By examining published literature and government documents we gain a full scope of the formal colonial perspective and the general public narrative. It is important to look at these types of sources because we can recognise the colonial ideas, and see the experiences of the enslaved in such a system. I argue that these sources attempt to cover up the importance of Obeah practices in Caribbean society. However these source limitations can be worked around.
A common narrative is apparent throughout the sources we will be examining in the next few posts. The general understanding is that obeah practices are evil, demonic, and show how ‘foolish’ enslaved peoples were to believe in it. This shows the European presentation of ‘obeah’ which is limited to what it was like. This negative and limited narrative of obeah practice supports Pablo F. Gomez perspective. He argues that Black medical and spiritual contribution to Caribbean knowledge was suppressed through documents and laws. In the next post we will begin looking at official documents and literature that cover up the importance of obeah to the wider Caribbean society and the enslaved community. Gomez adds that the Caribbean had multiple healing traditions in the Early Modern period. I argue that these healing traditions continued into the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which is evident through Obeah practices.
A way to use literature from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a source is using the method developed by Keith Sandiford. This includes using literature and the imaginary to analyse the values of society. This society has the history of different cultures encountering one another, and discussing it in a certain light. Then we use this to understand the narrative that surrounds obeah practices, and these narratives show the type of traditions that Obeah practices survived through.
Reference list:
Gomez, Pablo F., The experiential Caribbean: creating knowledge and healing in the Early Modern Atlantic (U.S.A.: The University of North Caroline Press, 2017).
Sandiford, Keith, Theorizing a colonial Caribbean-Atlantic imaginary: Sugar and obeah (Oxon: Routledge, 2011).
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