The Struggle of (Black) Gods Today: A.L.L.A.H. and the Rhetoric of Divine Subjectivity

Fellow-Vortrag II: Prof. Dr. Monica Miller (Bethlehem, PA)

New assemblages of social and cultural subjectivity are never without the challenges of old plateaus. This Deleuzian wisdom is exemplified in the Nation of Gods and Earths, a new religious movement where adherents claim total human subjectivity by referring to themselves as god, A.L.L.A.H. to be specific (Arm, Leg, Leg, Arm, Head = Fully Human). The making and social transcendence of these new black godz rarely means an end to social problems, and does not promise escape from one’s social location or reality. From the historic presidency of Barack Obama to the unanticipated election of Donald Trump, this talk explores the simultaneous “cost” and “promise” marking the ascendance of new black godz over and against the increasing social anxieties and tensions among old modes of western racialized marginalization. Here, black social ascendance and mobility meets the limits of possibility for escape from the religious durability and wrath of age-old American and European racism.

 

Monica R. Miller, PhD

is Associate Professor of Religion & Africana Studies and Director of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Lehigh University. Miller holds research interests in religion/irreligion in youth cultures and popular culture, changing contours of identity and difference, new black religious movements, and theory and method in the study of religion, with emphases on new black religious movements. A widely sought after international speaker, Miller is the author of numerous books and scholarly contributions spanning topics such as social difference in/and religion, transatlantic blackness, religion and hip hop culture, among others. Miller is currently at work on her next book project entitled New Black Godz: Towards a Theory of Black Religion as Identity, under contract with Bloomsbury Aca­demic.