The House of Spirits

With reference to one man’s remarkable struggle rebuild his home in Havana following its partial collapse, this article contributes the emerging anthropological literature on care by thematising role of state as carer-in-chief. Experiences such that Lázaro, protagonist article, demonstrate central paradox a project—one receives most extreme expression totalising project revolutionary socialism—namely, contradiction between particularistic, affective, and aesthetic character generalising neutralising rational order mechanisms charged with delivering it. Drawing ritual cosmological template Afro-Cuban espiritismo , Lázaro effectively solves supplementing relationship structures an intricate, ever-evolving, deeply personal spirits. The upshot is Lázaro’s sense inner conviction efficacy bureaucracy, underpinned aesthetics spiritsit practice provides.