Jah Kingdom: Rastafarians, Tanzania, and Pan-Africanism in the Age of Decolonization

Abstract

Using archival, ethnographic, and oral historical sources in her first full-length manuscript, Monique Bedasse writes a compelling intellectual and political history of Rastafari repatriation and Pan-Africanism during the post-independence period of the late twentieth century in the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. Bedasse’s subjectivity as a child of Rastafari parents and her training as a historian gave her unique access “to fiercely protected Rastafarian archives” (xiii) and allowed her to write an interior historical narrative that merits the linguistic and philosophical contributions of Rastafari. More than a peripheral, millenarian, escapist, or solely cultural movement, Bedasse positions Rastafari as central to Black radical ideas and Pan-African anti-colonial politics in the Caribbean and Africa. The intellectual contributions of Rastafari people open avenues of inquiry beyond popular culture. “Rastafari dynamic and ever-poignant critiques of racism and capitalism throughout the 1970s and beyond have been concealed by the focus on Rastafari as popular culture” (188). Engaging Rastafari people and not simply cultural products reveals their centrality to the development of decolonial Pan-African ideas as policy. While this is the broad focus of Bedasse’s book, her interventions critiquing the masculine characterization of repatriation and her choice to foreground the disruptive narrative of a Rastafari woman’s memories illuminates the intersectional nature of repatriation. Bedasse’s book comprises six thematic chapters that tell interwoven histories between Jamaica, England, and Tanzania. Her choice showcases the intertwined nature of African and Diasporan histories. Bedasse leverages multiple written archives in at least five different countries and draws upon embodied archives of Rastafari people. In so doing, she reveals the extensive networks between global Black radicalism and Rastafari repatriates as she chooses to allow their oral histories to drive her methodological choices in the field and in writing. Bedasse begins her book outlining the conceptual notion of “trodding diaspora,” serving as a model for thinking through multi-sited ethnographies between Africa and the Diaspora. The Rastafari term “trod” means to travel physically or metaphysically. Bedasse theorizes movement in terms of the physical repatriation and the mental return to an imagined “Africa.” There are four overarching ideas of trodding diaspora: First, Bedasse likens “trodding” to the physical and spiritual movement that allows Rastafari to build Jah Kingdom beyond national boundaries and imagine freedom beyond achievement of political independence. Much of Rastafari Studies is preoccupiedwith Rastafari repatriation to the nation-state of Ethiopia; however, Bedasse underscores the political, spiritual, and social importance of repatriation to Tanzania. Second, Bedasse defies scholarly attempts to separate research on Africa from