Social Dismemberment, Social (Re)membering: Obeah Idioms, Kromanti Identities and the Trans-Atlantic Politics of Memory, c. 1675-Present

This article argues that the terms of identity claimed by and ascribed to Africans and their descendants in the Americas during the era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade functioned less as claims of provenance than as complicated, shifting and highly contested languages of political logic. Focusing...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Slavery & abolition 2014-10, Vol.35 (4), p.537-558
Main Author: Krug, Jessica A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Africa
Blacks
Coping
Cultural identity
Eighteenth Century
Health
Identity
Jamaica
Languages
Latin America
Memory
Political Action
Politics
Resistance
Rituals
Slave trade
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Summary:This article argues that the terms of identity claimed by and ascribed to Africans and their descendants in the Americas during the era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade functioned less as claims of provenance than as complicated, shifting and highly contested languages of political logic. Focusing on the 'Kromanti' identity associated with all major acts of resistance and maroonage in the eighteenth-century British- and Dutch-colonized Caribbean, this article connects a strategy developed by the Asante state for coping with a particular moment of beheading of the body politic in 1717 to oath-taking strategies employed by maroons of diverse origins to reconstitute viable communities. Examining the ways in which political claims were made through a language of Obeah, or social health and healing, this article argues that ritual practices comprised the discursive field of political action for eighteenth-century Africans and their descendants in Jamaica and beyond.
ISSN:0144-039X
1743-9523
DOI:10.1080/0144039X.2014.889880