Black Religion and the Imagination of Matter in the Atlantic World (Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice)

This book situates the study of Black Religion within the modern temporal and historical structures whose geographical contours are the Atlantic World. It describes how black people and Black Religion made a phenomenological appearance in modernity simultaneously and were signified in the identity formation of whites and their religion. James A. Noel accounts for these new identity formations, religious-social practices, and their accompanying epistemological orientations by describing the non-reciprocal contacts and exchanges from which ensued new modes of materiality and imagining matter. Black Religion is shown to represent an alternative epistemological mode of imagining matter and a critique of both white Christianity and the Enlightenment. Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Studying Black Religion: Contacts/Exchanges and Continuities/Discontinuities....Pages 1-14 The Age of Discovery and the Emergence of the Atlantic World....Pages 15-35 The Imagination of Matter in the Atlantic World’s Political Economy....Pages 37-55 Being, Nothingness, and the “Signification of Silence” in African American Religious Consciousness....Pages 57-75 Epistemologies Opaque: Conjuring, Conjecture, and the Problematic of Nat Turner’s Biblical Hermeneutic....Pages 77-96 The Mulatto as Material/Sexual Site of Modernity’s Contacts and Exchanges....Pages 97-120 “The Signification of Silence” Revisited: African American Art and Hermeneutics....Pages 121-147 The Meaning of the Moan and Significance of the Shout in Black Worship and Culture and Memory and Hope....Pages 149-170 The Salsa/Jazz/Blues Idiom and Creolization in the Atlantic World....Pages 171-193 Conclusion....Pages 195-200 Back Matter....Pages 201-231 Introduction Studying black religion : contacts/exchanges & continuities/dis-continuities The age of discovery and the emergence of the Atlantic World The imagination of matter in the Atlantic World's political economy Being, nothingness, and the signification of silence in Black religious consciousness Epistemologies opaque : conjuring, conjecture, and the problem of Nat Turner's biblical hermeneutic The mulatto The signification of silence revisited : Black art and hermeneutics The meaning of the moan and significance of the shout in Black worship and culture & memory and hope The Salsa/Jazz/Blues idiom & creolization in the Atlantic World.