The Department of African American Studies
J. Kameron Carter
Professor, Religious Studies, Indiana University Bloomington
“Scripturalizing, Whiteness; or, U.S. Political Theology”
Friday, March 10, 2023
2:00 – 3:30pm
HIB 135
(Masks encouraged)
Abstract: Distilling parts of my book-in-progress, The Religion of Whiteness: An Apocalyptic Lyric, this talk reads David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829) for its insight into a central protocol of the United States and the authoritarianism of the present. Borrowing from scholar of religion Vincent Wimbush, I name that protocol scripturalization (cultural formations around “sacred languages”) and scripturalectics (the management of those cultures through the management of meaning). Taking on U.S. founding father Thomas Jefferson, Walker exposes whiteness (related to but not wholly identical with white people) as a scripturalizing political theology. That is, he exposes whiteness as practices of (settler) statecraft or governance organized around “scriptures” (from the Bible to U.S. law, including the U.S. Constitution) for the racial-colonial management of meaning. I will conclude with all-too-brief comments, inspired by such artists as Toni Morrison, M. NourbeSe Philip, and Wanchegi Mutu, on the fugitive arts of black faith from (within) settler colonial scripturalization. The unseizable interiority found in the arts of black endurance is another way of beginning to speak of the spirituality of the black radical tradition.
Full Schedule of Candidate Talks for the African American Studies Full Professor Search:
joão vargas
Mar 6 10:30am-12:00pm Lecture, HG 1010: “Abolish this World: Antiblackness and the Imperative of Invention”
J. Kameron Carter
Mar 10 2:00-3:30 pm Lecture, HIB 135: "Scripturalizing, Whiteness; or, U.S. Political Theology"
Jeffrey Stewart
Mar 15 11:00am-12:30pm Lecture, HIB 135
RA Judy
Mar 21 3:00-4:00pm Lecture, HG 1010