A Rhetorical Continuum? How Representationsof Antebellum Slavery Endure in Post-War Culture -- Global Contexts: How External Factors Drive US Perceptions of Slavery -- Othering the Slave Owner -- Othering the Enslaved -- Gender and the Rhetoric of Slavery -- Resistance and the Slavery Counter-Narrative.
Summary:
"This book will examine the interplay of various factors that influenced American perceptions of slavery and other forms of unfree, coerced or forced labour in the period after the emancipation of slaves within its own borders. It argues that while, undoubtedly, the shadow of antebellum chattel slavery loomed large in the American imagination, as influential was the model of imperial antislavery practised by European powers, especially after the United States itself developed an overseas empire in the 1890s. However, representations of slavery were not only a battleground on a geopolitical level. They were also used to work out the significance of competing scientific racial ideas, and also became a way for more radical thinkers to express their distaste for such ideas, while proposing new and more broad approaches to labour problems. Abolitionists were far from simplistic humanitarians and often their approach to the problem of slavery was a pragmatic one, designed as much to maintain control and hegemonic order as to give equal rights and opportunities to the world's poorest. This was especially the case when imagining the sexual enslavement of women, as gender and race intersected to provide a potent rhetoric intended to reinforce patriarchal dominance. This period, and especially the early twentieth century, does provide a significant evolution in the ways that slaves and slavery were described, and the United States' participation in international efforts to stop the phenomenon of slavery, and also increased endeavours to stamp out coercive labour practices within its own borders, reflected a foregrounding of more radical voices of resistance to the imperial standard."-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.