Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas

Performance, Representation, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition

Buch | Hardcover

224 Seiten

2019
Pennsylvania State University Press (Verlag)
978-0-271-08329-2 (ISBN)

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Explores how, in the Americas, people of African birth or descent found spiritual and social empowerment in the orbit of the Church. Draws connections between Afro-Catholic festivals and their precedents in the early modern Christian kingdom of Kongo.

This volume demonstrates how, from the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade, enslaved and free Africans in the Americas used Catholicism and Christian-derived celebrations as spaces for autonomous cultural expression, social organization, and political empowerment. Their appropriation of Catholic-based celebrations calls into question the long-held idea that Africans and their descendants in the diaspora either resignedly accepted Christianity or else transformed its religious rituals into syncretic objects of stealthy resistance.

In cities and on plantations throughout the Americas, men and women of African birth or descent staged mock battles against heathens, elected Christian queens and kings with great pageantry, and gathered in festive rituals to express their devotion to saints. Many of these traditions endure in the twenty-first century. The contributors to this volume draw connections between these Afro-Catholic festivals—observed from North America to South America and the Caribbean—and their precedents in the early modern kingdom of Kongo, one of the main regions of origin of men and women enslaved in the New World. This transatlantic perspective offers a useful counterpoint to the Yoruba focus prevailing in studies of African diasporic religions and reveals how Kongo-infused Catholicism constituted a site for the formation of black Atlantic tradition.

Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas complicates the notion of Christianity as a European tool of domination and enhances our comprehension of the formation and trajectory of black religious culture on the American continent. It will be of great interest to scholars of African diaspora, religion, Christianity, and performance.

In addition to the editor, the contributors include Kevin Dawson, Jeroen Dewulf, Junia Ferreira Furtado, Michael Iyanaga, Dianne M. Stewart, Miguel A. Valerio, and Lisa Voigt.

Cécile Fromont is Associate Professor of History of Art at Yale University. She is also the author of the award-winning book The Art of Conversion: Christian Visual Culture in the Kingdom of Kongo.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Kongo Christianity, Festive Performances, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition

Cécile Fromont and Michael Iyanaga

Part 1 Ritual Battles from the Kongo Kingdom to the Americas

1. Sangamentos on Congo Square? Kongolese Warriors, Brotherhood Kings, and Mardi Gras Indians in New Orleans

Jeroen Dewulf

2. Moros e Christianos Ritualized Naval Battles: Baptizing American Waters with African Spiritual Meaning

Kevin Dawson

3. A Mexican Sangamento? The First Afro-Christian Performance in the Americas

Miguel A. Valerio

Part 2 America’s Black Kings and Diplomatic Representation

4. Representing an African King in Brazil

Lisa Voigt

5. Black Ceremonies in Perspective: Brazil and Dahomey in the Eighteenth Century

Junia Ferreira Furtado

Part 3 Reconsidering Primary Sources

6. Envisioning Brazil’s Afro-Christian Congados: The Black King and Queen Festival Lithograph of Johann Moritz Rugendas

Cécile Fromont

7. The Orisa House That Afro-Catholics Built: Africana Antecedents to Yoruba Religious Formation in Trinidad

Dianne M. Stewart

Part 4 Aurality and Diasporic Traditions

8. On Hearing Africas in the Americas: Domestic Celebrations for Catholic Saints as Afro-Diasporic Religious Tradition

Michael Iyanaga

List of Contributors

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	04.05.2019
Reihe/Serie	Africana Religions
Zusatzinfo	10 Halftones, color; 6 Halftones, black and white
Verlagsort	University Park
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	499 g
Themenwelt	Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Gebete / Lieder / Meditationen
	Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Kirchengeschichte
	Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Liturgik / Homiletik
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	0-271-08329-8 / 0271083298
ISBN-13	978-0-271-08329-2 / 9780271083292
Zustand	Neuware