With great care and detail, Walker argues that African American freemasonry provides a critical theoretical lens for understanding the distinctive ways African Americans have constructed a radically democratic political imaginary through racial solidarity and political nationalism, forcing us to reconsider much more circumspectly the complex relationship between voluntary associations and democratic politics.
Mapping the discursive logics of the language of freemasonry as a metaphoric rendering of American democracy, this study interrogates the concrete forms of an associational culture, revealing how paradoxical aspects of freemasonry such as secrecy and public association inform the production of particular ideas and expressions of democracy in America.
|Preface: A Note on Freemasonry viiAcknowledgments ix
Introduction: Secret Rites, Public Power 1
1. The Specter of Democracy 23
2. A Cartography of Democracy 45
3. Ritual and Revolution 86
4. A New Political Ideology 128
5. The Democratic Uses of Ritual and Secrecy 175
Epilogue: Race, Ritual, and the Struggle for Democracy in America 219
Notes 227
Index 281|
"Recommended."—Choice
"An astounding reinterpretation of the roots of the black Masonic movement."—The Journal of American History
"A valuable contribution to our understanding of the relationship between Masonic cultural and institutional forms and the struggle for democracy among African Americans."—Journal of African American Studies
|Corey D. B. Walker is an assistant professor in the department of Africana Studies at Brown University.
