Reviews for Migration, Trade, and Slavery in an Expanding World: Essays in Honor of Pieter Emmer

The average rating for Migration, Trade, and Slavery in an Expanding World: Essays in Honor of Pieter Emmer based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-10-16 00:00:00 Raechel Donahue Saidiya Hartman's Scenes of Subjection reveals with great detail how Slavery has shaped and continues to influence the construction of subjectivity amongst Black individuals today. While the entirety of this book is incredible there are three key concepts that I would like to recount here. The first being the construction of Black suffering or images and accounts of Black suffering as used for entertainment for a white majoritarian environment. Hartman analysis of the Black suffering body reminds us that spectacles such as whipping, lynching, rape, flogging, etc. were created as mode of entertainment be that for humorous purposes or for sympathetic ones. The Black body politic was one created for white individuals to "feel" something and psycho-affective responses factor into this; Hartman clarifies this by analyzing how many white abolitionists used images of Black suffering to give an account about how Black suffering affected them, as oppose to hearing how it affects those who wear enslaved. Secondly, Hartman tackles the "bonds of affection" that existed with slave masters and their slaves, arguing that the law afforded slave masters (and by extension white individuals because let us not forget that structure of Slavery subjected all Black individuals to the will of white individuals in the States, slave owner or not) the ability to be "overcome" with emotion and negatively re/act against a Black individual. It should come as no surprise that rape was a lawlikely bond of affection committed against a Black woman. Moreover, by detailing this relationship with the law, Hartman points out that questions of agency or power that Black women may have had under such circumstances are ill place because what's at stake in this power dynamic is their well being and lives. Thus, claims of seduction, or affairs with actually cater to the myth of "happy slave," "gentle master," or those who "accepted their status." Hartman asserts that this narrative plays into the spectacle of pacifying the atrocities of Slavery. Lastly, Hartman's analysis on the "burden of freedom" that was placed upon the freed Black man's body is crucial to examining the ways in which respectability politics shaped, and still shapes, encounters with Black individual's lives. By examining mid 19th century text on "how to be free," Hartman is able to show how Black bodies were expected to disarm white individual's anger against them by "proving" that their freedom was "not for nothing" through their attire and attitude. This structure is still in place as Black individuals bear the burden of having to prove that they belong in certain environments, specifically institutional ones where the structures and conditions actively work against them.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-08-09 00:00:00 Emery G Braccini I'll admit this was a tough read for me, especially the first part. The academic writing style was difficult, which is on me: I don't have the educational background that would probably have made it more accessible. I regret that, because I'd be better able to summarize, share, and discuss the vitally important topics Hartman analyzes. I found Part 2: The Subject of Freedom to be astonishing and compelling. The concept of emancipation and the plain language of the Thirteenth Amendment was just the beginning of a truly American wave of backlash, retaliation, and enormous effort on the part of white America to maintain and exploit black subjugation, only with the pesky legalistic definition of "chattel slavery" having been legally discarded. Hartman's study of the efforts to fit the newly freed people into a system that comfortably (for whites) replicated antebellum norms is amazing. "The lessons of conduct imparted in freedmen's primers refigured the deference and servility of the social relations of slavery...Clearly, these lessons instilled patterns of behavior that minimized white discomfort with black freedom. The regulation of conduct lessened the discussions of the war by restoring black subordination on the level of everyday life..." (148) The failure of Reconstruction, the acquiescence of the federal government to the creation and passage of state Black Laws, the concept that legal freedom need not intrude on local definitions of acceptable behaviors (at the expense of achieving social equality for black people), the rise of Jim Crow, the decision of Plessy v. Ferguson, and the fact that all of this was enforced by legal and extra-legal terror and violence, all of it reminds me that my early education about slavery and Emancipation pretty much ended with just that: Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, blah blah blah, then Brown v. Board of Education...American exceptionalism. No, no and no. I totally recommend this book. If, like me, you find it challenging at first, keep going. I may not have been able to process or understand everything I read, but I value what I learned. This is one of those books that changes everything.