Abandonment and Dismemberment: "Something Torn and New"

     Dr. Beatty gave the lecture for this week. The abandonment and dismemberment mentioned to in the title of the lecture referred to the Middle Passage. The Middle Passage. Represents the
(one to three month) process of forcible taking African people off of the continent and taking them to other parts of the New World.
     Dr. Beatty posed a very intriguing question to us at the beginning of his lecture. It was "Does a physical abandonment/dismemberment equate with a cultural one?"After he asked us, we talked about the things that were brought over to America from our ancestors and the African culture. Some of the things mentioned were music, family, language, literature, food, dance, morals, ethics, stories, and religion. He also mentioned a book by Melville Herskovits that discussed that very topic. The book is entitled The Myth of the Negro Past, and in it he gives five areas of things brought over with the Africans: music, speech, religion, cuisine, song.
     Also, during the lecture, he talked about the different ways of explaining the "dismemberment." The first way is by creating historical narratives that deal with loss and emptiness. The second was by creating historical narratives of African continuity and collective synthesis and transformation interfacing with particular social conditions. The last way was by creating historical narratives of newness that assembles and combines African and European traditions, often giving primacy to the European side of the equation.
     The last note I wrote down was the definition of culture. Intergenerational, transmitted beliefs, behaviors, values, and world views that express humanity and communal identity. Even when we were stripped from our homeland, we kept our culture. To this day, that culture is still present.