Saidiya Hartman has been praised as “one of our most brilliant contemporary thinkers” and “a lodestar for a generation of students and, increasingly, for politically engaged people outside the academy” . In Scenes of Subjection—Hartman’s first book, now revised and expanded, with a new foreword, afterword, and illustrations—her singular talents and analytical framework are turned toward the “terrible spectacle” of slavery, illuminating the intertwining of violence, subjugation, and selfhood even in abolitionist depictions of enslavement. Through unmasking the hidden and overlooked at the margins of the historical archive, Hartman radically reshapes our understanding of history, in a work as resonant today as it was on first publication, now for a new generation of readers.
“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.”— Nation
Pages
432
Format
Paperback
ISBN
1324021586
ISBN 13
9781324021582
Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America
Saidiya Hartman has been praised as “one of our most brilliant contemporary thinkers” and “a lodestar for a generation of students and, increasingly, for politically engaged people outside the academy” . In Scenes of Subjection—Hartman’s first book, now revised and expanded, with a new foreword, afterword, and illustrations—her singular talents and analytical framework are turned toward the “terrible spectacle” of slavery, illuminating the intertwining of violence, subjugation, and selfhood even in abolitionist depictions of enslavement. Through unmasking the hidden and overlooked at the margins of the historical archive, Hartman radically reshapes our understanding of history, in a work as resonant today as it was on first publication, now for a new generation of readers.
“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.”— Nation