Insignificant Things

Amulets and the Art of Survival in the Early Black Atlantic

Matthew Francis Rarey (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

304 Seiten

2023
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4780-1715-8 (ISBN)

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In Insignificant Things Matthew Francis Rarey traces the history of the African-associated amulets that enslaved and other marginalized people carried as tools of survival in the Black Atlantic world from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Often considered visually benign by white Europeans, these amulet pouches, commonly known as “mandingas,” were used across Africa, Brazil, and Portugal and contained myriad objects, from herbs and Islamic prayers to shells and coins. Drawing on Arabic-language narratives from the West African Sahel, the archives of the Portuguese Inquisition, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European travel and merchant accounts of the West African Coast, and early nineteenth-century Brazilian police records, Rarey shows how mandingas functioned as portable archives of their makers’ experiences of enslavement, displacement, and diaspora. He presents them as examples of the visual culture of enslavement and critical to conceptualizing Black Atlantic art history. Ultimately, Rarey looks to the archives of transatlantic slavery, which were meant to erase Black life, for objects like the mandingas that were created to protect it.

Matthew Francis Rarey is Associate Professor of Art History at Oberlin College.

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. Significance, Survival, and Silence 1
1. Labels 31
2. Contents 72
3. Markings 124
4. Revolts 171
Epilogue 208
Notes 217
Works Cited 249
Index 275

Erscheinungsdatum	17.08.2022
Reihe/Serie	The Visual Arts of Africa and Its Diasporas
Zusatzinfo	78 illustrations
Verlagsort	North Carolina
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	544 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Kunstgeschichte / Kunststile
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	1-4780-1715-5 / 1478017155
ISBN-13	978-1-4780-1715-8 / 9781478017158
Zustand	Neuware