Rituals of Restorative Resistance: Healing Cultural Trauma and Cultural Amnesia through Cultural Anamnesis and Collective Memory

Abstract

Using a womanist auto-ethnographic approach, this essay presents an anamnestic remedy for healing cultural trauma and cultural amnesia within the African American community. The essay narrates the creation then infusion of rituals of restorative resistance into the liturgy of a traditional, urban black Baptist Church as a means of resistance, resilience, and restoration. By commemorating the sacrifices of Jesus and enslaved African ancestors in eucharist rituals that are enhanced with sacred songs, readings, and symbols, the liturgy expands the meaning of “Do This in Remembrance of Me” (1 Corinthians 11:24) to “Re-Member Me.” Drawing especially on work of Engelbert Mveng, Delores S. Williams, Barbara A. Holmes, Linda E. Thomas, and JoAnne Marie Terrell, and combining theology and anthropology, the essay describes a hermeneutic of healing within the community. It argues (1) that participation in enactment of rituals of restorative resistance decolonizes minds and deconstructs negative Western characterizations of black and brown bodies and (2) that ritualistic inversion and transformation of painful histories and traumatic stories into narratives and symbols of endurance and faith can re-invent, re-construct, and re-member individuals and communities into whole and healed entities.