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Johns Hopkins University | AS.060.116

Retaking Stolen Time: Conjure and Counternarratives in the Wake of Slavery

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What is conjure, and how has it been thought of historically? What can conjure narratives accomplish? And does anything particularly special happen when an author with investments in fixing or otherwise altering a history of dispossession and domination comes face to face with conjure? Conjure, in the broadest terms, can be understood as a set of Afro-diasporic spiritual practices in which significant objects, icons, gestures, and words (among other things) can refer to, and act on, people and situations in the broader world. But recent accounts of conjure tend to treat its practices and narratives as a sort of coping mechanism--a way of maintaining hope while in the clutches of enslavers, or a means of holding onto "Black Joy" while in the wake of white domination. While those ends are worthwhile in themselves, the underlying suggestion appears to be that conjure can *only* make subjection under regimes of racism and slavery more bearable for the participants, without realizing any practical effects outside of the minds of its believers. In this course, we will approach conjure and conjure narrative from a different perspective, tracing developments in three major authors' treatments of historical narrative as they become more and more invested in conjure traditions, and paying close attention to the relationship between time and narrative in their writing. Extended engagement with conjure folklore and with the works of Martin Delany, Zora Neale Hurston, Ishmael Reed, and Nnedi Okorafor will equip us to consider how the workings of conjure in Black counternarratives and speculative fiction respond to narratives of world history that privilege whiteness and justify Black suffering and dispossession.

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