Ceremony Found and related materials, approximately 1990s-2018

Please Note:

This collection is currently undergoing processing. The Academia series, Events and Engagement series, and Research Materials series are unavailable until approximately June 2026.

Scope and content:

The Ceremony Found subseries includes a number of largely unpublished works that Wynter at various times referred to as "Major work", "Book length ms.", "Book ms.", and similar names, and which appear to have evolved or morphed from one to another over almost 20 years. These works include "In the Great Silence of Scientific Knowledge", "Looking Back at the Hills of Hebron from Hindsight", "The Ceremony Found", "The Autopoetic Turn/Overturn", and several versions of an introduction (sometimes called "Prolegomena", "Some Gigantic Thing Called Colonial", and "Why Adam Had to Have Sinned") to the essay collection We Must Learn To Sit Down and Talk About a Little Culture, which appears to have an earlier proposed title of "We Know Where We Are From". "The Ceremony Found" appeared to be the latest work that was part of this overarching project, giving this subseries its name.

The various works included in this subseries address and synthesize many of the topics Wynter wrote about throughout her career, including Christopher Columbus's discovery of the Americas; the transition in Europe and elsewhere from geocentrism to heliocentrism and beyond; African slavery in the Americas and conceptions of race in literature; philosophy of human nature and the evolution of humans, in particular the significance of the discovery of the Blombos Cave in Africa and its impacts on understanding of early human development; and many other subjects.

Most of these works and titles are also talks or papers found in the Chronological subseries, and it appears that Wynter later expanded on them. Document or draft titles, notes, and correspondence indicated these works may have started out with one title and were merged or evolved into each other. During processing, any folders with dates before the original talk or paper was given were placed with the Chronological subseries, and those with dates after the talk or paper was given were placed with Ceremony Found, but many dates were unclear and this was inexact. Two other works which may be a part of this overlap are "Human Being as Noun" and "After the Human as Anthropos", but without any clear indication at the time of processing that these works were included, they are with the Chronological subseries only.

Materials that were originally intended to be part of the We Must Learn To Sit Down Together essay collection introduction are included here, and there is likely to be some related materials in the WMLTSDT subseries. There is also likely to be significant overlap with materials in the On Being Human as Praxis subseries, as those materials were created concurrently with many materials in this subseries.

A timeline of Wynter's writings, lectures, workshops, and other engagements compiled during processing is available here.

Processing information:

Many of these folders include notes in the form of sticky notes and notepads, folded 8.5"x11" sheets (often several together), and loose portions of cut 8.5"x11" paper. Many of these types of notes were held together with paperclips, and were often nested within other groups of notes held with paperclips. While original order and groupings were maintained wherever possible, many paperclips were removed and many small pieces of paper were not held together at all and/or had no apparent order. Researchers must use extra caution when reviewing these materials to ensure materials remain together.

Sticky notes on original folders were removed, attached to archival paper, and included in the folder. If any information other than just the title of the work was written on the original folder, that portion of the folder was retained and included in the new folder.

Original folders were often unmarked, and the likely work was inferred from content or format. Sometimes handwritten or typescript drafts are written on reverse pages from the same or other works, and processors made judgements about which work to use for the title. Handwritten materials were often undated, and some dates were inferred from surrounding materials.

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