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La globalisation est rarement abordée sous l’angle des influences spirituelles entre continents. S’appuyant sur un corpus d’images indiennes incorporées au vodun ouest-africain, cet essai souligne l’entrelacs des sources d’inspiration et suggère des voies alternatives pour conceptualiser le processus de mondialisation. Il considère que cette fusion religieuse indienne/africaine, qui s’exprime dans un riche ensemble d’objets, de croyances et de pratiques, constitue un excellent révélateur de la condition globale contemporaine.

Trans-South : The idea of « India » in West African vodun art and thoughtGlobalization is rarely thought of in terms of spiritual influences between continents. Stemming from a body of Indian chromolithographic imagery incorporated into West African Vodun, this essay considers alternative ways of conceptualizing globalization. Compelling notions of international boundaryless-ness evinced in present-day readings of this Indian/African religious merging, it suggests, can be re-conceptualized in ways that go far beyond the tangible, human domain into a world in which eternity and divine infinity are collapsed into the here and now. The essay considers a rich set of objects, beliefs and practices which bring to bear such an approach to, and in so doing shed a novel light on, the contemporary global condition.