Ishmael Reed

Throughout his literary career, African American novelist Ishmael Reed has shown constant concern for historical issues and for their expression through reflexive narratives. This blend of the historical and the aesthetic is one of the many amalgamations that are achieved in his texts. In terms of both form and ideology his work is characterized by syncretism. In form, all novels he has published to date overstep the boundaries among genres, as well as the gulf between academic and popular culture; in ideology, Reed supports multiculturalism as an expression of the plurality that constitutes US society. This essay explores how Reed's novels seek to produce a narrative hybrid that blends fiction and reality, satire and mysticism, the mass media and the AfrÍcan and Western literary traditions.

The late Antique mosaic of Orpheus decorated a small room, approximately 18 m2 in area, connected with two even smaller ones, in 4 m2 and the other 2 m2 in area, belonging most likely to a small funerary chapel (or tomb) discovered in the ancient necropolis by the Damascene Gate in Jerusalem; it was discovered in 1901 by H. Vincent.
The author proposes a new interpretation of the iconographic program of the Orpheus myth used by wealthy Christians in a sepulchral context (see Olszewski M.T. «Orphée endeuillé de la mosaïque funéraire de Jérusalem», in Rey Mimoso-Ruiz, B. ed., Actes du colloque «Orphée entre Soleil et ombre», à l’Institut Catholique de Toulouse du 16 au 17 novembre 2007, Inter Lignes, numéros spécial – mars 2008, pp. 205-214, 226). He also proposes a new interpretation of the role Orpheus played in Roman funerary art, concentrating on the importance of the play on words and the visual and textual punning that was popular in ancient art and especially in funerary art. He rejects the popular interpretation of Orpheus as Christ in the Roman catacombs and proposes to interpret the image as that of Orpheus, bard of the departed souls, without any ahistorical connection with Christ. The program of the mosaic from Jerusalem is thus explained as a play on the words Orpheus-orphanos and Chiron (Chi-Rho) and Pan [Παν(τοκράτωρ)].The frequently used Christian funerary formula of resting in peace, Christ or the Lord corresponds
perfectly with the mood created around the mythical bard.
Orpheus’ universal role as singer and musician moving even the most stony of hearts, extolling the beloved departed, is absolutely justified in the context of a 6th-century Christian tomb. Orpheus is a popular and neutral figure, meaning that in effect it does not constitute a threat to Christian theology and can be tolerated by the educated Christians of Jerusalem.

The authors suggest to view the origins of Islam against the background of the 6th century AD Arabian socio-ecological crisis whose model is specified in the paper through the study of cli-matological, seismological, volcanological and epidemiological history of the period. Most so-cio-political systems of the Arabs reacted to the socio-ecological crisis by getting rid of the rig-id supra-tribal political structures (kingdoms and chiefdoms) which started posing a real threat to their very survival. The decades of fighting which led to the destruction of the most of the Arabian kingdoms and chiefdoms (reflected in Ayyam al-Arab tradition) led to the elaboration of some definite "anti-royal" freedom-loving tribal ethos. At the beginning of the 7th century a tribe which would recognize themselves as subjects of some terrestrial super-tribal political au-thority, a "king", risked to lose its honour. However, this seems not to be applicable to the au-thority of another type, the "celestial" one. At the meantime the early 7th century evidences the merging of the Arabian tradition of prophecy and the Arabian Monotheist "Rahmanist" tradi-tion which produced "the Arabian prophetic movement". The Monotheist "Rahmanist" proph-ets appear to have represented a supratribal authority just of the type many Arab tribes were looking for at this very time, which seems to explain to a certain extent those prophets' politi-cal success (including the extreme political success of Muhammad).

Jacob’s vision of a ladder to heaven is one of those enigmatic Scriptural passages which has puzzled the keen intellects of many Bible scholars down through the ages, for well-known Christian commentators such as Matthew Henry and Adam Clarke have stabbed at its meaning realizing it has something to do with the Person of Jesus the Messiah and his heaven-ordained ministry to reconcile earth’s inhabitants to their Heavenly Father and Creator , but others as  Keil and Delitzsch don’t even connect this dream to the Person of Jesus .
But while we have a look at what the Christian Biblical scholars have said, we've also to see what the best of rabbinic Judaism has to offer us by way of explanation of Jacob’s dream.

Dear Friends,

My first, new book, "Cracking the Qur'an Code: God's Land, Torah and People Covenants with Israel in the Qur'an and Islamic Traditon" - 2011 Second Edition

1) Reveals how the Qur'an and Islamic Tradition affirm God's Land, Torah and People Covenants with Israel.

2) Is written in honor and based on the teachings of Dr. Asher Eder z"l (of blessed memory) of Jerusalem, Israel and Zionist Former Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi of Rome, Italy.  Dr. Eder and Sheikh Palazzi served as Jewish and Muslim Co-Founders and Co-Chairmen of the Islam-Israel Fellowship (established 1997) of the Root and Branch Association, Ltd. (established 1981).

3) Helps make the world more aware of Muslims, and Muslim majority nations, who are pro-American, pro-Israel, pro-Jewish and pro-Zionist, and who respect Jews and Christians as what the Qur'an calls "People of the Book", and who respect good people of all religions.

Shalom from Jerusalem, ISRAEL,

Mr. Lowell Joseph Gallin

In addition to reading my book and/or downloading FOR FREE, you are also welcome to PLEASE PAY WHAT YOU LIKE FOR "CRACKING THE QUR'AN CODE" VIA PAY PAL (Suggested Retail Price $19.95) AND SUPPORT LOWELL'S WORK:
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Mein Aufsatz im vorigen Inärah-Band war ein Versuch, anhand der Schriften-und Sprachverbreitung im römisch-byzantischen Vorderen Orient (einschließlich Arabiens) zu zeigen, dass der Koran in arabischer Schrift und Sprache nicht in der Gegend von Mekka/Medina hätte entstehen kön-n~n. D~r epigraph ische Kenntnisstand von heute widerspricht dieser herkommhchen Auffassu~g eindeutig. Vielmehr muss man gen Syrien schauen, etw~ zu den Ghassamden bzw. Lakhmiden oder den Nachfahren der deportierten Araber im Umkreis"von Merw, wo diese arabische Sprache gesprochen wurde und wo der Ubergang von einer aramäischen zur arabischen Schrift vollzogen wurde. Wenn man diese Argumente, wie und wo d~r Koran verschriftet wurde, betrachtet, dann wird vieles auch am Inhalt dieses Buches einfacher zu verstehen sein. Das Thema des folgenden Bei-Ich möchte mich an dieser Stelle bei Herrn Prof. Ohlig für seine Geduld und für da~ Verbessern der deutschen Fassung bedanken. Auch gilt mein Dank Herrn T. Mllo (Amsterdam) für seine typographische Hilfe und Herrn Prof. Groß für

Postmodernismo y metaficción historiográfica" examina la problemática combinación de autorreferencialidad literaria y revisionismo histórico en varias novelas producidas en Hispanoamérica y los Estados Unidos durante la primera mitad de los años setenta.

Throughout most of the Latin middle ages, “Saracen” (Saracenus, Sarracenus, Sarrasin, etc.) is the standard term used by most Latin authors to refer to Muslims. By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it has clearly religious overtones: Islam is referred to as “lex Sarraceni” or “lex Mahometi”, terms which are used more or less interchangeably. Yet “Saracenus” was originally a term used by Greek and Roman geographical/ethnographical writers to refer to certain peoples of the Arabian peninsula. The medieval image of “Saracens” in fact is a fusion of two traditions: biblical discourse on the “Ishmaelites”, descendants of Abraham’s illegitimate eldest son, and Roman discourse on marauding “Scenitae” or “Sarraceni” of the Arabian peninsula. This fusion is made well before the rise of Islam: we find it in Jerome. This talk will concentrate on the image of the Saracen/Ishmaelite in three Latin authors: Jerome, Isidore and Bede. We will see that the image of fierce Saracens found in Jerome is still quite operative in Bede and that the rise of Islam has not fundamentally altered it.

Lam offers a reevaluation of the relationship between magical realism and postmodernism, revealing the stakes of these categories for African American literature. Focusing on the novels of Ishmael Reed, this chapter demonstrates how postmodern frameworks tend to elide the political and decolonial ramifications of Reed’s fiction. Lam analyzes how Reed uses tropes such as black magic, hoodoo, Voodoo, and conjure in order to develop a syncretic and satirical aesthetic that exposes the metaphysical, ontological, and structural violence that has plagued the West’s ‘others.’ The chapter focuses on Reed’s novels Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down and Mumbo Jumbo, and also considers Reed’s editorial work, which encompasses the Black Arts Movement and black avant-garde poetry and poetics. The chapter closes with a consideration of Reed’s contemporary fiction and drama, including Conjugating Hindi and his criticisms of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton: An American Musical, in order to assess Reed’s political potential in the twenty-first century.

This is the front matter for an anthology I edited for Greenhaven Press that was published in 2001 and is, as far as I know, now out of print (though copies are still floating around on various used-book websites). What is included here is the front matter that I wrote as well as the table of contents for the excepted pieces that I anthologized within the book.

"This paper results from the reassement of all the verses in the Koran mentioning the word water, as well as of those showing a terminological or conceptual relationship with this element, though not referring to it explicitly. Of the main fields of ritual, eschatology and cosmogony which convey an interest in water, our major concern will be the third one. Dealing with these crucial Islamic aspects from the point of view of cosmogony requires the research of the presence of water at the beginning of Creation and its relationship with God, its role in the origin of life and animals, as well as in human beginnings.

KEYWORDS: Islam, Koran, cosmogony, water, Creation

RESUMEN
El artículo es el resultado de una  revisión de todos los pasajes del Corán en los que aparece la palabra agua así como de los principales pasajes que tienen relación terminológica o conceptual con el agua aunque no utilicen esa misma palabra.  De los tres ámbitos que resultan de dicha revisión (ritual, escatología y cosmogonía),  el de mayor trascendencia y alcance simbólico e ideológico es el tercero, por lo que es el objetivo específico del artículo. Se abordan los principales aspectos de la cosmogonía islámica del agua: desde la presencia del agua en el inicio de la creación y su relación con Dios, hasta su papel en el origen del hombre pasando por su función en el origen de la vida y la creación de los animales.

PALABRAS CLAVE: islam, Corán, cosmogonía, agua, Creación"

This essay explores the paradoxes of both Latin American Boom authors’ and U.S. American writers’ penchant for writing what came to be known as “total” novels by looking at two texts that are representative of the postmodern fiction produced in the 1970s: Carlos Fuentes’s Terra Nostra (1974) and Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo (1972). By analyzing one of the most influential late-Boom novels (Terra Nostra) in the context of contemporary historical fiction, students will be able to understand the impact of the Boom beyond its Latin American borders and in connection with other literary traditions. Although the focus of the essay will be on reading the postmodern writers from an inter-American perspective, it will address issues that will be relevant to other pedagogical approaches as well: How does the Latin American Boom relate to the current postmodernism debate? What is its relationship with other subaltern traditions? How have the Boom novels impacted our concepts of history and myth? How can they be perceived from a transnational perspective?

Keywords: postmodernism, comparative literature, inter-American fiction, total novel, history, myth, pedagogy of literature.

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In one trajectory of African American literature, which takes us from Harriet Jacobs in the attic to Ellison’s Invisible Man and Morrison’s spectral narrator in Jazz, black subjectivity becomes narratologically, rather than transcendentally, dematerialized or invisible. Most characters in this lineage speak from an invisible position in society rather than Nature. As a narrator, Jacobs symbolically hides in plain sight, yet remains socially invisible because of her subject position. But Ishmael Reed, always a hyper-presence, is not concerned with social or transcendental invisibility in the ways some other African American writers have been, but with taking down transcendental history. Instead of transcendental meditation, Reed reassesses how and why transcendental ontologies are racialized. Yet he also advances a fundamentally transcendental theory of aesthetic and ontological blackness.
For Reed, writing in the late twentieth-century, the real HooDoo of pantheism lies behind imitative white transcendentalism. In his satirical reprisal of the American Renaissance, Flight to Canada, Reed proposes that a violent, culturally impoverished white society uses Afri¬can iconography to prop up the empty shell of American transcen¬dentalism. In their divergent Afrocentrisms, Reed and Charles Johnson revise the history of slavery in America by reclaiming pantheism as an appropriated aspect of African American culture. They resituate the black male transcendentalist in the guise of Emerson’s individualistic rogue, but also resuscitate his reliance on an overriding dispossessive Nature. Contemporary African American writers such as Reed and Johnson return to the period, images and tropes of the American Renaissance not only to address slavery, but to recontextualize the origins of American transcendentalism and Romanticism as at least partly non-white and non-Western.
I argued in my first chapter that the rhetoric formulating an entire ontology based on transcendental Nature, and the racial codings on which it relies, begins with the appropriation of “aboriginal” pantheism from African and Native-American sources. Africans and Native-Americans were once allegedly in harmony with their surroundings, a condition white pantheists tried but failed to emulate, as reflected in their discourse of haunted animation, and their sense of alienation, exile or “dismemberment” from Nature. As Reed suggests in Flight to Canada, whites now try to teach aboriginal people “to appreciate nature poetry[,] when [their] people were one with the bear and the fish and the mountains and the waters” (143,165). That primordial or aboriginal view of Nature is animistic or pantheistic—that is, it imagines the world itself as alive. But in this sense, the attributes of transcendental Nature also reify American racial politics. Slavery, in which men are treated as things, makes the pantheistic exchange of the animate (or human) and inanimate or (inhuman) inevitable in American economies of representation; the transcendentalism that seeks to erase the boundaries between man and “the lower forms” of Nature can wind up being at least discursively complicit with the slavery that treats blacks as members of a primitive species and (in)animated objects.
A novel about constructing a future black aesthetic, Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo uses nineteenth-century American pantheism—and, for example, both Stowe’s and Emerson’s versions of Topsy, black Nature, or a self-growing Pan—as its most immediate epistemological source. Reed seems unable to decide whether to be Pan-African or Pan-American, an opposition he creates for himself at many turns. Trying to be a self-created writer, in imitation of his “self-propagating” Jes Grew, while simultaneously trying to acknowledge at least his black sources, Reed winds up better at satirizing than creating. In order to accommodate his vision of Jes Grew, Reed is forced to prophesy on the basis of his own prefabricated cosmology, while simultaneously pledging allegiance to an alleged history. For Reed, all history is not simply retrospective, but retroactive. In the end, Reed appropriates American Renaissance tropes to critique the modernist co-optation of the Harlem Renaissance. As a result, Reed seems unable to determine, in the context of his metanarrative framework, whether the Harlem Renaissance is a parody of the American Renaissance or vice versa, and to which he should pledge his artistic birthright. Jes Grew erases almost anything resembling empirical history or heritage in favor of archetypal, mythic and even Freudian narrative; in Mumbo Jumbo, metaphysics becomes metafiction. Though comic, Reed’s myth of origins also has tragic implications. One of the greatest ironies is that Reed seems to decide he wants to outdo transcendentalists at the very game he denigrates them for playing.
Beyond any plausible homage to Emersonian transcendentalism, Reed’s writing is also notably inconsistent, and perhaps only Mumbo Jumbo survives as a fully sustained, coherent and non-polemical work (except for the non-polemical part). But despite its limitations, Reed’s work provides a crucial link between the American Renaissance, the Harlem Renaissance and post-war African American literature. In reassessing the cannon, especially of the American Renaissance, Reed resituates pantheism as black; Jes Grew as a version of a pantheistic American Nature; and transcendentalism as a multicultural discourse centrally concerned with racial identity. As Reed’s narrator succinctly asks in Flight to Canada, “Had crossing the Atlantic changed the character of both Europeans and Africans?” (176) (Though one would want to complicate this assertion in narratological contexts, in Reed’s case there seems little doubt that his novels’ provocative narrators speak at least partly in the voice of a Reed persona). Before getting to my discussion of Reed’s status in American literature, and his retelling of Stowe’s and Emerson’s fables of black Nature, in the first half of this essay I assess Reed’s aesthetic in designing Mumbo Jumbo as a text about constructing black texts. Reed fabricates a myth of origins, which comes complete with an aesthetic that itself “jes grew.”

My monograph - the full text.

This book offers a new approach to reading the cultural memory of Africa in African American fiction from the post-Civil Rights era and in Black British fiction emerging in the wake of Thatcherism. The critical period between the decline of the Civil Rights Movement and the dawn of the twenty-first century saw a deep contrast in the distinctive narrative approaches displayed by diverse African diaspora literatures in negotiating the crisis of representing the past. Through a series of close readings of literary fiction, this work examines how the cultural memory of Africa is employed in diverse and specific negotiations of narrative time, in order to engage and shape contemporary identity and citizenship. By addressing the practice of “remembering” Africa, the book argues for the signal importance of the African diaspora’s literary interventions, and locates new paradigms for cultural identity in contemporary times.

Ishmael Reed is known for writing original postmodern works
which challenge white hegemony and control. His novels are
praised not only for a mere deconstruction of such instances but
also for erasure of the binary opposition of the oppressor/oppressed
equation.
However, although Reed uses his novels to deconstruct said
instances of oppression, these attempts have been questioned by
some critics who suggest that Reed not only does not deconstruct
the opposition of male and female characters but also favours the
position of male characters at the expense of female ones.
This article then sets out to answer the question whether the
position of women in Reed’s latest novel, Japanese by Spring, is in
alignment with his intent to deconstruct binary oppositions or not.
The article concludes that, while Reed is susceptible to emphasising
male roles over female roles in his early fiction, in order to
promote deconstruction of white hegemony his latest novel is endowed
with powerful female characters and successfully deconstructs
said binary oppositions.

Une quarantaine d'années après la conquête de Jérusalem par ‘Umar et une quinzaine d'années avant la construction du Dôme du Rocher par ‛Abd al-Malik, Arculfe, évêque des Gaules, fit un pèlerinage en Terre Sainte.  Il relata ses aventures à Adomnán, abbé d'Iona, qui écrivit par la suite un tract, De locis sanctis, où il cite abondamment Arculfe comme expert des lieux saints.  Le but d'Adomnán était de mieux connaître la topographie des lieux saints pour pouvoir mieux comprendre les sacra pagina.  Ce même motif poussa Bède le Vénérable, quelques décennies plus tard, à écrire son propre De locis sanctis, dans lequel il incorpore les informations d'Adomnán avec celles d'autres auteurs.
Ces deux textes De locis sanctis sont intéressants à plusieurs titres.  D'abord, ils conservent les impressions d'un chrétien occidental (et sans doute, jusqu'à un certain point, les impressions de ses interlocuteurs chrétiens orientaux) présent au Proche Orient à un moment clef de son histoire, peu après la conquête arabe, moment pour lequel les sources nous font cruellement défaut.  Si la description des lieux saints reste le but principal d'Arculfe, quelques passages ouvrent des perspectives intéressantes sur les interactions entre juifs, chrétiens et musulmans de Jérusalem lors du califat de Mu‘âwiya (661-680).  Deuxièmement, dans ces textes sont imbriqués plusieurs niveaux de "passages".  D'abord le déplacement d'un homme, Arculfe, qui fait le pèlerinage en Terre Sainte, séjourne neuf mois à Jérusalem, parle avec les habitants, surtout chrétiens;  puis (deuxième niveau) l'entretien entre Arculfe et Adomnán;  ensuite (troisième niveau), la composition par Adomnán de son texte et enfin (quatrième niveau), la réécriture de ce texte par Bède.  A chacun de ces niveaux, il y a un filtrage des informations et des témoignages pour les rendre aptes à être compris dans un système de pensée précis.  Au bout de cette chaîne de "passages", nous notons par exemple que le calife Mu‘âwiya s'est transformé en le bon roi chrétien Mavias, protecteur des chrétiens hiérosolymites face à leurs rivaux juifs.

The first 'unified field theory' of multicultural literature, A Genealogy of Literary Multiculturalism is a literary history of how we arrived at our current paradigm of writing, reading and teaching multicultural literature in the United States. It hypothesizes a three-phase development for multicultural literature from the 1920s to the 1980s, uncovering the largely unacknowledged role that social science ideas played in nourishing the politics and forms of the most canonical writers in the African American, Asian American, Mexican American and Native American traditions. A Genealogy of Literary Multiculturalism challenges the critical consensuses on the four traditions that treat each in terms of separate histories, a critical practice that has obscured the parallel phases of each tradition and the common cultural politics that generated multiculturalism's rupture with the non-pluralist literary politics that came before it.

This work is a pro-seminar work written by a student in the second year of the photography department at Bezalel, in the course "of Jerusalem during the British Mandate." During the course we discussed many issues related to the mandate by the knowledge of the history and the period (the company for Jerusalem, the blueprints Jerusalem, recognizing the central figures operating in Israel and abroad (Herbert Samuel, Ronald Storrs, Ashby, Kaufman, Mendelssohn, Harrison) Understanding traditions of construction and designs of architectural that have been changed almost every decade by changing perceptions of architects: the preservation of the existing (vernacular architecture and old traditions) to combine modernity which was a record at that time (local Bauhaus).

The chapter demonstrates how the satire of Ishmael Reed has evolved from a stage which frequently criticises through non-standard sexuality to a stage which frequently criticises through logical argumentation (as can be seen in novels published in 1990s and 2010s). By discussing examples from Reed's 1993 novel Japanese by Spring, the chapter connects these two modes of satire to two types of American racism: overt (present in the public discourse till the Civil Rights Movement) and covert (present in the public discourse after the Civil Rights Movement). It concludes by illustrating that as overt racism became unacceptable in American public discourse, Ishmael Reed updated his satire so that it would be argument-driven and could remain an effective type of social critique even under the new circumstances.

This dissertation reevaluates the critically overlooked discourse of American Renaissance pantheism, a doctrine of male merger with a deified nature. For many American writers, impersonal nature is an "arena" in which conflicts between parts and wholes are staged and reconciled under pantheism. In order to uncover underlying assumptions about individual and national identity advanced by white male writers, this study traces how writers use transcendental nature to define race, gender, and reproduction from the American Renaissance onward. It partly focuses on the overlooked ways Melville was expressly influenced and seduced by Emersonian transcendentalism, which was shaped  by an anti-individualistic ethos and a demonological view of nature. The study also explores the crucial influence of transcendental nature on African-American models of identity and focuses on Ishmael Reed's, Charles Johnson's, and Toni Morrison's representations of American transcendentalism and Romanticism as black in origin.

In contrast to critical observations that denied postmodernist literature any serious oppositional quality with reference to the late twentieth-century western culture (e.g. F. Jameson or T. Eagleton), and in line with critical acknowledgement of its adversarial potential by a more sympathetic group of critics (e.g. L. Hutcheon, L. McCaffery, P. Maltby, or S. Trachtenberg), the fiction of Donald Barthelme and Ishmael Reed perfectly illustrates the ability of postmodernist literature to provide a convincing and poignant cultural critique without ever becoming a socio-politically engaged literature in a traditional, programmatically unequivocal sense.
In this context, the paper interprets formal experimentation in Barthelme’s and
Reed’s fiction as a significant aspect of a typically postmodernist stance of
uncommitted commitment that enabled these authors to be simultaneously detached
from and drawn into the wider social, political or ideological debate.

Master thesis (in German language), submitted Dec 2017, Vienna (Austria).

| Religion as tool of resistance in Hip Hop and Afrofuturism as exemplified by Jiba Molei Anderson's Black Comic "The Horsemen" |

abstract: |
This master thesis examines the countercultural adaption of religion and spirituality by artists in popular culture. This is exemplified by Chicago based Afrofuturistic artist Jiba Molei Anderson and his Black Comic series “The Horsemen”. This work surveys two hypotheses. The first one assumes that Black artists formulate protest for social justice in their media (comic) by using religious elements (Santeria and Conscious Hip Hop). The second hypothesis assumes that two different media (comic and hip hop) are able to into one intermedium (Visual Rap). The master thesis focuses closely on communicative techniques of Black Vernacular Tradition, especially Signifyin(g), Nommo and NeoHooDoo. Anderson’s “Horsemen” comic is, therefore, considered as a spiritual, magical medium—as a Visual Conscious Rap. Anderson includes concepts of the new religious movement “Five Percent Nation” in his comic’s composition and plot. On one hand, Anderson criticizes social injustice in a Gnostic-messianic storyline; on the other hand, he secretly apprises the readers of Five Percenter teachings (Supreme Mathematics, divinity of humanity). To reveal and emphasize his hidden communications, the African-American literature theory “Signifying Monkey” is viewed as a tool of religious aesthetics. Anderson intentionally misleads (inexperienced) readers by using ambiguous signs to hide and protect his Five Percenter esoteric content. By recognizing these esoteric concepts, the comic becomes a vessel for word-magic (Nommo) and positive mental powers (Afrocentric New Thought). Anderson uses visual techniques as mechanics to exchange spiritual energy; his superheroes “The Horsemen”, who are based on the West-African Orisha, serve as realized potential of Anderson’s mental power. This positive energy is used to heal the readers’ minds, suffering from racism and its ramifications. Influenced by Afrofuturism, Anderson regards African religious concepts as occult-spiritual technologies. Afrofuturism is a movement in popular culture calling attention to the historical Black experience by adapting African concepts and the Black anthropology to elements of Science Fiction. Consequentially, Afrofuturism regards Black people as Aliens and/or Cyborgs (thus as non-human beings), because they have been designated to be non-humans in slavery and racism. On the basis of those post-colonial aesthetics, Anderson sources his own body out into his comic which consequently becomes a Black body itself; it becomes a living machine operated by Afrocentric energy. This work advocates a stronger focus on specific communicative techniques in media research conducted by scholars of religions. As an outcome of this plea, it introduces two terms: “media magic” and “techno-religion”. “Media magic” is characterized by a synthesis of religion/spirituality and medium; a mass medium becomes a vessel for magic and occult powers under certain aesthetical conditions. The second term “techno-religion” provides a new perspective for the study of religions which takes the entanglement of power, religion/spirituality, technology, science and society into account. It is conceptualized to be capable to think Religion and Post-Colonialism (i.e. race, gender, society, power and resistance) together.

"Archival Reflections explores the works of critically acclaimed contemporary New World writers - Carlos Fuentes (Mexico), Julio Cortazar (Argentina), Ishmael Reed, and E. L. Doctorow (United States) - from two innovative perspectives: the new historical novel of recent decades and the current postmodernist debate." "Due to its scope and perspective this work has a relevance that extends far beyond the conventional bounds of literary studies. Concerned as it is with issues of historical understanding, culture, and politics, it has implications for the literary histories of Spanish America and the United States, as well as for the fields of inter-American and cultural studies, literary theory, and historiography."--BOOK JACKET.

Author, etc.: Juan Navarro, Santiago 1960-
Title: Archival reflections : postmodern fiction of the Americas (self-reflexivity, historical revisionism, utopia)
Santiago Juan-Navarro.
Published: Lewisburg : Bucknell University Press ; London <England> : Associated University Presses, c2000.
Description: 367 p.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 336-3540 and index.

ISBN: 0838754279
0838754279 (alk. paper)
Subjects, general: American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism
Historical fiction, American -- History and criticism
Historical fiction, Spanish American -- History and criticism
Postmodernism (Literature) -- Latin America
Postmodernism (Literature) -- United States
Spanish American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism
Format: Book