Strategic Acts in the Study of Identity - Towards a Dynamic Theory of People and Place - Vaia Touna

Strategic Acts in the Study of Identity - Towards a Dynamic Theory of People and Place - Vaia Touna

4. Strategizing Subjectivity: Creolization and Intentionality in Studies of Caribbean Religions

Strategic Acts in the Study of Identity - Towards a Dynamic Theory of People and Place - Vaia Touna

K. Merinda Simmons [+-]
University of Alabama
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K. Merinda Simmons is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Graduate Director of the Religion in Culture MA Program at the University of Alabama. Her books include Changing the Subject: Writing Women across the African Diaspora (Ohio State UP, 2014), The Trouble with Post-Blackness (co-edited with Houston A. Baker, Jr., Columbia UP, 2015), and Race and New Modernisms (co-authored with James A. Crank, Bloomsbury, 2019). She is editor of the book series Concepts in the Study of Religion: Critical Primers (Equinox).

Description

This chapter looks at academic discourses on hybridity and creolization in the context of Caribbean religious traditions. A major emphasis in these discourses is the perceived strategic and subversive patterning of hybrid belief systems by slaves in the Caribbean under Christian colonial rule. Using the text Creole Religions of the Caribbean: An Introduction from Vodou and Santería to Obeah and Espiritismo, by Margarite Fernández Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, as a point of departure, I argue for scholarly consideration of the implications of the articulated impulses of projects like this, projects that are prevalent in academic discussions of identity and migration within African diasporas.

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Citation

Simmons, K. Merinda. 4. Strategizing Subjectivity: Creolization and Intentionality in Studies of Caribbean Religions. Strategic Acts in the Study of Identity - Towards a Dynamic Theory of People and Place. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 73-95 Jan 2019. ISBN 9781781790731. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=23802. Date accessed: 29 Mar 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.23802. Jan 2019

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