RELIGIÃO E POLÍTICAS DE IDENTIDADE: A FIGURA DO CONJURADOR EM THE CONJURE WOMAN, DE CHARLES W. CHESTNUTT

Resumo

This essay purposes to examine the representation of conjurers and conjuring in the fictional world of The Conjure Woman, a collection of short stories published in 1899 by the African-American writer Charles W. Chesnutt. Through the analysis of four representative narratives – “Mars Jeems’s Nightmare”, “Po’ Sandy”, “Sis’ Becky’s Pickanini” and “The goophered grapevine” –, it argues that the spiritual interventions on the part of the conjurers constituted, above all, instances of political and cultural resistance, for they aimed at preventing the reification and historical erasure of the black subject, in face of the Euro-American colonizing enterprise. The narratives also attempt to counteract reductionist representations of the black subject by painting a more holistic and complex picture of the black experience in the United States. Insights from the field of cultural and literary criticism, as well as religious studies, form the theoretical basis of the essay. The overall purpose is to show Chesnutt’s efforts in confronting the literary and cultural trends of his time, which insisted on depicting blacks either as subservient, happy with their fate, or as individuals lacking culture, intelligence, religion and history.