In 1760, following the largest slave revolt in the eighteenth-century British Empire, the Afro-Caribbean word Obeah first appeared in British colonial law. In Archival Irruptions, Katharine Gerbner traces how British authorities in Jamaica came to criminalize Obeah, a practice that was variously seen as a healing method, an Africana religion, a science, and a form of witchcraft. Gerbner shows that in the years directly preceding its criminalization, for enslaved Africans and Maroons, Obeah was a prophetic practice tied to healing and death rites. Drawing on Moravian missionary archives, Gerbner theorizes these descriptions of African religious beliefs, rituals, and concepts as irruptions: Moments when Africana epistemologies break the narrative of a European-authored archival document. Through these irruptions, we see European assertions of authority through the lens of Obeah. Moreover, we find that the modern category of religion is rooted in the histories of slavery, rebellion, and the criminalization of Black religious practices. Gerbners search for archival irruptions not only creates an opportunity to write an alternative narration about Obeah, it provides a new methodology for all those conducting archival research.
Katharine Gerbner traces how British colonial authorities in mid-eighteenth-century Jamaica came to criminalize Obeah, a religious practice held by enslaved Africans.
