Description
Book SynopsisThe contributors to
Embodying Black Religions in Africa and Its Diasporas investigate the complex intersections between the body, religious expression, and the construction and transformation of social relationships and political and economic power. Among other topics, the essays examine the dynamics of religious and racial identity among Brazilian Neo-Pentecostals; the significance of cloth coverings in Islamic practice in northern Nigeria; the ethics of socially engaged hip-hop lyrics by Black Muslim artists in Britain; ritual dance performances among Mama Tchamba devotees in Togo; and how Ifá practitioners from Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Trinidad, and the United States join together in a shared spiritual ethnicity. From possession and spirit-induced trembling to dance, the contributors outline how embodied religious practices are central to expressing and shaping interiority and spiritual lives, national and ethnic belonging, ways of knowing and techniques of healing
Trade Review“This groundbreaking book provides insight into how religious communities use expressive practices to unify and find healing. It offers an epistemological shift, recognizing the relevance of corporeality in galvanizing communities while allowing for individualist expressions of relationships to the otherwordly. This volume will make a strong impact in the fields of religious studies, anthropology, performance studies, and African diaspora studies.” -- Anita Gonzalez, author of * Afro-Mexico: Dancing between Myth and Reality *
“This volume makes a unique and important contribution to the study of African diasporic religions giving priority---in our analysis—not to the theological nor necessarily the social but to the embodied and performative nature of religious practice. In this groundbreaking set of essays we learn the ways in which embodied practices inform ideas like empowerment, resistance and survival.” -- Marla F. Frederick, author of * Colored Television: American Religion Gone Global *
“The focus of this theoretically engaged and ethnographically rich book . . . is a body-centered perspective on continental and diasporic African religions, offering valuable insights into the body as a medium of communication that generates knowledge, and the role of the body in producing intersubjectivity and relationality.” -- Susan Rasmussen * Journal of Anthropological Research *
"This eloquent anthology takes the study of the Black body in renewed directions, weaving analytics of healing, bodily movement, materiality, energy, and collective knowledge and practices. This volume advances the field of anthropology with a wide range of methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of African diaspora religion, culture, and society. . . . The book is also ideal for teaching undergraduates and graduate students. Undoubtedly, it ought to be of great interest to scholars of religion, particularly African and African diasporic religions, and other interdisciplinary areas within anthropology and beyond such as women, gender and sexuality studies, African and African diaspora studies, ethics, and performance studies." -- Nessette Falu * American Ethnologist *
Table of ContentsForeword / Jacob K. Olupona vii
Editors' Acknowledgments xv
Introduction: Embodiment and Relationality in Religions of Africa and Its Diasporas / Yolanda Covington-Ward and Jeanette S. Jouili 1
Part I. Spiritual Memories and Ancestors
1. Spirited Choreographies: Embodied Memories and Domestic Enslavement in Togolese Mama Tchamba Rituals / Elyan Jeanine Hill 23
2. Alchemy of the
Fuqara: Spiritual Care, Memory, and the Black Muslim Body / Youssef Carter 49
3. Spiritual Ethnicity: Our Collective Ancestors in Ifá Devotion across the Americas / N. Fadeke Castor 70
Part II. Community, Religious Habitus, and the Senses
4. Faith Full: Sensuous Habitus, Everyday Affect, and Divergent Diaspora in the UCKG / Rachel Cantave 99
5. Covered Bodies, Moral Education, and the Embodiment of Islamic Reform in Northern Nigeria / Elisha P. Renne 122
6. Embodied Worship in a Haitian Protestant Church in the Bahamas: Religious Habitus among Bahamians of Haitian Descent / Bertin M. Louis Jr. 152
Part III. Interrogating Sacredness in Performance
7. The Quest of Spiritual Purpose in a Secular Dance Community:
Bélé's Rebirth in Contemporary Martinique / Camee Maddox-Wingfield 175
8. Embodying Black Islam: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Afro-Diasporic Muslim Hip-Hop in Britain / Jeanette S. Jouili 197
9. Secular Affective Politics in a National Dance about AIDS in Mozambique / Aaron Montoya 222
Part IV. Religious Discipline and the Gendered and Sexual Body
10. Wrestling with Homosexuality: Kinesthesia as Resistance in Ghanaian Pentecostalism / Nathanael J. Homewood 253
11. Exceptional Healing: Gender, Materiality, Embodiment, and Prophetism in the Lower Congo / Yolanda Covington-Ward 273
12. Dark Matter: Formations of Death Pollution in Southeastern African Funerals / Casey Golomski 297
Contributors 317
Index 321
