Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America

MacArthur fellow Hartman (Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments) probes in this innovative critical study, which has been revised and expanded from its original 1997 edition, why emancipation failed to translate into freedom and equality for Black Americans. Provocatively arguing that American liberalism itself, not the absence or denial of it, prevented African Americans from becoming full-fledged citizens, Hartman examines how “the recognition of the slave’s humanity and status as a subject extended and intensified servitude and dispossesion, rather than conferring some small measure of rights and protection.” Dissecting various “scenes of subjection” common to 19th-century culture, including parades of coffled slaves and minstrel shows, Hartman identifies the forces that made it impossible for people once defined as property to be immediately recognized as human beings. Instead, white supremacist culture rendered Black persons “socially dead” in all but the rarest instances, Hartman argues. Though her writing is impassioned and even lyrical at times, the book’s theoretical discussions will be challenging for nonacademic readers. Still, this is a powerful and thought-provoking examination of slavery’s far-reaching legacy. (Oct.)