work of feminist anthropology and a way of bringing the subject of study home to us right here in New York City.McCarthy Brown is a white woman whose study of Haitian vodou over twelve years culminated not only in this book but in a friendship with "Mama Lola," the main object of her study, and in a spirit marriage to Ogun, one of the Lwa (Vodou deities) Mama Lola venerates and is possessed by (!). Because she includes this information in her account, the book never fails to produce strong reactions in students. Some love her for being so honest about the ethnographer's work - traditional ethnography writes out the ethnographer, and so neither considers the ways the ethnographer must inevitably affect the community she's visiting nor admits and explores the ethnographer's prejudices, reactions and changes in response to the new environment, so McCarthy Brown's putting herself in the picture actually makes her account more not less objective. Some think her marriage to Ogun (which means she has to save every Wednesday for him alone) is a sign of her seriousness and openness to the validity of the tradition she was studying. Others think that she has crossed one or several lines, as researcher and even as a person. They have strong opinions about what she should and should not have done, and should and should not have written about - the best kind of questions as we close our semester exploring how one does this thing called religious studies.
Indeed it's a good text to wind up with because it cracks everything open again. How should we approach our object of study? is "critical distance" desirable or even possible? can or should one approach the tradition one studies as a live option, as true or potentially true, or should one "suspend judgment" somehow? I think the stakes on these questions familiar from other interpretative disciplines are that much higher in religious studies because taking another religious tradition seriously means in some way taking seriously the possibility that the universe may be differently structured or peopled than you have assumed (remember my new brief for religious studies: we alone confront students with the fact that there is no consensus on the real). And because Mama Lola is a Vodou priestess, McCarthy Brown's book also forces anew (or new) questions of what should count as a religion. Reading this book some students realize (or have to admit to themselves) that, their own past pronouncements notwithstanding, they think religions have to have a hierarchy, or a sacred text, or a venerable tradition, or at least not be "syncretistic"... What fun!
