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Prof. Theophus Thee Smith, Emory Univ. Religion Dept., Atlanta, GA | July 2014
Excursions in African Diaspora Spirituality and Aesthetics

Excursions in African Diaspora Spirituality and Aesthetics *

Prof. Theophus Thee Smith
Emory Univ. Religion Dept., Atlanta, GA USA | July 2014

Introduction
The following items provide resources for a multi-genre study in African diasporic
expressions of art and spirituality. Genres include literature and music, ritual and worship,
sculpture, painting and theater, and provide compelling specimens for comparative case
studies and models or templates for scholarly research and student projects.
1) Working the Spirits: Aesthetic, Conjurational, and Ethnopharmacopeic Dimensions of
African Heritage
In this presentation Emory prof. Thee Smith exhibits and explores images from his essay,
Working the Spirits: The Will to Transformation in African American Vernacular Art, in Souls
Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art, Vol. 2; eds. William Arnett, Paul Arnett,
Lowery Sims; Atlanta: Tinwood Books, 2001; pp. 46-63. PowerPoint Presentation attached
2) The Gospel at Colonus: From Ancient Agony to Contemporary Ecstasy
The Gospel at Colonus is a current-day oratorio based on Sophocles middle work in the
trilogy that includes his better known tragedies, Oedipus Rex and Antigone: the play,
Oedipus at Colonus. In this state-of-the-art contemporary update the play is dramatically
set in an African American Pentecostal church worship service where Greek myth and
mystery religion replace Bible story and Christian theologyor arguably vice versa!
This presentation by Emory prof. Thee Smith, From Ancient Agony to Contemporary
Ecstasy, includes video excerpts copied by permission for academic use and is available
(sans video) on our Black Aesthetics consultation Blackboard site. In addition to the YouTube
excerpts currently posted at www.youtube.com/watch?v=3viJVy4-i1M, commercial versions of
the production are available at:
DVD (2008): www.amazon.com/Gospel-At-Colonus-Morgan-Freeman/dp/B001B1Q3EO/ref=pd_sim_b_1
Audio (1985/90): www.amazon.com/Gospel-Colonus-1985-Philadelphia-Cast/dp/B000005IZ7/ref=pd_bxgy_mov_img_b
Text (1993): The Gospel at Colonus: An Adaptation by Lee Breuer
www.amazon.com/The-Gospel-Colonus-Lee-Breuer/dp/0930452941/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332184321&sr=1-1

3) Baby Suggs Sermon

There are few more powerful scenes in literature, than that of 'Baby Suggs', the woman
preacher in Toni Morrison's 'Beloved', sermon preached in a place called 'the clearing'. It is
an exhortation to victorious self love, communal affirmation and the spirituality of
personhood. It is absolutely triumphal. This exhibit includes a sermon excerpt from the
novel, video excerpt from the film, and the comment quoted above, all posted by Gerald Britt,
July 3, 2009 at http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2009/07/baby_suggs_sermon.html
4) Oprahs 2009 Legends Ball
This exhibit displays a YouTube video from one of Oprahs most popular Legends Balls and
poses the query for seminar consideration: What do we think of this as a display of black
aesthetic spirituality? www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNmIW5hKV5E&feature=em-share_video_user

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Prof. Theophus Thee Smith, Emory Univ. Religion Dept., Atlanta, GA | July 2014
Excursions in African Diaspora Spirituality and Aesthetics

Some Key Categories of Afrocentric Creative and Sacred Expression

*
[Cf. Bibliography: Asante, Afrocentric Idea & Davis, African Creative Expressions of
the Divine]

ash (Yoruba) or flash of the spirit: the energy that makes the god
manifest, or makes the spiritual present (cf. Babatunde Lawalquoting? art
makes the invisible visible); cf. Thompson, Flash of the Spirit; Jahnheinz Jahn,
Muntu
blues idiom, where the proficiency or prowess, adeptness or aptitude for
enduring misfortune ironically transmutes to the existential binaries of
survival-satisfaction, survivor-triumphalism or tragedy-ecstasy; cf. the black
aesthetic in Addison Gayle, Jr., The Black Aesthetic; Amiri Baraka, Blues
People; James Cone, The Spirituals & the Blues
call and response: the antiphonal back-and-forth between sound or word,
and its response or enactment, e.g., in preaching, oratory, music, and
movement, kinetics or action/actionism/activism; cf. Paul Carter Harrison,
Drama of Nommo
code-switching between styles identified as polar opposites or binaries,
e.g., black styles vs. white identified styles; in particular the break from a
white-identified style to a black coded style; cf. Morton Marks, Uncovering
Ritual Structures in Afro-American Music, in Religious Movements in
Contemporary America
conjuring: transformations of experience/culture that are magical,
mythopoeic, healing /harm-ing, curing/cursing, pharmacopeic, shamanic; cf.
Chireau, Black Magic; Smith, Conjuring Culture
ecstatic dynamism as in spirit possession, contrasting , complementing or
fulfilling contemplative or meditative spiritualities; e.g.,
baptism/being/dancing in the spirit, or being ridden by the spirit; cf. Zora
Neale Hurston, Tell My Horse
improvisation as creative imperative contra mere imitation, repetition or
transmission of something received ; e.g., variations on predecessor styles in
jazz, gospel, soul music
incantatory dynamism, expressions and significations; cf. Kenneth Burke,
Language as Symbolic Action; Theophus Smith, Conjuring Culture, and
signifying below
magical consciousness, including transformations or performances; e.g.,
conjure, hoodoo, rootwork; cf. Yvonne Chireau, Black Magic; Theophus Smith,
Conjuring Culture
signifying as verbal , visual, literary, musical, dramaturgical/theatrical, or
otherwise performative, experiential or existential; e.g., parodies, comedy,
tropes; and including counter-ideologies, e.g., survival strategies and
resistance tactics, liberation and black theologies; cf. Charles Long,
Significations; Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey; and James Cone,
Black Theology and Black Power, Clifford Geertz, Toward an Interpretive
Theory of Culture, in The Interpretation of Culture re: man is an animal
suspended in webs of significance; Riggins Earl, Jr., Dark Symbols, Obscure
Signs: God, Self and Community in the Slave Mind, Cornel West, Prophesy

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Prof. Theophus Thee Smith, Emory Univ. Religion Dept., Atlanta, GA | July 2014
Excursions in African Diaspora Spirituality and Aesthetics

Deliverance!, Gayraud Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism; and

perhaps including the post-protest quest for normalcy (Shelby Steele),
humanism (Anthony Pinn), beyond ontological blackness (Victor Anderson)
trickster dynamism: the ludic impulse to play with tropes and display irony,
wit, and comic prowess through humor and actions/activism (e.g., playing
the dozens); also to trump, turn or overturn (countermand) prevailing
conditions in experience/history; cf. Dierdre L. Badejo, "The Yoruba and AfroAmerican Trickster: A Contextual Comparison," Presence Africaine 147:3
(1988); Alan Dundes, ed., Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel; Zora Neale
Hurston, High John de Conquer, Book of Negro Folklore (1958), Don
McKinney, Brer Rabbit and Brother Martin Luther King, Jr.: The folktale
background of the Birmingham protest, Journal of Religious Thought; Winter
89/Spring 90, 46:2

A Concise Bibliography of Selected Texts

Anderson, Victor. Beyond Ontological Blackness: An Essay on African American

Religious and Cultural Criticism. Continuum, 1999.
Asante, Molefi Kente. The Afrocentric Idea (revised). Philadelphia: Temple Univ.
Press, 1998.*
Baraka, Amiri / Leroi Jones. Blues People: Negro Music in America. William Morrow,
1963.
Bell, Michael E. "Pattern, Structure, and Logic in Afro-American Hoodoo
Performance," Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1980.
Berger, Peter and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise
in the Sociology of Knowledge. Anchor, 1967.
Burke, Kenneth. The Philosophy of Literary Form. Univ. of California Press, 1974. Cf.
Burke, Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method.
U. California, 1968.
Chireau, Yvonne Patricia. Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring
Tradition. Univ. of California Press, 2003/2006.
Cone, James H. Black Theology and Black Power . Orbis Books, 1969/1997. Cf. Cone,
The Spirituals and the Blues. Orbis Books, 1972/1992.
Davis, Kortright, ed. African Creative Expressions of the Divine. Howard U., 1991
(out of print).*
Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912). Oxford Univ. Press,
2008.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary
Criticism. Oxford Univ. Press, 1989.
Gayle, Addison, Jr. The Black Aesthetic. Doubleday, 1972. Cf. Gayle, ed. Black
Expression. Weybright & Talley, 1969.*
Geertz, Clifford. Description: Toward and Interpretive Theory of Culture, The
Interpretation of Culture, NY: Basic Books, 1973.
Harrison, Paul Carter. Drama of Nommo: Black Theatre in the African Continuum.
Grove, 1973.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Tell My Horse (1938). Turtle Books, 1984
Idowu, E. Bolaji. African Traditional Religion: A Definition. Orbis Books, 1973.
Jahn, Janheinz. Muntu: An Outline of the New African Culture. Grove Press, 1961,
1994.
Long, Charles. Significations: Signs Symbols Images in Interpretation of Religion,
Davies, 2004.

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Prof. Theophus Thee Smith, Emory Univ. Religion Dept., Atlanta, GA | July 2014
Excursions in African Diaspora Spirituality and Aesthetics

Marks, Morton. Uncovering Ritual Structures in Afro-American Music. In Irving

Zaretsky and Mark P. Leone, eds., Religious Movements in Contemporary
America. Princeton, 1974.
Mbiti, John S. African Religions and Philosophy; 2nd ed., Heinemann, 1992.
McKenzie, Peter. Hail Orisha! Phenomenology of West African Religion in Mid-19 th
Cent. NY: Brill, 1997
Pinn, Anthony. Varieties of African American Religious Experience. Augsburg, 1998;
Cf. Pinn, The End of God-Talk: An African American Humanist Theology;
Oxford 2012.
Ray, Benjamin C. African Religions: Symbol, Ritual, and Community, 2nd ed. Pearson,
1999.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism is a Humanism (1945). Yale Univ. Press, 2007. Cf.
Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943; principal text of modern
existentialism). See also Sartres preface to the post-colonial manifesto by
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1968) and Fanons critique of
Sartres existentialism in Black Skin, White Masks (1952).
Smith, Theophus H. Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black America. Oxford,
1994.
Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and
Philosophy. Vintage, 1983/84.
West, Cornel. Prophesy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity.
WJK, 2002.
Wilmore, Gayraud S. Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the
Religious History of African Americans. Revised 3rd ed. Orbis Books, 1998.
Young, Josiah U. Black and African Theologies: Siblings or Distant Cousins?
Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1986; and Young, Pan-African Theology: Providence &
Legacies of the Ancestors. Africa World, 1992.