"Transatlantic Reinstatements" and the Black Atlantic

Robert Farris Thompson's Flash of the Spirit functions within the well articulated contours of the project to trace African cultural survivals in the Americas. Rather then survivals, or recreations, Thompson prefers the concept of "transatlantic reinstatements." (32) By which Thompson means culture modes and practises that are "at once African-inspired and indigenously created." Well leaning strongly towards the African-retention model of Herskovits, Thompson seeks a way out of the historiographical swamp with the idea of reinstatement. Existing as both, these practises can have African roots but in contemporary, and historical, practice has lost any conscious trace of their African roots. (197)
Thompson's work is nothing if not enthusiastic. His writing leaps off the page with the excitement of someone who genuinely loves the objects and art forms he is discussing. Thompson has an axe to grind. As he argues of Yoruba culture "pulsing with ceaseless creativity richly stabilized by precision and control, will safeguard the passage of its people through the storms of time," and perhaps also the Middle Passage. Thompson is quick to pass value judgments on cultures, and praise the sensibilities of those African cultures that he finds ample survivals of in the Americas. One wonders about those African cultures that were not so robust.
Rather than focus on music, or dance, or food ways, Thompson's emphasis on material culture and visual arts (made things) is powerful in his attempt to trace specific cultures in the diaspora. His reading of Mande bottle trees or Yoruba Iron is compelling and hard to dismiss. He has a tendency, however, to essentialize cultures and intuit relatively fixed aesthetic ideas to cultures across broad space and time. For instance the idea of coolness in Yoruba culture or the Mande "search for simplicity." (196) I am typically quite skeptical of this generalized application of cultural modes.
Thompson's basic argument is hard to dismiss and his reading of art and material culture is compelling as are the transatlantic routes he traces. His decoupling of his sources from time (rarely is an object or a text dated when cited) causes a traditional historian to feel ill at ease.