Orlando Patterson’s concept of “social death” has yet to receive a critical analysis congruent to the ethos of Black Studies, which impels us to contextualize struggles over knowledge formation as part of struggles for, against, and over Black community. In this article, I situate the early Patterson not only within an imperial academy but also within its contested Black spaces of post-emancipation independence. I demonstrate how Patterson’s intellectual path was shaped by his interactions with the Rastafari movement around the cusp of Jamaica’s independence. But I also argue that in his evaluation of the movement Patterson denuded Rastafari of reason. Examining the same concerns of Patterson but through Rastafari reasoning demonstrates that his concept of “social death” might be problematic in some important ways to the purposes of Black Studies.

奥兰多·帕特森的“社会死亡”概念尚未得到与黑人研究精神相一致的批判性分析，这促使我们将知识形成的斗争作为支持、反对和争取黑人社区的斗争的一部分。在这篇文章中，我不仅将早期的帕特森置于帝国学院内，而且将其置于解放后独立的有争议的黑人空间内。我将展示帕特森的知识之路是如何通过他与牙买加独立风口浪尖周围的拉斯塔法里运动的互动而形成的。但我也认为，帕特森在对这场运动的评价中剥夺了拉斯塔法里的理性。通过拉斯塔法里推理来检验帕特森的同样担忧表明，他的“社会死亡”概念在某些重要方面可能对黑人研究的目的存在问题。