Shackled Sentiments
Slaves, Spirits, and Memories in the African Diaspora
Published on 6. July 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
252 pages
978-1-4985-8600-9 (ISBN)
Description
The ramifications of the trans-Saharan, trans-Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and domestic African slave trades are immeasurable, and they continue to disaffect black people from Africa to Haiti and Los Angeles to Lagos. Shackled Sentiments focuses on the memories and embodiments of slavery through case studies from western, eastern, and central Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. The contributors to this collection examine the ways that memories of slavery have been internalized. Slavery and memory are assessed from multiple perspectives: as sets of ritual practices, community-based systems of spirit veneration, mechanisms of resistance and national pride, sacred languages informing personhood, and instruments for healing and well-being. This book is recommended for scholars of anthropology, history, religion, art, and linguistics.
Reviews / Votes
The authors offer a collection of dynamic, cross-cultural analyses that represent new approaches to understanding how African descendant communities have "erected their own belief and moral system in response to institutionalized slavery" (p. xxiii). Taken together, the essays make one of the strongest cases yet for multidisciplinary scholarship that examines and compares local and regional conceptions of ritual, religion, and historical memory over time. * BRILL * Shackled Sentiments is a most welcome, unique, and important book. This collection provides an international and interdisciplinary approach to one of the gravest and most haunting of all human conditions or crimes: slavery. Eric Montgomery is to be resoundingly applauded for culling expert voices from throughout the Atlantic world to offer in a single collection the fine chapters on offer in Shackled Sentiments. In addition to providing readers with new knowledge about slavery, this volume offers compelling new insights about the historical and geographic reaches, ramifications, and contours of slavery, and it should inspire deep humanistic reflection not just on this topic but about our very existence as a species. -- Terry Rey, Temple UniversityMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
1 Maps
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
371 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4985-8600-9 (9781498586009)
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
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
01/2019
1st Edition
Bloomsbury eBooks US
€38.49
Available for download
Persons
Eric J. Montgomery is cultural anthropologist at the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Wayne State University and the Department of Anthropology at Central Michigan University.
Content
Chapter 1: American Women Anthropologists of the 20th Century on Haitian Vodou: A Brief Review
Natacha Giafferi-Dombre
Chapter 2: Vodou as the Embryo and Marker of Haitian Socio-Historical Identity
Nixon Cleophat
Chapter 3: Remembering Our Mothers: Black Women, Slavery, and Maternal Power in Barbados and Jamaica
Maureen Elgersman Lee
Chapter 4: The Past is Present: Slavery, Personhood, and Mimesis in Ewe Gorovodu and Mama Tchamba (Togo)
Eric Montgomery
Chapter 5: Slavery, Possession and Witchcraft in the Sudan: The Journey of the Zar Tumbura Cult
Gerasimos Makris
Chapter 6: Living with the Ghosts of Slavery in Western Eweland: Taming Ancestral Energies and Creating Ritual Cultures
Meera Venkatachalam
Chapter 7: Possession, Power, and Slavery in Eastern Africa
Beatrice Nicolini
Chapter 8: Slavery and Its Discontents: Shackled History as Spiritual Resources in Jamaica
Christian Vannier
Chapter 9: The Language of the Slave Spirits in Brazil
Laura Alvarez Lopez
Natacha Giafferi-Dombre
Chapter 2: Vodou as the Embryo and Marker of Haitian Socio-Historical Identity
Nixon Cleophat
Chapter 3: Remembering Our Mothers: Black Women, Slavery, and Maternal Power in Barbados and Jamaica
Maureen Elgersman Lee
Chapter 4: The Past is Present: Slavery, Personhood, and Mimesis in Ewe Gorovodu and Mama Tchamba (Togo)
Eric Montgomery
Chapter 5: Slavery, Possession and Witchcraft in the Sudan: The Journey of the Zar Tumbura Cult
Gerasimos Makris
Chapter 6: Living with the Ghosts of Slavery in Western Eweland: Taming Ancestral Energies and Creating Ritual Cultures
Meera Venkatachalam
Chapter 7: Possession, Power, and Slavery in Eastern Africa
Beatrice Nicolini
Chapter 8: Slavery and Its Discontents: Shackled History as Spiritual Resources in Jamaica
Christian Vannier
Chapter 9: The Language of the Slave Spirits in Brazil
Laura Alvarez Lopez