Impossible Witnesses: Truth, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony available in Hardcover, Paperback, eBook
Impossible Witnesses: Truth, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony
- ISBN-10:
- 0814756050
- ISBN-13:
- 9780814756058
- Pub. Date:
- 02/01/2002
- Publisher:
- New York University Press
- ISBN-10:
- 0814756050
- ISBN-13:
- 9780814756058
- Pub. Date:
- 02/01/2002
- Publisher:
- New York University Press
Impossible Witnesses: Truth, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony
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Overview
Impossible Witnesses explores these questions through a study of fiction, poetry, essays, and slave narratives from the abolitionist era. Linking the racialized discourses of slavery and Romanticism, it boldly calls for a reconfiguration of U.S. and British Romanticism that places slavery at its center.
Impossible Witnesses addresses some of the major literary figures and representations of slavery in light of discourses on natural rights and law, offers an account of Foucauldian discourse analysis as it applies to the problem of "bearing witness," and analyzes specific narratives such as "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," and "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano."
A work of great depth and originality, Impossible Witnesses renders traditional interpretations of Romanticism impossible and places Dwight A. McBride at the forefront of studies in race and literature.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780814756058 |
---|---|
Publisher: | New York University Press |
Publication date: | 02/01/2002 |
Pages: | 207 |
Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.56(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments | xi | |
1 | Introduction: Bearing Witness: Memory, Theatricality, the Body, and Slave Testimony | 1 |
2 | Abolitionist Discourse: A Transatlantic Context | 16 |
Abolitionist Discourse and Romanticism | 21 | |
Reflections on Abolitionist Discourse in England | 25 | |
African Humanity and the Possibility of Rage in Edgeworth, Cowper, and Opie | 42 | |
On Whiteness and Humanity: The Example of Blake's "The Little Black Boy" | 59 | |
Reflections on Abolitionist Discourse in the U.S. | 62 | |
Emerson and the Fugitive Slave Law: Toward a Theory of Whiteness | 67 | |
Troping the Slave: Margaret Fuller's Review of Douglass's Narrative | 75 | |
The Body as Evidence: Garrison's Defense of David Walker's Appeal | 78 | |
3 | "I Know What a Slave Knows": Mary Prince as Witness, or the Rhetorical Uses of Experience | 85 |
4 | Appropriating the Word: Phillis Wheatley, Religious Rhetoric, and the Poetics of Liberation | 103 |
5 | Speaking as "the African": Olaudah Equiano's Moral Argument against Slavery | 120 |
6 | Consider the Audience: Witnessing to the Discursive Reader in Douglass's Narrative | 151 |
Afterword | 173 | |
Notes | 177 | |
Bibliography | 191 | |
Index | 201 | |
About the Author | 207 |
What People are Saying About This
"His rich volume takes up the complex and strategic discourses that circulated around the truth of slave testimony....actively engaging."
-American Literature,
"In this ambitious and thought-provoking study, Dwight A. McBride places representative black-authored texts spanning the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries "in conversation with canonical Romantic authors and their tropes" to answer the fundamental intellectual question the work poses, "What does it mean for a slave to bear witness to, or tell the 'truth' about slavery?'"
-The Journal of American History,
"The globalization of culture makes increasingly apparent that the slave trade and its resulting exfoliation of cultural forms, both in the Americas and in Europe, were constitutive elements for the postcolonial and diasporic literatures of later days. In this respect and others, Impossible Witnesses describes a fascinating interplay between the Anglo-American history of slavery, British Romanticism, and African American literature, and constitutes an important addition to recent scholarship on the black Atlantic."
-Eric J. Sundquist,Dean of Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences, Northwestern University
"Dwight McBride's Impossible Witnesses is the most sophisticated treatment I have read of the slaves bearing witness to the truth of their condition. He teases out complexity and depth heretofore overlooked. Don't miss this important text."
-Cornel West,
"A necessary and compelling work which will expand and sharpen abolitionist scholarship."
-Toni Morrison