Memory

In a misguided belief that they will benefit from such practices the English encouraged the systematic eradication of memories of Africa, of social and familial structures. Machiavellian tactics, not completed because of kindness, the eternal human weakness. Some owners were kind to their slaves. The deep irony of this statement loses its obscenity when it is realised that it was precisely that quality, kindness and its opposite harshness, is what eventually enabled Sam Sharpe to mobilise the movement towards freedom. His owner had been kind, his anger lodged in in those who were treated harshly.

A lack of bonds such as memory, family etc. would benefit the efficiency of production, of the attainment of their yearly rehearsal of short term goals: the sugar harvest, the banana harvest. Slaves became as cattle, bred for strength, endurance to increase a blind productivity, effciently. Cattle, an earlier product of domestication has become no more than a machine.

To become a useful slave one must not have attachments other than the shackles to one’s owner. To be useful, the slave has to perform basic tasks all of them describable using simple geometry: make the wheel go round, cut the cane, work the banana, planted in its regimented lines. The slave is a machine.

MEMORY AND SLAVERY

In a misguided belief that they will benefit from such practices the English encouraged the systematic eradication of memories of Africa, of social and familial structures. Machiavellian tactics, not completed because of kindness, the eternal human weakness. Some owners were kind to their slaves. The deep irony of this statement loses its obscenity when it is realised that it was precisely that quality, kindness and its opposite harshness, is what eventually enabled Sam Sharpe to mobilise the movement towards freedom. His owner had been kind, his anger lodged in in those who were treated harshly.

A lack of bonds such as memory, family etc. would benefit the efficiency of production, of the attainment of their yearly rehearsal of short term goals: the sugar harvest, the banana harvest. Slaves became as cattle, bred for strength, endurance to increase a blind productivity, effciently. Cattle, an earlier product of domestication has become no more than a machine.

To become a useful slave one must not have attachments other than the shackles to one’s owner. To be useful, the slave has to perform basic tasks all of them describable using simple geometry: make the wheel go round, cut the cane, work the banana, planted in its regimented lines. The slave is a machine.