Archetypes of Transition in Diaspora Art and Ritual examines residually oral conventions that shape the black diaspora imaginary in the Caribbean and America. Colonial humanist violations and inverse issues of black cultural and psychological affirmation are indexed in terms of a visionary gestalt according to which inner and outer realities unify creatively in natural and metaphysical orders. Paul Griffith s central focus is hermeneutical, examining the way in which religious and secular symbols inherent in rite and word as in vodun, limbo, the spirituals, puttin on ole massa, and dramatic...