Hungbê, um passado como referência: narrativas e experiências de ancestralidade nas práticas educativas no Ilê Axé Omilodé (João Pessoa-PB).

Abstract

Hungbê - or ‘education’ - in the daily life of a Candomblé terreiro, breathes ancient African cultural and historical tradition resignified in Brazil by reciprocal teaching and learning processes. The divinized black-African historical ancestry and its knowledge, originating from the black diaspora, assumes significant importance due to the values that are manifested in the universe of educational practices in these terreiros. Circulating under different nuances, they cover: the cult of ancestors, the food, music and dance of the gods endorsed in African mythology, traditional clothing, the symbolism of myths and rituals relevant to the cult, and the sense of ethics and ecology that come from the civilizing values of these historical traditions. Given this scenario, the present dissertation has the general objective of analyzing the educational practices developed in the daily life of the studied terreiro and the process of building and disseminating this cultural knowledge. The locus of the research was Ilê Axé Omilodé, located in the city of João Pessoa (PB). Using a qualitative approach, the research is based on a set of data that was interpreted, understood and contextualized. The central theoretical body used in the analysis was: Candomblé (PRANDI, 2005; VERGER, 1981); Educação (SANTOS, 2010a; BRANDÃO, 2002); Tradição (HOBSBAWM, 1997; BÂ, 1982); Oralidade (VANSINA, 1982); Memória (HALBWACHS, 2006); Cultura (GEERTZ, 1989); Cotidiano (CERTEAU, 1998); Saber (MARTINIC, 1994) e Ancestralidade (LEITE, 2008). Dimensioning the terreiro as a space for the circulation of meaning, the methodology applied was Thematic Oral History, where we looked for witnesses’ evidence in the present time by using recorded semi-structured interviews, transforming them into sources. Guiding the content analysis of this research, and in order to organize the speeches and transform them into a document-monument as defined by the French historian Jacques Le Goff, we also use the notions of dense description by Geertz (1989), emphasizing the participatory observation as a data production technique and conversations in the daily life of the Menegon terreiro (2014), which defines terreiro spaces as being privileged for social interaction and the production of meaning. The conclusion is that the foundations of the educational culture of the Candomblé nation Ketu are: tradition, hierarchy, orality and ancestry, which emphasizes the concepts of knowledge, time, experience, power and authority. Educational practices take place in the daily social relationships of the terreiro through the dissemination of ancestral knowledge from the historical traditions of this culture.