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Liberating the
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of Maroonage as
Epistemological (Dis)
engagement

Randy R. Goldson1

Abstract
This article explores the concept of maroonage (other spellings “maronage,”
“marronnage,” and “marronage”) as a process of epistemological engagement
and disengagement using the way in which the Rastafari movement constructs,
organizes, and legitimates knowledge and knowledge production. By focusing
on the Rastafari processes of knowledge production and legitimation, this
article allows for a theorization of maroonage as a constant engagement
not only in the sense of physical withdrawal from hegemonic systems of
dominance but an ideological opting out. While many Rastafarians live in
secluded communities and choose not to participate in systems that work
against their interest, many have renegotiated the process of knowing such
that they can be in Babylon but not of Babylon. The epistemic shifts in Rastafari
discourse on a Black God, King, and Zion stand as exemplars of epistemological
self-determination characteristic of the maroonage on the ideological
level. The article develops by: (a) looking at ideology, (b) the contours of
Rastafari epistemology, (c) the sociopolitical context of epistemological (dis)
engagement, and (d) the epistemic shift in Rastafari discourse on a Black God,
King, and Zion as epistemological self-determination.

1
Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Corresponding Author:
Randy R. Goldson, Temple University, Anderson Hall 636, 1114 Polett Walk, Philadelphia, PA
19122, USA.
Email: randy.goldson@temple.edu
2 Journal of Black Studies 00(0)

Keywords
maroonage, epistemology, (dis)engagement, Rastafari

Introduction
This article explores the concept of maroonage (other spellings “maronage,”
“marronnage,” and “marronage”) as a process of epistemological engage-
ment and disengagement using the way in which the Rastafari movement
constructs, organizes, and legitimates knowledge and knowledge production.
I use the term epistemological to focus on liberation, self-determination, and
autonomy at the ideological level. (Dis)engagement serves to capture the
interaction with hegemonic systems of knowledge production. It is the epis-
temic shift constituting the rejection of domination and the construction of
alternate ways of being, knowing, and belonging. The focus on Rastafari in
this article is to push beyond the existing body of Rastafari scholarship that
presents the Rastafari community as a type of maroon community (Barrett,
1997, pp. 86–89; Campbell, 2007; Chevannes 1994, p. 10). If we concede
that Rastafari is a type of maroon community, then how do we account for the
fact that most Rastas do not live in autonomous communities in the hills or
inaccessible places? Scholars of Rastafari use the definition of maroonage
advanced by historians. This definition tends to focus on the phenomenon as
an event situated within the history of enslavement whereby maroonage is the
act of slaves running away from the plantation to form their own communi-
ties (Campbell, 1988, p. 2; Diouf, 2014; Price, 1973; Thompson, 2006). My
article engages Christopher Johnson’s challenge to see the “concept of
maroonage as an African cultural tradition rooted in the past, but not restricted
to it” (Johnson, 2012, p. 86).
Maroonage then begins with an ideological commitment. In the historical
sense of maroonage, an ideological commitment to freedom, self-determina-
tion, and autonomy propelled the process of fleeing the plantation to estab-
lish maroon communities (Diouf, 2014, pp. 2, 309–312; Thompson, 2006,
p. 17). Alvin Thompson anchors the maroons’ desire for freedom, self-deter-
mination, and autonomy within an enlightenment discourse that asserts the
natural affinity that human beings have for freedom (Thompson, 2006,
pp. 40–52). Thompson further notes that “Marronage was for them the clear-
est political expression of the fact that they were persons with sensibilities
similar to those of the Whites” (Thompson, 2006, pp. 36). While I agree with
Thompson that there is a universal human impulse to be free from the domi-
nation of others, the maroon’s commitment to freedom was not a desire to
prove that Africans had sensibilities like White people. Maroons sought
freedom because the tyranny and brutality of Euro-American enslavement.
Goldson 3

The maroons’ act of securing freedom from slavery through flight necessi-
tated a commitment to thinking outside of the ideological framework of the
plantation. The articulation of maroonage as an ideological shift coheres
with Neil Roberts’ assertion that “marronage is a flight from the zone of
nonbeing to zones of refuge” (Roberts, 2015, p. 119). Roberts invokes Franz
Fanon’s zone of being framework to demonstrate the ideological, perhaps
ontological, underpinnings of maroonage. The movement into a zone of
being constitutes a type of freedom. Roberts presents a useful typology of
sovereign and sociogenic marronage that allows for a more useful analysis
of the ideological dimensions of flight than the usual petit and grand maroon-
age. Within the traditional categorization of maroonage, introduced into aca-
demic discourse by Gabriel Debien, the emphasis was on permanence or
duration of flight. Petit maroonage referred to temporarily absconding or
leaving the plantation while grand maroonage categorized as “flight beyond
the reach of the plantation with the intention to never return” (Debien, 1966,
p. 3). The enslavers made the distinction between the two types of “flight”
and developed a cruel system of punishment thought by these enslavers to be
commensurate to the crime of fleeing the plantation. Roberts’ theorization of
maroonage beyond the binary categories of petit and grand focuses on the
political nature of flight where sovereign marronage is mass flight leading to
sociopolitical independence as conceived by a lawgiver and sociogenic
“denotes a revolutionary process of naming and attaining individual and col-
lective agency, non-sovereignty, liberation, constitutionalism, and the culti-
vation of a community that aligns civil society with political society”
(Roberts, 2015, p. 11). Not all cases of maroonage led to state formation, as
in the case of Haiti. The formation of maroon communities represents a type
of sovereignty that was mostly contingent on treaties between the plantoc-
racy and the maroons.
Christopher Johnson makes the connection between physical flight and
ideological disengagement. Johnson argues that “By physically removing
themselves, these Africans were removing the very base upon which this
system constituted itself. By ideologically disengaging, they were disrupt-
ing the foundational and anti-African epistemologies and methods of the
plantation” (Johnson, 2012, p. 97). The connection between the physical
and the psychic space of the plantation complex becomes more compelling
when we consider the fact that slavery was a process of identity erasure.
Maroonage then is resistance to antihuman and antifreedom practices and
ideas. It involves the construction of and constant engagement with African-
centered epistemologies. Constructing and engaging with Afrocentric epis-
temologies means that the process of maroonage entails rejecting ways of
knowing that invalidate Africanness or Blackness.
4 Journal of Black Studies 00(0)

The development of a Rastafari way of thinking about knowledge under-

scores the necessity of theorizing maroonage as the rejection of imperial epis-
temes. Here, I am applying a Foucauldian theorization of epistemes as the
ways in which knowledge is organized, constituted, and legitimated through
several discursive practices (Foucault, 1973, pp. 344–348; Mudimbe, 1988,
pp. 16–28; Ward, 1996, pp. 1–3). Episteme is the “how” of knowledge pro-
duction. Episteme also refers to the attitudes, categories, orientation, and
goals of knowledge. In the context of the colonial Jamaican society, imperial
epistemes involved the so-called rationalistic, modern, and empirical framed
within a narrative of progress (a movement from the primitive to the enlight-
ened). Within this progress narrative, Europeans defined all aspects of
Caribbean life over against European understandings of rationality, moder-
nity, and empiricism. African religious and medicinal practices, for example,
had no place in a “modern” society. Several scholars have discussed exten-
sively the way in which European colonizers defined and virtually invented
notions of modernity within the colonized spaces of African and Caribbean
societies. (Chidester, 1996; Mudimbe, 1988; Palmiè, 2002)
Even as I make this case for an expansion of maroonage as disengagement
from imperial epistemes by my interrogation of Rastafari, it is important to
underscore that the epistemological framework of Western thought fore-
grounds White supremacy. The very epistemes, the discursive practices that
give rise to what counts as knowledge and how Western knowledge is struc-
tured, are racist. My invocation of Foucault is to highlight that knowledge,
even in its most esoteric nature, is constructed and reified through repetition
and our willingness to accept it as a given. Recognizing the constructedness
of knowledge sharpens the focus on truth and the ability to make truth-claims
as a function of power. If the recognition of knowledge as a function of power
is the present “order of things,” then, as depicted by Rastafari, Black people
must have an imperative to be intellectually vigilant. In sketching the theory
of Afrocentricity, Molefi Kete Asante discusses this intellectual vigilance as
part of the posture of ensuring that Black people reject hegemonic epistemo-
logical positions (Asante, 2003, p. 50). Moreover, a part of this intellectual
vigilance is recognizing that because knowledge is a function of power,
African peoples can engage with/disengage from oppressive systems of
knowledge production, reproduction, and conceptualization.

Contours of Rastafari Epistemology

Before exploring fully how Rastafari epistemology extends the theorization
of maroonage by a process of engaging/disengaging with hegemonic episte-
mologies and by formulating epistemologies of wholeness, I will briefly
Goldson 5

outline some of the contours of Rastafari epistemology. First, an Afrocentric

orientation anchors the construction, organization, and content of the
Rastafari epistemology. Asante defines Afrocentricity as “a mode of thought
and action in which the centrality of African interests, values, and perspec-
tives predominate” (Asante, 2003, p. 2). The concept of Afrocentricity means
that Rastafari place Africa, African people, and African ideals at the center of
their knowledge construction process. Michael Barnett and Adwoa Ntozake
Onuora argue that all the pillars of Afrocentricity as outlined by Asante mani-
fest in Rastafari:

With its deification of an African King (Haile Selassie I); its assertion that the
Holy Land (Zion) is in Ethiopia or, by extention Africa (Williams, 2000); and
its contention that Ethiopia is the birthplace of humanity and civilization,
wherein Nubia and Egypt (Kemet) are considered the African daughters or
inheritors of Ethiopian Civilization, we propose that Rastafari ideology and
world outlook are undoubtedly Afrocentric. (Barnett & Onuora in Barnett,
2012, p. 174)

Barnett and Onuora see the manifestation of Afrocentricity in thoughts and

deeds of Rastafari. Although Rastafari emerged in the late colonial period
(the 1930s) and manifested differently from other Afro-Caribbean religions,
the ideological gaze is on Africa. Some of the earliest practices of Rastafari
like healing and drumming show a high degree of logicostructural integration
of traditional African practices (Chevannes, 1998, pp. 1–19). These inte-
grated elements make Rastafari both African-derived and Afrocentric.
The metatheory of Afrocentricity makes it permissible to speak about
Rastafari epistemology in a universalizing way. Universalizing discourses
tend to overlook the nuances of a given phenomenon. However, this critique
does not apply to the formulation of Rastafari epistemology because Afro-
consciousness holds together the social, religious, and political ethos of
Rastafari. Rastafari, regardless of the mansion (an organizational division
within Rastafari) to which they belong, will attest to the centrality of Africa
and Black people in the formulation of what Rastas believe. The practical
outcomes of a Rastafari epistemological system vary on the individual level.
An example of this variation is the matter of repatriation. Rastafari histori-
cally conceptualize Ethiopia as the Promised Land to which Black people
must return, but not all Rastas believe in a physical return to Ethiopia. Some
Rastas believe in a spiritual repatriation and others have expanded repatria-
tion to Africa more generally (Barnett, 2018, pp. 78–79; Bedasse, 2017,
pp. 1–7). Although the enactment of knowledge differs among Rastafari, the
frameworks of knowledge construction (the epistemes) remain essentially the
6 Journal of Black Studies 00(0)

same. As one Rasta brethren expressed it, “Only those with insight enough to
see the light of Africa will accept the truth of Ras Tafari” (Cashmore, 1983,
p. 169). Rastafari ceases to exist without this Afrocentric orientation.
In addition to the Afrocentric orientation, Rastafari construct their process
of knowledge production by differentiating between knowing and believing.
The distinction is part of a sapiential tradition that developed within Rastafari.
Within the wisdom tradition, knowing comes as a result of an active spiritual
awakening while believing is the passive acceptance of things (Owens, 1976,
p. 33, pp. 170–171). During his fieldwork among Rastas in the early 1970s,
Joseph Owens observed that

The brethren use the term knowledge’ in an unconventional way: knowing is

always characterised by a high degree of certainty, by a close relation to the
practical, and by an innate presence within man. . . Knowledge for them is an
active, inward process, which does not merely reduplicate an “external” world,
but creates and re-creates a world in which internal and external are welded in
unity. (Owens, 1976, pp. 170–171)

The dualism that frames most of Western epistemology does not hold in
Rastafari. Jah (the divine) is within the Rasta, and this creates a situation wherein
knowledge already resides within the Rasta (Cashmore, 1983, p. 135).
Knowledge emerges from the dialectical encounters with Jah (during medita-
tion) as well as with each other (when holding a reason). Reasoning in Rastafari
is a communal ritual involving dialectic engagement with each member about
life, truth, and the ways of Rastafari (cf. Afari, 2007, p. 89; Onuora in Barnett,
2012, pp. 156–157; Christensen, 2014, pp. 61–63). Reasoning often involves
sitting and smoking marijuana as Rastafari build community with one another
and with Jah Rastafari. The I-and-I concept (I-n-I or I-and-I)—the oneness of Jah
and human beings—typifies the way in which Rastafari frames knowledge as
dialectically constituted between Jah and the individual. The oneness of Jah and
human beings means that each Rastafari has authority and access to knowledge.
Scholars have characterized the Rastafari concept of the I-and-I in several
ways. Cashmore sees I-and-I (“oneness”) as an outgrowth of epistemological
individualism (Cashmore, 1983, p. 140). Other scholars see it as a circumlo-
cution for the first person plural (Owens, 1976, p. 65); an intertextual conti-
nuity with the messianic pronominal I of the New Testament (Palmer, 2010);
and as an adaptation of Monophysitism (Coltri, 2015, pp. 54–56). The I-and-I
concept is multidimensional. The various scholarly characterizations are all
probable. But Rastafari constantly echo the interpretation that I-and-I mean
the divine oneness; the indwelling of Jah within the Rasta. The “oneness”
claim rests in the realm of both epistemology and ontology. It is important to
Goldson 7

note that Rastas see an inseparable link between knowing (epistemology) and
being (ontology). Adrian McFarlane provides a useful explication of this
concept:

The I-and-I expression does not function simply as a protocol for all I-words;
it is the means by which Rastas make all informed utterances related to their
principles, cultic practices, and self-affirmation. That is, the expression is a
means by which Rastas communicate their basic philosophy or concept of
themselves, their community, and the world. (McFarlene in Murrell et al.,
1998, p. 107)

McFarlane argues for the I-and-I as a linguistic construction but also as a part
of Rastafari epistemology. He further argues that this I-and-I is a lionhearted
response to Quashie mentality (fear, timidity, and compliance; McFarlene in
Murrell et al., 1998, pp. 114–117). The lionheartedness propels Rastas to
think and act differently. I-and-I is part of what we could call epistemological
defiance, nonconformity to Eurocentric constructions of knowledge.
The relationship between epistemology and ontology in Rastafari mani-
fests fully in Rastafari conduct or principle of behavior known as livity. Like
other Rastafari concepts, livity is broad and dynamic, denoting Rastafari
lifestyle. The elements of Rastafari livity varies among Rastas. Livity usually
entails a strict diet of no meat, no salt, no alcohol, and no unnatural foods
(Barrett, 1997, pp. 140–142; Owens, 1976, pp. 166–169). This strict diet is
called i-tyal. Not all Rastafari adhere to this strict dietary code. In fact, many
Rastas eat fish and quite a few eat chicken. However, the general reason for
accepting a “natural,” plant-based diet is the belief that certain foods corrupt
and weaken the individual both physically and spiritually. A healthy body
and mind project the lionheartedness of the Rastafari but, more importantly,
allows for a strong connection to Jah. This connection to the divine is the
source of Rastafari power and ability to resist Babylonian ways of knowing
and ways of being.
The sporting of dreadlocks is another example of Rastafari livity in which
the relationship between knowledge and being intersect. The growth of locks
is the most important component of attire for Rastafari. Barry Chevannes
shows that the acceptance of locks as a symbol of Rastafari occurred over a
period of time. Chevannes argues that it was the Youth Black Faith that insti-
tutionalized the sporting of locks as a symbol of Rastafari (Chevannes, 1994,
p. 157). Rastafari used biblical justifications, such as the Nazarite vow
(Numbers 6:5), to justify the growing of the hair. In the Bible, Nazarites
vowed not to cut their hair, drink alcohol, nor have sexual intercourse.
Samson was the prototypical Nazarite who got his strength from his locks.
8 Journal of Black Studies 00(0)

Rastafari appropriate the Samson image, particularly, his locks wearing to

bolster the symbol of their strength and power. Over time, Rastafari have
come to see the hair as a symbol of strength. Commenting on hair symbolism,
Barnett and Onuora assert that “locks are symbolic of the lion’s mane. As a
result, Rastas view the lion as a consummate African symbol of the freedom,
power, and sovereignty that they, as Africans inherently hold” (Barnett &
Onuora in Barnett, 2012, p. 165). Some Rastas believe that having locks
brings them closer to Jah. As one of William Lewis’ informant told him, “The
barber shop is the mark of the beast. Comb and razor conquer. The wealth of
Jah is with locks, in fullness of his company” (Lewis, 1993, p. 45). The cut-
ting of the hair is generally considered to be Babylonian conduct. Yasus Afari
in his book Overstanding Rastafari writes that “They [locks] are the Roots
that anchor us in the Cosmic Mind, Intelligence and Consciousness of the
Most High, as well as, the Antennae that connects us to the spiritual exis-
tence” (Afari, 2007, p. 103). As an extension of the Most High, dreadlocks
are embodied symbols of a deep-rooted connection to the wisdom of Jah and
to the source of knowledge.
A final element of Rastafari epistemology is the liberatory nature of
knowledge. The fundamental consideration for Rastafari is how knowing
can make Black people free from White oppression. Rastas have always
understood freedom to be more than a physical condition but also a mental
state of being. When Bob Marley punctuated the airwaves challenging
Black people “to emancipate themselves from mental slavery,” he asserted
a fundamental element of the Rastafari dialectic of freedom. Noel Erskine
has argued that there is a synergistic relationship between knowledge and
“salvation” in Rastafari thought (Erskine, 2004, p. 145). Erskine is gener-
ally right about this observation except that Christian theology limits his
idea of salvation. Rastas would rather talk about freedom from Babylonian
bondage rather than salvation from sin (Perkins in Barnett, 2012, p. 241).
Of course, Rastas take their cue from Marcus Garvey who emphasized the
power of knowledge. Many of the early followers of Rastafari give credit to
Garvey for their coming to a deeper level of consciousness (Chevannes,
1998, pp. 91–110). Garvey’s teaching has had the greatest influence on the
development of Rastafari (Erskine, 2004, pp. 30–38). Like the earlier
Garvey movement, Rastafari believed that access to the history of Africa
and Black people would not only bring enlightenment but psychological
freedom. The ethical and practical implications of a liberation-oriented
epistemology manifest in the anticolonial, anticapitalist, and antiracists
agenda of the Rastafari movement. (Bedasse, 2017, pp. 22–47)
The liberatory framework of Rastafari epistemology is not without criti-
cism, even from members of the Rastafari community. Despite the
Goldson 9

anticolonial, anticapitalist, and antiracist agenda of the Rastafari movement,

scholars have noted a significant contradiction concerning the status of
women within the movement (Christensen, 2014; Coltri, 2015; Kitzinger,
1969; Lake, 1998; Rowe, 1980; Tafari-Ama in Murrell et al., 1998, pp.
89–106; Werden-Greenfield, 2016). Sheila Kitzinger, one of the earliest
scholars to document the status of women in the Rastafari movement, docu-
ments that women are peripheral to the movement and their status (queen or
virgin) defined in relation to Rastamen (Kitzinger, 1969, pp. 252–253).
Maureen Rowe, a Rastafari woman and scholar, agrees with most of
Kitzinger’s points but notes that patriarchy seen in Rastafari is a result of the
Bible-based origins of the movement (Rowe 1980, p. 14–17). The gender
restrictions, according to Rowe, are not necessarily oppressive because
Rastawomen “understand, accept, and practice them” (Rowe 1980, p. 16).
Rowe’s point is that oppression is a matter of ideological positioning; if the
Rastawomen do not see the rules as oppressive then outsiders have no right
to foist such categories on the movement. Of course, it is very possible that
woman can internalize oppression and can unconsciously be complicit in
their oppression. Yet Barnett’s insight is instructive that the glass is half full
where matters of gender are concerned (Barnett, 2018, p. 75). The Rasta
brethren that I have reasoned with do admit that the movement in its infancy
held to a rigid patriarchy such that women could not speak during services,
but the dynamics have changed as Rastawomen now occupy prominent lead-
ership roles in the various Rastafari organizations. Furthermore, recent move-
ments within Rastafari, particularly in the United States, to raise consciousness
about Empress Menen Asfaw not only as the wife of His Majesty but as
Mother of Creation, are shifting the gender dynamics. The inaugural publica-
tion of the Empress Menen Chronicles: An African Woman’s Journal of
History and Culture, edited by Asantewaa Oppong Waddie, represents an
important step in “balancing Rastafari.” Rastafari talks about “balance” as a
way of achieving gender complementarity. Rasess Jahzani Kush’s Blue Fyah
movement seeks to bring attention to “the feminine divine as represented
through the energy of Empress Menen Asfaw” (Kush, 2019, p. 65). Gender
dynamics might be a sticking point, but the overall epistemological ground-
ing of the movement is all about liberation.

The Sociopolitical Context of Epistemological (Dis)

engagement
Rastafari epistemology manifested within and against the colonial milieu of the
Jamaican society. The history of colonization in Jamaica was about the policing
of knowledge, sites of knowledge production, and access to knowledge as
10 Journal of Black Studies 00(0)

much as it was about economic exploitation and European conceit. For most of
the period of enslavement in the Americas, slaveholders made it a crime for
African people to learn how to read. Enslaved Africans would often be severely
whipped for reading, especially the Bible, because the White enslavers feared
that by reading slaves would attempt to secure their freedom. Not all Africans
were illiterate neither was literacy the only means to knowledge. Africans had
their own ways of knowing. Proverbs, communication with the ancestors, eso-
teric information passed down through the generations, memory of home, and
common sense (folk wisdom) constituted the epistemological system of
enslaved African people. But the slaveholders also patrolled indigenous knowl-
edge and knowledge production sites using the whip, the noose, and the coer-
cive force of colonial law. The criminalization of African spiritualties such as
myal and obeah throughout the British West Indies speaks to the White man’s
fear and suppression of African people accessing and having knowledge.
Brian Moore and Michele Johnson argue that the postemancipation period
(1865 and onwards) in Jamaica was about rooting out Afro-creole thoughts
and behaviors by implanting a Victorian system of belief (Moore & Johnson,
2004). In this system of British cultural imperialism, schools, churches, the
judiciary and other gatekeeping institutions became tools in the process of
civilizing the masses. The importation of the cultus Britannica, with all its
ritualism and pageantry, served to correct the backwardness of Afro-Jamaican
culture by making them more British (Moore & Johnson, 2004, pp. 271–
310). The program of British cultural indoctrination in Jamaica after 1865
attempted to regulate the thinking of the people and shape their conscious-
ness. Afro-Jamaicans pledged allegiance to the British monarchy, considered
Britain to be the motherland, and modeled an ethos that suppressed Blackness
and Africanness. Only few Jamaicans challenged the British cultural imposi-
tion that dictated how Black people should think and what Black people
should believe. The colonial elites labeled the Afro-Jamaicans who embraced
traditional systems of knowledge such as obeah, revival, Kumina, and bush
medicine as devilish, uncivilized, and seditious. The Rastafari process of
reconceptualizing life and positing alternate ways of knowing was a process
of epistemological self-determination. This epistemological self-determina-
tion is part of the process of maroongae, a movement away from the hege-
monic control of ideas. Rastafari demonstrates this epistemological
self-determination in several ways including the formulation of their own
language that scholars refer to as dread talk (cf. Pollard, 2000, pp. 69–85).
Dread talk differs from Jamaican or English language by the proliferation of
“I” words. My article, however, focuses on a narrower epistemic shift related
to reclamation of religion and spirituality. The focus here on Rastafari proc-
lamation of a Black God and the Black Zion as a type of epistemological
Goldson 11

disengagement is important in the context of the Afro-Caribbean because

Eurocentric religious ideas remain one of the strongest ideological entrap-
ments for African people.

Epistemic Shift: A Black God, A Black King, A Zion

In a setting where to be modern, rational, and civilized meant situating one-
self in an epistemological system structured on White supremacy, the archi-
tects of Rastafari disrupted the status quo by presenting an alternative
worldview. The message of Rastafari constituted a disengagement from a
system of knowledge (re)production that stemmed from the very plantation
complex that most Afro-Jamaicans had come to revile. Rastas rejected every
aspect of the cultus Britannica: monarchy, church, school system, politics.
Rastafari saw these institutions as part of a Babylonian system. In the
Rastafari overstanding (Rastas do not understand because “under” repre-
sents a position of being below), Babylon represents evil and oppression.
Ennis B. Edmonds rightly argues that Babylon can be summarized as the
metaphorization of historical atrocity, economic rapacity, mental slavery,
and political trickery (Edmonds, 2003, pp. 46–50). Instead of bowing to the
imperial political and religious order of the Jamaican society, Rastas chan-
neled an African-centered consciousness. Rastafari embraced Haile Selassie
I as the legitimate king. The Rastafari reference to Haile Selassie I instead of
Haile Selassie is important in Rastafari legitimation of Selassie’s divinity.
The name represents a shift from a chronological to the pronominal designa-
tion (Palmer, 2010, pp. 6–8). The throne name of His Imperial Majesty does
not simply designate him as the first (Roman Numeral one—I) but as the
I-ternal (eternal) One with whom the Rasta is now united. The emphasis on
the “I” in Haile Selassie’s name underscores the epistemological and onto-
logical value of the I-and-I concept. As King Ras Tafari, he was also declared
divine and as the legitimate deity. Ethiopia became the ancestral home and
sovereign kingdom for Black people. The Gleaner, the most prominent of
the colonial newspapers, printed the first article about the emerging Rastafari
movement which captured the main components of the Rasta theological
orientation in 1933:

It is stated that during the last few months largely attended meetings have been
convened at which seditious language and blasphemous language is employed
to boost the sale of pictures of “King Ras Tafari of Abyssinia, son of King
Solomon by Queen of Sheeba.” From the tale told to a reporter by one who
attended one of the meetings, one would almost conclude that the sleek young
Jamaican dressed in full black—vest and all—has lost his reason; but the fact
remains, our informants assures us that the photographs are sold at 1 [. . .] . . ..
12 Journal of Black Studies 00(0)

Devilish attacks are made at these meetings, it is said on Government both

local and Imperial, and the whole conduct of the proceedings would tend to
provoke an insurrection, if taken seriously. (Blatant Swindle Being Carried on
in the Parish of St. Thomas, 1933, p. 2)

Despite the procolonial stance and the anti-Rastafari claims, the newspaper
article provides a good depiction of the ideological framework from which
these early Rastafari adherents worked. The kingship of Haile Selassie I
became a focal point for thinking about colonialism, imperialism, and
domination.
Leonard Howell, one of the founders of Rastafari, published The Promised
Key, in 1935 which outlined the ideology driving the movement and the epis-
temic framework which structured early Rastafari thought. Maragh and
Howell (2001) preached that “Black Supremacy has taken white supremacy
by King Alpha and Queen Omega the King of Kings” (p. 13). Black suprem-
acy emerged as an alternative way of thinking about authority, knowledge,
and value of the Afro-Jamaican population. For Howell, this represented the
entire system of governance and social order. Whereas, the political and
social elites reified the cultus Britannica as the frame of reference for most of
the Jamaica society, Howell and other Rastafari adherents rejected the system
altogether in favor of an Ethiopianist position. In this system of belief,
Selassie was undoubtedly King and God. The logic at work in the Rastafari
declaration of Selassie as royal and divine is that if a White man can be called
king, then a Black man can be king too; if there can be a White god, why not
a Black god? Barry Chevannes argues that Rastafari rejected the hegemonic
system of values that uplifted Whites and degraded Blacks (Chevannes,
1998, p. 28). Echoing Howell’s rejection of the fetishization of Whiteness,
reggae musician and Rasta Sizzla, declares,

I have no white god

Don’t teach me anything wrong
Can yuh white god save me from white man oppression?
I have no white god
Is just a blackness iyah
If yuh white god a bless you him no bless Sizzla.

For Sizzla, like many Rastas today, the Christian church (particularly the
Catholic Church), Whiteness, and White supremacy are part of Babylon,
this system of oppression. For Rastas, embracing Christianity and its
“White” deity, is an overt embrace of Eurocentrism and an act of total
Goldson 13

complicity in Babylonian oppression of Black people. The embrace and

practice of Christianity by a number of Rastafari complicate the rejection
of Christianity as an element of the epistemological shift. Some members
of the Rastafari community embrace traditional Christian denominations
such as the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and even Seventh-Day Adventism
while others are part of Afro-centered churches like Spiritual Baptists.
Abuna Foxe’s The Church of Haile Selassie I, Inc. represents a Rastafari
organization that incorporates Christian liturgical and sacramental forms.
Rastafari often to qualify any embrace of Christianity by demarcating
between Christianity “proper” and White Christianity. It is also true that
several people who identity as both Rastafari and Christian allow the two
to stand in tension without rationalizing what many other Rastas consider
to be a contradiction of existence. Even though I make room for Rastafari
members who also identify as Christians, we should bear in mind the fact
that an overwhelming number of Rastafari consider Christianity to be a
“White man’s” religion that should be rejected.
Rastas justified their proclamation of Selassie as God and King using the
Bible, a traditional site of knowledge construction. The use of the Bible in
Rastafari knowledge formation brings into question the degree to which
Rastafari actually disengage from the colonial hegemonic systems of knowl-
edge construction, organization, and legitimation. However, the Rastafari
approach to traditional sources of knowledge, like the Bible, produces sig-
nificantly different outcomes than those of the dominant society. Rastafari
show a dialectical engagement with scripture. They embrace the Bible as an
important source of knowledge for Jah’s people but, at the same time, they
take a skeptical approach to the scripture. Rastas generally hold that White
people corrupted the Bible when they translated it from the original Amharic
language (Owens, 1976, pp. 30–38). Because White people perverted the
Bible, Rastafari must apply what Samuel Murrell and Lewis Williams call the
hermeneutics of Black superiority (Murrell et al., 1998, pp. 329–330). In this
approach to scripture, Rastas correct the corruption created by White people
by reading God, the bible characters, and biblical setting as all African.
Rastafari challenge the caricature of a Caucasian Jesus by deploying texts
like Jeremiah 8:21, Psalm 119:83, Daniel 10:6, and Revelation 1:14-15 to
justify the Blackness of Christ.
Furthermore, Rastas have drawn an undeniable continuity between the
biblical world and Ethiopia. One upshot of this continuity is the transforma-
tion of Emperor Haile Selassie I as the biblically promised messiah. An
important piece of supporting evidence for the Bible validating Selassie as
God is the Christological appellations ascribed to Emperor Haile Selassie I at
his coronation on November 1, 1930. Barnett explains,
14 Journal of Black Studies 00(0)

“The November 2, 1930 edition of The New York Times, reporting on the
coronation of HIM Haile Selassie I on its front page, noted that he was crowned
King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah. The
article indicates that the titles were bestowed upon him rather than being the
result of self-proclamation. In fact, the title Haile Selassie I is argued to be
prophetic in and of itself as it means, in Amharic, the power of the Trinity.
(Barnett, 2018, p. 21)

Howell seemed to have been aware of this news report. In The Promised Key,
he emphasized the divine titles, also adding “Elect of God and Light of the
World.” Maragh and Howell (2001) also cited Psalm 72:9-11, Genesis 49:10,
and Psalm 21 as texts that prophesied the coronation of Selassie and the hom-
age that would be paid to him by world dignities (pp. 4–5). Again, Rastas
make it a point to read against the grain. Their reading of the Bible unlocks
the mysteries and exposes the textual corruptions created by White people.
Coming to a knowledge of a Black king, a Black god, and a Black spiritual
consciousness is part of systematic agenda of opting out of epistemological
suppression.
Furthermore, the declaration of Haile Selassie I as the king and God of all
Black people provides the ideological basis for the reconfiguration of space.
Ethiopia (I-tiopia) becomes Zion, the land of redemption for Black people.
All other places outside of Africa, including Jamaica, becomes Babylon.
Ethiopia becomes the land of liberation for Rastas because the Bible proph-
esized it: “Princes shall come out of Egypt, and Ethiopia shall soon stretch
forth her hand” (Psalm 68:31). For the Rastas, the long biblical genealogy of
Ethiopia justifies its status as Zion. Here, we see significant ideological con-
tinuity among Rastafari, Ethiopianism, and Garveyism. Beyond the scriptural
support, Rastas conclude that Ethiopia must be Zion because up to 1930
when the Rastafari movement emerged, Ethiopia had never been colonized.
Some people in the Rasta community also believe that Garvey prophesized
the crowing of a king by declaring “Look to Africa for when a black man
shall be crowned, for the day of deliverance is near.” Outside of Rastafari oral
tradition, there is no evidence that Garvey spoke those words, but correct
attribution is less significant than what the idea instantiates (cf. Chevannes,
1998, pp. 103–104). By their experience of alienation and marginalization in
the Jamaican society, Rastas came to the realization of Jamaica as Babylon.
The reconfiguration of Ethiopia as Zion allowed Rastas to disengage from the
dominant theological world of Jamaica where Heaven in the sky (the apoca-
lyptic New Jerusalem) is purported to be the place of freedom.
The reconfiguration, however, does not remain on the ideological level of
spatial logic. Some Rastas believed in a literal exodus (physical disengage-
ment) from Babylon to Zion. The belief in repatriation to Africa was at the
Goldson 15

core of the Rastafari movement for the first 50 years of the movement. In
fact, hundreds of Rastas repatriated to Shashamane in Ethiopia since the
1960s (Campbell, 2007, pp. 220–226; MacLeod, 2014, pp. 1–5). The finan-
cial cost of repatriation and the difficulties of acquiring citizenship and its
associated benefits have challenged the prospects of physically disengaging
from Babylon. Since the 1980s, the idea of repatriation has become more of
an ideal rather than an ideological imperative. This is not to suggest that
many Rastas have given up on the possibility. Some Rastas continue to see
physical repatriation as fundamental to complete liberation. But others have
accepted the spatial logic of reconfiguration and are building community
around the idea of Zion in the present moment even as they aspire for the
homeland. Perhaps we can take a cue from Chronixx’s “Capture Land” lyrics
to understand the creative tension routinized in the Rastafari reconfiguration
of space

Carry we go home, carry we go home

And bring we gone a east
Cause man a rasta man
And rasta nuh live pon no capture land
Carry we go home
An mek we settle and seize
Man a rasta man
And rasta nuh live pon no capture land
Cherry garden a capture land
Me tell you Shortwood seh dat a capture land
Los Angeles dat a capture land
And New York City dat a capture land
East some a di place weh you wah go live sweet
A teifing land there’s no title fi it
And some a these place weh you wah go live nice
A tief dem tief it in the name of Christ
Spanish Town dat a capture land
The whole a Kingston dat a capture land
Remember Portland dat a capture land
And all down a Trinidad dat a capture land
Barbados dat a capture land
16 Journal of Black Studies 00(0)

Tell dem Bermuda dat a capture land

And tell Colombia dat a capture land
All round a Cuba dat a capture land. (Chronixx, 2014)

The idea of captured land (stolen and colonized spaces) highlights the oppres-
sion that created the Americas. The deployment of the language allows for
Rastas like Chronixx to sustain resistance against the Babylonian state by
constantly calling out the historical violence caused by colonialization. The
discourse on repatriation and the reconfiguration of space are part of the pro-
cess of epistemological self-determination.

Conclusion
Throughout this article, I attempted to demonstrate that maroonage can be con-
ceptualized as a process of engagement with and disengagement from hege-
monic epistemologies. I supported this theoretical conceptualization by
exploring how Rastafari constructed an epistemological rooted in Afrocentricity,
a sapiential tradition of knowing as opposed to believing, and liberation from
White oppression. The articulation of a Black God, a Black king, and a Black
Zion typify the extent to which Rastafari epistemology expands the theory of
maroonage as a process of epistemological self-determination. My suggestion
that maroonage is a process of epistemological self-determination or epistemo-
logical (dis)engagement is only a small intervention in the growing effort to
move beyond maroonage as just a historical occurrence. The process of episte-
mological self-determination is maroonage in process.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article.

ORCID iD
Randy R. Goldson https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8524-2759

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Author Biography
Randy R. Goldson, PhD, is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Religion at
Temple University. He completed a master’s degree in religion at Yale Divinity
School. His dissertation is a study of Rastafari conception of H.I.M. Haile Selassie
as divine and how such conception intersects with African notions of spirit and
power.