Cuban Literature in the Age of Black
Insurrection: Manzano, Plácido, and Afro-Latino Religion, 12/16/2019, by
Matthew Pettway, to be released 12/2019. See the YouTube lecture below for
a good intro.
Juan Francisco Manzano and Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés
(Plácido) were perhaps the most important and innovative Cuban writers
of African descent during the Spanish colonial era. Both
nineteenth-century authors used Catholicism as a symbolic language for
African-inspired spirituality. Likewise, Plácido and Manzano subverted
the popular imagery of neoclassicism and Romanticism in order to
envision black freedom in the tradition of the Haitian Revolution.
Plácido and Manzano envisioned emancipation through the lens of
African spirituality, a transformative moment in the history of Cuban
letters. Matthew Pettway examines how the portrayal of African ideas
of spirit and cosmos in otherwise conventional texts recur throughout
early Cuban literature and became the basis for Manzano and Plácido’s
antislavery philosophy. The portrayal of African-Atlantic religious
ideas spurned the elite rationale that literature ought to be a
barometer of highbrow cultural progress.
Cuban debates about freedom and selfhood were never the exclusive
domain of the white Creole elite. Pettway’s emphasis on
African-inspired spirituality as a source of knowledge and a means to
sacred authority for black Cuban writers deepens our understanding of
Manzano and Plácido not as mere imitators but as aesthetic and
political pioneers. As Pettway suggests, black Latin American authors
did not abandon their African religious heritage to assimilate
wholesale to the Catholic Church. By recognizing the wisdom of African
ancestors, they procured power in the struggle for black liberation.
In Search of My Brother: The Ghosts of Slavery in Black Colonial
Cuba
LECTURE by Matthew Pettway
Cuban
Literature in the Age of Black Insurrection: Manzano, Plácido, and Afro-Latino
Religion 8/28/2019 Politics and Prose: "Plácido and Manzano envisioned
emancipation through the lens of African spirituality, a transformative moment
in the history of Cuban letters. Matthew Pettway examines how the portrayal of
African ideas of spirit and cosmos in otherwise conventional texts recur
throughout early Cuban literature and became the basis for Manzano and Plácido's
antislavery philosophy. The portrayal of African-Atlantic religious ideas
spurned the elite rationale that literature ought to be a barometer of highbrow
cultural progress."
Revolutionizing Cultural Activism in Cuba-A Lecture by Roberto Zurbano 5/18/2018 Dr.
Mathew Pettway, YouTube: "Roberto Zurbano addressed the efficacy of black
cultural activism in Cuba; the promise of the Black Lives Matter movement in the
racially charged U.S. political environment; and the recent rapprochement
between Washington and Havana, and its possible effects on the island's racial
dynamics."
RACE AND THE AFTERLIFE OF SLAVERY IN CUBA | A lecture by Matthew Pettway 2/20/2018 Halsey
Institute: "In this talk, Dr. Matthew Pettway will explore how nearly four
hundred years of Spanish colonialism and African enslavement invented the myth
of white supremacy and nurtured the creation of another fiction, black
inhumanity. The emphasis of his talk will be to define the power of antiracist
thinking and to look toward the philosophical contributions of the formerly
enslaved (and their descendants) in an effort to build a society based on
democratic praxis. Dr. Pettway’s talk will provide context for the exhibition
Roberto Diago: La historia recordada."
The Altar, the Oath, and the Body of Christ 11/30/2015 Black Writing,
Culture and the State in Latin America: "In the shadow of the Haitian Revolution
(1791–1804), free and enslaved persons of African descent organized a series of
insurrections designed to abolish slavery, depose the Spanish military
government, and boldly institute a new republic of blacks and mulattoes on the
island of Cuba. Government interrogations confirmed that the chief conspirators
had initiated their plans in 1841 (Paquette 263–65) and subsequently concealed
the plot by compelling would-be rebels to swear unconditional allegiance to give
up their lives before revealing anything to their white enemies. To this end,
loyalty oaths were a pervasive means to effectively organize anti-slavery
revolts, maintain secrecy, and assure unity among insurgents."
Black Femininity and the Silence of Domestic Space in “The Cemetery on the Sugar
Plantation” by José del Carmen Díaz 9/1/2013 Zora Neal Hurston
Forum: "Critics have scarcely researched nineteenth-century Afro-Cuban writers,
with the exception of Juan Francisco Manzano and Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés
(also known by the pseudonym Plácido). Among the other poets, playwrights,
journalists and storytellers whose names we know, the work of José del Carmen
Díaz, an obscure enslaved poet from Güines emerges. In the fifth edition of
Poetas de color (1887), Francisco Calcagno includes a biographical and literary
sketch of José del Carmen Díaz. Although the book is primarily concerned with
Manzano and Plácido–whose work Calcagno discusses at length–some attention is
paid to lesser-known black poets."
Matthew
Pettway