231 Notes on a Disputed Process of Signiication The Practice of Communication in Spiritain Missions in the Central Highlands of Angola 1 Iracema Dulley State University of Campinas 2 Dieu n’a pas fini de pleurer après la traduction de son nom alors même qu’il l’interdit. (Derrida 1985) The practice of communication in the mission from a relational perspective This paper considers the interaction of the various agents involved in the context of the Spiritain missions in the Central Highlands of Angola; from the establishment of the first Catholic missions in the mid-19 th century until the pre-Liberation War period (1961). With this purpose, the analysis focus- es on Spiritain translations of Catholic doctrinal material into Umbundu, on collections of Umbundu oral genres translated into Portuguese and on eth- nographic as well as historic records from the period. Based on these sourc- es, the paper retraces the process of symbolic struggle between the agents, which resulted in the convention of meaning established in the mission. This convention was formed by indexing local ritual practices that fell under the rubric of “ancestor worship” to the Christian universe. According to this theoretical stance, records were produced in the com- munication between the agents in the practice of their daily lives. The fact that the empirical material consists of written sources presents two impor- tant methodological issues: On the one hand, how to have access to practice 1 Translated by the author and proofread by Dean de Lucia. 2 The research on which this essay is based was funded by FAPESP.