This text focuses on Black Africa, that is, West, Central, and Southern Africa, areas on the continent where the population predominantly has dark-pigmented skin. I am interested in racism in the context of the US, and Black Africa is strongly connected to the US through the enslavement of Black Africans that started in the US in the 1600s. Africa is a large continent, and the area encompassing Black Africa is also large and includes hundreds of cultures and languages. Yet there are cultural similarities because trade networks spread through Black Africa well before European colonisation. Nevertheless, these cultures differ, and the scope of this study cannot accommodate a detailed look into each African culture referenced. Therefore, I focus broadly on Black Africa, but the reader should keep in mind that Black Africa is not a monolithic culture but has distinct cultures and geography.

White supremacy is referenced throughout this text. I am not using the term polemically, but I am pointing to an ideological stance that most white people agree with. White supremacy simply means that you think that white people are better, more advanced, more civilised, and naturally more intelligent. (How else could you advance or create civilisation?) This does not mean that white supremacists are Nazis who want to kill or enslave nonwhites. White supremacists are often convinced their imagination is based on historical facts and often science. My overarching aim is to show how white supremacy is commonplace in the US by examining the history of Black African objects in the US, western aesthetics, art, and the US art world in the early 1900s.

The text uses a capital T in truth to signal that this refers to the philosophical concept of a universal and infinite truth that encompasses all times and places.

In this text, certain words are dealt with in non-standard ways to draw attention to the normalisation of racism and dehumanisation of Black people. Some words are used for precision over standard use. Black is capitalised throughout the text when referring to Black people.

The N-word is referenced in quoted material only and is written as Ni[…]er(s). USians is used instead of American(s) and US instead of America because referring to the United States as ‘America’ is imprecise as there are two large continents with a small strip joining them, which are all part of the Americas.

That we all are, or can be, victims of physics inscribes an agential form to a classical understanding of ideas such as gravity and force. It invokes a reversal of who and what can behave. As Mel Y. Chen writes in Animacies, there is the possibility of a linguistic “conceptual order of things, an animate hierarchy of possible acts” that they trouble significantly as they ponder the borders between the inanimate and the animate (3). In Chen’s early example of “the hikers that rocks crush,” they engage with the problem that “the hikers … play an object role” (2). The solution to the linguistic difficulty emerges when we animate the object, when the traditionally inanimate rock is given the free agency and subjecthood quality to crush the hikers. Upon this animation, the object becomes a thing, described by Robin Bernstein as when “the amateur’s knife should slip and cut a finger … that knife suddenly becomes a thing that has leapt up and asserted itself, a thing that demands to be reckoned with” (69), which centres her idea of “dances with things” as the kind of interplay between a human and the substantive things that they interact with daily. Bernstein borrows heavily from thing theorist Bill Brown’s assertion that “[t]he story of objects asserting themselves as things, then, is the story of a changed relation to the human subject” (4).

White western art history started before the first century with the Greeks, who carved statues, laid mosaics, and constructed monuments and temples with a high degree of artistic skill. Hellenic art has a character of balance and symmetry, often following the golden ratio and producing realistic portraits of humans. Greek art and ideas about beauty set the standards for what white philosophers and scholars would call the rules of aesthetics. Art for the Greeks celebrated gods and goddesses, public figures, and the good life. However, poor and enslaved people could only interact with public works; the wealthy collected art to decorate their homes and give them status. The Romans copied Greek forms, myths and art, spreading them throughout Europe as they moved their Empire north.

The next movement in white western art is Celtic and Norse art in the early first century. This artwork is highly stylised and figurative, incorporates language elements and does have realistic figures. As with much Greek and Roman art, Celtic art often had ritual significance and reflected the people’s cosmology. Not much changed in white western art until the end of the medieval period. The 1400s began the European Renaissance, Enlightenment, industrialisation, and the formation of ideas about art and aesthetics. This is also the start of the white European Colonisation of Black Africa.

At the start of the European Renaissance, artwork imitated nature as closely as possible. The Renaissance was an era when painting became a popular artistic medium when sculpture and three-dimensional objects held primacy before. The Belgium Jan van Eyck popularised realistic oil painting in Northern Europe, which the southern Italians like Benini picked up. The subject matter of white European art during colonisation consisted of Christian stories and portraits of wealthy nobles who could afford to hire a painter. Art had been used by the Catholic church previous to this to illustrate the bible for the illiterate masses; the church-sponsored various skilled artists to create monuments to god, Jesus and the saints, so artists painted what the Catholic church desired. White western art from this time still relies on Hellenic notions of beauty and proportion but is focused on capturing life in the artwork. We see the first concern for the accuracy of representation, which is influenced by science, during this period, as scientists used illustrations for Enlightenment classification projects before photography existed.

This list is taken from Alison Forrestal, Catholic synods in Ireland, 1600-1690 (Dublin, 1998). Where the decrees of the synods are extant, they are listed in bold type.

Contemporary horror film can hardly be discussed without considering the work of Jordan Peele, “Hollywood’s most inventive horror voice” (McCann). His debut Get Out (2017) offers a scathing criticism of the evil of racism and racial exploitation, reminding audiences that America is far from “living a blissful state of post-racial harmony” (McCann). In his second horror feature, Us (2019), Peele casts a wider net by exploring further, equally haunting social issues such as capitalist exploitation, poverty and the ever-present trauma of disenfranchisement. While the film may certainly be explored by focusing solely on the issue of race (from the perspective of critical race theory, for instance, which can be a topic of a separate research), the theme of racism is somewhat less prominent here than in Peele’s earlier film, and, due to its focus on dual identities, Us seems to be more intricate and more widely devastating, like capitalism itself. Notably, the only White characters in Us, the Tyler family, are killed by their own White clones (who in turn are killed by Black clones). Peele thereby avoids blatant racist inferences, which would allow for a clear identification of the victim (Black) and the oppressor (White), as was the case in Get Out. In this way, Us rejects clear demarcations of responsibility along the racial lines and looks for them along class lines, where they become more elusive. As this chapter argues, Us reveals that in a capitalist society everyone is simultaneously victim and oppressor, which keeps “us” enmeshed in a web of conflicting identities.

The council of Dublin, 1202

Convened by John of Salerno, papal legate in Ireland. The council probably considered the disputed succession to the archbishopric of Armagh, where there were rival English and Irish candidates. Despite the king's support for Ralph Petit, archdeacon of Meath216 and the pope's expressed preference for a candidate of neither English nor Irish extraction, victory eventually went to the Irish candidate, Eugenius.

The council of Athlone, 1202

This was also presided over by John of Salerno a fortnight after the previous synod, and seems to have dealt with the disputed succession to the archbishopric ofTuam, which had previously passed by inheritance from father to son and was slated to go to a nephew ofCadla Ua Dubthaig (1167-1201). The papal legate summoned the suffragans of the province and got them to elect the prior of Saul, Felix Ua Ruanada instead, but he was never really accepted locally. Eventually he resigned his see (1235) and went to live as a monk in Dublin, where he died in 1238.

The council of Mullingar, 14 February 1206

Universis ecclesiae sanctae matris filiis praesentes litteras visuris Simon, Dei gratia Midensis ecclesiae minister humilis et Radulphus, eiusdem loci archidiaconus et G., prior de Duvelech [Duleek], salutem in Domino.

Ad universitatis vestrae notitiam volumus pervenire, quod cum causa quae vertebatur inter canonicos Sancti Thomae de Dublinia ex una parte et monachos de Beatitudine [Bective] ordinis Cisterciensis ex alia, super corpore Hugonis de Lasci, nobis a domino papa commissa fuisset audienda et fine canonico sublato appellationis diffugio terminanda, nos in causa ipsa, ordine iuris observato, procedentes, demum post multas et varias prolationes per testes omni exceptione maiores veritate diligenter inquisita, de meritis causae sufficienter et plene instructi, praesentibus viris auctenticis et religiosis, videlicet Eugenio Ardmachano archiepiscopo et Hiberniae primate, Felice Tuamensi archiepiscopo, Simoni Midensi, A. Alphinensi,. Duacensi episcopis; F. Cenanensi, X. de Novan, H. de Trim abbatibus, R[oberto] de Sancta Trinitate Dubliniae, H. de Favoria prioribus; et aliis discretis quampluribus et venerabilibus personis, anno ab incarnatione Domini MCCV, die sancti Valentini, apud Admulinger [Mullingar], in ecclesia parochiali dictis canonicis Sancti Thomae de Dublinia definitive sententiavimus et eisdem corpus memorati Hugonis de Lasci auctoritate apostolica quae fungebamur in causa sententialiter adiudicavimus.

The idea for this book is an old one. I first read V. S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas in the third year of my undergraduate course at Delhi University in India. I did not particularly enjoy the book then. Later, when I came to Trinidad and read it again, I found in it a reflection of my interest in Indian writing in English. The book laid emphasis on documenting the everyday lives of Indo-Trinidadians in a joint family set-up. Its use of English and the familiarity of the subject matter helped me re-discover a deep-rooted Indian culture within Trinidad.

I am a recent migrant from India to Trinidad, a non-resident Indian (NRI), who shares strong ties with my motherland through internet access and social media platforms. As such, I am part of a huge NRI population overseas, but Trinidad is not a typical sought-after destination. A majority of the NRI population resides in the Middle East, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. My distance from these ‘diasporic metropolitan centres’ provides me with a unique standpoint from where I can negotiate postcolonial and postmodern discourse away from the typified Indian diaspora critic working in the US or UK academy. However, this book is neither ostensibly about me nor my diasporic point of view.

The book references an older diaspora that came to Trinidad over 178 years ago. That diaspora is no longer a diaspora but a strong community that is deeply enmeshed in the political, economic, social and cultural life of Trinidad. Stories abound about how the Indians were tricked into coming so far from home to Trinidad, or ‘Chini-dad’ as they called it. Vijay Mishra qualifies the differences between the older and the newer diaspora as between those who could not return and for whom India became a land in their imagination, distant and pure, and those who frequently return to the homeland, replenishing their connections to an actual India. My book, in a way, seeks new ways of bridging the gaps between the older and the newer diaspora.

I contend that reading Naipaul in Trinidad has made a difference because location, in spite of recent scholarship on globalisation, has to be lived to be felt.

This chapter is concerned with medicine of words rather than deeds, though, as we shall see, these words had to do with exhorting, persuading and encouraging patients and others to take charge of their lives or fulfil their responsibilities rather than with speculation or doctrinal issues. It will explore the overlap between medicine and religion in discourses of counsel or advice addressed to lay people and to clergy. This overlap occurs across a range of different kinds of writing. Some of the various forms these discourses took (from the thirteenth century to the dissolution) were: the writing of pastoralia about preaching and confession; penitential literature aimed at lay folk; advice to princes about conduct, diet and exercise; and general regimens of health. For the most part, the authors of these writings I will be considering here were friars.

The range of roles friars undertook as preachers, confessors, teachers and advisors to eminent people encouraged the creation of a similar variety of texts of counsel. But separating out those discourses concerned with spiritual as opposed to those concerned with bodily matters (salus animae vs sanitas corporis) is not always straightforward. In part, this is because texts were multivalent. To take an example: was the De proprietatibus rerum, an encyclopedic survey of things created by God, written c. 1240 by Bartholomaeus Anglicus OFM, read as a help to interpretation of the scriptures, as a source for figurae and exempla to be used in friars’ sermons, or as a guide to conduct and bodily health for all? The reason for the extraordinary success of this text in England, measured by its appearance in libraries and citation in everything from scholastic commentaries to recipes, is surely that it could be read in all three ways (and indeed in other ways too). Different books of the complete work by Bartholomaeus were useful for different kinds of reading. The same might be said for the new edition made by Roger Bacon OFM of the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum Secretorum in the 1270s. This work, translated from an Islamicate original, purported to be ethical, political and medical advice from Aristotle to Alexander; it dated from thirty to forty years after De proprietatibus rerum.

The Abbey Of Burton-upon-Trent has left the most extensive records of any institution in the region under study. As a result, the house provides unusually detailed evidence of how it administered its tenants and sought to regulate their relationship with other lords, giving us valuable insight into the pragmatic ways in which multiple lordship was managed. It also demonstrates the degree to which regional power was to a large extent bottom-up and depended on relations with, and loyalty from, those at the level of subtenants and below.

This chapter will first examine the abbey's foundation and the nature of its documentation, before turning to the most striking evidence for the house's management of its tenants. In most grants made by the house in the first two-thirds of the twelfth century, the type of homage performed by the tenant is recorded. Throughout these documents, there is a recognition of what services could be reasonably asked of a tenant, or whether and under what circumstances they would have to concede to the prior claims of another lord. A series of case studies explores how these homage relationships operated. Finally, attention will turn to the house's miracle stories. These demonstrate the importance of managing relations with subtenants and servants as a means of maintaining peaceful relationships with neighbouring lords. Before turning to the abbey's relations with its tenants, we need to briefly examine the foundation of the house and its sources.

The foundation and the documents

The abbey was founded c.1004 by a king's thegn, Wulfric Spot, who held lands both in the north Midlands area and further to the north-west. A previous religious foundation may have existed at Burton from the seventh century, according to the abbey's Vita of its patron saint, St Modwenna. The saint was said to be an Irish abbess who came to the area and built two churches: one on an island in the Trent, which was later known as Andressey, suggesting a dedication to St Andrew, and one on the eastern bank of the river. Although St Modwenna was said to have returned to Ireland, she left an unnamed companion at Andressey to act as abbess. After St Modwenna's death in Scotland, she was buried in this church. This tradition may be in part legendary, but circumstantial evidence also suggests Burton may have been an early religious site associated with Bishop Wilfrid.

The registers of the medieval archbishops of Armagh are a uniquely important source for medieval Irish church history. They are the only thing in Ireland even remotely comparable to English diocesan registers, though the differences are at least as important as the similarities. They are the property of the diocese of Armagh and are currently kept at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, although there have been proposals to move them to the Armagh Public (Robinson) Library. The Irish Manuscripts Commission has undertaken to print all of them in extenso and so far two volumes have appeared under their auspices. However, one register was published several years ago and there are calendars available of the others. The details are given below.

Introduction

There has always been a mild obsession with lists of ‘best law/lawyer films’ as a starter for any work using film in the study of law which can be found from the turn of the century up until the time of writing. There are also Guides that exist to provide law teachers with material, as well as accounts of how the justice system operates in practice. In addition the role of ideology in film continues to be a theme. Interest comes, too, from slightly unexpected quarters. The impact of film generally as well as certain specific areas like race is also encountered as is writing on strongly related areas. Originally interest in the cinematic portrayal of law and lawyers tended to focus on the traditional American courtroom drama with specific attention on two classic films. First Sidney Lumet’s 1957 film Twelve Angry Men and second Robert Mulligans 1962 offering To Kill a Mockingbird. It also started with American legal academics who had an interest in film as a cultural phenomenon. The two films, noted above, were selected by the American Film Institute as the two finest courtroom dramas, which was defined as ‘a genre of film in which a system of justice plays a critical role in the film’s narrative’; two iconic actors, Henry Fonda and Gregory Peck, standing up against all odds to support the idea of ‘justice’. Both took up an unpopular stance demonstrating the importance of a fair trial against a backdrop of prejudice. The two films are powerful pieces of social drama with life-and-death decisions. However, Henry Fonda, as Davis Juror 8, in Twelve Angry Men, was not a lawyer but a member of the jury charged with determining the guilt or innocence of a young man accused of murder.

Early Irish Christianity

The conversion of Ireland

In the tangled maze of Irish church history, few questions are more controversial or more intractable than the one which is the most fundamental of all - when and how did the Christian faith first reach the island of Ireland? About all that we can say for certain is that in the year 431 Pope Celestine I consecrated a man called Palladius as bishop to the Christians in Ireland - whoever and wherever they were. Hints from place names and the probabilities of geography suggest that these Christians lived somewhere in the south-east of the country, but it is impossible to know how many or how widely scattered they were. It is quite likely that most of them were British people who had gone to Ireland, either voluntarily as merchants or involuntarily as slaves or refugees. When that migration started is completely unknown, but after the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity in the fourth century, the chances that Roman citizens in Ireland would have been Christians increase dramatically, whether they were of British or of continental origin. Some of them were probably slaves who had been captured during one of the frequent Irish raids on Britain, while others may have gone to Ireland to escape religious repression after the condemnation of the British-born Pelagius in 429 but this cannot be proved and it left no trace on future developments. Whether these Christians made any effort to convert the native Irish is unknown, as is the ultimate fate of the Palladian mission. It seems that Palladius went to Ireland as planned and had a successful ministry there, but that after he died there was no attempt to follow up his efforts and the Christians of Ireland were left once more to their own devices.

The traditional evangelist of Ireland was Patrick, a Briton who was captured by Irish raiders and enslaved as a young man. He escaped from his captivity and managed to return home, but his experiences in Ireland had left him with a burning determination to return and preach the Gospel in that country. He went back, either to what is now County Down or to somewhere in the northwest, and launched a missionary effort which would eventually see the conversion of the Irish people to Christianity.

Friar practitioners

If one is not Black African, one must be cautious when thinking about Black African art. Most of the published work about Black African art that has circulated in the west up until the 1990s was all written by white western scholars. Under the influence of white supremacy and Enlightenment ideology, white western scholars believed that they could understand Black African art better than Black Africans. The continued prejudice in the white western world means that Black African scholarship remains ignored when it pertains to Black African art, philosophy, and aesthetics. White westerners with little or no knowledge of Black African cultures they studied had two things that blocked them from understanding what they studied. ‘First, it relates to embedded prejudice, a social inheritance that human beings sometimes display even if involuntarily. The second aspect pertains to ignorance. The modernist cultural hegemony has yet to acknowledge Africa as a legitimate global force in visual arts.’

To understand Black African aesthetics, art, and culture, one needs to look to Black African scholars who are better informed than their white European counterparts. There is a danger in thinking that Black Africa is a place where everyone has the same cosmology, aesthetics, culture, and language. Africa encompasses over thirteen million square miles, four times the size of the contiguous United States. There are hundreds of languages and groups within Black Africa, so one cannot speak of the area as a homogenous whole. If one thinks about the striking differences between different areas of the United States separated by hundreds of miles, one can imagine the differences that occur in Black Africa. To understand how Black African objects in white western scholarship and art are more representative of white western culture and ideas of Black Africa and less representative of Black Africa itself, one must examine Black African ideas, scholarship, and culture. Even though Black Africa does not have a singular language and culture, there are significant similarities that represent Black African cultural threads.

In this chapter, we will explore major themes and ideas found in Black Africa concerning human existence, Truth, and beauty. This work is not a definitive presentation of Black African thought or aesthetics, but a sample of the key themes and positions Black African scholars have held regarding Black African philosophy, aesthetics, and culture.