Episode 138 - Black Women’s Magic with Lindsey Stewart

Transcript

Ellie: 0:17

Hello and welcome to Overthink.

David: 0:19

The podcast where two philosophers talk about philosophy and everyday life,

Ellie: 0:24

I'm Ellie Anderson.

David: 0:26

and I'm David Pena Guzman,

Ellie: 0:28

David, the hashtag black girl magic took off around 2013, 2014. It's actually now since been patented. I feel like that was kind of the heyday of hashtags, right? And the Black Girl Magic hashtag was originally popularized as a way of emphasizing how black women and girls have responded to the injustices that they face by crafting their own kind of magic, a sort of protection self care that is unassailable by an outside world that often does not appreciate them.

David: 1:00

Yeah, and I think it's often presented as a way of honoring the achievements of black women living in a racist culture that seeks to keep them down. I'm mostly familiar with the hashtag black girl magic in the context of sports, s cience and technology. You know, like black women who break into areas of research from which they have been historically excluded.

Ellie: 1:23

And I think what you're talking about is the career achievement aspect of it, but I think often the hashtag is also used in the way that I was describing it as an indication of the sort of care which black women bring to their own relationships to self. And you know, the hashtag has also been the recipient of some criticisms. There's an article called, I'm Not Your Superwoman, that's critiquing the idea of black girl magic as potentially reinforcing the stereotype that black women are strong and so they don't need help because they can figure it out all for themselves. I also think we can mention the fact that there is a racist stereotype of longstanding, not just particularly with black women, but with black Americans in general of the magical Negro or the black person who sort of helps white people on their journey of self-discovery shows up a lot in literature and film. And the trope is racist in part because it instrumentalize as black people's existence, treating them as just a vehicle for a white protagonist. Self-development, you know, which is very different from what we were talking about a moment ago with the Black Girl Magic hashtag as emphasizing a relationship to self in which the black girl is centered. It's also racist because it's dehumanizing. There's a way that a magical creature is superhuman, which might seem like a way of honoring them, but can also end up being a way of not recognizing their own vulnerability and even their own personhood. And so kind of with that in mind, I want to say that the author whom we're interviewing today, the philosopher, Lindsay Stewart, wants us to reconsider black girl magic. She puts it more often in terms of black women's magic, not as falling into these sort of tropes, but rather as a key theme of 400 years of American history because Stewart notes that it's the contributions of black women that have helped make America what it is today.

David: 3:10

And even though the hashtag black girl magic, as you mentioned, Ellie was popularized only in the 2010s, 2013, 2014, it actually gets its meaning from a very long history of an association between black women and magical powers that goes all the way back to West Africa. In the Yoruba religion, which is a religion practice primarily in Nigeria, but also in other West African countries like Benin and Togo, there is a tale about how black women originally got their magic, and it's a tale about how one of the female goddesses of the Yoruba religion, Oshun, was betrayed by her male brothers. According to the story, a group of male divinities who are known in this tradition as Orisha made a secret pact among themselves and also with mortal human males to collectively dominate women.

Ellie: 4:10

Classic.

David: 4:11

Where have we heard this before? Now this pact between the Orishas and the Mortal men really embolden mortal men to start mistreating the women in their lives, their mothers, their lovers, their wives and their sisters, because they thought they were untouchable by virtue of having the backing of all these male Orishas. Now when Oshun who is the Orisha or the deity of Fertility and Water found out about this pact, she was immediately enraged because it wasn't the first time that her brothers tried to cross her. Back in time when the world was being created, the male Orishas had tried to diminish her power because they saw her as just this young woman goddess who should not have the same decision making power as the male deities. So they tried to keep her from exercising her status as a goddess, and she retaliated against this in that original act of defiance against her by taking her powers of fertility away from the world. And the result was of course, that because there was no fertility in the world, all the rivers started running dry, all the plants started withering away, and all the animals started dropping dead on the ground. Upon seeing this. The brothers realized that they had no choice but to include her in divine decision making and treat her as an equal, so they were kind of forced to give her a seat at the table.

Ellie: 5:47

They're like not another animal dropping in my path.

David: 5:51

I guess we'll treat you as an equal, rather than exclude you intentionally from all of your roles as a goddess. And so this was the second time that something like this was happening, and this time she decided to do something a lot more radical. Instead of just withdrawing her powers of fertility production and generation away from the earth, she decided to take all the women away from the world so that men would know what would happen when women were no longer around.

Ellie: 6:23

Day without a woman, am I right?

David: 6:25

Yoruba version, mythical time, and she approached the Ultimate Divinity, who is a Diddy by the name of Oladumare, and asked  Oladumare to give a very small portion of his divine power to the women of the world so that they could defend themselves against the aggressions and the violence that men were inflicting upon them. This power that  Oladumare, gave Yoruba women is a power known as Ahe, which is translated into English as magic. And so when  Oladumare exceeded to this request, he gave women a small little portion of his creative, w orld building healing power, and that according to the stale, is how black women got their magic.

Ellie: 7:18

In her book, Stewart describes how the story of Oshun and of black women's magic travels from West Africa and is still very much alive in the early days of slavery because the people are carrying on with their religious traditions. Over time that direct connection to the Yoruba religion was lost from any enslaved people. But over hundreds of years, and especially through various figures of black women that survive in the cultural imaginary, the idea of black women as having a kind of magic persists. This magic pertains to healing through arts of midwifery and herbal remedies, which we'll talk to Stewart about when we speak with her directly, as well as through practices of textiles, religious traditions, all sorts of ways. And for Stewart, it's important to recognize that uncovering the roots of black girl magic also helps us uncover the roots of American culture. She says towards the end of the book, our medicine has healed our countrymen. For centuries, our midwives brought thousands of Americans into the world, both black and white. Our textiles gave this country the iconic pants that are beloved around the world. Yes, we're talking about jeans. That edition 'cause she has like multiple chapters on jeans. The Music of America still moves to the rhythm of our blues. And so in talking about the historical roots of what we now call black girl Magic, Stewart also wants to call attention to the ignored contributions of black women over time contributions that are baked into the very structure of our society.

David: 9:14

Lindsey Stewart is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Memphis. Her research and teaching interests are black feminism, African American philosophy, and social and political philosophy. She is the author of a number of articles as well as the book, the Politics of Black Joy. She's also the author of the book that we're gonna be discussing today, which is The Conjuring of America Mojo's Mermaids Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women's Magic. Lindsey, thank you so much for joining us on Overthink. We are thrilled to talk with you today.

Ellie: 9:48

Welcome.

Lindsey: 9:49

Oh, thanks for inviting me.

Ellie: 9:51

We're so happy to have you. It was really such a joy to read this book. I learned so much when I was reading the book last week on vacation. Someone I was with asked me about the cover 'cause they saw the title and they were like, is it about literal magic or metaphorical magic? And I was like in a sense it's both, but I wanted to ask this to you directly. In what sense are you using the term magic? In the book, you refer to practices of conjure among early enslaved women, and the ways that traditions from West Africa were brought over on slave ships and then to the plantations, as well as the way that those practices then developed over the course of US history and really shaped US history. And so what is conjure and how should we understand its implications for how we understand the world? Like, is the world magical? In what sense do we mean magic? And I'm thinking a little bit about how, you talk about how Toni Morrison uses the term blended cosmology as a way of thinking about neither quite literal magic or metaphorical magic, but maybe something beyond that binary.

Lindsey: 10:57

Yeah, so I think that your answer is right. It's a little bit of both. Part of what I am trying to do is look at various crafts that black women are kind of renowned for in the country, like cooking, quilting, hairdressing. And I'm trying to place all of them in a 400 year tradition. So part of how I linked them together is looking at actual spiritual traditions that people were practicing from slavery on through Jim Crow and even currently today. So in that sense, I am talking about real rituals and real beliefs that people have. And another kind of level I'm thinking about how conjure, maybe in a metaphorical sense, has been absorbed by American culture. So a lot of the things that we take for granted in American culture, from the medicine we use to some hairstyles that we like, even some of the food that we eat we're produced in this context of conjure and has these roots, even though people who use some of these products aren't conjurers. Right? So it's a little bit of both.

Ellie: 12:12

Maybe this is a time where you could tell us a little bit about Vick's Vapo Rub, one of the first stories that you tell in the book, because that seems very much to pertain to what you're talking about.

Lindsey: 12:22

I started writing the book during COVID and I was thinking about how. Many enslaved women were very good at handling fevers, and I started to wonder, well, why weren't the medical doctors so good at handling fevers? And part of what I was able to find out is that there was this consistent tradition that emerged among enslaved women in the United States, in particular in the South, and they were using particular things like turpentine, like mint, that has menthol in it. It just struck me how similar that was to Vix Vapor Rub, what I remember about using it as a child. So I started to wonder what's behind this. Especially what I found out that Lunsford Richardson, the man who patented Vick's Vapor Rub owned slaves.

Ellie: 13:16

Mm.

Lindsey: 13:17

So then I started thinking, well, maybe he was influenced by some of these women. So I posted on Facebook, just a random question. How many of y'all used Vick's Vapor Rob growing up? And a lot of people responded actually from different countries, even responded Varo was kind of loved throughout the world and one woman popped up and said that her family, African American woman, her family has always said that Lunsford Richardson stole their family's recipe and based Vick's Vapor rub on that. And I did some research to kind of verify what she was saying. The woman's name is Crystal Sanders. She's at Emory.

Ellie: 13:59

Where we did our PhD. In fact, both of us.

Lindsey: 14:01

Right, right, right. So it seemed very likely that it was stolen.

David: 14:08

Yeah. And when I think about Vapo Rub, by the way, our Latino listeners are just like going wild right now because we all grew up with our abuelita rubbing vapo rub. And, you know, the menthol in Vapo Rub does give you this sense of something magical, something that takes you almost out of your chest, out of your body, elevates you. And one thing that you mentioned in writing about Vapo Rub is the tension between the figure of the black mammy, of the plantation, and then these white doctors. And as somebody who has an interest in the history of medicine and the history of science, I wanna ask you about that because one thing that runs throughout your book, but it's really exemplified in your account of the history of Apor Rub, is this tension between sactioned and non sanctioned forms of curative knowledge. And so this implicates, of course, the history of medicine, the history of botany, and a lot of black women, as you point out, have been simultaneously venerated and vilified for their medical knowhow, and because their medical knowhow has been at odds with mainstream white medical traditions. And so at the same time that, for example, these black women during the time of slavery are using things like teas to cure colds, doctors are using very different techniques like bloodletting and so there's a clear methodological opposition, right? Teas add liquid to the body, bloodletting takes out liquid from the body. And so I wanna hear you reflect on this relationship between these forgotten knowledges and maybe our understanding of science. Why has mainstream science been so eager to delegitimize the knowledge that we get from black women?

Lindsey: 16:03

There's so much to say about this, but I'll go back to what Ellie brought up with Toni Morrison and blended cosmology. Right, in the essay where Toni Morrison was talking about blended cosmology. She also mentions that. Conjure has been part of, she doesn't say conjure, but conjure has been part of how we come to know things. And that sort of knowledge has been discredited because of who it came from. And so I think when you're trying to figure out why have certain knowledges not been promoted in the medical field, sometimes it's because of where they came from and there was an assumption, in the 18th and 19th centuries that women, especially black women, old black women at that kind of didn't know what they were talking about. If you think even now some of the ways that we talk about home remedies is, you know, oh, it's stuff your grandma would tell you as if. Your grandma is not this veritable source of knowledge, right? So some of it is simply they were black women. Medical doctors wanted to establish that their background, their pedigree, and where they got their knowledge through universities was the way to get medical knowledge. This tension between invasive and non-invasive methods is something that we can continue to see even today. With how we think about midwifery and the way that women are having, or people with vulvas are having babies, right? It's a lot of doctors prefer to, go into the womb and kind of make you really not very much of a participant in the birthing process, but midwives, especially black midwives, retained this preference for non-invasive methods. So anything that they could do outside of the body, like giving you teas or massages was one way to enhance your strength, enhance your immune system, and not stress you out.

David: 18:13

Well, and in your book you talk about this in terms of attention between the indifference of the white official male doctor and the caregiving practices of the black mammy. So the irony, of course, is that even though they were vilified and delegitimate in public, many white Americans, including slave owners who lived on plantations, would still rush to them behind closed doors for their care, for their knowledge, and they would just turn their back on them, of course, in public.

Ellie: 18:45

I'm thinking about so many of the characters that emerge in your book because part of the pleasure of reading this book is that you get introduced to such a wide variety of black women throughout history, throughout American history, who shaped the America that we know in fundamental ways. And I'm actually just realizing as we're having this conversation now, how, I think virtually all of those figures that you focus on, including the mammy, especially through the figure of Aunt Jemima, the candy lady, the voodoo Queen, and we'll come back to the Voodoo Queen a bit later, in a sense, they're all caregivers, and so I'm curious how you feel about that as well, because I think some of these tropes, especially the mammy trope, are often treated as racist tropes that we should move away from, and you even explicitly address that in the book. But I think what you're also trying to address is how, okay, first off, mammies were real historical figures, and so it's not like a racist trope. They were just like a person with a definitive role on a plantation, but also that we can sort of, think about their role in a new way, moving away maybe from what black feminist sociologist, Patricia Hill Collins calls controlling images and showing how these roles were so much more than the kind of tropes that we have today. So I'm curious what you think about that and the way that these women, I think almost to a one, if not to a one, are caregivers. Maybe not the mermaid, although maybe even the Mermaid. You talk about the mermaid a lot in your book too.

Lindsey: 20:18

So part of this comes back to in many West African cultures, there is no, you know, I, without we, so there's always gonna be concern for the community you live in and thrive within. A group and how well that group is doing as well. But I think too, one way of addressing the, the caregiving and thinking about something that David said earlier about the different ways that they were viewed negro mammies, it seems like when they were giving care to enslaved people in a way that benefited slave masters, that's when they were loved and great.

Ellie: 20:59

Mm.

Lindsey: 20:59

Right. But when they were given care in a way that challenged white doctors or helped the enslaved be rebellious in any way, then they're evil. Right? And then they're a problem. And it seems like a lot of oppressed people fall into that, in that you can be the Madonna or you can be the Jezebel, and you can be the same person, right? It just depends on your relationship to the oppression you're facing.

David: 21:28

And I think this connects to one of the central themes in magic studies, which is the instability of magic. That magic, of course, can be used for good or for evil. And the judgment really depends on the eye of the beholder, especially given that magic is an attribution often made from the perspective of those who seek to reject or condemn a practice, right?

Lindsey: 21:50

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

David: 21:51

A lot of people will describe what they do as medical knowledge or tradition or spirituality, but it's often presented as magic by people in positions of religious or scientific authority. And one thing that I think your, book does wonderfully is walk us historically through all these historical periods showing how black women's magic really shaped American culture. And your book is written in terms of a procession of characters, as Ellie mentioned, you know there is the negro mammy of slavery. There is the voodoo queen of the Antebellum south. There is the mojo building woman of Reconstruction, the granny midwife of the Jim Crow era, and then finally the candy lady. And at the end of your book you also talk about modern day black women conjurers. Now to give our listeners a taste of the kind of analysis that you give in this book, I want to focus on one of these figures, and because I lived in New Orleans, I immediately gravitated to the Voodoo Queen. And I wanna ask you about that because in the case of the Voodoo Queen, you mentioned that this figure was embodied historically by the real character of Marie Laveau in New Orleans. Who was feared not only because of her magical powers, but also because she represented in the flesh the possibility of rebellion, racial rebellion. So I want to hear you talk to us a little bit more about this figure and how you interpret her.

Lindsey: 23:23

I mean, in some way the book was written to get to her. I'm from Louisiana, so I'd always heard stories about Marie Laveau, and I think one thing that's important to remember is that there was a historical person. Probably two people under the same name of Marie Laveau, who did have enormous influence in New Orleans right before the Civil War, and a little bit afterwards, she was a free black woman, which was also something kind of rare during slavery, even though there's a historical basis, what's really interesting to me is the stories that people tell around her, because a lot of those stories are about rebellion. They're about. Women who have been domestically abused, who want some help out of the situation. It's about, you know, enslaved people who wanted to run away. Right. Those are the sort of stories that kind of circulate around Marie Laveau. So there's a historical Marie Laveau, and then there's the kind of fantasy or mythological Marie Levo. And I'm more interested in the second, although there is some of the first in the book, because the second is still with us.

Ellie: 24:35

You mentioned that she's a character in American Horror Story, and your students didn't realize she was a real person.

Lindsey: 24:40

Which was sad. It's like, wait, you didn't know this I also was really interested in how the stories that people told about Marie Laveau right around the time where she was alive is really different than what you get in shows like American Horror, where she's kind of vilified. Right? And you can see this still, this trend even today of when a woman is powerful and maybe even engaging in social justice, a little bit rebellious, they get read in American culture as these kind of evil witches.

David: 25:15

For me. New Orleans was a central character really in, in your telling of that, because of the legal complexities of New Orleans where there are elements of British, Spanish and French law that then created the possibility for these. Very peculiar forms of black existence, like the black slave who can nonetheless buy their freedom or who can own property. And I wanna hear you say a little bit more about what her relationship. And I hear mean that fantasm or that figure, the mythological figure was to the political and economic institution of slavery such that she represented a source of anxiety for white America. In what ways was she seen as a threat to the institution?

Lindsey: 26:04

Mostly because of her connection to Voodoo. And this is where it's important to remember that when you're thinking about American history, you need to put it in the context of what's going on in other countries as well, right? So you've got the Haitian Revolution just before Marie Laveau born and that just struck so much fear in the Americas, right? Because the Haitian Revolution was the only successful black revolution against slavery, and it was well known that it was started by a voodoo ceremony. So now you've got this very powerful woman who is free mingling with people who are enslaved and practicing a religion that is known to spark rebellion like that, just, that just can't happen for these slave owners. That's too much of a threat.

Ellie: 26:58

And can you say a little bit about the sort of communal or collective aspects of these voodoo ceremonies? It's just reminding me of what some of what you were saying before about the we coming before the eye. and that's more, you know, in the West African traditions that you were talking about, whereas Voodoo has a more complex legacy, especially in the Caribbean. But it strikes me that somebody like Marie Laveau as powerful an individual or not, because like you said, maybe she's actually two people, right. Which already says something about this. As powerful as she was. I mean, that's also you're talking about the way that her power was predicated on and seen as threatening because of its relation to the community.

Lindsey: 27:40

She and her voodoo participants often had their meetings. They were raided by the police and they were outlawed. Right. And they were outlawed under the law against unlawful assembly, which I find really funny because now they're bringing back unlawful assembly as a reason to, complain about protests. But, it's crazy how long that thing has lived. But the problem was this mixing of very different groups inNnew Orleans at the time, you had upper class white women there. You had enslaved blacks, you had free black people. Right? It was thought that during these meetings, because these different classes were interacting, you could get all sorts of information that you wouldn't normally have access to, right? So you might know that, you might hear from an upper class white woman that this slave owner is looking for so and so, which you wouldn't have known if you hadn't have, have gone to these meetings. So part of what was dangerous about these meetings was simply the mixing of these different classes.

David: 28:50

I'm really happy that you mentioned the police raids on these gatherings ran by the voodoo women of Louisiana, because you mentioned that in one of those, they confiscated a figurine of a mermaid that embodied the mythical magical power of Marie Laveau. And you use this to launch an inquiry. Into the role of a mermaid worship, both in voodoo, but also in other spiritual traditions, dating all the way back to West Africa to make a point that even though we think of mermaids, and you see this with the recent controversy over the Little Mermaid and the casting of a black actress to play that role, even though we think of mermaids as like North European white ladies with a fish tail, in fact t hey're part of the mythologies and spiritual traditions of many cultures, and that includes voodoo. Can you say a little bit more about the symbolism of the mermaid, because it reappears multiple times in your discussion of the Voodoo Queen in the Antebellum South.

Lindsey: 29:57

I mean, part of what I really loved with diving into mermaids, besides just mermaids are awesome, is they're one of those figures that you can really see how different cultures kind of met and, and influence each other, right? So in West Africa there's always been nature spirits that were worshiped. That could take the form of mermaids. They also took the form of serpents. They already had that base, and then you put them on ships, you know, when they were kidnapped and taken across the Atlantic and on these ships there were mermaid figureheads. Right? So it makes kind of sense that when they took their water spirits with them from West Africa, the one that really stuck out was mermaids. And one of the things that I love about mermaids is how they're really vengeful So in the context of Marie Lavoe, again, really dangerous free spirited woman. She's also calling on spirits that avenge black people. It's just, she was so dangerous.

Ellie: 31:11

This also reminds me of one of the stories you tell in the book about a white doctor who opened a pharmacy. I'm forgetting exactly where, but then basically like all of his would be customers were going to the local black woman healer. And so then he created a mermaid exhibit in his pharmacy to try and get the local population to come over, you know?

Lindsey: 31:35

Yeah. No, I love that story. It's based in Charleston, right?

Ellie: 31:39

Oh, Charleston? Yes.

Lindsey: 31:40

Yep. Yeah. And just how, you know, I used it as an instance of how these mermaid stories that were told in black communities could also summon rebellion. Because that local conjure woman used mermaid stories to galvanize the people into a riot, and what they were rioting wasn't just the supposed mermaid that was in the shop. I think what they were rioting and protesting was how badly African Americans have been treated by the medical establishment, especially during that time. This is the time when there were people called Night Raiders. Who would steal black corpses or just when they're treating someone, let them die so that they can use those bodies for medical experimentation. So it's just, you know, really interesting that you could use a mermaid story to kind of get people going to protest in that way.

David: 32:41

Well, and how the goals of the protest were indirectly articulated, right? Because ostensibly, many of the people who showed up to the, clinic of this pharmacist, I you know, they were protesting the fact that he had kidnapped this mermaid that they thought was real or that they said they thought was real on the grounds that she had been separated from her children and if you read that in the context of slavery, what they're opposing is the separation of parents and children, which was a very common practice in the south. And so I really appreciated that you make that connection because initially when you were telling that story, I wasn't seeing the connection, but then it really drew at home that magical language, like the language of mermaids in Charleston is a way of making sense of the world, the material world, the real world in which one finds oneself.

Lindsey: 33:36

I mean, it's also a way to transmit knowledge, right? And part of the ways that. I think about this all the time with where we are in America with the attacks on education and history. One of the ways that you can keep history alive is telling stories. There's always some nugget in there that attests to the conditions that people were living in.

Ellie: 34:02

I wanna ask about how this practice of conjure and the magic that you discuss in the book. Pertains to the relationship between the mind and the body because David, you mentioned the material world a moment ago, and I think a lot of what we've been circling around puts pressure on our expectation that, you know, we receive at least those of us who are trained in philosophy, that the mind and the body are separate, or that mind and matter are separate. It's clear from reading your book that the Yoruba traditions that African Americans brought over with them from West Africa don't share those that dualism. And indeed, I think the practice of conjure really puts pressure on it too. And so you talked about the difference between non-invasive versus invasive medical practices. I think that is obviously relevant in this context, but I was also particularly struck by how you describe the importance of hairdressing in Yoruba and African American cultures. You mentioned that hair is considered threads of your destiny in Yoruba society. And so the hairdresser was considered a spiritual figure. And I'm curious what you think this practice of hairdressing might say about the spiritual character of the body as well as in general, the view of mind and body that we're seeing here where they seem to be more interconnected than dualistic.

Lindsey: 35:26

Mm-hmm. I mean, I think one of the advantages that Conjure women had from slavery up to modern day hairdressers is the sense that health is holistic. So you need to pay attention to what the body is doing. Yes, but you also need to pay attention to people's environments and their relationships with other people. Whether there's conflict in those relationships. Right? And when you sit, I mean, at least at black hairdressers, when you sit down in the hairdresser's chair, you tell her all about your life, right? She's getting information on whether you've had a fight with your mother or your child. She's getting a sense of how stressed you are and how that stress is affecting your body in terms of your hair thinning and things like that. Sometimes the really chronic diseases show up first in the hair, so they really have access to how these different parts of your life are fitting together.

Ellie: 36:26

And so would you say that there's a more monistic view of minded body, than a dualistic one? Would you say that indicates maybe not necessarily a monism, but at least like a sense more of their interconnection?

Lindsey: 36:39

I am not quite sure to tell you the truth. The Yoruba have a very complex cosmology that I do not claim to know everything about. I will definitely say that there's connections between the soul, but the body. Definitely. There's also a sense that your ancestry is really important too, that the people that came before you placed a definitive stamp on who you are now, and I think that's also really important to remember is how much the stuff that came before you not only shaped who you are, but also shapes a lot of the opportunities that you get Now.

Ellie: 37:18

Mm-hmm Absolutely. And it strikes me that that's also really different from the predominant Christian way of understanding things that many of us have in the us, including many African American communities. And you mentioned in the book that there's been a kind of denigration of conjure because of Christian fundamentalism and Christian nationalism, and of course like many black Americans are Christian. And so I'm curious to hear you say more about whether you think that part of the ignorance that many Americans have around conjure comes from Christianity. And what you would like to see happen in the future? Like should there be a move away from Christian fundamentalism altogether and a renewal of practices of conjure? Do you think there's room, maybe not for fundamentalism, but for a Christian worldview and conjure or not?

Lindsey: 38:08

Yeah, I usually end up having to deal with this question in the course I teach called Human in the Divine and university of Memphis is I think 40% African American. So it's very large number of African Americans in that class. And usually they kind of struggle a bit with, I'm Christian, I'm not supposed to like this stuff, but I do like this stuff. Right. And one of the goals of that course is to help them see that especially in the south, a lot of what you do in churches are also conjure and you don't even realize it. A lot of it comes from West Africa. A lot of the types of Christianity that black people in this country practice have been informed very deeply by conjure. So I like to show people that you're already doing it and you don't know it. I also like to remind the students that historically, many of their ancestors did not feel like they had to choose between Christianity and conjure, right? So you see this a lot in Catholicism. All around the world. Catholicism was, I don't know, something about that, the structure of Catholicism. It was people were able to kind of retain a lot of their indigenous religious traditions and just kind of veil it under Catholicism and the US, a lot of us are Protestant, but there were still ways that even with Protestant Christianity, some aspects of conjure were still retained.

David: 39:48

This is hitting home very close for me because it was not until I was an adult that I realized just how many strands of the Catholicism I was raised with was actually not Catholicism at all, but we that, and it in fact was, Amerindian traditions that had survived by camouflaging themselves as local iterations of a Catholic theme. But I wanna go back to something that was mentioned a minute ago, which is the importance of the past, and returning to it because you close the book by invoking the principle of Sankofa, if I'm pronouncing correctly.

Lindsey: 40:28

Mm-hmm.

David: 40:29

Which is the idea that you should go back and fetch it, i.e, you need to look back at your history and reclaim the aspects of it that will help you flourish. In this case, part of black women's history is conjure, and I wanna ask you the very question that you put in the title of your conclusion, which is, Where have All the black women conjures gone? And the reason I wanna ask that is because when. We think about magic or conjure as a category, I think it's very easy for us to fall into a sociological or purely anthropological mindset that is retrospective. Like, oh, it's this thing that we used to do back in the day, but now that we live in an industrial modern world, a la Weber, we have been disenchanted. And so there is no room for magic anymore. But you point out that in fact, controversial are still all around us.

Ellie: 41:26

Beyonce may be one of them.

David: 41:28

Yeah.

Lindsey: 41:28

Yeah,

Ellie: 41:29

I'm taking that from the book. Although I was, I didn't need to take to convince me much.

Lindsey: 41:36

Yeah. Oh, definitely Beyonce. I mean, her visual album Lemonade was all about bringing kind of national consciousness of Oshun, right? So, the Yoruba goddess. So yeah, definitely Beyonce, right? I think a lot of conjure shows up in the health and wellness industry. So there's a product that I've started to use, it's called Black Girl Vitamin. And it's by these black women, both herbalists and, and doctors kind of joined together to address some of the kind of deficiencies that are very specific to black women. I see that as a continuation of Negro Mammies looking at how do we find the herbs and roots that will help boost our immune system. I see it conjure also show up in the rise of doulas. And alternative forms of giving birth, right? And this kind of push against some of the traditional ways that we think about, you know, how a birth should go with maybe you don't necessarily have to go to a hospital for it. Maybe you need support all throughout the pregnancy and even afterwards. So those are some ways I see conjure still being practiced. I also see in black communities, this move towards going back to the land. So gardening and developing that kind of ancestral relationship to the land. I see it there. Right. And I totally see it in TV and novels that are very popular right now. So Queen Sugar is a show that I love. There's also legacy of the Orishas, trilogy that is gonna be turned into a, I think a three part, three movies, I think. That's very, very popular. Right. And I think if people. Learn about the history, they'll be able to see it more, how it's still there and how it's still shaping American culture.

David: 43:42

And I think your book fits in this tradition insofar as it's a kind of necromancy where you're in contact with dead, with these past figures as a way of enacting Sankofa in the form of writing.

Lindsey: 43:57

Yeah.

Ellie: 43:58

And I've never agreed with Bell Hook's statement that Beyonce is a terrorist. I think Lemonade, I'm like a full on lemonade apologist. I think it's one of the best works of art of the 21st century. Okay, well we are so, so, so grateful for you joining us, Lindsay. This has been a delightful conversation. Really fascinating book and thank you so much for taking the time.

Lindsey: 44:20

Oh, thanks for having me. Craving more Overthink? Subscribe to our Substack for an extended version of our episodes, community chat, and additional bonus content. If you'd prefer to make a one-time tax-deductibe donation, you can learn more at our website, Overthinkpodcastcom. our support helps cover key production costs and allows us to pay our student assistants a fair wage.

Ellie: 44:48

David, this interview was so fun. I learned so much from the book, as I said before, but also hearing Lindsay speak about it just opened new avenues as well. And I'm curious what, what do you wanna follow up on here in our last few minutes of wrap up?

David: 45:02

Well, I wanna keep talking about Beyonce.

Ellie: 45:06

I won't complain.

David: 45:08

Well, the reason I wanna talk about this is because I don't wanna brag, but I just saw her live in Las Vegas. I was there.

Ellie: 45:14

Oh yeah, I saw that on your Instagram. Oh, it was Las Vegas.

David: 45:18

It was the last show of the Cowboy Carter tour, and so I went to see her live.

Ellie: 45:24

Okay. Okay. Yeah. You know, I'm not a huge fan of that album, even though I appreciate all that she's doing for the recognition of black people in country. How was the show?

David: 45:34

Okay, so I didn't really love it either.

Ellie: 45:37

Okay. Did you know the album well before?

David: 45:39

No, I didn't know the album, and in fact, I was only listening to it on the way to the airport to Vegas to go to the show.

Ellie: 45:46

Wait, so you, why did you go to the show?

David: 45:48

Because a few of my friends were going and they found tickets, and then they're like, you should come with us. It's gonna be life changing. And so I agreed to do it.

Ellie: 45:55

Like a gay Las Vegas excursion?

David: 45:57

It was a gay Las Vegas become part of the hive moment. And I have to say, I thought the show was good. I had a good time. But there were also moments that were slow just because country music is not going to live up to the kind of upbeatness of pop in general. But then I read Lindsay Stewart's book. It changed my interpretation of the album and of the experience altogether because I started thinking about what is it about the music that I listened to at the stadium in Las Vegas that I thought maybe was unexpected? And it was precisely the fact that it incorporated a lot of very different traditions that I just was not expecting. So there was a lot of, well, obviously country, but also gospel influences. There were Creole influences here and there, including the lyrics. But after reading Stewart's book where she talks about the syncretism in black women's conjure practices, I started to see all those mixed elements in Beyonce's music in that light. And so I actually started listening to the album over and over again after having gone to see her live, and I came to really appreciate the album, listening to it now with an ear molded by my reading of this text.

Ellie: 47:21

Okay. I wanna hear more about that because I mentioned in passing in our interview that I think lemonade is one of the great works of art of the 21st century. I know people have criticisms of Beyonce, like thinks she's a capitalist, sellout and all of that, and, but I think from an artistic perspective, that album is just absolutely brilliant, in part because of the way that she synthesizes and moves beyond in a really original fashion. A lot of different traditions in American culture. And I would even defend the idea that Lemonade, especially the Visual Album, is an encapsulation of what Adorno talks about as the work of art being a riddle and having a kind of unique relationship to its environment where it's not a direct commentary on social conditions, but it's sort of transforming those in a unique way. It's like related to its context, but it also exists on its own. There's like not a complete wholeness to the work of art, but there is a kind of riddle like nature to it, such that it is a whole unto itself, but also uniquely connected to the surrounding environment. However, I did not feel that way about Cowboy Carter. So tell me what I'm missing.

David: 48:33

Okay, so I mean, I like what you're saying because it suggests that, at least in relation to lemonade, it's not that it's giving us a clear answer, but that maybe it's posing a well-formulated question to which there might be multiple answers, right? Like that's the enigmatic riddle, like quality that unifies.

Ellie: 48:49

But it's not just like, oh, I have no idea what's going on. I mean, there's just like an incredible arc and trajectory to album that I think just like you really are transported.

David: 48:59

Yeah. Well, and with Cowboy Carter, there is the album, and at the concert there were all these video montages that were projected, that put the music in conversation with a visual element that very explicitly invoked African American history, the Civil Rights Movement, Jim Crow. And so there was backwards looking stance to the experience of being in the concert. That also echoes what Stewart says about disco conjuring, especially the practice of Sankofa. And in fact, I read an article about Cowboy Carter, the album, it was a review written by a woman who is a professor of African American thought at Loyola, and she

Ellie: 49:47

Which Loyola? There's so many.

David: 49:49

I know there, there are multiple Loyola, she is at the Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Ellie: 49:54

LMU

David: 49:56

Yeah, LMU, her name is Kim R Harris, and she reads Cowboy Carter as a Sankofa album. So she explicit explicitly uses that term and she says that what Beyonce is doing is exactly what Stewart says we should be doing in connection to our history. We should be looking back and going back into the past in order to recover elements from it, especially those that have been forgotten and sidelined as a way of enriching and illuminating and rendering meaningful our experience in the present.

Ellie: 50:34

Okay. And can you say more specifically about what features of the album might lend itself to that? I know we're a philosophy podcast, not a music criticism podcast, but certainly relevant here.

David: 50:45

I love that you clocked me for like, sidestepping the question where I'm like, I just liked it.

Ellie: 50:50

no, I mean, we venture into artistic appreciation. My half baked Adornian analysis, not withstanding.

David: 50:59

One example that Harris gives is the lyrics of the song Freedom, which according to her hearken back to the historic Negro spiritual Wade in the Water, which was a song that was secretly a code in the underwater. Oh my God, not the underwater,

Ellie: 51:16

Underwater railroad? I mean, it's giving mermaid.

David: 51:24

I'm sorry. In the Underground Railroad.

Ellie: 51:27

I mean, there are famously, like Harriet Tubman had to forward the river, or like remember she jumped into the river to escape the slave catcher. So maybe underwater railroad, I mean, yeah, not technically what you were looking for

David: 51:38

yeah, not at

Ellie: 51:38

but there are some interesting resonances.

David: 51:41

And so yeah, there are these allusions to historically meaningful aspects of the black experience that then get presented. In connection to current events and the status of race in contemporary American society. So it's that reaching back and rediscovering and putting to work that I think is the essence of the principle of Sankofa.

Ellie: 52:05

As you're talking about this, David, I'm reminded of some parts of the book where Stewart writes about quilting and the importance of quilting among black women in the US and the way that the patching together involves taking existing material, but then transforming it into something quite original, and I would say, I'm really coming in hard here as a Beyonce apologist. I would say I think that's what Beyonce's doing in her work as well. Right. There's like a sense in which there's an original transformation of existing material, and I'm particularly struck by what you said about. The visuals kind of hearkening back to history because I think that's also what's happening in the practice of quilting. You know, it's materials that have been used for other means, like a kind of ancestral lineage of the textiles that are then being reworked and transformed into something new.

David: 53:00

Yeah. And I think that technical knowhow or that Wiley intelligence is also something that Steward associates with the candy lady right of the 20th century. The woman who knows how to improvise and make something that is appealing to other people based on the materials that are available to her. And so in that sense, Beyonce would be like. The candy lady of the present precisely because of that ability to improvise in making something wonderful out of one's existence, which of course is part of what we mean by black girl magic, when we use that phrase, it's a reference to the fact that black women are able to produce magic in non magical places.

Ellie: 53:46

We hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Please consider subscribing to our Substack for extended episodes, community chats, and other additional Overthink content. And thanks to those of you who already do.

David: 53:56

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Ellie: 54:10

We'd like to thank our audio editor, Aaron Morgan. Our production assistants Bayarmaa Bat-Erdene, and Kristen Taylor, and Samuel PK Smith for the original music. And to our listeners, thanks so much for overthinking with us.