The Sociogeny of Social Death: Blackness, Modernity, and its Metaphors in Orlando Patterson

Abstract

White over black is slavery and slavery is death. Death is the end of forever. The end of forever is perfection and perfection, for us, seems divine, beyond the veil, beyond death;hence, the end of forever. [1] But before 'race,' something else has happened, both within the context of 'race' and alongside it. [2] [1] Orlando Patterson's Slavery and Social Death, a "global analysis of the institution of slavery," has become the elliptic center of the socio-historical scholarship on slavery. [3] A "landmark," a "cornerstone," generating a figural economy that telescopes debates about domination and resistance, retention and originality, and the methodologies that get us here or there, Patterson's conceptualization of "social death" has traversed disciplinary boundaries and is mobilized in radical black studies, comparative literature, psychoanalysis, sociology, cultural studies, political science, anthropology, archaeology, and history. [4] Indeed, Patterson's Slavery and Social Death, or more precisely, his titular concept-metaphor "social death," tellingly appears in those works pushing the pertinence of disciplinary boundaries to the breaking point. While the basic tenets of his thesis circulate widely, the historiographical origins, political stakes, and theoretical tensions internal to his intervention are less understood. Is Patterson read well?Save for the first few pages of the book's introduction, is he read at all? I contend that there is something symptomatic in the relative staying power of social death, of social death as a question on which to project one's own political and philosophical positions. Historical cipher, philosophical allegory, explanatory device or heuristic, political technology or regime, diffusive status of the marginalized, practice of exclusion, political ontology, effect and threat: social death's proliferating use or disuse is not incidental, but is the whisper, rather, of secrets harbored deep within, and on the surface of, the malign metaphysics of slavery, echoing everywhere as time and space. Mysticism in the flesh. [5] While texts are written to confirm or combat both the historical instance and political pertinence of social death, there are questions that go unasked. To start: What is social? What is death? Who decides their presumed relation, and how has this relation been indelibly seared and severed and sutured by the violence of slavery? [2] These questions are less an attempt to "out" other scholars for their thin scholarship than an endeavor to raise a doubled query about the status of the mobility of a concept in our unethical and anti-black

Critical Race Theory, Afro-Pessimism, and Racial Progress Narratives

“…Racial slavery distinguishes the social location of blacks from that of other racial minorities. Slavery produced blacks as beings considered nonhuman, as they lacked human markers: ownership of their bodies and the ability to reason (Sorentino 2016). Enlightenment philosophers developed their ideas about what it means to be human during the era of the transatlantic slave trade.…”

“…Enlightenment philosophers developed their ideas about what it means to be human during the era of the transatlantic slave trade. Definitions of humanity excluded the status of being enslaved (Sorentino 2016). The meaning of whiteness as human (free, rational) developed in antagonism to the meaning of blackness as nonhuman (enslaved, incapable of reason).…”

“…The meaning of whiteness as human (free, rational) developed in antagonism to the meaning of blackness as nonhuman (enslaved, incapable of reason). Africans emerged from the middle passage and slavery as blacks, a racialized group of not quite humans and the permanently subjugated property of whites (Sorentino 2016). Scholars called this permanent subjugation social death (Patterson 1982).…”

Social Work in the Shadow of Death

“…Our conception of the human is historically produced and inextricable from transatlantic slavery (McKittrick, 2006). During the transatlantic slave trade era, enlightenment philosophers created definitions of the human that excluded the enslaved (Sorentino 2016). To be human was to be free and able to reason, two traits violently and systematically denied to the enslaved (Sorentino 2016).…”

“…During the transatlantic slave trade era, enlightenment philosophers created definitions of the human that excluded the enslaved (Sorentino 2016). To be human was to be free and able to reason, two traits violently and systematically denied to the enslaved (Sorentino 2016). Being "human" has been positioned as not Black (Wilderson, 2010).…”