Rituals of resistance: The making of an African -Atlantic religious complex in Kongo and along the Sea Islands of the slave South

Rituals of Resistance investigates the development of an African-Atlantic religious complex that linked ritual practice in the Kongo region of West Central Africa to that of the slave societies of the American South, in particular the Sea Island region of Georgia and South Carolina, during the era of slavery and the trans Atlantic slave trade. In the slave South, the African-Atlantic religious complex operated as a crucial space not only for the recuperations of certain West African ritual forms and processes, but also for the creative emergence of new spiritual practices. Though linked through cultural practice, these communities are perhaps most marked by flexibility and change; by the degree to which their cultural practices were modified and adapted in response to the machinations of daily life and the imperatives of the oppressive societies in which they lived.;Through the prism of Christian conversion and ritual baptism, chapter one, "Sacraments, Water Ritual, and the Spirits of the Deep: Christian Conversion in Kongo and along the Sea Islands of the Deep South," probes not only the often elusive and subtle question of conversion, but also reveals fresh avenues and insights regarding those points and processes that marked the African-Atlantic religious complex and the meanings, understandings, and practices that attended it. Chapter two, "Minkisi, Conjure Bags and the African-Atlantic Religious Complex" is concerned with the manner in which the dynamics of the slave trade contributed to the dispersal of some aspects of the minkisi tradition throughout the Atlantic World in general and within the antebellum slave south in particular. The treatment is comparative, noting both the similarities and differences between the two traditions, and emphasizes the importance of innovation and creativity in the maintenance and operation of these ritual objects. Lastly, this study notes the relationship between these objects and the limits of modernity. The third chapter, "Burial Markers and other Remembrances of the Dead" proposes something of a generalized biography of the dead, charting the movement of the postmortem body and soul from this world to the next. Moreover, this study traces the community treatment of death and the dead, marking rituals of mourning, bereavement and libation. Lastly, chapter four, "All God's Children Had Wings: Flight, Transmigration and other Sacred Movements of Southern Slaves" focuses on the folkloric record of flight, sacred movement, and transmigration in the slave community, addressing the expressive arts as central to the formation of a people.