Social death thesis only describes a small minority of the enslaved-reject monolithic interpretations that occlude agency

(Paul E. Lovejoy, History@York, The African Diaspora: Revisionist Interpretations of

Ethnicity, Culture and Religion under Slavery1 Studies in the World History of Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation, II, 1 (1997). https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/31317017/Lovejoy_Revisionist_Interpretions_of_African_Diaspora-libre.pdf?1392317860=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DThe_African_Diaspora_Revisionist_Interpr.pdf&Expires=1678339058&Signature=CeZc8ehZj5rba7AXZ0AcaFqdW4EPKShdia9dkUALNJ7h7hGTqWhu0uCb4UNI2ZIgY334oFYNv8LeogclKP0ayEZSis7C3bVinAJCJiwXypj~NFVNDqHldozkfz~mTmPuAV08NyiDizrW8PjMX3iG5SmFEVpevjFVj1EoaM3Yl83J-cZFX4Lram904xbjAbJrKzWp4yzu19GebUm0bhQF75~VkwW073TRkaefyYcEI~9Ip9KZRxkzjW9yVfY0t7FQ-sRje2ONyaDE3J6dOrsWQCBdx5ErpSROkZKXVPEYMvw1i175i67qgak1o8aASd-Yg0qyIxnRplJ3N30aJQLN8w__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA)

The contributions of anthropologists aside, it is time to add an historical perspective that is rooted in African history to the examination of slavery in the Americas. The slave trade and the movement of identifiable groups of people have to be tied to specific historical events and processes in Africa, and it must be demonstrated what was and what was not transferred to the Americas. From this perspective, specific historical circumstances determined who was exported and who was not, and these circumstances might well have influenced who was active in promoting adjustments under slavery and preserving knowledge of Africa. The different reasons for enslavement have to be distinguished as crucial variables in determining what factors were important to the enslaved population. Whether an individual became a slave as a result of war, famine, commercial bankruptcy, judicial punishment, or religious persecution mattered. The conscious deportation of political prisoners has to be distinguished from impersonal transactions in the fairs and market-places of Africa. Instances of "mistakes" need to be documented as a means of determining why individuals ended up in the Americas or North Africa who legally should not have been so enslaved. Such examples include arbitrary alterations in the terms and conditions of pawnship, failure to ransom kidnapped victims, and "panyarring", i.e. the seizure of individuals for debt or other compensation.18 Slaves can be examined as individuals and as recognizable groups of people who had personal and collective histories. I am suggesting that the methodologies and research results of the past several decades of Africanist history can be used much more effectively in the examination of the conditions of slaves in the Americas than has been the case until now. In the process of applying these methodologies and research results, we will also know more about the history of Africa itself. Specifically, because it is now possible to say much more about the identities of the enslaved people who were brought to the Americas from Africa, we can now see the slaves of the Americas as not just an enslaved black population but also as Africans who constituted a displaced population that behaved in ways that were similar to other displaced people at other times. The fact that people were forcibly transported from Africa in the case of slaves should not disguise the similarity with other migrations. By comparing the movement of slaves across the Atlantic with other trans-Atlantic migrations, it is possible to see Africans as active agents in reformulating their cultural and social identities in the Americas, despite the oppressive setting to which they were subjugated. The issue of agency is important in unravelling the history of Africans outside of Africa. Scholars have taken the conscious actions of slaves into consideration in studying slave resistance, even extending their analyses to the ethnic origins of those involved in revolt and marronage. The extent to which specific historical situations influenced this resistance has not been explored sufficiently, however. The study of religion, cultural expression (including music, cuisine, naming patterns, etc.), and social relationships (kinship, ethnicity and ship-board friendships) also hinges on the recognition that people found ways to determine their identities on their own terms. Much more so than previously, these aspects of slave culture are not perceived as "survivals" but rather as features of conscious and not-so-conscious decisions by people themselves in selecting from their collective experiences those cultural and historical antecedents that helped make sense of the cruelty of slavery in the Americas. While many slaves were brutalized to the extent that they died without entering into meaningful and sustainable forms of social and cultural interaction with their compatriots, many other slaves more or less successfully re-established communities, reformulated their sense of identity, and reinterpreted ethnicity under slavery and freedom in the Americas. More than simply the foundation for individual and collective acts of resistance, these expressions of agency involved the transfer and adaptation of the contemporary world of Africa to the Americas and were NOT mere "survivals" of some diluted African past. Despite the "social death" of which Orlando Patterson speaks,19 slaves created a new social world that drew on the known African experience. Certainly the horrors of enslavement, the rough march to coastal ports and the trauma of the Middle Passage affected the psychological and medical health of the enslaved population, but not to the extent imagined by Elkins, at least not in most cases. While their resurrection from Patterson's "social death" was distorted by chattel slavery, many enslaved Africans were none the less fit enough to participate in the "200 Years' War" of which Patterson also writes.20 From the perspective of Africa, therefore, it is fruitful to examine the condition of slaves in the Americas on the basis that they were still Africans, despite their chattel status, the deracination that accompanied their forced migration, and the sometimes haphazard and sometimes deliberate attempts of Europeans to destroy or otherwise undermine this African identity. I am not here suggesting that enslaved blacks conceived of themselves in pan-African terms of recent times; the evolution of such solidarity has to be examined historically for different times and different places. Rather, I am arguing that many slaves in the Americas, perhaps the great majority, interpreted their lived experiences in terms of their personal histories, as anyone would, and in that sense the African side of the Atlantic continued to have meaning. Often slaves, former slaves, and their descendants still regarded themselves as Africans -- in the broad sense that they had come from Africa, no matter whether they reinterpreted that identity in reformulated ethnic terms (Nago, Coramantee, Mandingo, Pawpaw, etc.), in religious terms (Male/Muslim, Kongo Christian, animist), or in some other manner. Efforts to return to Africa by boat or by joining the world of the ancestors through suicide have special meaning in this sense. They are perhaps the starkest examples of the continued association with Africa for some slaves. The process of creolization comes much more in focus when the merger of cultures -- European and African -- is perceived in terms that are more equal than is often the case. The Africa that entered the creole mentality was neither static nor ossified. We can go beyond the pioneering work of Herskovits and his students, who identified sets of cultural traits -- "survivals" -- that provided colour to the sub-culture of slaves and their descendants. This anthropological approach explores the formulation of distinct societies in the context of slavery; current research is adding an historical perspective to this analysis. For many slaves in the Americas, Africa continued to live in their daily lives. That experience included a struggle to adapt to slavery in the Americas and to re-interpret cultural values and religious practices in context, but frequently maintaining a clear vision of the African past and more than a fleeting knowledge of developments in Africa after arrival in the Americas. Only when fresh arrivals stopped coming from a specific homeland did the process of creolization take root.