The 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 Ifa 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, and sexual and gender politics. In this way, the body is a crucial site of religiously motivated social action for people of African descent.
Contributors. Rachel Cantave, Youssef Carter, N. Fadeke Castor, Yolanda Covington-Ward, Casey Golomski, Elyan Jeanine Hill, Nathanael J. Homewood, Jeanette S. Jouili, Bertin M. Louis Jr., Camee Maddox-Wingfield, Aaron Montoya, Jacob K. Olupona, Elisha P. Renne
Yolanda Covington-Ward is Associate Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and author of Gesture and Power: Religion, Nationalism, and Everyday Performance in Congo, also published by Duke University Press.
Jeanette S. Jouili is Associate Professor of Religion at Syracuse University and author of Pious Practice and Secular Constraints: Women in the Islamic Revival in Europe.
Title: Embodying Black Religions in Africa and Its Diasporas (Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People)
Author: Jeanette S. Jouili,Yolanda Covington-Ward
ISBN: 9781478010647
Binding:
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publication Date: 2021-09-24
Number of Pages: 352
Weight: 0.6082 kg
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 *