The Lettered City Unbound: Ritual Drawing and the Production of Power in Nineteenth-Century Havana

Date of Award

Spring 1-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

History of Art

First Advisor

Fromont, Cécile

Abstract

In nineteenth-century Havana, Cuba, ritual drawing was a ubiquitous technology of power that transcended the boundaries of ethnicity, race, and class. These drawings - signatures, seals, and scribal flourishes - enslaved and freed, empowered and constrained, and afflicted and healed. Inscribed on documents, floors, bodies, and drums in ink, charcoal, and chalk, ritual drawings summoned supernatural and natural forces to forge their makers' authority in Cuba. This dissertation examines two entangled traditions of ritual drawing commonly framed as discrete: bureaucratic signatures and seals, seen as "secular," and the typically ephemeral signatures and seals associated with Santería, Palo Monte, and Abakuá, categorized as "religious." Yet, I show that in the nineteenth century these practices formed a single dynamic and contested field constructed by enslaved and free Afro-descendants as well as white colonial officials. This dissertation centers on a corpus of ritual drawings created by men of African descent and recorded on paper between 1812 and 1884. By analyzing these images, I illuminate the formation of a ritual drawing aesthetic that persists in Cuban ritual practice today and how it cohered diverse groups of ritual specialists during the colonial period. Ultimately, this dissertation broadens the scope of Caribbean, Latin American, and African art histories, demonstrating how Africans and Afro-descendants reconfigured the visual, social, and political horizons of Spanish imperial hegemony and the Atlantic world more broadly.

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