Spirit in the Dark: A Religious History of Racial Aesthetics

by Josef Sorett

Most of the major black literary and cultural movements of the twentieth century have been understood and interpreted as secular, secularizing and, at times, profane. In this book, Josef Sorett demonstrates that religion was actually a formidable force within these movements, animating and organizing African American literary visions throughout the years between the New Negro Renaissance of the 1920s and the Black Arts movement of the 1960s. Sorett unveils the contours of a literary history that remained preoccupied with religion even as it was typically understood by authors, readers, and critics alike to be modern and, therefore, secular.

Spirit in the Dark offers an account of the ways in which religion, especially Afro-Protestantism, remained pivotal to the ideas and aspirations of African American literature across much of the twentieth century. From the dawn of the New Negro Renaissance until the ascendance of the Black Arts movement, black writers developed a spiritual grammar for discussing race and art by drawing on terms such as "church" and "spirit" that were part of the landscape and lexicon of American religious history. Sorett demonstrates that religion and spirituality have been key categories for identifying and interpreting what was (or was not) perceived to constitute or contribute to black literature and culture. By examining figures and movements that have typically been cast as "secular," he offers theoretical insights that trouble the boundaries of what counts as "sacred" in scholarship on African American religion and culture. Ultimately, Spirit in the Dark reveals religion to be an essential
ingredient, albeit one that was always questioned and contested, in the forging of an African American literary tradition.

Genres: Religion, History

312 pages, Hardcover

Published September 1, 2016

Reviews

[Peter Kerry Powers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book on the religion as a motivating factor in African American Literature. Sorett takes a little more of a theological and theoretical approach than a historical and institutional approach, but nevertheless and important contribution to what is an understudied issue in African American cultural production, the prevalence of religious tropes, themes, sensibilities.

Update--I recently reviewed Sorett's book in a review essay at The Cresset. A short excerpt:

"Sorett’s book grows increasingly profound the deeper it goes into the twentieth century. A significant chapter on African American Catholicism analyzes the conversion of an unusual number of important African American writers and thinkers to the Catholic faith, a fact that Sorett links to the new ways many African American writers, preachers, and theologians were confronting questions of universality and particularity. Perhaps the strongest chapter in the book is a very important and extensive analysis of the Black Arts Movement, one that made clear to me just how short a shrift it is usually given in discussions of African American literature, often being shrugged off as “mere” cant and protest. Sorett shows just how serious the religious and aesthetic practice and theorizing of these writers actually is, linking it to both protest against and continuity with the traditions of Afro-Protestantism from which it springs. Perceptive readings of Amiri Baraka show how Baraka navigates the tensions he experiences with the specifics of Afro-Protestant practice.

"Drawing clear lines between content and form, Amiri Baraka privileged the latter (spiritual/black forms) over the former (Christian/white content). In doing so, he highlighted the contributions that black people made both to American Christianity and jazz music. Moreover, in making this distinction he identified in black music a unique religious tradition that neither began nor ended with Western Christianity or the United States. (183)

"Sorett goes on to note that, like Baraka, Larry Neal “privileged the forms of the black church over its content; cadence and rhythm were more important than doctrine or theology. He was much ‘more concerned with the vibrations of the Word, than with the Word itself.’” (186). Though Sorett does not make this point, I was struck by the ways Baraka and Neal resonate with the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, whose study of the so-called Sorrow Songs posited in music a deep and unitary connection to African roots, more important ultimately than the words that had been corrupted by an intervening Christian history imbued with white supremacy. Seeing the quasi-Victorian Du Bois with his preferences for Aristotle and grand opera mirrored in the rebellious jazz, soul, and blues personae of writers like Neal and Baraka was only one of a multitude of instances throughout this book in which I found the familiar made uncanny, the distant made familiar."