Events

Adrian Hernandez-Acosta, (Yale) "Metalepsis: Double Translations in the Caribbean Arts of Africana Religions"

This presentation analyzes two artworks by Black Caribbean women—the Cuban Belkis Ayón and the Trinidadian M. NourbeSe Philip—that at once draw on specific Africana religions for their subject matter of caring for the dead and yet swerve from faithful representation of orthodox practice and its gender politics. Informed by a set of literary theorizations of metalepsis as poetic allusion, boundary transgression, and/or critical posture relative to tradition, this presentation focuses on the metalepsis at play in Ayón’s collagraph Nlloro (1991) and Philip’s poetry book Zong! (2008) as double translations across discursive fields and aesthetic forms. In doing so, this presentation offers a way to rethink the relation between religion and art from the vantage point of those who are alienated from authorized religious space.