The Echoes of Conjure in African American Christianity as Enfleshed Memory

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay explores Conjure, a magical tradition unique to the African American Diaspora in the United States. Conjure exemplifies the religio-ethical significance of what this essay names enfleshed memory: remembering and rearticulating sacred knowledge at the intersectional site of the human body. Enfleshed memory is integral to Conjure for healing and resistance as a dual means of survival among the African American diaspora to the present. Therefore, enfleshed memory is evaluated as a critical locus in which echoes of this magical tradition resound in contemporary African American Christianity. The origins and characteristics of Conjure are explored, with an emphasis on the role of enfleshed memory. Reverberations of Conjure are then identified in African American Christianity in the ethnohistorical and religious scholarship of LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant’s research on Gullah/Geechee women (2014). Finally, these echoes are elucidated in the terms of “microhistory” and “countermemory,” categories developed by womanist theo-ethicist Emilie M. Townes (2006).