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Decolonizing Revelation

A Spatial Reading of the Blues

Rufus Burnett Jr.

At a time when ideas like “post-racial society” and “#BlackLivesMatter” occupy the same space, scholars of black American faith are provided a unique opportunity to regenerate and imagine theological frameworks that confront the epistemic effects of racialization and its confluence with the theological imagination. Decolonizing Revelation contributes to this task by rethinking or “taking a second look” at the cultural production of the blues. Unlike other examinations of the blues that privilege the hermeneutic of race, this work situates the blues spatially, offering a transracial interpretation that looks to establish an option for disentangling racial ideology from the theological imagination. This book dislocates race in particular, and modernity in general, as the primary means by which God’s self-disclosure is read across human history. Rather than looking to the experience of antiblack racism as revelational, the work looks to a people group, blues people, and their spatial, sonic, and sensual activities. Following the basic theological premise that God is a God of life, Burnett looks to the spaces where blues life occurs to construct a decolonial option for a theology of revelation.

Lexington Books / Fortress Academic

Pages: 220 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9¾

978-1-9787-0045-1 • Hardback • March 2018 • $123.00 • (£95.00)

978-1-9787-0046-8 • eBook • March 2018 • $116.50 • (£90.00)

Subjects: Religion / Christian Theology / General, Music / General

Decolonizing Revelation

A Spatial Reading of the Blues

Hardback

eBook

Summary

At a time when ideas like “post-racial society” and “#BlackLivesMatter” occupy the same space, scholars of black American faith are provided a unique opportunity to regenerate and imagine theological frameworks that confront the epistemic effects of racialization and its confluence with the theological imagination. Decolonizing Revelation contributes to this task by rethinking or “taking a second look” at the cultural production of the blues. Unlike other examinations of the blues that privilege the hermeneutic of race, this work situates the blues spatially, offering a transracial interpretation that looks to establish an option for disentangling racial ideology from the theological imagination. This book dislocates race in particular, and modernity in general, as the primary means by which God’s self-disclosure is read across human history. Rather than looking to the experience of antiblack racism as revelational, the work looks to a people group, blues people, and their spatial, sonic, and sensual activities. Following the basic theological premise that God is a God of life, Burnett looks to the spaces where blues life occurs to construct a decolonial option for a theology of revelation.

Details

Lexington Books / Fortress Academic

Pages: 220 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9¾

978-1-9787-0045-1 • Hardback • March 2018 • $123.00 • (£95.00)

978-1-9787-0046-8 • eBook • March 2018 • $116.50 • (£90.00)

Subjects: Religion / Christian Theology / General, Music / General

Author

Rufus Burnett Jr. is professor, academic advisor, and affiliate of the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Towards a Spatial Reading of the Blues and Revelation: Doing Theology in light of the Colonial Difference
Chapter 2: Entanglements of Spatial Imagination in the Delta Region: Recovering a Blues Option for Decolonizing Revelation
Chapter 3: The Blues Cosmovision and Decoloniality: Towards a Blues Perspective on Revelation and Knowledge
Chapter 4: Revelation and Knowledge in the Delta: A Blues Take on the Modern/Colonial World and its Theological Foundations
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Author

Reviews

Decolonizing Revelation is ground-breaking theological analysis of racial project at the heart of colonial difference. Burnett offers a trenchant and incisive critique of our pursuit of racial equality that leaves out the problem of coloniality. In his powerful analysis of "blues life world" he offers an alternative trans-theological promise of solidarity and resistance. This powerful book is a must read for those of us invested in solidarity across differences and divides in a broken world.
— Wonhee Anne Joh, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Decolonializing Revelation: A Spatial Reading of the Blues is a deeply subversive text—it invites us to destabilize the underlying logics of Western coloniality and participate in the epistemic reconstitution of ways of thinking and modes of being these logics disavowed. Burnett articulates a novel and theoretically rich treatment of the blues as a cosmovision, perspective and peoplehood aimed not only at critiquing Western coloniality and Christian faith but transforming its terms of discourse. This book is important for anyone passionate about the conceptual work required to generate and sustain ongoing projects of liberation as well as those invested in the remaking of Christian theology and cultural studies for the contemporary world.
— Adam Clark, Xavier University

Decolonizing Revelation

A Spatial Reading of the Blues

Rufus Burnett Jr.

Decolonizing Revelation

A Spatial Reading of the Blues

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