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The Illusion of Isolation: The Gullah/Geechees and the Political Economy of African Culture in the Americas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 September 2008

J. Lorand Matory
J. Lorand Matory
Affiliation:
Anthropology and African and African American Studies, Harvard University
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Extract

The Gullah/Geechee people are the locus classicus for the study of “African survivals” in North American culture. As such, they have been saddled with the duty to generate universal principles for the explanation of Africans’ acculturation, adaptation, and cultural resistance in the Western hemisphere, and they provide the main North American test case for explanatory principles generated elsewhere in the Americas. Yet, the well-studied Gullah/Geechee case, like the Afro-Atlantic world generally, holds untapped lessons about the historical genesis of cultures and ethnic identities worldwide. Is isolation the normal precondition and conservator of cultural and ethnic distinctiveness? And do the enslaved and their descendants choose their ancestors’ ways and identities mainly when and where isolation from the oppressor has made the oppressor's cultural alternatives unavailable? The existing literature on the Gullah/Geechee people of the southeastern U.S. coast and islands says “yes” to these questions, which also stand at the heart of both black Atlantic and global cultural history.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , October 2008 , pp. 949 - 980
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2008

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