Partially supported by a NULab Seedling Grant.
Digital Ancestral Altars (DAA) goal is to commemorate Trinidad’s ancestral Ifá/Orisha elders and connect members of the transnational Isese l’agba (traditional Yorùbá religious community worldwide) through a media archive and website. The website will showcase media objects from Dr. Castor’s multimodal ethnographic archive (Trinidad Ethnographic Archive Lab; TEAL) and materials collected from community members. Additionally, this project is a step to fulfill their ethical commitment to the community by providing access for Trinidad’s community members selections from their ethnographic archive (spanning a period of over twenty years). One important reason for this project is the ephemeral nature of social media. Every year on Facebook, the anniversary of an elder’s passing is noted through numerous memorial posts and threads that include photos, videos, and tributes. These memorials are subject to the whims of the “Meta-verse’ which makes intellectual property claims to the material on their site. The recent change in Twitter’s ownership and subsequent shifts in many of its policies started a conversation on Black Twitter about both the stability of our digital platforms and their ownership (including the ownership of intellectual property). Digital Ancestral Altars seeks to address these issues of ephemera and ownership by offering an alternative (likely to supplement and not replace) to social media sites to remember elders of the Ifá/Orisha community. In doing so, it extends an ethics of care for community that is at the heart of Isese l’agba (Yoruba tradition and culture) for both embodied and disembodied beings. The central charge of actively remembering and honoring the ancestors can be facilitated through the digital, bringing transnational community together in their communications with the ancestral realm.
Theoretically, this project contributes to conversations on digital Black religions, spiritual praxis, transnational religious communities and the construction of the African diaspora. Dr. Castor’s approach to spiritual praxis and digital Black religions is visible in her recent article, “Ifá/Orisha Digital Counterpublics” where they state, that “I do not see the virtual and the physical as distinct or separate, rather as different yet interrelated sites or spheres of engagement” (Castor 2022, 18). They continue to point out that moving between realms is a central ritual praxis in African diasporic religions that informs the shifting between the physical, spiritual, and virtual realms. Digital Ancestral Altars is situated at the intersection of these realms while also centered in the transnational religious community that informs African diasporic religions. As such the digitally mediated veneration of ancestors will offer opportunities to not only build communities across disparate geographies but to also theorize how spiritual praxis and technology contribute to this building.
DAA is partially supported by The Crossroads Project’s Community Stories Fellowship. Thanks to NULab and the community for all their support of this project.
Project Team Members
- N. Fadeke Castor, Principal Investigator
- Graduate Students: L. Virginia Martinez, (Current); Halimat Haruna, (Former); Titilayo Odedele (Former)
Publications
Castor, N. Fadeke. 2017. Spiritual Citizenship: Transnational Pathways from Black Power to Ifá in Trinidad. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Castor, N. Fadeke. 2022. “Ifá/Orisha Digital Counterpublics.” The Black Scholar 52 (3): 17–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2022.2079065
