Audacious....Original and provocative....What Hartman has to say about both slavery and its continuing resonances should be heard as widely as possible....A major scholarly contribution to the project of expanding and refining the nation's political memory.

The Nation

A tour de force.

American Literature

American historians, especially historians of the South, will learn much from Secenes of Subjection

The Journal of American History

Se alle

...a profoundly important subject...the author explores anew the calculated use of both blatantly overt and seemingly subtler forms of control over black bodies and black psyches.

Mississippi Quarterly

Well worth close attention, however, since Hartman relies o n extensive and intensive scholarly research to challenge the apparently major distinctions between slavery and emancipation and to encourage our recognition that there have been no dramatic historical turning points for black Americans." Journal of Southern History

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.
Les mer
Selling point: A provocative and original exploration Selling point: Will engage readers in a broad range of historical, literary, and cultural studies

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780195089844
Publisert
1997
Utgiver
Vendor
Oxford University Press Inc
Vekt
433 gr
Høyde
235 mm
Bredde
155 mm
Dybde
20 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
296

Forfatter

Biografisk notat

Saidiya Hartman is Associate Professor of English at the University of California-Berkeley