Nat Turner and the Affective Power of Religious Fanaticism

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article draws on insights from scholarship on religion, race, and affect to understand the affective power of Nat Turner’s prophetic religion and critiques of Turner that dismissed him as a “fanatic.” It does so through a close reading of The Confessions of Nat Turner and an analysis of diverse newspaper and governmental reports responding to Turner’s religious narrative performance. It situates these sources within an antebellum affective economy in which Turner and his detractors sparred over the meaning and morality of the Southampton Rebellion. They did so through diverse appeals to powerful feelings, divine forces, and religious “truth.” The language of fanaticism was at the center of this sparring.