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E-book
Author Rarey, Matthew Francis, author.

Title Insignificant things : amulets and the art of survival in the early Black Atlantic / Matthew Francis Rarey
Published Durham : Duke University Press, 2023

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Description 1 online resource (xiii, 288 pages) : illustrations, maps
Series The visual arts of Africa and its diasporas
Visual arts of Africa and its diasporas.
Contents Introduction: Significance, survival, and silence -- Labels -- Contents -- Markings -- Revolts
Summary "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"-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Online resource; title from PDF title page (JSTOR platform, viewed November 27, 2023)
Subject Amulets -- Africa -- History
Art objects, African -- History
Ceremonial objects -- Africa -- History -- Sources
Black people -- Material culture -- Atlantic Ocean Region
Material culture -- Africa -- History -- Sources
Material culture -- Atlantic Ocean Region -- History -- Sources
African diaspora.
ART / History / General.
ART / African.
Material culture
Ceremonial objects
African diaspora
Amulets
Art objects, African
Africa
Atlantic Ocean Region
Genre/Form Sources
History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2022043194
ISBN 1478024429
9781478024422