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.