The Erotic as a Marvelous Real Paradigm: Hurston and Conjure Feminism

• Main Author: Peñate, Patricia Coloma
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
• Subjects: ancestry; epistemology; erotic; feminism; folklore; spiritual practices
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss42/7; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/2068/viewcontent/KK_2042_2C_202023_207_20Regular_20section_20__20Pe_C3_B1ate.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

The presence of conjuring in African American culture and artistic works in its relation to female identity has been recently addressed from an academic point of view as “Conjuring Feminism”: a term that centralizes its role as an intellectual tradition that works as a liberatory epistemology for women of African descent. In the definition of such term, Audre Lorde’s concept of the erotic has a central role. This paper analyzes Zora Neale Hurston’s works to explore how she engages in this tradition and its erotic nature. Lorde’s notion also functions as the paradigm at the base of Conjuring Feminism and provides an analysis of its applicability to address the African-based spiritual phenomenon of magic, one that engages Alejo Carpentier’s notion of the marvelous real. In this way, the erotic provides the space and momentum to enact both Conjure Feminism and the marvelous real as female liberatory epistemologies.