The middle passage’s trauma becomes a shared origin for collective identity.

Evidence

What is terrifying partakes of the abyss, three times linked ta the unknown. First, the time you fell into the belly of the boat. For, in your poe tic vision, a boat has no be11y; a boat does not swallow up, does not devour; a boat is steered by open skies. Yet, the belly of this boat dissolves you, precipitates you into a nonworld from which you cry out. This boat is a womb, a womb abyss. It generates the clamor of your protests; it also produces aIl the coming unanirnity. Although you are alone in this suffering, you share in the unknown with others whom you have yet to know. This boat is your vvomb, a matrix, and yet it expels you. This boat: pregnant with as many dead as living under sentence of death. … The next abyss was the depths of the sea. Whenever a fleet of ships gave chase to slave ships, it was easiest just to lighten the boat by throwing cargo overboard, weighing it down with balls and chains. These underwater signposts mark the course between the Gold Coast and the Leeward Islands. … In actual fact the abyss is a tautology: the entire ocean, the entire sea gently collapsing in the end into the pleasures of sand, make one vast beginning, but a beginning whose time is marked by these balls and chains gone green. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 90

Categorization

• XREF: Glissant’s womb-abyss generating ‘coming unanimity’ out of shared suffering is a candidate mechanism for how common trauma grounds collective identity without fixed essence — directly counterposes to the essay question of whether collectivity requires essentialism. — connects to: Middle Passage captives forged a shared diasporic identity through collective resistance — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 284; Shared emergent identity from common fate explains collective support amid disasters — John Drury, The role of social identity processes…, 15; The exiled encounter with absolute unknown was the founding trauma of creolized identity. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 85 (+1 more)
• STORYSTEM: A boat ‘pregnant with as many dead as living under sentence of death,’ a womb that expels — this is a vivid generative image for a narrative built on a shared catastrophe that both births and orphans a people.

Broader Connections

• Middle Passage captives forged a shared diasporic identity through collective resistance #expands (0.95) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 284
• The exiled encounter with absolute unknown was the founding trauma of creolized identity. #expands (0.90) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 85
• Shared suffering forged a common task and vision across the African diaspora #expands (0.90) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 829
• Shared emergent identity from common fate explains collective support amid disasters #corroborates (0.70) — John Drury, The role of social identity processes…, 15