Social Death

Question 1

‘All human relationship are structured and

Patterson

Answer 1

defined by the relative power of the interacting persons’

Question 2

Power is “that opportunity exisiting

Patterson

Answer 2

within a social relationship which permits one to carry out ones will even against resistance and regardless of the basis on which the opportunity rests

Question 3

Slavery is one of the most extreme forms of the relation of domination
(Patterson)

Answer 3

approaching the limits of total power from the viewpoint of the master and of total powerlessness

Question 4

Slave was powerless in

Patterson

Answer 4

relation to another individual

Question 5

Alienated from all ‘rights’ or claim of birth,

Patterson

Answer 5

he ceased to belong to his own right to any legitimate social order

Question 6

Slavery is the permanent, (Patterson)

Answer 6

violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonoured persons

Question 7

David Brion Davis ….

Answer 7

Inhumane Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World

Question 8

Restore crucial element of chattel property

Answer 8

which is closely related to Patterson’s natal alienation and generalised dishnour (David Brion Davis)

Question 9

The key to this relationship lies in the animalisation (Brion Davis)

Answer 9

or bestialisation of slaves

Question 10

Not to say they saw them as ‘only animals’…(Brion Davis)

Answer 10

or as entire different species

Question 11

Example of extreme case when Frederick Law Olmsted

Answer 11

said he wouldnt mind killing a slave any more than he would a dog

Question 12

Patterson work is concerned with the dynamics of power and the relation of masters and slaves…

Answer 12

needs to focus on the question of harness or leniency and economic motives (Brion Davis)

Question 13

Vincent Brown

Answer 13

Social Death and Political Life in Study of Slavery

Question 14

Brown - “Social death is theoritical abstraction that is meant not to describe the…

Answer 14

lived experiences of the enslaved so much as to reduce them…to reveal the essence of slavery

Question 15

Brown - Social history have often taken “agency”…

Answer 15

Or the self-willed activity of choice making subjects, to be their starting point

Question 16

Brown - If scholars were to emphasise the efforts of the enslaved more than the condition of slavery,

Answer 16

we might at least tell richer stories about how the endeavours of the weakest and most abject have at times reshaped the world

Question 17

James H Sweet

Answer 17

Defying Social Death

Question 18

Sweet - Slaves might be pushed to the precipice of social death…

Answer 18

the strands of social belonging were always there to seize and claim ones personhood

Question 19

Carolyn Flick

Answer 19

The Making of Haiti (1990)

Question 20

Flick argues

Answer 20

Master held absolute rights of life and death over slave and could, and did, exercise these at will.

Existence of slaves was at times one of total fear – but out of this rose a conscience of ones self-existence

And in this they developed a sense of their own identity

Question 21

Vincent Brown (2)

Answer 21

Spiritual Terror and Sacred Authority in Jamaican Slave Society (2003)

Question 22

Brown - Spiritual Terror and Sacred Authority argues

Answer 22

Slave masters did not achieve the fear requisite to maintaining control over the enslaved by physical force alone (24)

Terrorise spiritual imaginations of the enslaved

For some, harsh treatment only aggravated the general indignity of lost social statu

Question 23

Walter Rucker

Answer 23

Conjure, Magic, and Power (2001)

Question 24

Rucker argues that…

Answer 24

Conjurer in the Americans served as a cultural bridge, with the ability of transcending cultural differences between African groups

Question 25

Sasha Turner Bryson

Answer 25

The Art of Power (2013)

Question 26

Sasha Turner Bryson Argues

Answer 26

Legislative changes reflected Jamaican authorities’ obsessive efforts to define, control, and eradicate Obeah. They ended up portraying it as witchcraft or the ‘supernatural’

Question 27

Leslie Desmangles

Answer 27

The Maroon Republics and Religious Diversity in Colonial Haiti

Question 28

Leslie Desmangles argues…

Answer 28

Anthropolical literature about Vodou suggests that African religious traditions brought by the alves remained intact throughout the colonial period in Haiti

Question 29

Edict Noir of 1685

Answer 29

made it illegal for the slaves to practise their African religions openly, and under stiff penalities to the contrary, ordered all masters to have thie slaves converted to Christianity within eight days after their arrival to the colony

Question 30

Neil Roberts

Answer 30

Freedom as Maroonage

Question 31

Neil Roberts argues

Answer 31

resistance as the pursuit of freedom, and freedom as the act of resisting rather than the destination

Question 32

A Diptee

Answer 32

From African to Jamaica

Question 33

A Diptee argues

Answer 33

Being a socially accepted institution at the time many different interpretations of enslavement would occur and the legality that they operated in (6)

If they would not accept the legality, they would not define themselves as socially dead during enslavement

Question 34

Issues of Diptee

Answer 34

‘They would not accept the legality of slavery’

What evidence is there for this?

They may not have a choice – reinforces social death?

Commit suicide

Question 35

Way in which social death is not true

Answer 35

Religion
Culture
Fugitivity

Question 36

Culture

Answer 36

Great Dismal Swamp Community

Communities form and it’s not uncommon for slaves who are escaping from the big cities to make their way into the swamp

There were far more maroon communities in the

Talented musicians and singers

Through singing – call and response and the labour that they communicate to one another

Music used to bolster spirits

Communities are a form of slave resistance

Dancing singing, folklore, they bring enslaved people together and its often against oppression and slave holders

We can go into the more obvious and gruesome

At the heart of a community is family

Families had a high degree of stability