#natal alienation

[gravalicious]

“These propositions, especially the positing of a series of existential breaks in contrast to the sustained normativity of patriarchy, are what lead Patterson to argue in Slavery and Social Death that it is not property per se that marks the distinct condition of the slave, but rather an alienation of all his rights by virtue of being dis-affiliated from his blood heritage. This notion of “natal alienation,” first introduced in a 1979 article, is Patterson’s most influential contribution to the analysis of slavery and is what defines the “death” in “social death” (Bodel and Scheidel, 2016, p. 11; Patterson 1979). So let us be clear about the nature of this death. First of all, it is filial. Patterson renders “natality” as biologically rooted in “living blood relations” and the “claims and obligations” that they make on the individual’s “more remote ancestors and … descendants”, that is, “natural forebears” (Patterson 1982, p. 5 my emphasis). “Humanized fictive kinship,” Patterson claims, is not the same as “claims and obligations of real kinship or with those involving genuine adoption” (1982, p. 63). Real and genuine, here, mean formally sanctioned rather than simply “expressive.” This leads to the second point: Patterson imbues filial claims with a patriarchal normativity based on the functionalist distinction between informal familial relations built by slaves but made illegitimate by the master, and formal enforceable ties of “blood” (see Patterson 1982). The latter, as we have seen in Patterson’s prior work, almost always invokes a patriarchal question of the standing of the father/husband and the legal lack of this standing under slavery. The loss of this patriarchal position is heavily attached to an honor economy (as patriarchy always is). With these specifications, Patterson (1982) provides his famous definition of slavery as “the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons” (p. 13). But as universal as that definition presents, it nonetheless rests upon and affirms the social anthropological framings of Patterson’s early work.”

Robbie Shilliam - Social Death and Rastafari Reason [Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race (2023), 1–19]

[gravalicious]

Karen Middleton - Circumcision, Death, and Strangers [Journal of Religion in Africa, XXVII, 1997]

[gravalicious]

“The literal translation of hazomanga is “blue wood” or “blue tree” because the word hazo in the Sakalava-Masikoro dialect has two senses: tree and wood. The tree meaning designates the shady place by the kily (tamarindus indica) or the kily itself where ceremonies are held, such as the soronanake or fandeo (adoption or recognition of a child by the father through circumcision). The hazomanga consecrates this ceremony, adding another member to the father’s lineage. Hazomanga also evokes wood. The hazomboto, meaning ‘‘wood from the rod,’’ is also called hazomanga. This is a phallic symbol, an evocative stake that one plants in a sacred place (the fanandrata) during the circumcision ceremony. Moreover, the stake of katrafae (cedrelopsis grevei), which is planted each time that the jiny comes out, is called hazomanga. Later I discuss in more detail how the word jiny has come to be an integral part of hazomanga. The other word in hazomanga, manga, is very easy to understand. It means beauty.[5] Malagasy call all dark colors manga when they want to give it value. For example, a young woman with beautiful eyes is called ampela manga maso, (‘‘woman of blue eyes’’). A beautiful young black girl is often baptized Manga, or Remangane. The Makoa, originally African slaves, when freed were baptized Zazamanga, ‘‘blue children,’’ to avoid saying black. By extension, hazomanga has a higher signification. It designates the house of the Mpitoka, the lineage leader or patriarch, and even the village where he resides, which serves as the focal point for the whole lineage.[6] As I already mentioned, the hazomanga is a combination of parts. Its main element is the jiny. Jiny is of Arabic origin (Lavondès 1967: 128n). In Menabe, when the jiny in the royal family was called dady and was worshipped by all the kingdom’s subjects, each lineage was identified by its jiny. In fact, in the precolonial period only the noble families and Vohitse (free people) were concerned with the hazomanga. Slaves were not entitled to it. Thus, before I discuss the role and the place of the hazomanga in the life of the Masikoro, it is necessary to present briefly their precolonial society. This brings me to the different social castes and their position and particularly in relation to the hazomanga.”

Jeanne Dina - The Hazomanga among the Masikoro of Southwest Madagascar: Identity and History [Ethnohistory, 2001; 48(1-2): 13-30]

[decolonizeyourfrickinmind]

Venus in Two Acts - Saidiya Hartman

“Venus makes plain the convergence of terror and pleasure in the libidinal economy of slavery and, as well, the intimacy of history with the scandal and excess of literature (Hartman 1)”

Using the method of critical fabulation, Hartman evokes the haunting of “Venus,” a dual pseudonym encompassing the multiple identities ascribed to young African slave girls in historical as well as a specific slave girl briefly mentioned in criminal justice case. "What we know of Venus in her many guises amounts to “little more than a register of her encounter with power (Hartman 2).” The construction of Venus in Hartman’s retelling pushes the boundaries of the archive and illuminates the power structures and violence that constructed who or what we see as “Venus.” Hartman engages in narrative restraint and critical fabulation to “imagine what cannot be verified (Hartman 12),” attempting to grant these people as complete and complex of a personhood as possible. Silences are acknowledged and amplified within the text. Hartman attempts to take Venus from the grasp of hegemonic history and rebirths her within a Black counter-history that seeks to disrupt hegemony and create a space for mourning where it is prohibited.

Orphaned beginnings is an uncomfortably familiar topic to many Black people living within America, myself included. Hartman’s retelling of Venus is an attempt to reverse the processes of natal alienation by resurrecting her from her social and corporeal death. Not only is she disrupting the racial, sexual, and gendered constraints that are seek to erase Venus, Hartman creates a stronger connection to our ancestors, giving space for mourning. This disruption serves to bring the past to the present, illuminating “the intimacy of our experiences with the lives of the dead (Hartman 4). By bringing light to the too many ways that Black people have been subjugated we can see how those violent processes have adapted and persisted in our modern day.

We need to look and listen to what is and isn’t provided to us. We need to ask what is missing and why? Hartman’s emphasis on what can and cannot be restored provides a blueprint for how we should analyze future materials. We need to be able to deduct what the limitations of the archive are, whether it be general history or a piece or writing within itself, and see how the archive is disrupted. Acknowledging silence is a must.

I cannot imagine a future that holds itself accountable for its monstrous presents, but I hope to. Sometimes it feels that reparations is all we can be given.

[processedlives]

Jennifer Morgan, 'Partus Sequitur Ventrem’: Law and Re/Production for Enslaved Women

[goddessarchives]

Is the scene of slaves dancing and fiddling for their masters any less inhumane than that of slaves sobbing and dancing on the auction block? If so why? Is the effect of power any less prohibitive? Or coercive? Or does pleasure mitigate coercion? Is the boundary between terror and pleasure clearer in the market than in the quarters or at the "big house"? Are the most enduring forms of cruelty those seemingly benign?

Saidiya V. Hartman (Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-making in Nineteenth-century America)

[so-treu]

Two people meeting on the avenue will ask, "Is this where you stay?" Not, "Is this your house?" "I stayed here al my life" is the reply. Staying is living in a country without exercising any claims on its resources. It is the perilous condition of existing in a world in which you have no investments. It is having never resided in a place that you can say is yours. It is being "of the house" but not having a stake in it. Staying implies transient quarters, a makeshift domicile,a temporary shelter, but no attachment or affiliation. This sense of not belonging and of being an extraneous element is at the heart of slavery.

Saidiya Hartman, “Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route,” pp. 88

[dontbcruel]

I prefer the term "natal alienation," because it goes directly to the heart of what is critical in the slave's forced alienation, the loss of ties of birth in both ascending and descending generations. It also has the important nuance of a loss of native status, of deracination. It was this alienation of the slave from all formal, legally enforceable ties of "blood," and from any attachment to groups or localities other than those chosen for him by the master, that gave the relation of slavery its peculiar value to the master. The slave was the ultimate human tool, as imprintable and as disposable as the master wished. And this is true, at least in theory, of all slaves, no matter how elevated. Paul Rycaut's classic description of the Janissaries as men whom their master, the sultan, "can raise without Envy and destroy without Danger" holds true for all slaves in all times.

Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 1982.