Slaves resisted plantation tech-stagnation by developing an informal scrap economy.

Evidence

As for the slaves or their close descendants, who had absolutely no interest in the Plantation’s yield, they would be an exception to this technical irresponsibility because of their own need to guarantee daily survival on the edges of the system. This resulted in the widespread developrnent of small occupations, or what is referred to in the Antilles as djobs, a habituaI economy of bits and scraps. Technical irresponsibility on the one hand and a breakdown into individual operations on the other: immobility and fragmentation lay at the heart of the system eating away at it. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 377

Categorization

• DEFINE: Glissant introduces ‘djobs’ — the informal economy of bits and scraps the enslaved built on the edges of the Plantation.
• XREF: connects to: Enslaved people resisted constantly through tools, slowdowns, flight, and arms — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 94; Slaves’ subsistence needs created a fragmenting djob economy on the system’s margins — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 377

Broader Connections

• Enslaved people resisted constantly through tools, slowdowns, flight, and arms #expands (0.70) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 94