Research Catalog

Archives of conjure : stories of the dead in Afrolatinx cultures

Title
Archives of conjure : stories of the dead in Afrolatinx cultures / Solimar Otero.
Author
Otero, Solimar
Publication
New York : Columbia University Press, [2020]

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StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
TextUse in library Sc D 21-216Schomburg Center - Research & Reference

Details

Description
xv, 248 pages; 22 cm.
Summary
"In Afrolatinx religious practices such as Cuban Espiritismo, Puerto Rican Santería, and Brazilian Candomblé, the dead tell stories. Communicating with and through mediums' bodies, they give advice, make requests, and propose future rituals, creating a living archive that is coproduced by the dead. In this book, Solimar Otero explores how Afrolatinx spirits guide collaborative spiritual-scholarly activist work through rituals and the creation of material culture. By examining spirit mediumship through a Caribbean cross-cultural poetics, she shows how divinities and ancestors serve as active agents in shaping the experiences of gender, sexuality, and race. Otero argues that what she calls archives of conjure are produced through residual transcriptions or reverberations of the stories of the dead whose archives are stitched, beaded, smoked, and washed into official and unofficial repositories. She investigates how sites like the ocean, rivers, and institutional archives create connected contexts for unlocking the spatial activation of residual transcriptions. Drawing on over ten years of archival research and fieldwork in Cuba, Otero centers the storytelling practices of Afrolatinx women and LGBTQ spiritual practitioners alongside Caribbean literature and performance. Archives of Conjure offers vital new perspectives on ephemerality, temporality, and material culture, unraveling undertheorized questions about how spirits shape communities of practice, ethnography, literature, and history and revealing the deeply connected nature of art, scholarship, and worship"--
Series Statement
Gender, theory, and religion
Uniform Title
Gender, theory, and religion.
Subject
  • Spiritualism > Caribbean Area
  • Afro-Caribbean cults
  • Black people > Religious life > Caribbean Area
  • Black people > Caribbean Area > Rites and ceremonies
  • Spirits
  • Women and spiritualism > Caribbean Area
  • Material culture > Religious aspects
  • Water > Religious aspects
  • Blacks > Religious life
  • Blacks > Rites and ceremonies
  • Spiritualism
  • Women and spiritualism
  • Caribbean Area > Religious life and customs
  • Caribbean Area
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
Introduction: Archives of conjure -- Residual transcriptions -- Crossings -- Flows -- Sirens -- Conclusion: Espuma del mar, sea-foam.
Call Number
Sc D 21-216
ISBN
  • 9780231194327
  • 0231194323
LCCN
2019038651
OCLC
1128885208
Author
Otero, Solimar, author.
Title
Archives of conjure : stories of the dead in Afrolatinx cultures / Solimar Otero.
Publisher
New York : Columbia University Press, [2020]
Type of Content
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Series
Gender, theory, and religion
Gender, theory, and religion.
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Research Call Number
Sc D 21-216
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