Ashon T. Crawley, “Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility” (Fordham UP, 2016)

Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility (Fordham University Press, 2016) is innovative and lyrical, challenging and beautiful. Ashon Crawley brings together black studies, queer theory, theology, and continental philosophy to theorize the ways in which what he calls “otherwise worlds of possibility” can serve as disruptions against marginalization and violence and also produce possibilities for flourishing. Examining the whooping, shouting, noise-making, and tongue speaking of Black Pentecostalism, Crawley reveals how these aesthetic practices allow for the emergence of alternative modes of social organization. In the process, he does much more: suggesting a hermeneutics, a methodology for reading culture when people are under siege.

Ashon Crawley is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and African American Studies at the University of Virginia.

Hillary Kaell is associate professor of Religion at Concordia University in Montreal.

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