A P ENTECOSTAL PHOTOGRAPH AND THE HERMENEUTIC
OF THE FANTASTIC
Instead of the uncanny, the 1917 interracial Pentecostal photograph might
register as fantastic. It is fantastic because the fantastic is carnivalesque. In
a hermeneutic of the fantastic, an artifact, event, or text crosses into a lim-
inal space, in-between space. Liminality violates the racial codes and law
that govern racially demarcated zones, white and black zones; liminality
is a space “controlled by unknown [racial] laws.” The police and military
along with vigilante squads patrol these zones and force compliance to the
racial laws. The liminal space, being a space in between the two racialized
zones, is ungoverned by recognized laws; it is in the borderlands. Whereas
interracial behavior is a violation either of the two racialized zones accord-
ing to de jure or de facto laws, the liminal space is beyond the surveillance
of the authorities; it escapes their oversight, their offi cial gaze. Are the
Pentecostal men in the photograph inhabiting a liminal space? Is racial
behavior beyond racially regulated religion and governed society? 14
Pentecostalism as a liminal space illustrates Pentecostalism operating
outside of the norms and expectation of regulated religion. Pentecostals
will exit and re-enter racialized zones at will in most cases; exceptions
are when they are tortured or arrested for their interracial activities. In
describing Pentecostalism as a liminal space, the focus is on the areas that
are out of bounds. As a photograph of fantastic, of liminality, this picture
points to the racial frontier or borderlands.
There were cartoons that described early interracial Pentecostalism as
a carnival such as the one entitled: “Spray From the Gliddy Bluks’ Water
Carnival.” In this cartoon, William Seymour and Glenn Cook were drawn
along with a group of baptismal prospects labeled as white “timid sis-
ter” and the “innocent bystanders.” The “timid sister” commented that
the “water looks treacherous and choppy,” a white “innocent” bystander
declined baptism because he was donning his good clothes, and an African
American “innocent” bystander says: “It don’t look good to me.” Like
the cartoon of 1907, did the 1917 interracial Pentecostal photograph
depict the space outside of the racially demarcated zones? 15
How might one construe the 1917 Pentecostal photograph as a photo-
graph of the fantastic that fi ts within a narrative arc of early Pentecostalism?
The narrative of Pentecostalism birthed by the Azusa Street Revival could
be construed as liminality. The Azusa Street Revival created a third way
of worshipping between white and black forms of worship. The crossover
VINTAGE PHOTO, VISUAL EXEGESIS, AND 1917 INTERRACIAL... 219