Vodun in Coastal Benin: Unfinished, Open-Ended, Global

Vodun in Coastal Benin: Unfinished, Open-Ended, Global. By Dana Rush. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2013. Pp. vii, 290; illustrations, notes, references, index. $65.This text explores contemporary Vodun practices through the lenses of sacred arts, regional histories, and cultural connections. Rather than defining and listing the religion's attributes, Rush takes a lived religion approach that is refreshing. In this sense, Vodun is unfinished, unbound, and constantly in a state of becoming, and her text reflects this through multiple cultural vignettes and by approaching the subject from slightly different angles in each chapter. Rush begins with a reflexive examination, admitting that her attempts to ask about Vodun directly met with resistance. It was not until she embraced Vodun's opacity (a term she borrows from Glissant) that she began the gradual process of experiencing layered concepts and moments situated within larger symbolic contexts. She argues that, while Vodun is too fluid and complex to easily define, three main points are relevant: 1) Vodun is an on-going process that does not have a discrete goal but instead constantly absorbs and adapts to new stimuli; 2) Vodun exists and has always existed in a global milieu; 3) Vodun's composite character means that this longstanding relationship with foreigners has fueled the tradition.The first chapter argues that many cities in Africa such as Ouidah were sites of global interactions that continuously provided new concepts and materials for shrines, which are ever-changing and evolving performances of the sacred. In Chapter 2, Rush introduces Glissant's concept of rhizome to discuss how Vodun and its practitioners are connected through an intricate and widespread horizontal system that provides rootedness without boundaries. Chapter 3 looks at how the presence of foreigners has been folded into local conceptions and reproductions of Vodun, including both the expected discussion of interactions with Europeans as well as intra-African cultural exchanges. Chapter 4 explores how India has been consumed, exchanged, and reimagined in Africa and the diaspora. Chapter 5 takes on the multifaceted types of slavery and how those images of the enslaved manifest in Vodun as Tchamba. Finally, the last chapter looks at contemporary Vodun art's intersection between serious religious reflections and tourism and includes short depictions of artists.Vodun in Coastal Benin will appeal to scholars of African art, contemporary West African cultures, and religious studies as a lived religion approach to this complex tradition. …