When the Devil Knocks: The Congo Tradition and the Politics of Blackness in Twentieth-Century Panama (Black Performance and Cultural Criticism) - Hardcover

Craft, Rene Alexander

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814212700 ISBN 13: 9780814212707

Publisher: Ohio State Univ Pr, 2015

Synopsis

Despite its long history of encounters with colonialism, slavery, and neocolonialism, Panama continues to be an under-researched site of African Diaspora identity, culture, and performance. To address this void, Renée Alexander Craft examines an Afro-Latin Carnival performance tradition called “Congo” as it is enacted in the town of Portobelo, Panama—the nexus of trade in the Spanish colonial world. In When the Devil Knocks: The Congo Tradition and the Politics of Blackness in Twentieth-Century Panama, Alexander Craft draws on over a decade of critical ethnographic research to argue that Congo traditions tell the story of cimarronaje, charting self-liberated Africans’ triumph over enslavement, their parody of the Spanish Crown and Catholic Church, their central values of communalism and self-determination, and their hard-won victories toward national inclusion and belonging.When the Devil Knocks analyzes the Congo tradition as a dynamic cultural, ritual, and identity performance that tells an important story about a Black cultural past while continuing to create itself in a Black cultural present. This book examines “Congo” within the history of twentieth century Panamanian etnia negra culture, politics, and representation, including its circulation within the political economy of contemporary tourism.

About this title

About the Author

Renée Alexander Craft is assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies and Curriculum in Global Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ohio State Univ Pr
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0814212700
• ISBN 13: 9780814212707
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240