ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author proposes an understanding of history which relies not on the dominance of logos and the Western historiographic archive, but on close-range anthropology and performative studies who regard bodily transmission as a form of manifesting culture, tradition, and the past. In analysing relations between vodun and history encoded in that specific scene, the author shows theoretical consequences associated with the necessity to decolonise performance studies. Shifting the focus from efficacy towards agency, when considering reflections on performativity, he propose to concentrate less on an events singularity and more on communal experience, and the dynamic interconnectivity of human and more-than-human agents on agency's very ability to act, perform, and thereby impact reality. Historical agency manifests itself in a specific commonality he term an affective communitas.
