Insignificant Things: Amulets and the Art of Survival in the Early Black Atlantic

by Matthew Francis Rarey

In Insignificant Things Matthew Francis Rarey traces the history of the African-associated amulets that enslaved and other marginalized people carried as tools of survival in the Black Atlantic world from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Often considered visually benign by white Europeans, these amulet pouches, commonly known as “mandingas,” were used across Africa, Brazil, and Portugal and contained myriad objects, from herbs and Islamic prayers to shells and coins. Drawing on Arabic-language narratives from the West African Sahel, the archives of the Portuguese Inquisition, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European travel and merchant accounts of the West African Coast, and early nineteenth-century Brazilian police records, Rarey shows how mandingas functioned as portable archives of their makers’ experiences of enslavement, displacement, and diaspora. He presents them as examples of the visual culture of enslavement and critical to conceptualizing Black Atlantic art history. Ultimately, Rarey looks to the archives of transatlantic slavery, which were meant to erase Black life, for objects like the mandingas that were created to protect it.

Genres: Sociology, Grad School, History

304 pages, Hardcover

Published May 12, 2023

Reviews

[Wisconsin Alumni]

Matthew Francis Rarey MA’08, PhD’14
Author

From the author:
Matthew Francis Rarey traces the history of the amulet pouches that enslaved and other marginalized people carried as tools of survival in the Black Atlantic world and shows how they are examples of the visual culture of enslavement.

[David Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tough going (for me) with the theorizing but worth the effort. Brought me into so many worlds and lives that would be otherwise invisible, at least to me.