Christ’s grassroots path: Countermemories of the plantationocene and Fannie Lou Hamer

Abstract

This article examines the figure and path of Christ in contrast with the structure of the plantation. Far from being a relic of the past, the plantation is an economic and social form revelatory of often-repressed and ongoing dynamics connected to land, labor, and race. Attending to the dangerous memory of those exploited and oppressed serves to subvert this order of empire and open space for different hopes. Furthermore, it lifts up the prophetic memory of people’s traditions in which Christ is identified with alternative orders of commonwealth and the commons. These alternatives are incarnated in grassroots African American traditions rooted in commonly held land, cooperative labor, and communal care, especially in the theological vision, political organizing, and communal practice of Fannie Lou Hamer and Freedom Farms Cooperative.