Social Death and Rastafari Reason

Orlando Patterson’s concept of “social death” has yet to receive a critical analysis congruent to the ethos of Black Studies, which impels us to contextualize struggles over knowledge formation as part of struggles for, against, and over Black community. In this article, I situate the early Patterson not only within an imperial academy but also within its contested Black spaces of post-emancipation independence. I demonstrate how Patterson’s intellectual path was shaped by his interactions with the Rastafari movement around the cusp of Jamaica’s independence. But I also argue that in his evaluation of the movement Patterson denuded Rastafari of reason. Examining the same concerns of Patterson but through Rastafari reasoning demonstrates that his concept of “social death” might be problematic in some important ways to the purposes of Black Studies.