Kalunga Crossings: Waterscapes of Terror and "Teachment" in the African Atlantic World

Authors

Dianne M. Stewart, Emory UniversityFollow
Tracey E. Hucks, Harvard Divinity SchoolFollow
Solimar Otero, Indiana UniversityFollow

Abstract

In this article, we think alongside historian of religions Charles H. Long to analyze the relationship between water and empire, explore theoretical approaches to water and modernity, and probe the significance of water in Africana ecologies and spiritual cultures, highlighting its suggestive contributions to restorative epistemologies of ecological co-habitation. Our investigation advances an Africana religious framework of “waterscapes of terror and ‘teachment’” that centers diaspora bodies of water as loci for analyzing history, materiality, and ecological regard. Teachment is an anti-colonial linguistic irruption, an all-encompassing term for Africana pedagogies and epistemologies that defy antiblack and anti-African colonial instruction. Examining how Africana engagements with water surface the salience of both terror and teachment, we underscore the absence of reflection on Africana knowledge systems in discourses concerning world ecology and the environment. We subsequently argue that Africana resources, such as the concept of Kalunga, the mystical relationship between spirit and nature, sonic signs of spiritual and environmental cohesion, and regard for non-human modes of matter have much to offer in furthering scholarly discussions on our current global ecosystem and racialized bionetwork.

Author Biography

Dianne M. Stewart is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Emory University.

Tracey E. Hucks is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Africana Religious Studies at Harvard Divinity School and the Suzanne Young Murray Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Solimar Otero is the Director of the Latino Studies Program, and Professor of Folklore and Gender Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is also the editor of the Journal of Folklore Research. Her research centers on how gender and race shape Afro-Caribbean spirituality and Yoruba traditional religion in folklore, performance, literature, and ethnography.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Stewart, Dianne M.; Hucks, Tracey E.; and Otero, Solimar (2025) "Kalunga Crossings: Waterscapes of Terror and "Teachment" in the African Atlantic World," Yale Journal of Music & Religion: Vol. 11: No. 2, Article 3.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17132/2377-231X.1321