Local author Katharine Gerbner will be joining us in the shop from 5:30-6:30 pm on Friday, December 19th to introduce her book Archival Interruptions: Constructing Religion and Criminalizing Obeah in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica, followed by a Q&A and book signing with refreshments
About the Book
In 1760, following the largest slave revolt in the eighteenth-century British Empire, the Afro-Caribbean word Obeah first appeared in British colonial law. In Archival Irruptions, Katharine Gerbner traces how British authorities in Jamaica came to criminalize Obeah, a practice that was variously seen as a healing method, an Africana religion, a science, and a form of witchcraft. Gerbner shows that in the years directly preceding its criminalization, for enslaved Africans and Maroons, Obeah was a prophetic practice tied to healing and death rites. Drawing on Moravian missionary archives, Gerbner theorizes these descriptions of African religious beliefs, rituals, and concepts as “irruptions”: moments when Africana epistemologies break the narrative of a European-authored archival document. In these irruptions, we see European assertions of authority through the lens of Obeah. Moreover, we find that the modern category of religion is rooted in the histories of slavery, rebellion, and the criminalization of Black religious practices. Gerbner’s search for archival irruptions not only creates an opportunity to write an alternative narration about Obeah; it provides a new methodology for all those conducting archival research.
About the Author
Katharine Gerbner is a historian who examines how religion shapes – and is shaped by – race, politics, and technology. She examines religious practices that have been excluded from traditional definitions of religion and develops multilingual archival strategies to uncover stories that have been marginalized or forgotten. She is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Religious Studies Program at the University of Minnesota.