Paper Abstract
The
word slave and its variants are constructs which were used in many traditional polities
in the Africa to assign identity to individuals living in slavery. A slave identity is a negative one and both
slaves and some masters in the continent did try to deconstruct it. From
narratives and other evidence collected among polities in the Cameroon
Grassfields, it is clear that many masters and enslaved individuals in the area
were involved in deconstruction process as a way of reducing the psychological
burden of slavery. They used appellations, functions, titles and ranks which
gave slaves a sense of honor, acceptability and belonging in their host
societies.In societies where enslaved persons were rapidly integrated into
corporate life, first generation males slaves were simply called sons or people
of their owners while female ones were called daughters or wives of their masters. However, in societies
where enslaved persons were discriminated against in citizenship and corporate
life, the deconstruction process was limitted but such appeared to have been
the exceptions in Africa. This paper shows how
new paradigms for understanding and reinterpreting the institution of
slavery in Africa could be built from the way masters handled the problem of
slave identity.
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