Moyọ̀ Òkédìjí, Before the Amistad Options for resolving the battle of “consciousness” are three (life, death, or captivity) and not two (life or death). No sane person enters a battle with the intent of getting killed or captured, although the potential for either outcome is not unknown. Warriors risk lives aiming to survive, to capture, or to kill their adversaries. If they end up with captives, the burden of sustaining the life of the unkilled, but defeated, adversary falls on the captor. The warrior that enslaves thus brings upon itself the responsibility of managing a reluctantly living person. Hence, a permanent tension that frequently breaks into outright wars between the master and the enslaved obtains in slaveholding societies. Slavery breeds permanent unrest because the enslaved is constantly attempting to be free of the “normative” circumference instituted at the moment the effort to die was truncated. The master, knowing ...