Obeah, Orisa, and religious identity in Trinidad. : Africans in the white colonial imagination / / Volume I, : Obeah : / Tracey E. Hucks.

• Superior document: Religious cultures of African and African diaspora people
• VerfasserIn: Hucks, Tracey E., 1965-
• Place / Publishing House: Durham : : Duke University Press,, 2022.
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Religious cultures of African and African diaspora people.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (xviii, 262 pages) :; illustrations, maps

"Obeah, Orisa, and Religious Identity in Trinidad is an expansive two-volume examination of social imaginaries concerning Obeah and Yoruba-Orisa from colonialism to the present. Analyzing their entangled histories and systems of devotion, Tracey E. Hucks and Dianne M. Stewart articulate how these religions were criminalized during slavery and colonialism yet still demonstrated autonomous modes of expression and self-defense. In Volume I, Obeah, Hucks traces the history of African religious repression in colonial Trinidad through the late nineteenth century. Drawing on sources ranging from colonial records, laws, and legal transcripts to travel diaries, literary fiction, and written correspondence, she documents the persecution and violent penalization of African religious practices encoded under the legal classification of "Obeah." A cult of antiblack fixation emerged as white settlers defined themselves in opposition to Obeah, which they imagined as terrifying African witchcraft. These preoccupations revealed the fears that bound whites to one another. At the same time, persons accused of obeah sought legal vindication and marshaled their own spiritual and medicinal technologies to fortify the cultural heritages, religious identities, and life systems of African-diasporic communities in Trinidad."-- Provided by publisher.

Table of Contents

The formation of a slave colony: race, nation, and identity -- Obeah trials and social cannibalism in Trinidad's early slave -- society -- Obeah, piety, and poison in the slave son: representations of African religions in Trinidadian colonial literature -- Marked in the genuine African way: liberated Africans and Obeah doctoring in post-slavery Trinidad -- C'est vrai -- It is true.