Between the Worlds of the Colonizer and the Conjure Woman

Whites Only

Worldmaking is, first and foremost, an undertaking of the imagination. It is the physical manifestation of the inherent, creative power that lies within us all. The world, in its current state, is nothing more than a violent, destructive aberration of the power of the human imagination—adapted to whiteness, and fed on unfettered power, unmitigated desire for control, and a mind acutely tuned to domination.

Xenophobia is this world's ideological foundation. Exceptionally and unequivocally violent means of subjugating and imposing definition upon the physical bodies and minds of the other, its apparatus. "The ways people knew their places in the world had to do with their bodies and the histories of those bodies, and when they violated the prescriptions for those places, their bodies were punished, often spectacularly. One's place in the body politic was as natural as the places of the organs in one's body, and political disorder [was] as unnatural as the shifting and displacement of those organs." African signaled deviant sexuality. Black bodies expanded the free labor force, disabled bodies were defined by limited capitalistic output, and women's bodies served procreative measures. In so defining, each body is marked. From this ideological standpoint, bodies were saddled with a purpose, robbed of humanity, and endangered by any and every audacious attempt to find freedom—self-defined by the individual and collective.¹ The other then, is biotechnology for the definition, construction, and perpetuation of this complex hegemony. Whereby the dystopian terra-forming enterprise of the colonizer—imperialism, colonialism, and the plantocracy—specifies life itself as landscape, with an ever present sign that boldly reads: whites only.

The "Man of Reason"²

The human experience is one of emotion and intuition, which creates a foundation for the "world-sense" of Indigenous and African cultures that "privilege senses other than the visual or even a combination of senses."³ The inclusivity of the term "world-sense" is contrasted by a Western "worldview," whereby the colonizer defines himself as the "man of reason." The imposition of the Western "worldview" is an apparatus of colonization. It strips people of a knowledge of themselves and the ways they understand and connect with the Earth, as well as each other. By supposed standards of morality, social constructionism, and biological essentialism those within the margins have been stripped of their humanity under the guiding and pervading logic of the colonizer.⁴,⁵ "Society then, is seen as an accurate reflection of genetic endowment—those with a superior biology inevitably are those in superior social positions."⁶

In opposition to the "man of reason," the conjure woman is animated genetic memory. She is an amalgamation of Africa and the Americas where critical theory and decolonized imagination converge to deploy African-based spirituality as a praxis of healing, resistance, and self-preservation in her queer world space. As more and more efforts are made to resist and deconstruct, she is the only one who remembers how to build the world that will take the place of what is destroyed. In her dissertation, Kameelah Martin noted, "A conjurer includes, but is certainly not limited to root workers, fortune tellers, midwives, herbalists, hoodoo doctors, voodoo queens, spiritual mediums, persons born with a caul, or second sight and others who are gifted with communication with the spirit world. The term conjure woman, then, works as an umbrella term for the various forms of healing and spiritual practices with expressly African derivations that appear in African American literature."⁷

Ancestral Liberation Theology

If the conjure woman is the antithesis of the colonizer, then an Indigenous/African-derived "world-sense" is a primary tool in her arsenal used for constructing a queer world space. Contrasting the ideological basis that girds imperialism, colonialism, and the plantocracy, Vodou (spirit or sacred energy)—and other African-derived creole religions of the Caribbean and Latin America—provides a praxis which aids the margins in the reimagining of the world.⁸

The Haitian Revolution exemplified a formula for freedom, integrating Vodou as a means to overthrow colonial rule. Concerted efforts were made...