She Come Like a Nightmare: Hags, Witches and the Gendered Trans-Sense among the Enslaved in the Lower South
In the historiography of slave culture and folk beliefs in the U.S. South, the hag of African American lore has generally been more closely allied with Western European lineages than West African antecedents. Using the cultures of the upper Guinea coast in addition to Western European witchcraft dis...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
The Pennsylvania State University Press
[2017]
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| In: |
Journal of Africana religions
Year: 2017, Volume: 5, Issue: 2, Pages: 239-274 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Südstaaten, USA
/ Slave
/ Witch
/ Popular belief
/ Rise of
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| RelBib Classification: | AE Psychology of religion AG Religious life; material religion BB Indigenous religions KBQ North America NBE Anthropology NBH Angelology; demonology TJ Modern history |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | In the historiography of slave culture and folk beliefs in the U.S. South, the hag of African American lore has generally been more closely allied with Western European lineages than West African antecedents. Using the cultures of the upper Guinea coast in addition to Western European witchcraft discourses as interpretive contexts, this article argues that enslaved people infused the English term hag with beliefs about female-embodied, trans-sense power adapted from West African cosmological frameworks but indigenous to enslaved communities in the U.S. South. Moreover, among the enslaved, beliefs regarding the hag did not function as a sanction against socially deviant women as in the West African and European American contexts, but rather attested to the sociological importance of women in enslaved communities in the Lower South. |
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| ISSN: | 2165-5413 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of Africana religions
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.5325/jafrireli.5.2.0239 |