Their essentialist understanding of the history of the slavery
silences and obscures the languages ofgratuitous freedom Turns
CaseBrown 2009 professor of history and of African and African
American Studies specializing inAtlantic Slavery (Vincent, Social
eath and !olitical "ife in the Study of
Slavery,#http$%%history&fas&harvard&edu%people%faculty%documents%bro'n
socialdeath&pdf )
*+ T -. T/0 / ST1+2 13 S"AV0+2 in a 'ay that emphasizes
struggles against socialalienation re4uires some read5ustment in
commonplace understandings of culture and politics&Historians
and social scientists have often debated the question of slave
cultures and thecultures of slavery through residual Victorian
understandings of culture as the civilizationalachievements of the
*est,# Africa,# or various other groups, to be attained, lost, or
re created&The meanings attributed to things are often taken to
indicate complete and integrated systemsof belief and behavior even
identities that corresponded to distinct population groups!
Thisapproach has been sub5ected to critical scrutiny in a number of
disciplines&67 *hile culture maystill refer to 'hat *illiam
Se'ell, 8r& has called the particular shapes and consistencies
of 'orldsof meaning in different places and times# that someho' fit
together despite tension and conflict, thefluidity of this
definition 'ould suggest that practices of meaning are better seen
as tools to be usedthan as possessions to be lost&69 And though
culture is still sometimes portrayed as a holistic set of'orldvie's
or attitudes commensurate 'ith circumscribed populations,
historical writers shouldbegin from a different point of departure
highlighting instead particular meanings assituational guides to
consequential action"motivations sometimes temporary that are
bestevaluated in terms of how they are publicly enacted shared and
reproduced & Thefocus 'ould
be less on finding an integrated and coherent ethos among slaves
and more on the particular actsof communication that allowed
enslaved people to articulate idioms of belonging similarityand
distinction & The virtues of this method are on display in
8ames Sidbury:s ;ecoming African inAmerica$ +ace and -ation in the
0arly ;lac< Atlantic, 'hich sho's ho' #nglophone blackpeople
e$pressed their sense of being #frican %in tension with and in
partial opposition tomemories and e$periences of the indigenous
cultures of #frica rather than directly out ofthem!&'( The
meaning of the category %#frican& was not merely a reflection
of culturaltenacity but the consequence of repeated acts of
political imagination!
