Howard Thurman, Body Memories, and the Power of the Vignette

Abstract

Howard Thurman is attuned to bodies under threat. In this article, I argue that his use of vignettes offers a distinctive rhetorical strategy for addressing collective trauma. Through closely examining “The Third Component,” a sermon preached in 1958, I display his distinctive contribution to working with traumatic memories. In relying on a third memory—a memory of communing in the Presence of total regard—he connects religious experience to the somatic efforts to heal bodies from trauma. I make the case that, for Thurman, the work of racial justice depends on spiritual practices to hone attention and enable the awareness necessary for the work.