
(Re)citing Diaspora as Scriptural Cartographies
Sightings of the Black Atlantic and Story-Telling Difference Before Reading
A. Francis Carter Jr.(Author)
Rowman & Littlefield (Publisher)
Will be published approx. on 10. December 2026
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-1-9787-1614-8 (ISBN)
Description
What happens when disciplines that study diaspora are inclined to perceive knowledge derived from Black life as anachronism?
How scholars write history and interpret early Christian texts is not neutral; they rehearse cartographies drawn by Enlightenment thinkers who treated linearity as the shape of human progress and the nation-state as its natural container. These inherited cartographies function as unquestioned scriptures that shape how interpreters reconstruct the past and read texts within those historical reconstructions. In this book, New Testament scholar A. Francis Carter Jr. centers diaspora as a prism to explore and intervene in hermeneutical theory. Through contextual readings, Carter exposes a disciplinary predisposition towards anti-Blackness incipient to Diaspora Studies. He then reorients the discourse and maps diaspora's etymological origins and biblical uses through a Black Atlantic cartographic framework - replacing sameness with differentness, linearity with polyvocality, and the erasure of Black life with its recognition as a site from which scripture, history, and diaspora become legible.
How scholars write history and interpret early Christian texts is not neutral; they rehearse cartographies drawn by Enlightenment thinkers who treated linearity as the shape of human progress and the nation-state as its natural container. These inherited cartographies function as unquestioned scriptures that shape how interpreters reconstruct the past and read texts within those historical reconstructions. In this book, New Testament scholar A. Francis Carter Jr. centers diaspora as a prism to explore and intervene in hermeneutical theory. Through contextual readings, Carter exposes a disciplinary predisposition towards anti-Blackness incipient to Diaspora Studies. He then reorients the discourse and maps diaspora's etymological origins and biblical uses through a Black Atlantic cartographic framework - replacing sameness with differentness, linearity with polyvocality, and the erasure of Black life with its recognition as a site from which scripture, history, and diaspora become legible.
Reviews / Votes
Eschewing the trendiness of ingenuity of exegesis too often marked by faux historicism and misplaced and faulty theologisms, with this book Carter has raised his voice within the small circle of multifield and transdisciplinary theorists of the scriptural. Using segments of the African diaspora as grounding, his pursuit of some basic issues and dynamics that have determined the psycho-logics and politics and orientation of historical and contemporary cultural formation is provocative and intriguing, worth the serious attention of all cultural critics. * Vincent L. Wimbush, Institute for Signifying Scriptures * This is a substantial and subtle study of the discourse of diaspora from a Black Atlantic perspective that not only resists a rigid and static framework of the nation-state, but also recommends a reorientation of biblical studies in terms of its assumptions and conventions. Readers who are willing to tackle this thick tomb will be rewarded with many thought-provoking information and ideas. * Tat-siong Benny Liew, College of the Holy Cross * In the lineage of Vincent Wimbush's field-shifting work, Carter's (re)Citing Diaspora as Scriptural Cartographies offers an ambitious re-orientation of historical knowledge practices away from anti-Blackness, univocality, and canonicity towards ones that center differentness, polyvocality, and relationships. With close attention to metaphors and metanarratives, Carter persuasively proposes a conceptual shift in our understanding of diaspora. Especially striking are the creative "interludes" that model his approach through new forms of storytelling. * Denise Kimber Buell, Williams College * Carter's thoughtful and profound re-articulation of the humility involved in proposing new interpretations of truth and objectivity. . .are compelling, thrilling, and even a bit hopeful. The careful differentiation between people, nation, and nation-state is worth the price of admission alone. * Daniel Boyarin, author of The No State Solution *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Illustrations
13 bw illus
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-9787-1614-8 (9781978716148)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
A. Francis Carter, Jr. is Assistant Professor of New Testament and early Christian literature and Director of Black Church Traditions and African American Faith-Life at Phillips Theological Seminary, USA.
Content
Introduction: Diaspora in-Sight
Story-Telling as Interlude: Reclamations (The Chevalier de Saint-Georges)
Part I: Reading Orientations: Enlightened Pre-Texts and Modern Landscapes
1: Hegelian Color-Blindness as Pathology and Cartography: I Don't See Color
(Ever)
2: Pathogens: Root-Language and the Line as a Figure of Structure
3: A Scientific Perspective: Imagination, Rhizome, and (de)Rooting the Objective
Story-Telling as Interlude: Reclamations (Joseph, Anne's Son)
Part II: Pathological Spaces: Diaspora Approaches towards Discipline
4: A Landscape of Diaspora Studies: An Economy of Thought
5: Studying Diaspora before an (un)Disciplined Diaspora Studies: Economic(al)
Stories
6: Diaspora Studies and Story-Telling Roots, Ideally Not African
7: The Practical Grammars of Diaspora Studies: Definitions, Approaches, and Uses
Story-Telling as Interlude: Reclamations (James William Roman)
Part II: Diaspora (re)Sighted: (re)Citations of Black Atlantic Story-Telling
8: Recitations: A Practice of Reading in Black American Discursive Traditions
9: A Generative Story of Diaspora: Contextual Reading as Rhizomic Mapping
10: Heuristic Insights for Diaspora Studies: A Roman View with Preliminary
Framing
11: (re)Sighting Diaspora: (re)Viewing the Archive
Bibliography
Story-Telling as Interlude: Reclamations (The Chevalier de Saint-Georges)
Part I: Reading Orientations: Enlightened Pre-Texts and Modern Landscapes
1: Hegelian Color-Blindness as Pathology and Cartography: I Don't See Color
(Ever)
2: Pathogens: Root-Language and the Line as a Figure of Structure
3: A Scientific Perspective: Imagination, Rhizome, and (de)Rooting the Objective
Story-Telling as Interlude: Reclamations (Joseph, Anne's Son)
Part II: Pathological Spaces: Diaspora Approaches towards Discipline
4: A Landscape of Diaspora Studies: An Economy of Thought
5: Studying Diaspora before an (un)Disciplined Diaspora Studies: Economic(al)
Stories
6: Diaspora Studies and Story-Telling Roots, Ideally Not African
7: The Practical Grammars of Diaspora Studies: Definitions, Approaches, and Uses
Story-Telling as Interlude: Reclamations (James William Roman)
Part II: Diaspora (re)Sighted: (re)Citations of Black Atlantic Story-Telling
8: Recitations: A Practice of Reading in Black American Discursive Traditions
9: A Generative Story of Diaspora: Contextual Reading as Rhizomic Mapping
10: Heuristic Insights for Diaspora Studies: A Roman View with Preliminary
Framing
11: (re)Sighting Diaspora: (re)Viewing the Archive
Bibliography