Author: Leslie Maria Harris
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820354422
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 365
Book Description
Slavery and the University is the first edited collection of scholarly essays devoted solely to the histories and legacies of this subject on North American campuses and in their Atlantic contexts. Gathering together contributions from scholars, activists, and administrators, the volume combines two broad bodies of work: (1) historically based interdisciplinary research on the presence of slavery at higher education institutions in terms of the development of proslavery and antislavery thought and the use of slave labor; and (2) analysis on the ways in which the legacies of slavery in institutions of higher education continued in the post-Civil War era to the present day. The collection features broadly themed essays on issues of religion, economy, and the regional slave trade of the Caribbean. It also includes case studies of slavery's influence on specific institutions, such as Princeton University, Harvard University, Oberlin College, Emory University, and the University of Alabama. Though the roots of Slavery and the University stem from a 2011 conference at Emory University, the collection extends outward to incorporate recent findings. As such, it offers a roadmap to one of the most exciting developments in the field of U.S. slavery studies and to ways of thinking about racial diversity in the history and current practices of higher education.
Slavery and the University
Author: Leslie Maria Harris
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820354422
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 365
Book Description
Slavery and the University is the first edited collection of scholarly essays devoted solely to the histories and legacies of this subject on North American campuses and in their Atlantic contexts. Gathering together contributions from scholars, activists, and administrators, the volume combines two broad bodies of work: (1) historically based interdisciplinary research on the presence of slavery at higher education institutions in terms of the development of proslavery and antislavery thought and the use of slave labor; and (2) analysis on the ways in which the legacies of slavery in institutions of higher education continued in the post-Civil War era to the present day. The collection features broadly themed essays on issues of religion, economy, and the regional slave trade of the Caribbean. It also includes case studies of slavery's influence on specific institutions, such as Princeton University, Harvard University, Oberlin College, Emory University, and the University of Alabama. Though the roots of Slavery and the University stem from a 2011 conference at Emory University, the collection extends outward to incorporate recent findings. As such, it offers a roadmap to one of the most exciting developments in the field of U.S. slavery studies and to ways of thinking about racial diversity in the history and current practices of higher education.
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820354422
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 365
Book Description
Slavery and the University is the first edited collection of scholarly essays devoted solely to the histories and legacies of this subject on North American campuses and in their Atlantic contexts. Gathering together contributions from scholars, activists, and administrators, the volume combines two broad bodies of work: (1) historically based interdisciplinary research on the presence of slavery at higher education institutions in terms of the development of proslavery and antislavery thought and the use of slave labor; and (2) analysis on the ways in which the legacies of slavery in institutions of higher education continued in the post-Civil War era to the present day. The collection features broadly themed essays on issues of religion, economy, and the regional slave trade of the Caribbean. It also includes case studies of slavery's influence on specific institutions, such as Princeton University, Harvard University, Oberlin College, Emory University, and the University of Alabama. Though the roots of Slavery and the University stem from a 2011 conference at Emory University, the collection extends outward to incorporate recent findings. As such, it offers a roadmap to one of the most exciting developments in the field of U.S. slavery studies and to ways of thinking about racial diversity in the history and current practices of higher education.
Blood Legacy
Author: Alex Renton
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 178689887X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 516
Book Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 'An incredible work of scholarship' Sathnam Sanghera Through the story of his own family’s history as slave and plantation owners, Alex Renton looks at how we owe it to the present to understand the legacy of the past. When British Caribbean slavery was abolished across most of the British Empire in 1833, it was not the newly liberated who received compensation, but the tens of thousands of enslavers who were paid millions of pounds in government money. The descendants of some of those slave owners are among the wealthiest and most powerful people in Britain today. Blood Legacy explores what inheritance – political, economic, moral and spiritual – has been passed to the descendants of the slave owners and the descendants of the enslaved. He also asks, crucially, how the former – himself among them – can begin to make reparations for the past.
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 178689887X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 516
Book Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 'An incredible work of scholarship' Sathnam Sanghera Through the story of his own family’s history as slave and plantation owners, Alex Renton looks at how we owe it to the present to understand the legacy of the past. When British Caribbean slavery was abolished across most of the British Empire in 1833, it was not the newly liberated who received compensation, but the tens of thousands of enslavers who were paid millions of pounds in government money. The descendants of some of those slave owners are among the wealthiest and most powerful people in Britain today. Blood Legacy explores what inheritance – political, economic, moral and spiritual – has been passed to the descendants of the slave owners and the descendants of the enslaved. He also asks, crucially, how the former – himself among them – can begin to make reparations for the past.
The Psychological Legacy of Slavery
Author: Benjamin P. Bowser
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476642338
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
This collection of essays surveys the practices, behaviors, and beliefs that developed during slavery in the Western Hemisphere, and the lingering psychological consequences that continue to impact the descendants of enslaved Africans today. The psychological legacies of slavery highlighted in this volume were found independently in Brazil, the U.S., Belize, Jamaica, Colombia, Haiti, and Martinique. They are color prejudice, self and community disdain, denial of trauma, black-on-black violence, survival crime, child beating, underlying African spirituality, and use of music and dance as community psychotherapy. The effects on descendants of slave owners include a belief in white supremacy, dehumanization of self and others, gun violence, and more. Essays also offer solutions for dealing with this vast psychological legacy. Knowledge of the continuing effects of slavery has been used in psychotherapy, family, and group counseling of African slave descendants. Progress in resolving these legacies has been made as well using psychohistory, forensic psychiatry, family social histories, and community mental health. This knowledge is crucial to eventual reconciliation and resolution of the continuing legacies of slavery and the slave trade.
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476642338
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
This collection of essays surveys the practices, behaviors, and beliefs that developed during slavery in the Western Hemisphere, and the lingering psychological consequences that continue to impact the descendants of enslaved Africans today. The psychological legacies of slavery highlighted in this volume were found independently in Brazil, the U.S., Belize, Jamaica, Colombia, Haiti, and Martinique. They are color prejudice, self and community disdain, denial of trauma, black-on-black violence, survival crime, child beating, underlying African spirituality, and use of music and dance as community psychotherapy. The effects on descendants of slave owners include a belief in white supremacy, dehumanization of self and others, gun violence, and more. Essays also offer solutions for dealing with this vast psychological legacy. Knowledge of the continuing effects of slavery has been used in psychotherapy, family, and group counseling of African slave descendants. Progress in resolving these legacies has been made as well using psychohistory, forensic psychiatry, family social histories, and community mental health. This knowledge is crucial to eventual reconciliation and resolution of the continuing legacies of slavery and the slave trade.
Beyond Slavery
Author: Jacqueline L. Hazelton
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230113893
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 713
Book Description
This book looks at a United States that continues to be driven by racial and cultural divisions, from the disproportionately high number of incarcerated African Americans to heartfelt disagreements over the true nature of marriage and the proper role of faith in public policy.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230113893
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 713
Book Description
This book looks at a United States that continues to be driven by racial and cultural divisions, from the disproportionately high number of incarcerated African Americans to heartfelt disagreements over the true nature of marriage and the proper role of faith in public policy.
Transcending the Legacies of Slavery
Author: Barbara Fletchman Smith
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429923198
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 112
Book Description
This book puts psychological trauma at its centre. Using psychoanalysis, it assesses what was lost, how it was lost and how the loss is compulsively repeated over generations. There is a conceptualization of this trauma as circular. Such a situation makes it stubbornly persistent. It is suggested that central to the system of slavery was the separating out of procreation from maternity and paternity. This was achieved through the particular cruelties of separating couples at the first sign of loving interest in each other; and separating infants from their mothers. Cruelty disturbed the natural flow of events in the mind and disturbed the approach to and the resolution of the Oedipus Complex conflict. This is traced through the way a new kind of family developed in the Caribbean and elsewhere where slavery remained for hundreds of years.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429923198
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 112
Book Description
This book puts psychological trauma at its centre. Using psychoanalysis, it assesses what was lost, how it was lost and how the loss is compulsively repeated over generations. There is a conceptualization of this trauma as circular. Such a situation makes it stubbornly persistent. It is suggested that central to the system of slavery was the separating out of procreation from maternity and paternity. This was achieved through the particular cruelties of separating couples at the first sign of loving interest in each other; and separating infants from their mothers. Cruelty disturbed the natural flow of events in the mind and disturbed the approach to and the resolution of the Oedipus Complex conflict. This is traced through the way a new kind of family developed in the Caribbean and elsewhere where slavery remained for hundreds of years.
The Psychic Hold of Slavery
Author: Soyica Diggs Colbert
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813583985
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Book Description
What would it mean to “get over slavery”? Is such a thing possible? Is it even desirable? Should we perceive the psychic hold of slavery as a set of mental manacles that hold us back from imagining a postracist America? Or could the psychic hold of slavery be understood as a tool, helping us get a grip on the systemic racial inequalities and restricted liberties that persist in the present day? Featuring original essays from an array of established and emerging scholars in the interdisciplinary field of African American studies, The Psychic Hold of Slavery offers a nuanced dialogue upon these questions. With a painful awareness that our understanding of the past informs our understanding of the present—and vice versa—the contributors place slavery’s historical legacies in conversation with twenty-first-century manifestations of antiblack violence, dehumanization, and social death. Through an exploration of film, drama, fiction, performance art, graphic novels, and philosophical discourse, this volume considers how artists grapple with questions of representation, as they ask whether slavery can ever be accurately depicted, trace the scars that slavery has left on a traumatized body politic, or debate how to best convey that black lives matter. The Psychic Hold of Slavery thus raises provocative questions about how we behold the historically distinct event of African diasporic enslavement and how we might hold off the transhistorical force of antiblack domination.
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813583985
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Book Description
What would it mean to “get over slavery”? Is such a thing possible? Is it even desirable? Should we perceive the psychic hold of slavery as a set of mental manacles that hold us back from imagining a postracist America? Or could the psychic hold of slavery be understood as a tool, helping us get a grip on the systemic racial inequalities and restricted liberties that persist in the present day? Featuring original essays from an array of established and emerging scholars in the interdisciplinary field of African American studies, The Psychic Hold of Slavery offers a nuanced dialogue upon these questions. With a painful awareness that our understanding of the past informs our understanding of the present—and vice versa—the contributors place slavery’s historical legacies in conversation with twenty-first-century manifestations of antiblack violence, dehumanization, and social death. Through an exploration of film, drama, fiction, performance art, graphic novels, and philosophical discourse, this volume considers how artists grapple with questions of representation, as they ask whether slavery can ever be accurately depicted, trace the scars that slavery has left on a traumatized body politic, or debate how to best convey that black lives matter. The Psychic Hold of Slavery thus raises provocative questions about how we behold the historically distinct event of African diasporic enslavement and how we might hold off the transhistorical force of antiblack domination.
Slavery's Descendants
Author: Lucian K. Truscott
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1978800762
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
Slavery's Descendants brings together twenty-five contributors from a variety of racial backgrounds, to tell their personal stories of exhuming and exorcising America's racist past. Together, they help us confront the legacy of slavery and reclaim a more complete picture of U.S. history, one cousin at a time.
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1978800762
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
Slavery's Descendants brings together twenty-five contributors from a variety of racial backgrounds, to tell their personal stories of exhuming and exorcising America's racist past. Together, they help us confront the legacy of slavery and reclaim a more complete picture of U.S. history, one cousin at a time.
The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution
Author: James Oakes
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324005866
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Finalist for the 2022 Lincoln Prize An award-winning scholar uncovers the guiding principles of Lincoln’s antislavery strategies. The long and turning path to the abolition of American slavery has often been attributed to the equivocations and inconsistencies of antislavery leaders, including Lincoln himself. But James Oakes’s brilliant history of Lincoln’s antislavery strategies reveals a striking consistency and commitment extending over many years. The linchpin of antislavery for Lincoln was the Constitution of the United States. Lincoln adopted the antislavery view that the Constitution made freedom the rule in the United States, slavery the exception. Where federal power prevailed, so did freedom. Where state power prevailed, that state determined the status of slavery, and the federal government could not interfere. It would take state action to achieve the final abolition of American slavery. With this understanding, Lincoln and his antislavery allies used every tool available to undermine the institution. Wherever the Constitution empowered direct federal action—in the western territories, in the District of Columbia, over the slave trade—they intervened. As a congressman in 1849 Lincoln sponsored a bill to abolish slavery in Washington, DC. He reentered politics in 1854 to oppose what he considered the unconstitutional opening of the territories to slavery by the Kansas–Nebraska Act. He attempted to persuade states to abolish slavery by supporting gradual abolition with compensation for slaveholders and the colonization of free Blacks abroad. President Lincoln took full advantage of the antislavery options opened by the Civil War. Enslaved people who escaped to Union lines were declared free. The Emancipation Proclamation, a military order of the president, undermined slavery across the South. It led to abolition by six slave states, which then joined the coalition to affect what Lincoln called the "King’s cure": state ratification of the constitutional amendment that in 1865 finally abolished slavery.
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324005866
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Finalist for the 2022 Lincoln Prize An award-winning scholar uncovers the guiding principles of Lincoln’s antislavery strategies. The long and turning path to the abolition of American slavery has often been attributed to the equivocations and inconsistencies of antislavery leaders, including Lincoln himself. But James Oakes’s brilliant history of Lincoln’s antislavery strategies reveals a striking consistency and commitment extending over many years. The linchpin of antislavery for Lincoln was the Constitution of the United States. Lincoln adopted the antislavery view that the Constitution made freedom the rule in the United States, slavery the exception. Where federal power prevailed, so did freedom. Where state power prevailed, that state determined the status of slavery, and the federal government could not interfere. It would take state action to achieve the final abolition of American slavery. With this understanding, Lincoln and his antislavery allies used every tool available to undermine the institution. Wherever the Constitution empowered direct federal action—in the western territories, in the District of Columbia, over the slave trade—they intervened. As a congressman in 1849 Lincoln sponsored a bill to abolish slavery in Washington, DC. He reentered politics in 1854 to oppose what he considered the unconstitutional opening of the territories to slavery by the Kansas–Nebraska Act. He attempted to persuade states to abolish slavery by supporting gradual abolition with compensation for slaveholders and the colonization of free Blacks abroad. President Lincoln took full advantage of the antislavery options opened by the Civil War. Enslaved people who escaped to Union lines were declared free. The Emancipation Proclamation, a military order of the president, undermined slavery across the South. It led to abolition by six slave states, which then joined the coalition to affect what Lincoln called the "King’s cure": state ratification of the constitutional amendment that in 1865 finally abolished slavery.
Legacies of Slavery
Author: Maria Suzette Fernandes Dias
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527567001
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
The proclamation by the United Nations General Assembly of the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition during 2004 marked the culmination of recent efforts to re-engage with slavery’s past and create an intellectual, social, political and ethical climate conducive to a sustained and meaningful dialogue among cultures and civilisations. The past decade witnessed an upsurge of national and international exhibitions and conferences on the impact of slavery and the overwhelming and enduring cultural miscegenation and the demographic, socio-political and spiritual hybridisation that the phenomenon consciously or unconsciously initiated; the celebration of efforts by Abolitionists to publicise the savagery of this inhumane practice; a revival of interest in and the glorification of, the often ignored or historically negatively represented resistance to slavery by slaves themselves; and, numerous endeavours to address the negative legacies of slavery like racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, which continue to impinge upon our present as part of contemporary politics. Yet, these ventures aimed at raising awareness of the horrors of slave trade and slavery, at honouring struggles for the emancipation of the enslaved, at examining the aftermath of slavery like the emergence of a new historic consciousness, at restoring broken links and solidarity between the historically dislocated diasporas and their countries of origin, at commemorating sites of memory, and, at celebrating artistic and cultural métissage, such as the UNESCO’s Slave Route Project, have largely focused on the Atlantic World, and the deportation of slaves from Africa to other parts of the World, raising questions about the legacy of slavery in other societies, like those in Asia, the Pacific and Europe, where slavery still remains on the margins of national and post-colonial histories. This edited volume is an attempt to reconsider slavery as a global human institution which has coexisted with other socio-political, economic, legal and cultural institutions. As a temporally and spatially ubiquitous phenomenon, it has generated and continues to, engender legacies, be they historical, oral or visual, which need to be compared and discussed to facilitate dialogue between cultures and civilisations and to mitigate the wounds of the past which continue to scar our present. It brings together writings by scholars from history, literature, anthropology and cultural studies who examine the indelible mark left by slavery in its various forms, on societies, cultures and peoples all over the world and attempts by artistes and writers to alleviate this stigmata of History. This volume consists of two sections. The first section entitled "Connecting Histories" explores some of the varied forms in which slavery presented itself in the last four centuries and the need to reengage with its legacies. Adhering to Manning’s contention that slavery is "an enduring metaphor for inequities in the treatment of humans", this section focuses on identifying the legacy of slavery and its significance in scholarship (Manning); alternate perspectives on slavery through the examination of forced labour and the dehumanising treatment of indigenous people in Australia (Read), enforced migration and labour exploitation of convicts in penal colonies (Maxwell-Stewart); and, a historical overview of Lusitanian slavery in India (D’Souza) and the hybridisation of pre-colonial slavery traditions in the perpetuation of the perkerniersstelse, or a profitably managed European settler-colony based on the global monopoly of nutmeg production, by the Dutch (Winn). The second section of the book entitled "Centering Discourses: Identity, Image and Text" begins with a postcolonialist reading of Caribbean slavery as a legacy of capitalism, imperialism and plantation culture and above all, the globalization of sugar consumption (Ashcroft). The two chapters that follow resuscitate two of the many categories of slaves who were victims of historical silence, namely children in the sugar plantations of the West Indies (Teelucksingh) and Martiniquan maroons (Fernandes-Dias). Articulating with the discourse on identity and cultural appropriation introduced in the preceding essay, chapter nine provides an overview of the power struggle at work in the construction of Creole identity and its political legitimization, through a topical analysis of the process of commemoration of a "site of memory", Le Morne Brabant, symbol of slavery and marronage in the Mauritian collective memory (Carmignani). The final two chapters explore the problematics of presenting slavery through the adoption of a counter-hegemonic discourse, particularly through the arts. Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko which exalts the Black slave as a hero without making any explicit case for the abolition of slavery, continues to occupy the terrain of sympathist - abolitionist ambiguity (Landford) while the Amistad case, despite its numerous positive legacies, demonstrates how excessive popularization of the incident as an Abolitionist cause célèbre, resulted in an overload of historical memory to the point of obscuring historical reality (Fernandes Dias). Despite the volume's overarching desire to provide a global and comparative overview of the historical, ideological, economical and cultural factors that contributed to the evolution of slavery and the legacies that the institution generated, this volume is limited in the thematic, chronological and geographic terrain that it has covered. We attribute this shortcoming to the complexity of slavery itself as an institution, the problematic of defining what constitutes slavery and the historical silence maintained over its dehumanizing effects. Yet the story of slavery is also a tale of survival, of resistance and of the resilience of the human spirit to transcend oppression and preserve its inherent dignity. It is the celebration of the rich cultural fusion and métissage that rose from the ashes of human suffering. The wounds of the past need to be healed, perhaps initially, at a mythopoetic level, through the articulation of repressed collective angst and its legacies through the arts and through scholarship.
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527567001
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
The proclamation by the United Nations General Assembly of the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition during 2004 marked the culmination of recent efforts to re-engage with slavery’s past and create an intellectual, social, political and ethical climate conducive to a sustained and meaningful dialogue among cultures and civilisations. The past decade witnessed an upsurge of national and international exhibitions and conferences on the impact of slavery and the overwhelming and enduring cultural miscegenation and the demographic, socio-political and spiritual hybridisation that the phenomenon consciously or unconsciously initiated; the celebration of efforts by Abolitionists to publicise the savagery of this inhumane practice; a revival of interest in and the glorification of, the often ignored or historically negatively represented resistance to slavery by slaves themselves; and, numerous endeavours to address the negative legacies of slavery like racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, which continue to impinge upon our present as part of contemporary politics. Yet, these ventures aimed at raising awareness of the horrors of slave trade and slavery, at honouring struggles for the emancipation of the enslaved, at examining the aftermath of slavery like the emergence of a new historic consciousness, at restoring broken links and solidarity between the historically dislocated diasporas and their countries of origin, at commemorating sites of memory, and, at celebrating artistic and cultural métissage, such as the UNESCO’s Slave Route Project, have largely focused on the Atlantic World, and the deportation of slaves from Africa to other parts of the World, raising questions about the legacy of slavery in other societies, like those in Asia, the Pacific and Europe, where slavery still remains on the margins of national and post-colonial histories. This edited volume is an attempt to reconsider slavery as a global human institution which has coexisted with other socio-political, economic, legal and cultural institutions. As a temporally and spatially ubiquitous phenomenon, it has generated and continues to, engender legacies, be they historical, oral or visual, which need to be compared and discussed to facilitate dialogue between cultures and civilisations and to mitigate the wounds of the past which continue to scar our present. It brings together writings by scholars from history, literature, anthropology and cultural studies who examine the indelible mark left by slavery in its various forms, on societies, cultures and peoples all over the world and attempts by artistes and writers to alleviate this stigmata of History. This volume consists of two sections. The first section entitled "Connecting Histories" explores some of the varied forms in which slavery presented itself in the last four centuries and the need to reengage with its legacies. Adhering to Manning’s contention that slavery is "an enduring metaphor for inequities in the treatment of humans", this section focuses on identifying the legacy of slavery and its significance in scholarship (Manning); alternate perspectives on slavery through the examination of forced labour and the dehumanising treatment of indigenous people in Australia (Read), enforced migration and labour exploitation of convicts in penal colonies (Maxwell-Stewart); and, a historical overview of Lusitanian slavery in India (D’Souza) and the hybridisation of pre-colonial slavery traditions in the perpetuation of the perkerniersstelse, or a profitably managed European settler-colony based on the global monopoly of nutmeg production, by the Dutch (Winn). The second section of the book entitled "Centering Discourses: Identity, Image and Text" begins with a postcolonialist reading of Caribbean slavery as a legacy of capitalism, imperialism and plantation culture and above all, the globalization of sugar consumption (Ashcroft). The two chapters that follow resuscitate two of the many categories of slaves who were victims of historical silence, namely children in the sugar plantations of the West Indies (Teelucksingh) and Martiniquan maroons (Fernandes-Dias). Articulating with the discourse on identity and cultural appropriation introduced in the preceding essay, chapter nine provides an overview of the power struggle at work in the construction of Creole identity and its political legitimization, through a topical analysis of the process of commemoration of a "site of memory", Le Morne Brabant, symbol of slavery and marronage in the Mauritian collective memory (Carmignani). The final two chapters explore the problematics of presenting slavery through the adoption of a counter-hegemonic discourse, particularly through the arts. Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko which exalts the Black slave as a hero without making any explicit case for the abolition of slavery, continues to occupy the terrain of sympathist - abolitionist ambiguity (Landford) while the Amistad case, despite its numerous positive legacies, demonstrates how excessive popularization of the incident as an Abolitionist cause célèbre, resulted in an overload of historical memory to the point of obscuring historical reality (Fernandes Dias). Despite the volume's overarching desire to provide a global and comparative overview of the historical, ideological, economical and cultural factors that contributed to the evolution of slavery and the legacies that the institution generated, this volume is limited in the thematic, chronological and geographic terrain that it has covered. We attribute this shortcoming to the complexity of slavery itself as an institution, the problematic of defining what constitutes slavery and the historical silence maintained over its dehumanizing effects. Yet the story of slavery is also a tale of survival, of resistance and of the resilience of the human spirit to transcend oppression and preserve its inherent dignity. It is the celebration of the rich cultural fusion and métissage that rose from the ashes of human suffering. The wounds of the past need to be healed, perhaps initially, at a mythopoetic level, through the articulation of repressed collective angst and its legacies through the arts and through scholarship.
Race and Reunion
Author: David W. BLIGHT
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674022092
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 525
Book Description
No historical event has left as deep an imprint on America's collective memory as the Civil War. In the war's aftermath, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. David Blight explores the perilous path of remembering and forgetting, and reveals its tragic costs to race relations and America's national reunion.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674022092
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 525
Book Description
No historical event has left as deep an imprint on America's collective memory as the Civil War. In the war's aftermath, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. David Blight explores the perilous path of remembering and forgetting, and reveals its tragic costs to race relations and America's national reunion.