sent back