THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Thinking with Ngangas
Read Stephan Palmié’s comparative investigation of Afro-Cuban ritual and Western science. Palmié aims to challenge the rationality of Western expert practices, Thinking with Ngangas: What Afro-Cuban Ritual Can Tell Us about Scientific Practice and Vice Versa.
Inspired by the exercises of Father Lafitau, an eighteenth-century Jesuit priest and protoethnographer who compared the lives of the Iroquois to those of the ancient Greeks, Stephan Palmié embarks on a series of unusual comparative investigations of Afro-Cuban ritual and Western science. By writing about Afro-Cuban ritual in relation to Western scientific practice, and vice versa, Palmié hopes to challenge the rationality of Western expert practices, revealing the logic that brings together enchantment and experiment.
LINK TO BOOK: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo202331179.html