Slavery, n. — There are many terms for slavery, many of which pertain to Orlando Patterson’s “intrusive” notion that a slave is a “permanent enemy on the inside,” with all of the militarized and nationalistic rhetoric that accompanies such a conceptualization of slavery (Patterson 39). This analysis of the etymology of “slavery” will look at various terms that denoted slaves and slavery and subsequently address the construction of a self, pertinent to the community or society in which the form of slavery is found, that is accomplished in identifying individuals as worthy of enslavement. Next, the same rhetoric will demonstrate a militaristic element that is necessary to the enslavement and construction of a communal identity. In this way, the history of slavery demonstrates the connection between communal identity and communally organized and endorsed violence.
Patterson considers slavery a social institution intrinsic to self-conception within communities, extending the typical narrative of societal enrichment to contain the communal component of being generative of selfhood for its constituent members. His analysis involves intrusive and extrusive defining features of the construction of the social self, which, for the most part, denotes who belongs to the society and who does not. The intrusive construction of self through slavery denotes the prevalent practice of enslaving the members of an opposing ethne during or after warful engagement (Patterson 40). For example, adonke designates slave for the Ashanti people, while literally meaning “foreign northerners,” and one Latin term for slave, captivus, is the root word for English words such as “captive” and “capture” (39). Through these two terms, the signified notions of slavery refer to outsiders to one’s community who have been subdued and enslaved through conquest, necessarily intruding on another ethne to define one ethne’s self-conception. Patterson also cites Islamic communities as a prominent example of communities that would enslave conquered foreigners after a jihad, because their religious war deemed these individuals unfit as members of society (40-1). On the other hand, the extrusive construction of self through slavery refers to the enslavement of people who “no longer belonged” to the society through the deviation from communal standards, excluding someone who once belonged by enslaving her or him in the community (44). In addition, the direct root for “slavery” is sclava, which refers to the Eastern European slaves that Spanish Moors took in their conquests of that region back to Spain (BBC). All these versions of slavery have designated those who do not belong to the society and subject them to enslavement as a means of determining who has citizenship and benefits of membership and who must contribute to the benefits of the society often against their will.
Much of these words conveying the notions of slavery evoke militaristic and violent imagery which one cannot separate from the construction of the communal identity. For example, the Kwakiutl people use the phrase q!aku q!ak’o to designate a slave, while the root’s literal translation means “to cut off the head” (40). The violent imagery inherent to the etymology of “slave” evokes the social transition of cultural practices around conquest from killing to enslavement of the foreigner. In this way, the connection between warfare and slavery persists in the etymology and therefore cannot be eradicated in the cultural context. Since the root for “slave” also comes from a warful and violent context, it follows that the same connection cannot be expunged from the cultural consciousness. Moreover, as Yaa Gyasi’s novel Homegoing demonstrates, the prevalent phenomenon of warring African peoples taking captives and delivering them to the Europeans, as a means to develop better relations than other peoples with the colonizers, spurred the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and reaffirms the warful origin of enslavement and slavery (Gyasi). Additionally, this context dislocates the direct warfare from the Europeans but implicates Europeans in its aggravation through their enslavement, since slavery and warfare are inseparable. Due to this, the colonial efforts to construct an identity for Europeans also draws on the intrusive and extrusive enslavement of the societal self-construction’s other in a way that suggests the community endorses the violence inextricable from enslavement by means of its connection to warful conquest.
Tracing the history of the word “slavery” reveals the societally-condoned violence that is implicit in its array of signifiers. This comes from the institutionalization of slavery— a product of warfare in many cultural contexts in which it exists. Its very institutionalization denotes the application and promotion of violence because community formation occurs through slavery’s perpetuation. In this way, self-definition through slavery condones institutional violence against those whom the society has deemed exterior to the community yet necessary to its wealth and power.
Gyasi, Yaa. Homegoing. Penguin Random House, 2016.
Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Harvard University Press, 1982.
