ABSTRACT
Wifredo Lam used de- and retotalization with remarkable flexibility: to satisfy Western expectations about the other and to evoke a characteristically non-Western form of affective distress. Pablo Picasso could see Lam’s multifarious work as confirming his own artistic choices, Andre Breton his antipathy to the West, the Abstract Expressionists their fascination with the totemic, Ortiz, Cabrera, and Carpentier their valorization of Afro-Cuban culture, and Levi-Strauss his ideas on detotalization, retotalization, and atemporality. Causality also pertains to the way shamans deploy de- and retotalization to assist women experiencing birthing pains. Among the Cuna Indians, for example, shamans perceive the body as the setting for struggles between benevolent and malevolent spirits. Facilitated by de- and retotalization, Lam’s synthesis of Western art and non-Western artifacts, Cuban Santería and Western anthropology, parallels this adaptive phenomenon, and reflects an openness to multiple traditions, without reflecting any of them completely.
