Ephemerality and the "Unfinished" in Vodun Aesthetics

Along coastal Bénin, the Vodun religious system cheap cufflinks its associated aesthetics are driven by fluctuation, transformation, and open-endedness.' The continuity of Vodun is dependent upon its ability to remain relevant and effective in the lives of its practitioners. If it is not effective, it closes down; it ceases to be; it finishes. In this paper, I argue that this protean, agentive aesthetic system that thrives on such flux and possibility is best described in terms of the ephemeral, the incomplete, the "unfinished."

My intent here is to introduce the idea of the "unfinished" as a way of conceptualizing Vodun aesthetics, and by extension, other African and African diaspora aesthetics. Drawing on both theory and case studies from coastal Bénin and the Caribbean, I explore how Vodun aesthetics are best understood through action, interaction, and potentiality. I suggest that like Vodun, the framework we use for understanding its aesthetics must also remain flexible, rather than definitive. This means making sense of Vodun arts by accepting the idea of "unfinishedness" cheap earrings an ongoing, indeed permanent state of anticipation. I begin by exploring the inherent paradox between the ephemeral and the unfinished.

In Vodun thought, the seemingly contradictory ideas of the ephemeral (impermanent, fleeting, short-lived) and the unfinished (ongoing, enduring, never-ending) merge in a dialectic that maintains the requisite tension between the two. For example, in a problem -solving situation, a diviner might prescribe items for a client to offer to a particular Vodun spirit residing in a shrine. After an offering is made that results in the resolution of a problem, the power solicited for and inherent in this "work" is no longer necessary (ephemeral). At the same time, this very power is preserved, maintained, and ready to be tapped if a need arises (unfinished). For the annual yam celebration in a Vodun compound near Cotonou, Bénin, the guardian spirit Legba was offered yams, palm oil, chicken blood, and other oblations over a fresh bed of azan, or ritual palm fronds (Fig. 1). The particular offerings were active when this photo was taken in the mid 1990s. cheap jewelry than a decade later, none of these offerings remain and many more have been added and have since disintegrated. The accumulative power, however, endures; it is present, and can be called upon if the need arises. That is, the tension maintained through this ephemeral/unfinished dialectic is the determining factor in Vodun efficacy-when Vodun transcends and fuses such opposites, it works.