Currents of knowledge

Abstract

Santo Daime, an ayahuasca religion from the Brazilian Amazon, liturgically mobilizes a group dance called the bailado. Emerging in the 1930s from precarious circumstances instigated by rubber boom cycles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Santo Daime has proven resistant against global systems of epistemicide, the systematic killing off of knowledge forms (SANTOS, 2014). I argue the bailado is key to this resistance as corporeal self-knowledge choreographically positioning participants as both audience and performer. In this paper, teachings from Santo Daime hymns and eighteen years of participant observation are drawn upon to support this argument through choreographic analysis.

Keywords

• ayahuasca
• bailado
• choreography
• epistemicide
• Santo Daime