Scenes of subjection : terror, slavery, and self-making in nineteenth-century America / Saidiya V. Hartman.
Hartman, Saidiya V.
1997
E443 .H37 1997 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection

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Title Scenes of subjection : terror, slavery, and self-making in nineteenth-century America / Saidiya V. Hartman.
Author Hartman, Saidiya V.
ISBN 9780195089844 (paperback)
0195089847 (paperback)
9780195089837 (hardcover)
0195089839 (hardcover)
Imprint New York : Oxford University Press, 1997.
Language English
Description viii, 281 pages ; 24 cm.
Call Number E443 .H37 1997
Dewey Decimal Classification 973/.0496073
Summary "In this provocative and original exploration of racial subjugation during slavery and its aftermath, Saidiya Hartman illumines the forms of terror and resistance that shaped black identity. Scenes of Subjection examines the forms of domination that usually go undetected; in particular, the encroachments of power that take place through notions of humanity, enjoyment, protection, rights, and consent. By looking at slave narratives, plantation diaries, popular theater, slave performance, freedmen's primers, and legal cases, Hartman investigates a wide variety of "scenes" ranging from the auction block and minstrel show to the staging of the self-possessed and rights-bearing individual of freedom. While attentive to the performance of power--the terrible spectacles of slaveholders' dominion and the innocent amusements designed to abase and pacify the enslaved--and the entanglements of pleasure and terror in these displays of mastery, Hartman also examines the possibilities for resistance, redress and transformation embodied in black performance and everyday practice. This important study contends that despite the legal abolition of slavery, emergent notions of individual will and responsibility revealed the tragic continuities between slavery and freedom. Bold and persuasively argued, Scenes of Subjection will engage readers in a broad range of historical, literary, and cultural studies."--Publisher's description.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-275) and index.
Series Race and American culture.
Linked Resources Contributor biographical information
Publisher description
Record Appears in On-Campus Resources > Books
All Resources
I. Formations of terror : 1. Innocent amusements: the stage of sufferance
2. Redressing the pained body: toward a theory of practice
3. Seduction and the ruses of power.
II. The subject of freedom : 4. The burdened individuality of freedom
5. Fashioning obligation: indebted servitude and the fetters of slavery
6. Instinct and injury: bodily integrity, natural affinities, and the constitution of equality.

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