Prologue and Acknowledgements
Introduction: Church, Spirit, and the History of Racial
Aesthetics
1. The Church and the Negro Spirit
2. Ancestral Spirits
3. Catholic Spirits
4. As the Spirit Moves
5. An International Spirit
6. That Spirit is Black
7. Contrary Spirits
Epilogue: You Can't Keep a Good Church Down!
Notes
Index
Josef Sorett is Associate Professor of Religion and African-American Studies at Columbia University, where he also directs the Center for African-American Religion, Sexual Politics and Social Justice.
"Perhaps the most important and powerful statement to date
concerning religion and literature in the African American
tradition. Indeed, at the risk of grandiosity, I think Sorett's may
be one of the most important recent works of African American
literary criticism and simultaneously one of the most significant
works in the field of religion and literature" -- The Cresset
"Given Sorett's interdisciplinary approach, his weaving together of
religious and literary studies in order to make visible the
influence (overflow) of the spirit in both sacred and secular
cultural forms, Spirit in the Dark will be useful for both scholars
of African American religion and African American literature, in
particular those focused on Black Modernism. Sorett's text
challenges us to move beyond singular and secularizing narratives
about
this literary period in order to see the full complexity of black
cultural forms and the rich contexts in which they were produced."
--Tisha Brooks, Papers on Language and Literature
"Spirit in the Dark is a richly textured and intellectually
sophisticated text that expands on the range and the nature of
Black religio-cultural and theological discourse in the US...
Sorett deserves all the plaudits he has received for creating such
an ambitious and highly intelligent and perceptive piece of work
that rewards careful attention and scholarly engagement." --
Anthony G. Reddie (The Methodist Church and University of South
Africa)
"Sorett s goal in Spirit in the Dark is to illuminate the
entanglements of religion and literature in 20th-century African
American history; he makes a strong and persuasive case for the
significance of religion to the language that black artists and
intellectuals used to talk about race. The book also offers new
ways of thinking about the history of secularism by identifying the
spirit of Afro-Protestantism embedded in black theories of
culture,
thereby challenging the notion that American secularism is a
uniform phenomenon. The concept of racial aesthetics offers a key
term for understanding how African Americans used the arts to
ponder the meaning of
blackness. In this way Spirit in the Dark does indeed offer a rich
set of tools for understanding the power of a work like Moonlight,
and should serve as a model for future work attending the long
history of the entanglement of religion and art in black
life."--Public Books
"Sorett unveils the contours of a literary history that remained
preoccupied with religion even as it was typically understood by
authors, readers, and critics alike to be modern and, therefore,
secular. Spirit in the Dark offers an account of the ways in which
religion, especially Afro-Protestantism, remained pivotal to the
ideas and aspirations of African American literature across much of
the twentieth century."--Reading Religion
"Spirit in the Dark is a finely honed compendium of black American
writers and the breadth of their religious influences. That black
intellectuals and artists were also sometimes dogmatic religious
adherents, eclectic spiritualists, and irrepressible agnostics is
not an unknown observation, but what these identifications meant
for modern black expressive culture has gone mostly unsaid. Until
now. A richly historical study, Spirit in the Dark
is a valuable resource indeed." --Maurice Wallace, English and
Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African
Studies, University of Virginia
"An exciting and innovative intervention that deftly melds African
American religious and cultural studies." --Barbara D. Savage,
author of Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black
Religion
"In this magisterial book, Josef Sorett takes us into those black
literary spaces that have heretofore been described as secular and
reveals how those who reside therein imagine the beautiful in light
of the religious. From the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Arts
Movement, Sorett pushes the boundaries of our understanding of the
workings of the 'spirit' and, in doing so, unsettles our
understanding of black religion and literature. This SPIRIT moves
in this
book. It is a must read!" --Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., William S. Tod
Professor of Religion and African American Studies, Princeton
University
"Even at their most assertively secular, black expressive arts over
the last century have riffed on Afro-Protestant church structures
that they in turn attenuate, revise, and sustain. In this
venturesome book Josef Sorett traces the 'celebratory ambivalence'
that animates and infuses African-American cultural production from
the Great Migration to the present. Spirit in the Dark is the best
single-volume work I know of on the arts and fictions of
Afro-Protestant modernity." --Tracy Fessenden, author of Culture
and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature
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