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Remembering Asar: an Argument to Authenticate Rastafari’S Conceptualization(S) of Haile Selassie I

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Remembering Asar: an Argument to Authenticate Rastafari’S Conceptualization(S) of Haile Selassie I REMEMBERING ASAR: AN ARGUMENT TO AUTHENTICATE RASTAFARI’S CONCEPTUALIZATION(S) OF HAILE SELASSIE I A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Cher Love McAllister May, 2009 ii ABSTRACT Remembering Asar: An Argument to Authenticate RastafarI’s Conceptualization(s) of Haile Selassie I Cher Love McAllister Doctor of Philosophy Temple University, 2009 Doctoral Advisory Committee Chair: Nathaniel Norment, Jr. Since the emergence of RastafarI communities within 1930’s Jamaica following the coronation of Ras Tafari Makonnen as Haile Selassie I, Negus (king) of Ethiopia, RastafarI continuously articulate his divinity within their discourse. While the specific nomenclature for and significance of Haile Selassie I may vary in accordance to time and affiliation, it is unquestionable that Selassie I remains central to the RastafarI way of life for more than 70 years. What scholars and thinkers on RastafarI question, and very fervently so during the past 10 years, is the authenticity of the divinity of Selassie I within RastafarI thought. The few scholars who attempt to solve what for them is the “problem of authenticity,” claim, through christological and apologistic approaches, that RastafarI need to reconsider the possibility of his status, as it is conjecture and blasphemy. Adhering to African epistemological assumptions that everything in existence comprises the whole of existence, we rely on an African symbolic approach to examine RastafarI conceptualizations of Selassie I within pre-coronation, coronation and post-coronation RastafarI writings. Given that the material reality seemingly degenerates the collective body and consciousness in accordance with the cycles of time as expressed within the most ancient of Kemetic cosmologies, our aim is to suggest that Haile Selassie I emerges as a ba, the soul template, of Asar, a force demonstrative of human ability to iii exist within the material realm in accordance with the unseen realm of existence. We conclude, unlike previous academic thinkers who examine RastafarI thought, that RastafarI thinking about Haile Selassie I is therefore an authentic perspective, one that undoubtedly occurs in accordance with the structure and origin of the universe and the cyclical journey of Africana reclamation of a primordial consciousness. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I must first acknowledge and thank the creator and ancestors. You continue to teach me that we are spiritual beings on a journey to remember ourselves as having a primordial ancestral consciousness that transcends our contemporary material identities. For, I am unable to contribute to the world without you. To Het Heru Hetep (Jacqueline Teresa Wigfall), Karanja Keita and Danielle Wallace Carroll, Yaba Blay, Kaila Adia Story, Mihoby Rabeharrison, and Aimee Glocke, thank you for your collegiality, friendship, love, encouragement and support on my long journey to complete my doctorate. Each of you in your own way made this road easier for me to travel. Love, life and livity! To my Dissertation Committee, Dr. Nathaniel Norment Jr., Dr. Abu Abarry, Dr. Greg Kimathi Carr, and Dr. Wilbert Jenkins, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your unending patience and intellectual guidance. Each of you has unquestionably supported and encouraged my intellectual work, yet challenged me to rethink particular logic, concepts, and conclusions. Medase paa! v DEDICATION To my mother Geneva Lowe McAllister, who as Ast, nurtures and remembers me from the ancestral duatic realm. To the Africana world vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………....ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………….…….iv DEDICATION…………………………………………………………………….….…...v LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………….…….…viii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………..…..1 Introduction to RastafarI Discourse on Haile Selassie I……………….… 1 The Problem of Authenticity: ……..………………………………….…..6 Haile Selassie I for Researchers on RastafarI Statement of Purpose and Objectives………………………………….….8 African Symbolic Research Approach and Overview of Chapters….…..14 Contribution of Dissertation……………………………………..............21 Limitations…………………………………………………………….…22 2. THE PROBLEM OF AUTHENTICITY: ………………..……………….…..27 RASTAFARI CONCEPTUALIZATION OF HAILE SELASSIE I IN ACADEMIC DISCOURSE 3. ANUNIAN COSMOLOGY……………………………………………….......47 Cosmology within Academic Discourse: The Universe Informing Human Thought and Behavior………….……..48 Nu: The Source of Existence…………………...…………………...…...54 Microcosmic Creation………………………………………….………...59 Conclusion……………………………………………………….….…...81 vii 4. PROCESS OF REMEMBERING ASAR………………………………….…..83 WITHIN ANUNIAN COSMOLOGY: THEORIZING ASAR Clearing Intellectual Space: Asar, Sex and Gender…………………...…86 . The Process of Remembering Asar…………………………………..…..90 Introduction to the Duat………………………………………….….….101 Remembering Asar at the Crossroads…………………….…………….103 Remembering Asar in the Duat…………………………………………108 Coda……………………………………………………………….........121 5. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BA OF AST: …………………………….......135 REMEMBERING ASAR AT THE CROSSROADS Marcus Garvey: The Ba of Ast at the Crossroads……………….............137 Remembering the Non-gendered Qualities of Asar……………….….....146 God and Black Supremacy………………………………………………151 Conclusion…………………………………………………………...….155 6. AUTHENTICATING HAILE SELASSIE I WITHIN…………………….…157 RASTAFARI THOUGHT: RASTAFARI REMEMBERING ASAR The Solar Baboons………………………………………………….…...159 Articulative Wisdom, Re Music and Coming into the Light Haile Selassie I in Exile: Asar in Rasteau………………………….…...170 King of Kings and Lord of Lords of the Perfect Black………………....175 Remembering Asar in Amentet BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………….………….…182 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Anu cosmological cycle of time…..………………….………….…...……….69 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO HAILE SELASSIE I WITHIN RASTAFARI THOUGHT Adorations to Asar Un-Nefer Divinity Great, personality (in) heart (of) Abdu King eternity, Lord of Forever traveling (for) eternities, (in) form raised he. -- Papyris of Ani Princes shall come out of Egypt and Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God --Psalm 68:31 Yeah man! Jah Live! Ya cycaan (can’t) kill God. --Bob Marley, Bob Marley in His Own Words Introduction to RastafarI Discourse on Haile Selassie I Since the emergence of RastafarI communities within 1930’s Jamaica, following the coronation of Ras Tafari Makonnen as Haile Selassie I, Negus (king) of Ethiopia, RastafarI continuously articulate his divinity within their discourse. The earliest post- coronation writer to describe Haile Selassie I is Leonard Howell in The Promised Key, in which he asserts that Haile Selassie I has come as the living God to “purify our social standards and our way of living, and rebuild and inspire our character.”1 Prince Emmanuel Charles Edward, elder of one of the oldest Jamaican based RastafarI communities, The Ethiopia Africa International Congress (Nyabinghi Order of Rastafari), also contributes to the post-coronation discourse on Haile Selassie I. In his text Black Supremacy, he writes that Haile Selassie I is Jah RastafarI, the Almighty God, “who [is] 1 Leonard Howell, The Promised Key, ed. Ras Miguel. (Kingston: Headstart, n.d),5. 2 seated in Zion and reign [s] in the hearts of all flesh.”2 Begun in 1937 as a support program in Harlem, NY for Ethiopia during the Italio-Ethiopian war, the Ethiopian World Federation (EWF), conceptualizes Haile Selassie I to be the “Elect of God and the Light of the World.”3 This discourse about Haile Selassie I expresses the earliest attempts to identify Haile Selassie I’s divine significance within the context of his coronation as Negus of Ethiopia, the only landspace in Africa that European colonizers had not demarcated. With the deposition of Selassie I in 1974 by Marxist opposition leader Menguistu Selassie Mariam, RastafarI continue to stress Selassie I’s divinity despite his removal from his earthly throne. International reggae artist Robert Nesta Marley is one among many who contributes to this idea. In his song “Jah Live” Haile Selassie I is “God almighty,” while in Marley’s other articulations, Jah is everything in existence.4 The Twelve Tribes of Israel community, which Prophet Gad forms during the 1970s under the direction of Prophet Gad, does not necessarily conceive of Haile Selassie I as God. They conceive of him as the return of Christ in flesh, and often interchange the term Christ with Haile Selassie.5 In an even more recent contribution to the discourse, Jah Ahkel, in his 1994 text, Rasta Emperor Haile Sellassie, Jah Ahkel writes that RastafarI conceive of Haile Selassie I as “omnipresent and like Christ, he can never die, so Jah Rastafari (God Sellassie) lives.”6 Undismayed by the deposition and then the reported passing of Haile 2 Prince Emmanuel Charles Edwards, Black Supremacy, (St. Andrew: Ethiopian Africa Black International Congress, nd.) 10. 3 Horace Campbell, Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney, (Trenton: Africa World, 1987), 77. 4 Ian McCann, Bob Marley In His Own Words, (New York: Omnibus, 1993), 59. 5 Leonard Barrett, The Rastafarians, (London: Heinemann, 1977), 229. 6Jah Ahkell, Rasta: Emperor Haile Selassie and the Rastafarians, (Chicago: Research Associates, 1999),34. 3 Selassie I, RastafarI continue to rearticulate his divinity in light of these unfortunate changes. It seems that regardless of the passing of time (post-coronation and post- deposition), the emergence of group affiliations, the
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