RGGJ talk by Robbie Shilliam

This talk will be on Zoom.

To register and receive a copy of the paper, please write to lincentre [at] mcgill.ca (subject: Registration%20for%20RGGJ%20Shilliam%20talk)

In this paper Robbie Shilliam focuses on Orlando Patterson’s early works leading up to Slavery and Social Death and considers how they laid a path towards his celebrated concept of social death. Shilliam demonstrates how this framework emerged out of his interactions with the Rastafari movement in post-independent Jamaica. But he also argues that in his evaluation of the movement, Patterson denuded Rastafari of all reason. What politics might be emanative of the concept of social death if we situate the early Patterson not only in an imperial academy but also in its contested black spaces of post-emancipation independence?