Domingos Alvares, African Healing, And The Intellectual History Of The Atlantic World

Synopsis

Between 1730 and 1750, Domingos Alvares traversed the colonial Atlantic world like few Africans of his time--from Africa to South America to Europe. By tracing the steps of this powerful African healer and vodun priest, James Sweet finds dramatic means for unfolding a history of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world in which healing, religion, kinship, and political subversion were intimately connected. Alvares treated many people across the Atlantic, yet healing was rarely a simple matter of remedying illness and disease. Through the language of health and healing, Alvares also addressed the profound alienation of warfare, capitalism, and the African slave trade. As a result, he and other African healers frequently ran afoul of imperial power brokers. Nevertheless, even the powerful suffered isolation in the Atlantic world and often turned to African healers for answers. In this way, healers simultaneously became fierce critics of Atlantic imperialism and expert translators of it, adapting their therapeutic strategies in order to secure social relevance and even power. By tracing Alvares' frequent uprooting and border crossing, Sweet illuminates how African healing practices evolved in the diaspora, contesting the social and political hierarchies of imperialism while also making profound impacts on the intellectual discourse of the "modern" Atlantic world.

Copyright:

2011

Book Details

Book Quality:

Excellent

Book Size:

300 Pages

ISBN-13:

9781469609751

Publisher:

University of North Carolina Press

Date of Addition:

09/30/13

Copyrighted By:

University of North Carolina Press

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Biographies and Memoirs, Health, Mind and Body, Religion and Spirituality, Social Studies, Medicine

Submitted By:

Daproim Africa

Proofread By:

Daproim Africa

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.