RT Article
T1 BOB’s Blues: A Reflection on the Legacy of Victor Anderson’s Beyond Ontological Blackness
JF Black theology
VO 21
IS 1
SP 21
OP 32
A1 Burnett, Rufus
LA English
YR 2023
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1841011193
AB This essay celebrates Victor Anderson’s Beyond Ontological Blackness: An Essay on African American Religious and Cultural Criticism (BOB) by considering how it reads blackness as an open possibility for human flourishing. Through critical engagement with Anderson’s notion of the “grotesquery of blackness,” it reads blues as a site for considering the implications of Anderson’s contention that black theology must move beyond essentialist constructions of blackness. The reflection also highlights how Anderson’s work anticipates contemporary critiques of modernity within decolonial studies, especially in the work of Sylvia Wynter. Finally, this essay uses the insights of BOB to assess the grotesque genius of the blues by offering a brief analysis of blues singer Muddy Waters’s performance of “Hoochie Coochie Man.”
K1 ontological blackness
K1 hoochie coochie-ness
K1 the grotesque
K1 decolonial theory
K1 the blues
K1 Black Theology
DO 10.1080/14769948.2023.2180134