The Gut
A Black Atlantic Alimentary Tract

This Element traces gut feelings in Black Atlantic traditions to religious ancestors' strong stomachs and intestinal fortitude.

Elizabeth Pérez (Author)

9781009013475, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 5 January 2023

84 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 0.5 cm, 0.14 kg

'Pérez's monograph is a succinct study focused on the 'gastrointestinal tract as a privileged experiential zone' in Black Atlantic Religions. Pérez foregrounds the significance of human digestive anatomy across time, place, and Black Atlantic traditions through brief yet generative analyses of rituals, songs, proverbs, and African cosmological principles. The book's seemingly narrow theme invites us into the depths of the important relationship between human and animal physiology within Black Atlantic traditions. Pérez persuasively conceptualizes the elongated path that connects the mouth, throat, stomach, and intestines as a track/tract as a site to theorize the imbrication of race, religion, and wellness (spiritual and physical).' K. B. Dennis-Meade, Material Religion

If the head is religion, the gut is magic. Taking up this provocation, this Element delves into the digestive system within transnational Afro-Diasporic religions such as Haitian Vodou, Brazilian Candomblé, and Cuban Lucumí (also called Santería). It draws from the ethnographic and archival record to probe the abdomen as a vital zone of sensory perception, amplified in countless divination verses, myths, rituals, and recipes for ethnomedical remedies. Provincializing the brain as only one locus of reason, it seeks to expand the notion of 'mind' and expose the anti-Blackness that still prevents Black Atlantic knowledges from being accepted as such. The Element examines gut feelings, knowledge, and beings in the belly; African precedents for the Afro-Diasporic gut-brain axis; post-sacrificial offerings in racist fantasy and everyday reality; and the strong stomachs and intestinal fortitude of religious ancestors. It concludes with a reflection on kinship and the spilling of guts in kitchenspaces.

1. Gut feelings
2. Gut beings
3. Gut history
4. Gut delicacy
5. Strong stomachs 6. Intestinal fortitude
7. Spilling (your) guts
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Mysticism, magic & ritual [VXW], Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Folklore, myths & legends [JFHF]