Category: Social Death

Psychopaths and criminals seem to be a big problem all around the world that people have been dealing with for centuries. To know how to stop and identify a psychopath, people must first learn the direct mindset of a psychopath. I think psychopaths are feared so much because they seem very unpredictable and can blend in with society very well. Society must learn how to think like a psychopath to understand what their motives and intentions are for disturbing the peace of American society. I am going to be talking about how people become psychopaths and how they are connected to emotional and psychological based crimes that can turn very violent that happen not just in America but also around the world.

Many people including I have always wondered what psychopath really is and how they affect society today. The simple answer is no one really knows until they become one because they can never understand the experiences they went through such as trauma and abuse as a kid. In my opinion, when people look at the background of all the famous psychopaths in American history, they all had one thing in common, they were unpredictable, and I think it is their feelings that drive them to be like that. For example, an author by the name of Robert Hare who has a certified PH. D says that “At times they appear to be cold and unemotional while nevertheless being prone to dramatic, shallow, and short-lived displays of feeling”. Robert Hare is basically giving people a deeper understanding of the mindset of a psychopath, explaining to society that these madmen have no sympathy for causing pain to others. Another thing that Robert Hare mentions is that psychopaths do not have the willpower or empathy to show any kind of emotion to their victims. Whether or not people believe it, there is evil out there and we as human beings must be able to help people out in desperate times so that they do not turn into psychopaths. The life into becoming a psychopath can involve many things, this evolves things such as emotional detachment, what behavior they experience, and how they are affected by personality disorder.

There are many things that cause emotional detachment, but the 3 best ones are probably failure to accept responsibility for actions, early behavior problems, and lack of remorse and guilt which are 3 of Robert Hare’s characteristics. Responsibility is a big aspect of people in general, but it is completely different from psychopaths as they want to keep their identity a secret so that he can get around certain consequences coming his way. Based on the characteristics represented in The Psychopathy Checklist it seems like this character has a lot to do with emotional detachment because they have never been taught about how important responsibility is which can cause psychological change. The next characteristic is behavior issues at an early age that can cause major attitude and emotional issues in the future. Psychopaths seem to always have a rough childhood and that is when they grow up with no sympathy for other feelings. The final characteristic is psychopaths have no guilt or remorse for the crimes they committed and the lives they ruin which might lead to the detachment of any kind of emotion that person once had because they seem to lack empathy as well. Emotional detachment is a very severe matter, too much of it and people might start to inherit predator issues because they have no feelings to help them recover.

There are many characteristics and motives behind predatory behavior in psychopaths, but what exactly are they one might ask? Based on The Psychopath Next Door documentary, experts describe psychopaths as very manipulative and disturbing sorts of people that have no emotion, but they try to show that they do. The duration of the video basically explains how psychopaths act around others. Psychopaths will look for any opportunity they can get to attack you at your worst, for example; another fact off the video The Psychopath Next Door is that predators see us as prey because our emotions cloud your judgment and make us weak, which is when psychopaths will take advantage of that. Many people wonder what a psychopath thinks, and how they target certain victims. Predators can be depicted at a young age when kids start to develop predatory behavior problems based on a man named Dr. Michael Woodworth who is involved in advanced science and learning. Psychopathic behavior just as the video mentions can affect the mental state of even a small child. Believe it or not, psychopaths rarely kill them, they more try to get under your skin and make you do their dirty work for them. Psychopathic predatory behavior issues are one of the biggest problems in America and we must learn how to decline the rate of psychopaths. Based on a Criminal psychology writer named Fiona Guy, psychopathic predators will do anything to get their prey because they have minimal risk and stress factors holding them back. While some people grow up and become psychopaths they are still taught the right and wrong of society, they just do not listen and rely on their predatory instincts because they are already corrupted with this sense. Many people think psychopaths do not think about their acts and the consequences when they commit them, but psychopaths are some of the most successful people alive because they are highly intelligent. For Example, one of the most famous psychopathic killers in American History, Ted Bundy, was one of the most feared people in history but also one of the most brilliant in the ways he could manipulate or trick others and that’s why he was so successful as a psychopath. Physiological behavior in Criminals could be due to various types of disorders such as personality disorders which could be the reason why people act this way.

A personality disorder is having a huge impact on a psychopath, but does it really cause them to have behavioral issues, and should they be held responsible for their actions. This question can go both ways when it comes to a psychopath. But I believe we should try to help them instead of punishing them because that makes us no better than them. Based on the video psychopath next door psychopaths react to stimuli in the brain that causes them to change their personality and want things like money or sex. Based to an author named David Porter, “the annual prevalence of Antisocial Personality Disorder is .02% to 3.3.% when the criteria from prior DSM editions are applied”. As I mentioned before, personality disorder could be the cause uthor explains how psychopaths are prosecuted for experiencing criminal behavior and violating many systems of the law. So yes they should take partial responsibility for their actions because going against the law is never the right thing to do, but psychopaths just do not seem to understand that because they rely on their instinct to make the decisions. Based on an author by the name of Hervey Checkley who is a professor of psychiatry and neurology, psychopaths with personality disorders should be placed in hospitals that accept them because according to the standards of psychiatry they are not eligible or mentally stable enough to be put in state hospitals because they cannot face up to their crimes. One signature place where these types of psychotic patients usually are is at the medical center in Springfield where they try to treat and monitor the patients at a restricted and safe level of contact and learn more about how physiological behavior is affected by personality disorders in psychotic people.

For centuries people have been dealing with psychopaths all around the world. Psychopaths bond to this world in a different way than most people do, they cause physical and mental harm, but it seems like they do not always do it because they want to, it is because they feel the need to. People must learn to accept that there is evil in the world and it will do anything it can to bring you down. Psychopaths are not feared for how they kill people, they are feared for how good they are at blending in with the rest of society because your neighbor could be a psychopath and you would never know. The documentary, articles, and books mentioned here showed me a lot on how psychopaths are treated for their bad deeds; they showed how psychopaths suffer from a personality disorder which then leads to predatory behavior issues that cause emotional detachment from society.

In his seminal poem “The Wasteland,” T.S. Eliot vividly externalizes what he perceives to be a very internal death of pandemic proportions. Calling upon a vast catalogue of religion, classical writings, music and art, the work depicts an entire Western culture virtually dead spiritually in the wake of World War I. Some are aware of their death yet many are not, moving about numbly in a world without any true resonance or meaning. The grim diagnosis presented by Eliot is nevertheless countered by an underlying yet pervasive optimism that an internal rebirth is possible. However, that optimism, often buried deeply within the labyrinth-like text, is accompanied by the promise that any such resurrection will be predicated by a grueling emotional, intellectual, and spiritual journey. There is most definitely hope but before that hope can be fully realized, the most barren and arid landscapes of an individual’s spiritual death must be experienced and conquered.

Eliot chooses to preface his poem with a Latin quotation from Satyricon about the prophetess Sibyl who was blessed with eternal life but condemned to permanent old age. Translated, the brief passage reads, “For once I myself saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her ‘Sibyl, what do you want?’ she replied, ‘I want to die.’” And thus begins the guided tour through spiritual death to an eventual resurrection. For Eliot, the promise of eternal life in misery is the greatest of condemnations to be endured and is an integral part of “The Wasteland’s” theme. There comes a time when the only way to escape from a situation is through death. There is no way to retreat or otherwise triumph. Spiritually, an individual’s connection to meaning and purpose has been severed and, unable to receive the necessary nourishment to enable spiritual life and progression, they simply must begin anew. This concept is further strengthened by Eliot’s allusions to the Fisher King and various rites of fertility and vegetation in the notes that accompany the poem. According to the Fisher King myth, the king is maimed and it is only through his eventual strengthening and physical healing that his land can return to prosperity. Similarly, it is only through sacrifice that one can attain an escape from the spiritual death. It is that death which occupies most of the first segment of ‘The Wasteland,” entitled “The Burial of the Dead.” Spring traditionally brings feelings of happiness. Flowers are reborn from the soil and the climate begins to warm, all set to a score improvised by an orchestra of birds. However, the spring depicted by Eliot is anything by joyous.

There is no life left. Spring still occurs as always yet the elation it normally elicits is tempered by the lack of vibrancy in post-World War I Europe. People want to be happy but it simply is not there. The grim and woeful depiction is immediately contrasted with happier memories of a countess, recalling sledding down hills when staying at the Archduke’s. The reference to an Archduke may be an allusion to Francis Ferdinand, whose assassination triggered the eruption of World War I. Such an allusion would thus create a firm connection between pre- and post-WWI Europe.

Having established the loss of happiness and energy, Eliot proceeds to delve deeper into his description of the spiritual death while also incorporating the first of many references to Christianity, which is a critical part of the poem. In addition to the reference to Ezekiel in line 8, there is a distinct Messiah reference, “There is a shadow under this red rock/Come in under the shadow of this red rock”(25-26). The lines can be referenced to Isaiah 32:1-2 which reads, “Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment. And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” Again, we have the reference to a lack of water, to an arid, blistering world. Eliot utilizes very definite symbolism throughout “The Wasteland;” dryness is to be equated with death, water with birth. Such symbolism can be carried over to the dynamics of Christianity Eliot weaves into the poem’s narrative, providing what is to be a unifying thread throughout the work. In addition to the resurrection of Christ, there is also the concept of baptism in water, introducing yet another allusion to death and rebirth.

In Eliot’s description of the Hyacinth girl, “Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not/Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither/Living nor dead, and I knew nothing”(38- 40), there is a distinct air of impropriety and utter disillusionment. Things are not the way they ought to be. Experiences that should be pure and life affirming are instead corrupt and dismal. That disillusionment is further enhanced by the episode regarding a visit to the clairvoyant Madam Sosostris. Upon an initial reading, the Sosostris section appears to be no more than a tarot card foretelling of the future, including death by water. The fear of death, however, is disconcerting. For the majority of the work, death is portrayed as a necessary step along the path to rebirth. Yet here Sosostris warns, “Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find/The Hanged Man. Fear death by water”(54-55. It is by a careful analysis of the passage that the true nature of Madame Sosostris may be revealed. Lines 43-45 read, “Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante/Had a bad cold, nevertheless/Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe.” Why does Eliot mention she had a bad cold? Why might such a temporary condition have any bearing upon what one might presume to be her more permanent state as a psychic? The name Sosostris is in fact a play upon the name Madame Sesostris in Aldous Huxley’s novel Chrome Yellow. In chapter 27 of the novel, a fair is thrown and Mr. Scogen volunteers to pose as a clairvoyant, Madame Sesostris. He is masquerading as a woman and the character of Madame Sesostris is a fraud that perpetuates people’s worst fears in a doomsayer style: He had a terrifying way of shaking his head, frowning and clicking with his tongue as he looked at the lines. Sometimes he would whisper, as though to himself, “Terrible, terrible!” or “God preserve us!” sketching out the sign of the cross as he uttered the words. The clients who came in laughing grew suddenly grave; they began to take the witch seriously. She was a formidable- looking woman; could it be, was it possible, that there was something in this sort of thing after all?(Chrome Yellow, chapter 27).

In light of the allusion it is logical to conclude the reason Madame Sosostris’s “bad cold” is mentioned is because it is not a cold at all—just the deep voice one would expect of a man dressed as a woman. Sosostris, like Sesostris, is a fraud and her predictions misleading. As such, her warning of death by water is meant as a sort of red herring—a diversion from the path one must follow to escape the spiritual death that consumes them and be reborn. The fact that she/he is nevertheless esteemed as “the wisest woman in Europe,” despite the utter deception, is a criticism of the collective atmosphere of deception and false paths Eliot saw as an all-encompassing threat to Western Culture. The final, “Unreal City” segment of “The Burial of the Dead” provides some of the most striking, evocative imagery. We are presented the image of London beneath a dense brown fog. The tone is foreboding even before it is made known that what at first seems to be a very realistic scene is in fact a horrifying, nightmarish vision, the brown fog in fact a sea of dead people floating above: Unreal City Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over the London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many.Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled. (60-64)

The description is the externalization of the internal death. The final line quoted, regarding the “sighs, short and infrequent”, further addresses the response of the dead to their condition. According to Eliot’s notes, the line is a reference to Canto IV of Dante’s Inferno in which those who were good yet Pagan, and who died before Christ’s ministry, were sentenced to an eternity in Limbo. Comprised of many of the world’s greatest thinkers, the group is obliged to accept their fate, the only discontent expressed in their short, infrequent sighs. Similarly, Eliot is suggesting, those who are dead spiritually are accepting their fate as well—with only occasional sighs of dismay. Any hope of a rebirth or triumph is subdued by what has become a pervasive apathy. The alarming nature of the section is extended by the conversation which concludes “The Burial of the Dead;” “The corpse you planted last year in your garden/Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?/ Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?”(71-73). The lines are in reference to the fragility of the necessary death. With spring comes rebirth but it takes little to disturb the state required for one to rise again. Another reference is made to the risk of a dog digging the corpse up (74)— essentially awakening the dead before they are completely prepared for the promised rebirth. Finally, in the one of the poem’s most striking lines to this point, the protagonist essentially turns on the reader with the direct statement, “You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,– mon frere!”(76). Translated from French, the line reads “You! Hypocrite reader! My likeness, my brother!” Suddenly, the reader is transformed from a passive observer to active participant, forced to confront his own, personal spiritual death. The victims of the death are no longer only anonymous faces in a vast sea of people but instead, take on a much more personal, individual identity—that of the reader.

“What the Thunder Said,” the final segment of “The Waste Land,” brings to a close the arduous journey of the poem. The opening stanza is a clear allusion to the suffering of Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane and his crucifixion:

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces

After the frosty silence in the gardens

After the agony in stony places

The shouting and the crying

Prison and palace and reverberation

Of thunder of spring over distant mountains

He who was living is now dead

By opening this segment of the poem with such a direct allusion, the Christ imagery throughout the work is strongly affirmed. The individual’s own death and rebirth, Eliot argues, will in many ways parallel that of Christ. And just as Christ was resurrected, resurrection is the very heart of this particular segment; the rebirth and the subsequent steps needed to assure continued prosperity.

Following the allusions to Christ, Eliot etches an agonizing depiction of the most dry, lifeless state of being. As aforementioned, water is a symbol throughout “The Wasteland” of life while dryness represents death. In the second stanza of “What the Thunder Said,” the environment is so parched and barren that there is no question as to the degree of death. The imagery is distinctly desolate, “Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit/Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit”(339-40). At this phase of the journey, complete death is assured. There is no longer a risk of the corpse being disturbed by a sudden frost or the clawing of a dog. The death and burial of the previous identity, paralleling the burial of Christ, is nearly complete. The depiction reaches its pinnacle of suffering in lines 346 to 359 as Eliot’s style abruptly shifts, most lines comprised of two or three short words. Madness has been brought on by the dehydration, reflected by the onomatopoeia of line 358-59; “Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop/ But there is no water.” The tone has become more desperate, frantically reaching for anything. The protagonist is no longer able to communicate, completely overwhelmed by their condition.

After yet another reference to Christ (360-65), shelter is sought in a chapel with no windows. Death is once more alluded to, “Dry bones can harm no one”(391), this time making clear that the death has occurred much earlier. We are no longer dealing with a corpse buried but rather, dry bones completely stripped of any flesh or signs of life. Then, death having been thoroughly established and all remnants of the previous life completely eliminated, the cock crows “Co co rico co co rico /In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust/Bringing rain”(393-95). Finally, the long-promised water replenishes the miserable, arid landscape. The fulfillment of the promise is signaled by the cock’s crow, as was Peter’s denial of Christ for the third time. The resurrection has taken place. A rebirth is futile if the reborn quickly dies once again. To evade such pervasive death, the thunder delivers what can be interpreted as advice to maintain spiritual virility. In a reference to Hindu legend, line 401 simply reads, “Da,” which has in fact three separate meanings; Datta (to give), Dayadhvam (sympathize), and Damyata (to control oneself). Eliot concludes by providing examples of each part of the thunder’s advice and then, in the final stanza of the poem, alludes once more to the Fisher King. This time, the king has returned to full health and is sitting along the shore (424-25). Full fertility has been restored and the poem’s journey has finally reached its destination. However, it is equally important Eliot notes that one eliminate all connections to the previous death lest be at risk of a relapse2E This is conveyed in line 427, “London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down.” At once, Eliot is referring to the elimination of any linking connection to the past while also alluding to the pure innocence of a child by including the children’s nursery rhyme lyrics. The poem then bursts into a final flurry of allusions, including Dante, and is done.

Ultimately, the journey is a personal one. While an entire culture has perished together, it is only independently that such death can be overcome and only at great sacrifice and effort. The allusions to Christ throughout are distinct, as are those to Dante’s Inferno. In many ways, Dante’s journey through hell and final escape by first descending only to find that the directions have suddenly shifted and he is actually emerging from the twelfth circle is very similar to the journey to rebirth as depicted by Eliot. It is only through death itself that death can be overcome. Similarly, Eliot may be suggesting that it is only by broadening one’s mind sufficiently as to be able to fully comprehend his poem, complete with its myriad, esoteric allusions, that a person may be able to attain a level of enlightenment comprehensive enough to allow the undertaking of such a challenging journey. The journey to enlightenment and a reawakening is, as promised, to be a difficult one but nonetheless worthwhile.

To Eliot, the greatest tragedy would be for us all to adopt the same defeated, hopeless sighs uttered by those in Limbo and floating along amidst the brown fog, our emotional numbness joined by apathy to our woeful state.

Social death can be defined as the condition of people not fully accepted as human by the wider society. From various studies conducted on social death, three underlying notions have arisen: ‘a loss of social identity, loss of social connectedness and losses associated with the disintegration of the body’ (Králová, 2015). I will be exploring these factors in greater depth to demonstrate how enactments of social death, in those who are both biologically alive and dead, can impair an individual’s mental and physical health.

Firstly, social death of an individual can occur after their biological death, which can be depicted through funerary practices that ritualistically mark the transition of the deceased person from a state of being alive into the segregated domain of the dead (Borgstrom, 2016). Funerary practises range from mummification of the body exercised in Ancient Egypt to modern day burial and cremation. These ceremonies which have been acclaimed as a natural, integral part of many cultures and may even be aligned with the wishes of the individual, is arguably an act of dehumanisation. Whilst it is not morally acceptable to mummify, cremate or bury a living person, we plausibly dehumanise the dead by subjecting them to these inhumane acts. In Indonesia’s Torajan culture, families keep the bodies of their relatives to ‘live’ at home with them, sometimes for years after their deaths.Family members and relatives state how it provides them the time to deal with the loss of the individual (Sahar Zand, 2017). The function of social death in this instance can be viewed with the analogy of a car accident. When a car collides, the airbag is designed to inflate and serve as a cushion to minimise injuries to the head and chest. Likewise, the gradual and prolonged enactment of social death can be likened to the inflation of an airbag. This is largely beneficial, as it curtails the shock and grief elicited in the bereaved and provides them time to adjust slowly to the death of their loved one. Yet, it is difficult to ascertain whether this funerary practice withholds the rights of the deceased to undergo the liminal transition into the state of being biologically and socially dead, as it is unfeasible to assess the mental and physical impairment of an individual who has undergone the permanent cessation of all biological functions. Thus, exploring the extent of which an individual’s wellbeing is compromised due to social death, subsequent to their biological death, is implausible.

Alternatively, social death can also occur before the biological death of an individual, for instance when someone undergoes a loss of moral entitlement (Lock, 2002, p.119). This can be elucidated as others perceiving the individual with a lack of social worth, which results in detachment within relationships the individual has with others, thus a loss of social connectedness. Clinically, this could lead to a lack of investment into both the quality and quantity of patients’ lives, namely through the provision of resuscitation attempts as well as nutritional and hydration assistances provided for the patient. For example, the fervour, the length and plausibly the outcome of the reviving attempt can be dependent on a hierarchy of lives which the healthcare staff consider salvaging, largely regardless of the patient’s clinical viability. The extremities of this ‘moral hierarchy’ consist of those of who are socially perceived as immoral (for instance criminals) as well as elderly and terminally patients for whom death is considered an appropriate “punishment” or a welcome “friend/blessing” (Timmermans, 1998). Children and other individuals who depict a degree of personhood and surmount the neutrality or the detached nature of resuscitation have the ‘best chance for a full, aggressive resuscitative effort’ (Timmermans, 1998). Consequently, social death can become a direct predictor of biological death for an individual, due to socially ingrained morals and prejudices of others that directly influence the service of healthcare options and treatments the individual receives.

Moreover, social death can occur in individuals, who are undeniably still part of society yet deemed socially dead. This ‘liminal incorporation’ (Knight, 1984) of individuals in society is evident in those subjected to slavery but also in refugees. War refugees primarily undergo social death due to their loss of identity and personal agency. This is apparent as, they are forced to leave their country of origin, thereby losing access to their ‘cultural heritage, social networks, economic capital and roles associated with family and employment’ (Králová, 2015). Their human rights becoming endangered coupled with their stigmatised status triggering social exclusion, has severe impacts on their mental and physical health. This is depicted in a study of the general population of civilians in Afghanistan after two decades of war which show a definite increase in the incidence and prevalence of mental disorders. This is evident as symptoms of depression were observed in 38.5% of civilians; symptoms of anxiety in 51.8% and PTSD in 20.4% (Murthy and Lakshminarayana, 2006). These figures were accounted predominantly by women and other vulnerable groups such as children, the elderly and the disabled. Therefore, this manner of social death in war refugees have impaired their wellbeing, through the repercussions of mental disorders brought by the onslaught of trauma in warfare and their subsequent disintegration of the mind.

Furthermore, contrary to previous examples, where the dissolution of oneself has been coerced upon individuals, there are cases wherein social death occurs as a result of isolation but without the individual’s loss of agency. This may be apparent in patients with terminal conditions in hospices, where they may actively turn away from life, thereby choosing to have a form of social death prior to their physical death (Lawton, 2005). These individuals isolate themselves before their biological death by detaching themselves from relationships, consequently undergoing a loss of social connectedness. People, with terminal illnesses feel a certain degree of helplessness when dealing with their disease, primarily due to the inevitable nature of their disease. This sense of helplessness or loss of control results in psychological responses such as loneliness and depression (Mabenagha, 2009).

Figure 1: Mean score of depression, anxiety, and stress among cancer patients and control (Singh et al., 2015) This graph portrays a correlation between patients with cancer and the incidence of depression, anxiety and stress, particularly how cancer patients are twice as likely suffer depression in comparison to those without cancer. Also, these patients are more susceptible to experience more physical symptoms, have a poorer quality of life, and are more likely to have suicidal thoughts or a desire for hastened death than cancer patients who are not depressed (Rosenstein, 2011).Thus, this self-inflicted nature of social death does not sheild the terminally ill against impairments in their wellbeing, rather it instigates detrimental deteriorations in their mental and physical wellbeing, once again resulting in the disintegration of their body.

In addition to the individuals themselves experiencing impairments in their wellbeing, the bereaved can also suffer from their loved one’s social death. In contrary to as stated above, where the bereaved may benefit from the social demise of their loved one, they may on the contrary experience their own manner of social death. This could result as a direct consequence to the isolation caused by caring for someone as they were dying, as well as the health and social care professional contact diminishing after someone has died (Schneider, 2006). The lack of social activity coupled with a loss of role in relation to the deceased, compounds their resulting loss of identity and the deficits in their health. Those undergoing bereavement could experience adverse physical and psychological wellbeing, poorer mental health and social functioning, which could occur up to four years following bereavement. Bereaved females experienced a sharper fall in vitality and suffer greater deterioration in mental health compared to their male counterparts (Liu, Forbat and Anderson, 2019). Consequently, witnessing the social and biological death of a loved one, can leave these individuals bereft and impaired in their psychological and mental wellbeing.

To conclude, I personally think that social death to a large extent does impair the wellbeing of both the deceased and the bereaved, with repercussions of the event permeating and debilitating their mental, physical and psychological health. Social death strips individuals of their dignity and humanity, as they are belittled to a lower social standing than those society deems to have social worth. It also can create a widening gulf of detachment between the relationships the individual has with others, particularly those who aren’t undergoing social death. Whilst it is difficult to assess the harm social death inflicts on the dead, in a living person it is likely to forge an inevitable trajectory towards biological death.

From the periods between the years 1600-1800, Black Africans were subjected to a grueling expedition of torment and torture. In Emma Christopher’s historical writing known as “Many Middle Passages: Forced Migration and the Making of the Modern World”, we are thrown into the earlier ages where there were journeys of slave ships from the west coast of Africa, across the Atlantic, to North America. This voyage was referred to as the Middle Passage. It was named so because it was the middle leg of the ‘Triangular Trade’ route that was used by European merchants. Slaves would be traded in the Americas for goods which in turn would be shipped to Europe. At which point slave traders would then head back south to Africa; pick up slaves and repeat the whole process over again. In regard to my findings in the reading, I focused on the experiences of the Trans-Atlantic migration that contributed greatly to the idea of the African diaspora featured in chapter one “The Other Middle Passage the African Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean.” While in comparison look to focus on the recruitment, export, and transportation of Chinese coolies, who were almost exclusively male, to Cuba and Peru, which served as the mid-nineteenth century surge of enslavement for human labor from the lucrative export-oriented revenue production that blew up in Cuba. Of This can be found in chapter 9 “La Trata Amarilla the “Yellow Trade” and the Middle Passage, 1847–1884” by Everyln Hu-DeHart from pages 166-183. The slave experience speaks to an African diaspora that recognizes loss, trauma, and death as key contributors in the formation of culture and community in an African ‘homeland’. In Many Middle Passages: Forced Migration and the Making of the Modern World, Emma Christopher does describe the gruesome deaths aboard the Brookes, a slave ship that made about ten voyages during the eighteenth century. Instantly, Christopher, Pybus, and Redikerl establish the transatlantic middle passage as the journey between Africa and the Americas in order to quickly dive into the poor social conditions, the resistance adopted by the enslaved Africans, and the creativity that abolitionists worked on bringing to the light of the public.

The excruciating temperatures, limited airflow, inadequate sanitation situation, and being packed in the lower decks caused death from skin infections, scurvy, and other horrible diseases. After death, there was no peaceful way of disposing of the bodies, the bodies were thrown overboard and eaten by sharks (Introduction: Page 3). The enslaved witnessed the violent deaths of those who attempted rebellion. For example, one woman involved in a conspiracy of insurrection was hung upside-down and killed by being slashed with knives. On slave plantations of the Caribbean, the reality of oppression was made visible by presentations of deceased rebellious slaves hung throughout plantations as a warning to other slaves considering rebellion. Abolitionist campaigners, such as Thomas Clarkson, understood the impact that the depiction of the “Brookes” would play in the public. Clarkson believed that a picture really could be its own language, “which was at once intelligible and irresistible’ Christopher, Pybus, and Redikerl (page 12). There was yet a significant silence with abolitionists during the eighteenth century despite emancipation becoming an international concern. Christopher, Pybus, and Redikerl (page 13) note how Christopher’s silence draws attention to the abolitionists that “turned away from a protest against the treatment of transported felons” despite previous appeals.

The middle passage illustrated the importance of human cargo for America’s profit, and the disregard held for the individuals forced to migrate under harsh conditions. Social and cultural death also significantly shaped the experiences of enslaved Africans. Continuing from the introduction on page 10, Orlando Patterson describes slavery as a form of social death that stripped African peoples of their identities and cultures and rendered them dehumanized, passive laborers for their white masters. Patterson reflected enslavement as a process from “theories of social death have applications in settings beyond chattel slavery. Certainly, the people discussed here were alienated from the place of their birth, and many were dishonored and stripped of their personal power” (Page 10). All slaves were branded and their hair cut, teeth filed, and their clothes and personal articles connecting them to local gods of protection were removed. Cultural and social alienation as well as loss of life were significant representations of the slave experience. In the New World where protocol made enslaved people alienated from traditional practices in a manner resembling Orlando Patterson’s “social death” enslaved people tooled violence, loss, and death in its variety of manifestations as a site for creativity and cultural reconstruction. These features have been realized in African diasporic communities historically.

Slaves wanted death resulting in purposely drowning themselves, and refusing to eat, actions that worked against their immediate oppressors and the capitalism that drove the slave trade. Aspects of the slave experience and in particular the formation of cultures and communities in the context of slavery contribute to a notion of an African diaspora that is deviant from structures of race, ethnicity, and the nation-state. The interpretation of diaspora relies on notions of a common origin among members of a community and predicates unity on the common territory. Historical accounts of slavery support a hybrid interpretation of diaspora in different ways. The nature of cultures and communities that were born out of slavery were not restricted by ethnicity, race, or national origin, but emphasized by cultures. Enslaved Africans being transported on the so-called “floating dungeon” found that the alternative geography of the ocean provided a completely new platform on which to establish a community. Enslaved Africans on slave ships were separated from nearly all previous forms of a social common language. In the incredible suffering they endured, slaves drew on the common experiences aboard the slave ship in order to build social meaning, while efforts to have individual cultural heritage held little significance. In result Alliances formed within the process of dispersal were founded on shared experiences of suffering; slaves were alienated from a sense of a singular homeland. In this way, cultures formed on the middle passage contribute to the idea of culture, class, family, and ethnicity in the African diaspora (Lovejoy).

The diasporic community that arose from common experiences of slavery and the middle passage is one founded on movement, confusion, and innovation: a diaspora influenced by cultural realities of Africa and the Americas but not defined by either shore. However, in Chapter 9 “La Trata Amarilla the “Yellow Trade” and the Middle Passage, 1847–1884” by Everyln Hu-DeHart from pages 166-183 the focus is on the recruitment, export, and transportation of Chinese coolies. Chinese coolies were regarded as derogatory and/or a racial slur in the Caribbean, Africa, Oceania, North America, Southeast Asia, and Europe – in reference to people from Asia. Most Chinese workers labored in the sugar and cotton industries, where plantation agriculture expanded significantly in the nineteenth century as a result of the guano boom that invigorated the Peruvian economy. On plantations, the coolies faced limited mobility via debt peonage and tightly controlled lives via corporal punishment. On plantations, many coolies resisted total domination by planters through tactics very similar to those of African slaves and indentured servants, sometimes going against Chinese contractors that acted as enforcers. Coolies would steal, run away, pretend to be sick, strike, and hold back or disrupt production in order to frustrate owners in the hope of gaining concessions that would better their living conditions. So again, we see inadequate living conditions between different types of enslaved ethnicity.

In a result, the coolie trade constituted as a prime example of globalization where ships could be owned by any number of entrepreneurs; American or European. There can be no question that the coolie trade was extremely lucrative since profits were made not only on the coolie cargo but also upon other freight that the coolie ships carried around the world, not wasting any carrying capacity as they crossed the oceans. Even further as we can calculate the profits of this “triangular trade”/ “yellow trade”. For example, on page 180 DeHart quotes that “One account of a ship that carried 900 coolies to Cuba reported that the cargo represented a value of 450,000 pesos for the importers, with original outlay at only 50,000 and the cost of the expedition less than 100,000.” ( DeHart pg. 180) Which amount to an easy 300,000 pesos profit, which as you can tell was very lucrative. Between the Atlantic slave trade and the yellow triangular trade occurring across the globe, both acts of enslavement changed the lives of all that were involved, especially those that were forced to migrate. Christopher, Pybus, and Rediker’s account of the middle passage highlighted how human life was literally cheap, as individuals who became human cargo were no longer considered to be human being in the eyes of the usurper. A true way to set the tone for globalizing capitalism, and that slavery really is social death.