The “Ring Shout”: A Corporeal Conjuring of Black-Togetherness

Abstract

This article explores the Ring Shout as a corporeal conjuring of Black-togetherness. Theoretically, I embrace the notion of assembly in ways that offer new comprehension around both implicit and explicit modes of embodiment in constant play within Black cultural modes. I turn to the research of Katrina Hazzard-Donald, Dr. Yvonne Daniel, and M. Jacqui Alexander for theoretical grounding regarding diasporic Afro-spiritualities, while artists such as Talley Beatty, Reggie Wilson, and Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah (formerly Christian Scott) provide landmarks for the artistic and aesthetic discourse of the text. I introduce a concept, AfrOist, as a navigation through and toward a recontextualization of centralized Africanist tendencies. With this shift, cultural inheritances are remembered and claimed.