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Alternative modernities: statecraft and religious imagination in the Valley of the Dawn
- Author(s): Holston, James
- et al.
Abstract
Many new religions promote the emblems and institutions of modern nation-states. In this article, I consider an example from Brazil, analyzing the mimetic relations between its modernist capital, Brasília, and a millenarian and ecstatic religion called the Valley of the Dawn located on the city's outskirts. I focus on the project of salvation that each sponsors and on a religious ritual that stages a judicial event associated with the state. Arguing against compensatory explanations, I suggest that both state and religion are performances, mutually critical, of the same paradigm of modernity.
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