Vincent Brown – The Reaper’s Garden and Related Concepts

A set of vocabulary flashcards derived from the lecture notes on Vincent Brown's 'The Reaper’s Garden' and related texts, focusing on key concepts around death, power, and identity in the context of slavery.

Burial marked who belonged and who didn’t in a society built on __.

inequality

The dead were considered active __ in social life, expressing identity through burial rituals.

social agents

African spiritual practices maintained a connection between the __ and the dead.

living

Rituals and ancestor worship fostered unity and __ under slavery.

moral order

Spiritual leaders known as __ acted as mediators between worlds, helping enslaved people.

shamans

Enslaved individuals who died resisting oppression are referred to as __.

martyrs

Martyrdom combined African beliefs with __ concepts of sacred sacrifice.

Christian

High mortality rates in Jamaica highlighted the __ of slavery.

brutality

Death was a moral and political __ used by abolitionists and the empire.

weapon

“Critical fabulation” is a method that blends history with __ to recover lost stories.

imagination

Necropolitics refers to the power to decide who __ and who dies.

lives

The concept of ‘death-worlds’ describes spaces created by colonialism that result in __ death.

living

The term __ expands on Foucault’s ‘biopower’, indicating control through death.

necropolitics

Brown's perspective sees death as a form of community and __.

resistance

Hartman's work focuses on the __ silence of Black women in history.

archival

In Mbembe's view, power dynamics in empires involve authority over life and __.

death