Scenes of Subjection, Revised and Updated: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America

by Saidiya Hartman

The groundbreaking debut by the award-winning author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, revised and updated.

Saidiya Hartman has been praised as "one of our most brilliant contemporary thinkers" (Claudia Rankine, New York Times Book Review) and "a lodestar for a generation of students and, increasingly, for politically engaged people outside the academy" (Alexis Okeowo, The New Yorker). In Scenes of Subjection—Hartman's first book, now revised and expanded—her singular talents and analytical framework turn away from the "terrible spectacle" and toward the forms of routine terror and quotidian violence characteristic of slavery, illuminating the intertwining of injury, subjugation, and selfhood even in abolitionist depictions of enslavement. By attending to the withheld 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.

This twenty-fifth anniversary edition features a new preface by the author, a foreword by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and an afterword by Marisa J. Fuentes and Sarah Haley.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, Theory, Philosophy, Politics, Academic

Audible Audio

First published September 4, 1997

About the author

Saidiya Hartman is the author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, and Scenes of Subjection. She a Guggenheim Fellow and has been a Cullman Fellow and Fulbright Scholar. She is a professor at Columbia University and lives in New York.

Reviews

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Ayanna Dozier · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Zach Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

To me, this is truly a groundbreaking text. Saidiya Hartman offers us a critical perspective on the ways we think of (racial) chattel slavery and makes truly compelling arguments about the making of the subject and its continuation after "emancipation." This text is in incredible dialogue with, and clearly influenced, Christina Sharpe's scholarship in Monstrous Intimacies and In the Wake, and should be carefully studied by anyone interested in 19th century America and its foundation of subjection, servitude, and slavery. Her analysis of Reconstruction and the limitations of so-called "freedom" after 1865 were particularly important for me. The book's (at times) dense text is made up for by a treasure trove of knowledge, emotion, and vision for the future.

[John Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

To most, the event and structure of chattel slavery is characterized by its inhuman brutality--the torturous violence that slaves faced, like the scene of Aunt Hester's beating in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, is what many of us associate with slavery and thus condemn.

To Saidiya Hartman, these events are much more ambiguous. Do we observe the brutality of slavery in order to play witness to unspeakable pain and confirm the truth behind the inhumanity of the structures? Or are we just spectators who use these scenes of subjection as opportunities for self-reflection?

This is the question that undergirds Part I of Scenes of Subjections. Hartman outlines that despite the best attempts to be genuinely empathic, the recognition of domination only in these explicitly violent scenes of slavery represents both our inability to recognize everyday suffering as well as the fungibility of Black ontology: why is it that many of us only recognize how brutal the institution of slavery is when placing ourself in the position of the unnamed slave? The slave body was a vessel in which white abolitionist writers, even the most well-intentioned, were able to perversely imagine themselves as the subjects of violence while being able to leave that imagination freely.

But what Hartman ultimately addresses aren't these overt, obvious scenes of subjection. Instead, she examines the everyday scenes of slavery, in which the brutality of slavery isn't made immediately clear. The forced cheerfulness at slave auctions or the song and dance of minstrel shows are the sites of formation for both terror and enjoyment that Hartman alludes to. Slavery was not just a structure created with whips and chains, but reaffirmed by the very performance of being a slave. Without giving away too much of the details, Hartman makes detailed analyses of topics like the antiheroic roles of slaves in minstrel shows or the denial of Black femininity and seduction within slave law. In the end, though, Hartman is not a pessimist about these systems: she also addresses the everyday, micropolitical acts of resistance common across plantations and how intent ultimately controlled the effects of theatricality, religion, and performance upon Black ontology.

Part I is a stunning piece of academic work on it's own, but Part II of the book is where it solidifies itself as a masterpiece. The fundamental question that Hartman attempts to answer is: if race--prior to 1863--was a marker between man and chattel, White being analogous to free and Black to slave, how did emancipation change our understanding of race? (Interestingly, Hartman doesn't really address the existence of antebellum free Black northerners, though I feel like the answer to that ontological issue becomes pretty clear in her following analysis.)

Hartman's answer begins with an examination of the fundamental labor shortage that came with the abolition of slavery. When emancipation happened, society had to figure out how to transform the former slave population into a rational worker producing labor of their own accord. The answer that civil society settled on was the idea of responsibility. As freedmen, former slaves would now need to take care of themselves, and the most honorable way to do so would be to toil away in labor. This idea not only manipulated the sanctity of freedom, it reframed the system of slavery as a codependent relationship and away from the realities of brutal captivity and forced productivity. In a way, the productive system of labor was a realized version of the Panopticon, where the single security guard transformed from the slave owner into the forced ideal of discipline and self-possession (quick reminder: fuck Jermey Bentham).

How did postbellum society allow this to happen? Why did Reconstruction fail so badly in securing the social and civil rights of former slaves? The narrative of equality, once the ideal that abolition marched towards, was now being used to guarantee the social subordination of Black folks. Legislators and the judiciary both ruled against provisions like the Civil Rights Act of 1866, because they gave "special" treatment to freed slaves and would taint the sanctity of mature responsibility that came with freedom. The law offered no intervention to actually guarantee the equality that it proposed, and nowhere does Hartman make this more evident than in her analysis of Plessy v. Ferguson.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court upheld that the legal distinction of white and colored folks in no way violated the equality of the two races. This decision not only implicitly affirms the ways in which race continued to be shaped by slavery, it also confirms that one's racial category is one's property that can be definitively determined by others--DESPITE THE FACT THAT HOMER PLESSY WAS PHENOTYPICALLY INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM WHITE. The decision in Plessy is so unsettling to Hartman because not only was the ideal divide of the public and private ignored, the state showed that it had the power to arbitrarily intervene to uphold social norms that it found to be correct. The state not only regulated and upheld inequality, it actively engaged in the reproduction of racism.

Hartman makes clear throughout her book that it is "an attempt to recast the past... [to] offer some small measure of encouragement and serve to remind us that the failures of Reconstruction still haunt us." Without a doubt, she succeeds on the mission she set out to accomplish with this book, and the claims she makes rings just as true 25 years later as when the book was written. 5/5.

[Luke McCarthy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was expecting to read a history book, but unfortunately for me, this is almost entirely a work of critical theory. Most, if not all, the things this book argues for are sound. My issue is not with the content (or Hartman’s conclusions), but method. So many arguments here are ‘proven’ through the quotation of secondary literature. If primary sources are used, they are generally legal documents or works of instructional literature that are elaborated on for pages and pages without once being contextualised (How popular was the book in question? What were the implications of this particular judgment? How did these laws affect people in the day to day? How exactly were they implemented?). This is a work of history almost entirely bereft of people. Instead, there is merely declarative abstraction.

[Harriet Showman · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you think slavery was a benign system. Read this book. Saidiya Hartman's scholarship cannot be denied.

[Yuna · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Mars]

the discourse on terror and enjoyment between master/slave relationships is insightful, deep, and oft' times, frighteningly relevant to my own experiences as a performer and as a black man negotiating (enjoying and cautious of) the fruits of my culture.

[JRT · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The conviction that I was living in a world created by slavery propelled the writing of this book.” This powerful assertion is the first sentence in the Preface of Saidiya Hartman’s high level work on the philosophy of racialization and American slavery, “Scenes of Subjection.” This revelation immediately sets the tone for what follows—an analysis of America’s fundamental nature and the role that slavery and anti-Blackness played in molding that nature.

Hartman explores the everyday, “ordinary” forms of violence that enslaved Africans suffered from, and the total emptiness of emancipation as a form of “freedom” for Black people, ultimately concluding that America’s nature is fundamentally and irredeemably anti-Black. In fact, Hartman comments on the categories of “Black” and “white” as indices of subordination, domination, objectification, and privileged property, respectively. In doing so, she makes clear that the American project steeped in a pervasive and irredeemable oppression that cannot be changed with mere legislative advances.

While Hartman spent a lot of time discussing the scenes of subjection characterized by chattel enslavement, I was fascinated by the evaluation of the transitory point between slavery and reconstruction, wherein Hartman described America’s deliberate failure to make citizens and “humans” out of formerly enslaved “chattel. In short, Blackness—whether enslaved or “free”—served as an instrument of white enjoyment and entertainment from plantation days all the way through the racial Nadir of the 19th Century.

The section on the role of enslaved Africans as entertainment was striking. Slaveholders deliberately encouraged artistic expression among their slaves as a means to quell insurrectionist sentiment and consciousness. As Hartman explains, artistic expression on plantations reflected “temporary freedoms” that slaveowners allowed their enslaved to engage in, for the purpose of plantation management and general pacification. However, Hartman also detailed how the enslaved used these moments of artistic expression and temporary liberty to develop their revolutionary consciousness, often clandestinely. In this way, Blackness itself is characterized by the push and pull of objectification and resistance.

Ultimately, this is a striking piece of work on the foundational anti-Black nature of America. Highly recommended.

[Lily Spar · Rating 5 out of 5]

It feels silly to give this book a rating because it is so high above Goodreads #nooffense. I think this is the most important academic work I have ever read. Hartman just completely reimagines a way to use the archive, write black history in the us, and imbibes the book with passion and interest. Throughout my academic life this boom has forced me to consider my own interest in the archive and archival practices. I’m done on here for now but if you want to talk about Scenes, I’m always around.

[Archie Hamerton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly blown away

[Hollis]

Some themes of note emerge in the introduction: 1) the role of violence as “an inaugural moment in the formation of the enslaved” 2) “the uncertain line between witness and spectator” 3) Hartman’s attention to “savage encroachments of power that take place through notions of reform, consent, and protection” (3-5). The book is split into two halves, organized by periodization, specifically, the antebellum and postbellum, or slavery and emancipation. This is a very rewarding text when it comes to highlighting the pervasive influences of enslavement that carry into the reconstruction era. Hartman highlights how enslavement conditions our impression of freedom, and furthermore, how race is embedded in subconscious processes of relation and identification.

One of her most intriguing claims is delivered in the final chapter, which takes up the monumental task of explaining the United States’ muddied relationship with questions of the social sphere, class, and civil society. Letting her speak directly, “blacks have largely occluded and represented the social, and by dint of this the issue of social rights was neglected until the New Deal. Worse yet, when social rights were belatedly addressed, they were configured to maintain racial inequality and segregation” (168). A very provocative claim, arguably the text's most intriguing, enduring statement for the present. Of course, her reading of enslavement as a condition that evades prospects of redressing (chapter two) is clearly influential. As is her approach to white fascination with Black pain (chapter one). In general, the text offers a rich range of jumping off points for future study. Her writing is emotional charged, poetic, verbally rich, and generative. Nonetheless, I do wonder why her insights from the sixth chapter haven't been as explicitly taken up by scholars of Black Studies as well as American Studies writ-large. Failure to do so has certainly contributed to misinformed engagements with Afropessimism as merely "racial reductionism."

[Theodore]

i'm not going to act like i will ever have the range to fully understand everything within the 202 pages of this book because i didn't. with that said, Saidiya Harman is remarkable scholar, professor, archivist, and all the above . this was probably one of the most insightful and powerful books i've ever read on black subjectivity/ black suffering (almost unbearable at this time).

reading this definitely changing and helps put into perspective of the black experience. i will be going back to this book for the rest of my life.

[foxfire · Rating 5 out of 5]

There were parts of this book I didn't fully grasp when I read it, but have jumped out to me in the day-to-day whether in conversation or by reading through various takes on social media. Highly recommended reading for any and all historians, professional or not. Saidiya Hartman should be the example all historians strive to emulate in writing, sourcing, and analyzing the hegemonies of our time.

[Amaryah Armstrong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Invaluable text by one of black studies most inventive authors. A study in attentive scholarship.

[Sohum · Rating 5 out of 5]

as probably everybody who has read it knows, this is one of the best books ever written. the analysis is incredible and trenchant, and remains as much nearly 30 years after publication.

[Chloë Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

a long, necessary, impactful and field molding read. this book is really gonna frame my scholarship and the way i build as a nerdy doctoral student and may make me shift my focus from the early 20th century to the late 19th. but, also, on a just literary level, there is a powerful application of language in here, a knitting like quilt like magic that's breathtaking. i think this book (or its well-done audiobook iteration) might be just what everyone interested in understanding slaverys afterlives and modern impact might need. necessary reading. five stars.

[Hannah Baksh · Rating 4 out of 5]

monumental… considering authorship so long ago. we hear echoes reverberating in historiographical chamber now, but hartman’s voice and questions dominate. yet, i question whether the value in this book is obscured behind overly complex language and lack of pattern. information could benefit so many more than just academics, but message is hidden deep within. will need to read again. dense, take your time. hartman’s words are not simple.

EDIT: upon second reading, hartman’s argument is all the more illuminated.

[Carmen Marshall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last week’s anthro selection. Very astute arguments MADE ME THINK and I got to facilitate class for this book and the discussion was so good which made me like it more. Emancipation as a nonevent! The only thing I didn’t like was how flowery her language was it definitely didn’t help clarifying her arguments but then I remember she’s trained in literature

[Paco · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book definitely deserves a better rating than I’m giving it, what I actually learned is that it wasn’t what *i* was looking for. Turns out I have a low tolerance for history, and so much of this book is about slavery and emancipation itself and as a historical moment.

The central argument—that seemingly liberatory discourse of humanity, rights, and equality can actually facilitate subjection by legitimating undergirding power dynamics—is really good and really well argued.

[meowdeleine · Rating 5 out of 5]

" How does one give expression to outrages without exacerbating the indifference to suffering that is the consequence of the benumbing spectacle, or contend with the narcissistic identification that obliterates the other, or the prurience that too often is the response to such displays? "

[tonia peckover · Rating 5 out of 5]

(All books get 5 stars) Hartman’s work is undeniably important in rewriting the understanding of Black history in America. She examines the archive and how it obscures and illuminates the real story of Black lives around slavery. Truly eye-opening. Academic in its scope and presentation, so not an easy read.

[Iza Cupial · Rating 5 out of 5]

brak skali

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unflinching absolute masterpiece. I came to this one after reading ‘wayward lives’ in a day. This book took me about a year, with much stopping and starting and rereading, to really comprehend how complicated and powerful these arguments are… this is one of those books that I hope my children will read, wish my parents had read, and it will inform my opinions for the rest of my life when it comes to law, power and bodies.

[Dill · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is analysis and review because the book is dense.

Review: Slavery - Scenes of Subjection by Saidiya Hartman

Coincidentally this review was written over 6 years ago, during an extremely painful time in my life. I had lost so much of myself at that time. There was so much pain, suffering and loneliness that felt so normal and it psychotically became comfortable. I read terrifying books on racism, sexism, homophobia, the holocaust etc as some psychotic salve to the horrors that I was experiencing in the ordinariness of my own life. I don’t know what left a larger scar… these books or my lived experiences of collapse. Anyways here is an excerpt from that review.

This book came about and into my life from a karmic path that eventually led me to taking humanities courses at the University of Amsterdam. When we become ignorant to the ordinariness of structural injustice that might not be felt or seen affectively by the privileged but lived ordinarily by the oppressed, we require a reading in history to understand our collective humanity. Many people in this world live with debilitating mental health issues like depression and anxiety. We might desire to medicate, to confront, or to draw out some kind of story to alleviate ourselves from its grasp. Intergenerational trauma could also find its way into our present, and yet tracing out the truth was always going to be messy. Scenes of Subjection by Saidiya Hartman is a brave attempt to elucidate the limits of historical redress and to find a pathway from continuing structural racism to its roots in the American slave trade.

I have a little story. In University, I had the privilege of being able to study abroad in the Netherlands. Somehow through a string of coincidental events, the opportunity arose and with slight hesitation, I went ahead. Living abroad for half a year was a difficult challenge about independence and embracing discomfort. As an introvert, it requires exhausting strength to engage in social spaces as they often feel enervating rather than rejuvenating. However I embarked.

Before the trip, I had insightful conversations about traditional festivals within Dutch culture before the eve of Christmas. I ended up having a heated debate about the tradition of Zwarte Pete. This caricature was a local historical re-imagining of the tale of Sinter Klaus. Pete was a black helper who provided support for Sinter Klaus along his journey. However contemporary representations of Sinter Claus felt uneasy as white dutch people often painted their faces black in order to represent the historical figure. There are many videos online about this issue, but many Dutch people felt it was a tradition that should not be challenged as it was deeply embedded within the childhood imaginary of the country.

Coming into the country we coincidently made our way to a few historical museums tracing out proud ventures of the Dutch people–the european slave trade and colonial conquest. Now what made these museums significant was the perspectives organized around these traumatic ruptures within our collective global historical continuum. The Dutch and europeans' voices were illuminated with stories that built a sense of empathy and compassion for their struggles of human development that felt necessary for the progress of humanity. A particular atmospheric affect about how the Dutch left a positive impact through their brave travels was produced. On the other hand, images of the enslaved were often assembled as inhuman animals being civilized or treated as they were–less than human. This particular structure of feeling was curiously malicious and left a tinge of sourness on my mouth as I navigated its halls of pride.

At another museum I was also startled by depictions of blackface that went beyond my surprise of Zwarte Pete. These displays showed caricatured depictions of white people in painted blackface, exaggerated features. Their physical activity and expressions clearly depicted a sense of comedic currency, and often included animalistic attributes like tails with monkey-like behavior. Franz Fanon’s concept of ‘thingification’ speaks truths to these racist narratives as the collective affective structure posited colonizers as virtuous progressives and the colonized as submissive saved subjects toward a collective world-building project. These felt upon me as distortions to my liberal conceptual understanding of progress. I was greatly impacted by these malicious constructions of a collective global historical continuum of ‘progress.’

Thus came this book. Trigger warning to those who might deal with depression and racial trauma. However reading or even reading a review of this book helps to realize the important implications of human subjugation to realize the potential of physical, material and psychological harm to marginalized populations.

Book Review: Scenes of Subjection by Saidiya Hartman

I found it important for myself to unpack why it is so important that the world to consider the black historical account, to elucidate the present with further clarity. To allow perspective arguing against a linear progressive idealism that effaces the ongoing struggle of people of color in the face of white-supremacy, capitalism and cis-heteropatriarchy. To comprehend the struggles of people who share a collective identity marker, even as that identity has been historically shaped to violently carry dominion over another. I chose to read “Scenes of Subjection” by Saidiya Hartman, in light of reading Achille Mbembe’s essay, Necropolitics, and upon Americanist intellectual Lauren Berlant’s recommendation. Scenes of Subjection asks its readers to critically question the recognition of humanity granted to freedmen considerate of historical epoch’s and the licensing of rights during the 19th century, such as the abolition of slavery, Emancipation, Reconstruction, the fourteenth amendment and the civil rights act.

What if this recognition of humanity was effectual only in so far as it intensified black suffering and subjugation? What if affective and expressive capacities that commonly produce inroads towards positive relations such as sentiment, enjoyment, affinity, will and desire further facilitated subjugation, domination and terror? From my understanding, what this book is attempting to communicate is the difficulties and challenges faced by a nation of people, whose constitutional ideas of liberty, individualism and rights is built upon an institutional foundation of slavery and contingent systems of white supremacy, capitalism and cis-heteropatriarchy. Primarily, Hartman is concerned with ordinariness, or the quotidian. She displaces the monolithic integrity of the historical event to pinpoint how everyday acts have tended toward reproducing the vestiges of slavery and insidious structures of power.

Chapter 1: Innocent Amusements: The Stage of Sufferance

One of the most painful considerations of existence under the institution of slavery is “the subjection of the slave to all whites [that] defined their condition in civil society. Effectively this made the enslaved an object of property to be potentially used and abused by all whites.” Under the pained situation of object-status, the enslaved were contingently mired as instrument to the desires of the dominant in addition to being economically fungible as an exchangeable commodity under capitalist relations. Thus, to be enslaved entailed a reality of being socially dead—operating outside and barred from societal inclusion—and criminally culpable—submission being paramount to the constitution of (white) society, and any acts in contestation to that formation are subject to ‘law’.

The enslaved status as object produced attributes of fixedness, instrumentality and commodification. This orientation can be understood as a painful impasse, whereby intractable subjection ruptures possibility for freedom. Here, I aim to pinpoint that “pain provides the common language of humanity; it extends humanity to the dispossessed and in turn, remedies the indifference of the callous” [18]. Empathy is the conduit, by which a witness gestures toward placing a projection of one’s own personality into an object, with the “attribution to the object, of one’s own emotion.” [18] Hereby explanation oddly confirms, a sort of reinforcement of objectification through what is commonly considered an exemplary form of compassion. The subject of empathic witness, as Hartman notes: “exploits the vulnerability of the captive body as a vessel for the: uses, thoughts, and feelings of others.” The humanity extended to the slave, inadvertently confirms the expectations and desires definitive of the relations of chattel slavery. This is not to unilaterally discount the value of empathy, as it is an important linkage to the condition of human suffering that I believe, holds space toward acts of healing reciprocity. In the chapter Innocent Amusements, Hartman illustrates the fungibility of the black body, considerate of acts of enjoyment, sentiment and pleasure in scenes of minstrelsy, melodrama, the coffle and literature.

Hartman first, deconstructs the genealogy of the word enjoyment. Beyond its common understanding as a scene of pleasure, and happiness, Hartman finds corollary between enjoyment and the inexorable citizen’s rights to their objects of enjoyment. Here she examines enjoyment as property, noting enjoyment as: “the exercise of a right, privilege or incorporeal hereditament, beneficial use, interest and purpose to which property may be put implies rights to profits and incomes there from” [24]. Relative to the propertied state of the enslaved, the enjoyment of property additionally entails “the use of one’s possession [and] the value of whiteness (an incorporeal hereditament or illusory inheritance of chattel slavery)” [24]. Further expanding on whiteness as value, the enslaved are held as white hereditary property, thus employed as supremacist currency. The enslaved therefore become displaced as willful agents, whereby their acts produced in scenes of pleasure are mired in their usage as objects of white property, resulting in acts of violence being effaced.

Melodrama & Minstrelsy

When I had studied abroad in the Netherlands, I was first confused, and then fervently upset at the discordant act of blackface as a cultural and historical artifact. First encountered within the historical scene of Sinterklaas and his (black) helpers, I then discovered toys and other preserved objects, reproducing blackness to incite enjoyment, reinforce stereotypes of questionable black sentience, and deployed as an object of fungible, contented, boisterous, and happy subjectivity. Engaging in conversation with a dutch individual, this form of subjugation was reinforced as an important historical artifact, that held sentimental currency, . Rather it was dissimulating the historical legacy of colonialism, engendering the innocence of a nation, and a marker colonialism and black subjugation as necessitated duty for the common good and prosperity of the nation. As depressing as this sounds, people hold onto images that appear as symbolic markers of a collective identity that in their very (re)construction disavows the brutal contortion from their truthful conditions of violence and deprived humanity of which they came.

Even when I navigated spaces that avowed Netherlands and its legacy of slavery at TropenMuseum of Amsterdam, interpretations, voices, and perspectives of whiteness, engendering empathy (such as ‘the plight’ of having to bear living in a ‘foreign country’) were amplified while the enslaved were remembered in scenes of emaciation, silence and subjugated labor in proximity to the eye of supervisory whiteness. Here I felt the melancholy of a displaced humanity, and effacement of evil amidst the act of attempting to reveal a shameful national memory. This brings to question why historical scenes such as Museums, and national events end up effacing evil and violence in that act of ‘protection.’ And this protection appears in the situation of a reputation, an impressionable public or upholding a form of sentimental expectation. What is being protected? And for whose interests? Surely the botched seams of these fabrications would eventually reveal the bludgeoned reality that has so evidently soaked through.

Minstrelsly “was an American form of entertainment developed in the 19th century. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music.” (Wikipedia 2017). Blackface was another form of entertainment where white folks put on blackness through makeup and dress, to project blackness in the form of a dim-witted, lazy, buffoonish, superstitious and happy-go-lucky being (2017). In an attempt to counter these representations, melodrama was employed by abolitionists in the context of minstrelsy to alter the reproduction of black abasement. According to Hartman, Melodramatic Minstrelsy was an “essential language of good and evil [that] armed antislavery dissent with the force of moral right and might.” While brim with good intent, blackface was reproduced and only an illusory agency was to be found in the staging (mis)representation of black freedom. On the minstrel stage, what is left is the scene of white subjects seemingly necessitated as placeholders for the depiction of black emancipation. Anti slavery minstrelsy wasn’t capable of exceeding the fear of disavowing white enjoyment.

The slave coffle is another scene of examination in which Hartman elucidates its production as a site employed for white self-reflection, and a display of socially tolerable violence. Hartman describes the coffle as “the pageantry of the trade, the unabashed display of the market’s brutality, the juxtaposition of sorrow and mirth, and the separation of families” [32]. Accounts of the coffle by 19th century observers such as George W. Featherstonhaugh, exclaim that it was “the most striking spectacle ever witnessed.” The incongruity of the coffle laid bare by enforcing the enslaved to sing minstrel tunes for basic necessities. The intent of this distortion of reality was to attenuate the brutality of the scene and uphold the limits of socially tolerable forms of violence necessitated for the normalization of slavery. Furthermore Featherstonhaugh notes that “the poor negro is naturally a cheerful, laughing animal, and even when driven through the wilderness in chains, if he is fed and kindly treated, is seldom melanchole” [33]. Featherstonhaugh’s reflection defines for a white audience an empathic relation to the enslaved that produces black subjection as natural, its embodiment as animalistic, and defines for the enslaved their condition as contented, if not enjoyed. Additionally, is this not to relieve citizens the responsibility of defining for themselves, how they feel about the institution of slavery?

In the coffle, the enslaved are fettered with chains, concomitant with their emotional state; which is defined through the white spectacle. Unlike Featherstonhaugh, even depictions that are produced with seemingly good intention reproduce objectification. Abraham Lincoln, encountering a slave coffle aboard the steamboat Lebanon en route to St. Louis, shifted the scene as witness of the crimes of the trade to “consider ‘the effect of condition upon human happiness.’” [34]. He notes:

“In this condition they were being separated from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of them, from their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery where the slash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and unrelenting than any other where; yet amidst all these distressing circumstances, as we would think them, they were the most cheerful and apparently happy creatures on board...How true it is that “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb’ or in other words, that He renders the worst of the human condition tolerable, while He permits the best, to be nothing but tolerable.” [34]

From what appears to be a staging of tragedy toward empathizing with the dehumanizing condition of the enslaved, what we are instead left with is the “establish[ed] suitedness of the slave’s nature to the condition of slavery [and] mus[ing] about the adequacy of the human condition” [34]. Lincoln’s analyses displaces focus from the brutal violence of enslavement in favor of an analysis of the human condition.

These innocent amusements of melodrama, minstrelsy, white witnessing and self-reflection reveal the slipperiness of empathy. As Hartman notes: “Innocent amusements were designed to promote gaiety by prudent means, ameliorate the harsh conditions of slavery, make the body more productive and tractable, and secure the submissions of the enslaved by the successful harnessing of the body.” [42] The employment of empathy to contort the object of witness with the intent of dissimulating a scene of violence for the benefit of the white witness is an act that reinforced black subjugation under hegemonic white supremacy. Furthermore subjection, encouraged as entertainment “harnessed pleasure as a productive force, and regulated the modes of permitted expression.” [43] Lastly, what makes these acts so terrifying is the way “violence becomes neutralized and the shocking readily assimilated to the normal, the everyday, the bearable” [34]. Upon understanding this, how can we employ the power of empathy that avows the witnessing of suffering and further propels us into acts of compassion and kindness within our own capacities of giving?

Redressing the Pained Body: Toward a Theory of Practice

In the event of subjection, a state of objectification whereby actions are closely monitored and policed under dominion. How do you consider, or construct a frame of resistance whereby as we have noted the physical as well as emotional registers are circumscribed and policed around the white gaze. Hartman works towards outlining resistance through defining ‘practice’ and presenting scenes and acts in which black resistance is held as an opening for agency, while considerate of the deleterious constraint subjugation acts on the body to reproduce the condition rather than resist it. By examining the limitations of fun & frolic, performing blackness as a site for counterinvestment, as understanding the challenge of enacting resistance without a political locus, while considering memory investment as possibility for redress, Hartman examines the limitations, possibilities and opportunities for breach under the institution of slavery.

Hartman propounds that “exploiting the limits of the permissible, creating transient zones of freedom, and reelaborating innocent amusements were central features of everyday practice. Hartman notes a definition of practice as “a way of operating [defined by] the non-autonomy of its field of action, internal manipulations of the established order, and ephemeral victories.” Explicating this definition within enslavement, action does not secure the enslaved a “territory outside the space of domination” nor do they carry “power to keep or maintain what it is won in fleeting, surreptitious, and necessarily incomplete victories” [50]. Considerate of the transient quality of practice within domination, acts of resistance still count as possibility for willful redress.

Hartman notes the importance of addressing enslavements operation on the body as pained. The pained body in this sense must be recognized “in its historicity—the history that hurts—and as the articulation of a social condition of brutal constraint, extreme need and constant violence; in other worlds [a] perpetual condition of ravishment” [51]. Hartman argues that this pained status is due to the denial of black sentience—and essential to the “spectacle of contented subjection [and] discredited claims of pain” [51]. - reached char limit.

[Adz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh man, what can one even say (spoiler, a lot). Deeply humbling experience to be engaged with such an intense and rigorous intellect as Hartman. The book is very particularly focused on a few aspects of African-American life both during and after the abolition of chattel slavery in the United States, but its findings are profound and leave a lot more to be explored. I haven't read very much legal scholarship and though I've taken a course or two on Black Radicals in college, I still don't have a great hold on the larger discourses among Africana scholars, especially not how those discourses have changed over time. That said, I feel like I can feel the influence of Harman's work 25 years later in the way people talk and think about slavery. As someone who is also deeply invested in the capacities of speculative fiction, I think Hartman's work bridging literature, history, and possible futures (in this case the future of freedom from slavery) is a really good early example of the scholarship that started thinking really critically in that space.

The rest of this review is more for me than anything else just to really work through a summary of the text, both for me to better absorb it now, and for future reference. Anyone is invited to read this but idk if it's gonna be that helpful.

I was really intimidated when I began this, but the introduction by Keeanga-Yahmatta Taylor sort of got me over that. Taylor has a great way of making things accessible and to see a friendly (i.e someone I had read before and heard on interviews) face opening the book really helped me get into it. I would say this is one of those books where I got, maybe 60% of what was going on and this is one of those times I really wish I had a group to digest it with.

Ok. I'm just gonna do a list of the big takeaways for me because if I stick with the paragraph form this is gonna be a million pages:

Intro/Chapter 1:
-limits of empathy and the way it can actually be a tool for yt supremacy. I've seen this argument elsewhere, and the relatively short amount of space Hartman gives it makes me think it might have already been in circulation when she wrote it. Still, a very good explanation that acts a strong opener for the book by articulating the necessity of rigorous analysis rather than allowing oneself to be led entirely by the fundamentally limited/self-centered driving force of empathy. (not to say empathy is always bad, etc etc). I also found this section to be oddly prescient in thinking about what we might today call, trauma porn, pain experienced (usually by Black ppl) which is then circulated to create an intense viewerly experience. Very common in news media and the arts (doing a lot of spoken word, this feels very familiar to me). Makes me think of Christina Sharpe's commitment to not circulating images of Black suffering. However, to echo Hartman in the introduction, this is not by any means the central finding of the book. If the limits of empathy can be thought of as a central deconstruction, I would say her focus on everyday activities and lives of enslaved people can be thought of as the construction, and I think that is worthy of a lot of attention.
-I think the introduction is really incredible scholarship in terms of Hartman's considerations of the limits of the archive. This theme is reflected and explored throughout the whole book but is examined most explicitly in this first chapter. For me it was like, this is not going to be a Howard Zinn style slave history, because making that would be impossible because of the limitations placed on slaves at the time in terms of what they could say. Even after slavery, memories are fuzzy, federal interviewers are biased, etc. And really, even in those post-emancipation interviews, those interviews were still shaped by the dynamics of slavery which had just preceded it.
-The work on minstrels really extends that point on limits of empathy. "Is the encounter with black suffering merely an opportunity for white self-reflection? More broadly speaking, the elasticity of blackness enables its deployment as a vehicle for exploring the human condition, although, ironically, these musings are utterly indifferent to the violated conditions of the vessel of song." (52).

Chapter 2:
-"the contented slave singing for the master or dancing on hthe auction block conspire to eradicate the social experience of enslavement [...] precisely as they appear to give voice to the slave [...] the counterfeit effectively annuls any possibility of redress or resistance" (86). So first off, this really underlines the subtle brutality of slavery in the performative elements (I think of the big points of the chapter). It also shows the invisibilized force used to perpetuate stereotypes of slaves. I think it also begins to open up some questions about the nature of consent under coercion that show up more explicitly in the next chapter.
-"The question remains as to what exercise of the will forms of action, or enactment of possibility, is available to animate chattel or the socially dead" (91). I think this is one of the first times we see that phrase "socially dead". Here I think Hartman's use of language to capture the impact of slavery is super important. When I think of how to describe something as horrific as slavery, the language in common use doesn't really do it, so to speak of something like "social death" is I think exactly the kind of intervention this work needs.
-pg 96-97 is great in toto. Early constructions of "performing blackness" that I think still reach through til today. Also, compliments the later chapters on the legal construction of race very well. "What is particular to the discursive constitution of blackness is the inescapable prison house of the flesh or the indelible drop of blood -- the purportedly intractable and obdurate materiality of physiological difference" (96).
-99 has a really incredible analysis of communities of enslaved people. What brought them together, what tore them apart. I think it is a nice complication to keep from turning enslaved people into like, ideas, like Hartman really gets into the messiness of the provisional and imperfect nature of collaboration among the enslaved.

Chapter 3:
-pg 142, I read this section on Celia at the same time Tracy McCarter was on the news. I think Cyntonia Brown was too. But that legacy of the carceral state coming up and swallowing Black women who defend themselves in cases of domestic/sexual abuse was still far too resonant. It's just wild because here, Hartman is showing that trend as it was being formally constructed and ossified within the law.
-157 I think I'm not getting all of this entirely but the way Hartman is thinking through sexual relations in slavery through the lense of domination and hegemony is really interesting to me. It also reminds me a bit of that camp of Marxist-Feminists who claimed consensual sex was impossible under capitalism because the agency of the women was fundamentally compromised by systemic factors. I don't know enough about either argument to know if that's a fair comparision but I will say Hartman's argument seems a lot more profound.
-S/O to 174 for being ig trans accepting, but more particularly, for imagining gender as a variety of constructions transformed by race, geography, history etc " Can we employ the term 'woman' and yet remain vigilant that 'all women do not have the same gender'?". I just have such admiration for the way Harman effortlessly moves accross a variety of frameworks in thinking through the past. + "the captive female does not possess gender as much as she is possesed by gender" (176). There's also this connection between the way Black women were rendered female and the forms of sexual violence that were exacted upon them.

Chapter 4:
-might skip through a lot of this because compared to other chapters I think it's a little less full. This is because I think Hartman is arguing really subtle points about the degradations of post-emancipation life compared to slavery but for me, I'm already immediately on board with that claim so the arguments don't do as much for me. Do love the shout out to marx on 202. This chapter feels more like an intro for the second part than a chapter in it's own right.
-A lot of the arguments made here and in chap 5 were familiar to me because they are used a lot in abolitionist texts as well as any in-depth discussions on reparations or Black dispossesion more generally so I think I will have fewer notes here.

Chapter 5:
-" The participation of over 200,000 men in military services made it nesecarry for the nation to recognize blacks as citizens [this] exemplifies the masculinism of citizenship and, moreover, shows citizenship itself to be a kind of soldiering" (272). Interesting insight here that I think is also seen in women's lib + pinkwashing. Military involvement preceeding other rights for citizens. This phenomena might also extend to the lower classes who fought in the revolutionary war idk. War seems really intimately linked w national identity.
-"Classically, the private sphere designates men's liberty from the state [...] and ensures their custody of women and children rather than women's safety" (276-277). This sentence is wild more for how it operates within the context of the book. It articulates a complex, yet not particularly new idea as a way to introduce both 1. The construction of whiteness, freedom, and liberty at the expense of Black people as constructed (this chapter) and 2. The amorphous, instrumental, and generally repressive character of naturalized distinctions between private and public spheres.
-great section here about early examples of hygeine policing which is still in full force today (279-282). There's racial elements that still carry through but it also made me think of hygeine discourse more generally and the way it has perhaps morphed alongside capitalist individualism to produce a lot of contemporary liberal self-care discourse. That's a whole-ass tangent tho.

Chapter 6:
-this one is much more in the weeds of legal history but this is also where a lot of the good stuff on legal subject formation is. Big theme here of seeing the ways black people's status as a subject and object simultaneously is continued.
-299 great for Hartman articulating her intervention on a more traditional marxist (a-la Dubois) analysis of antebellum/post-emancipation us History.
-critiques of "scientific charity" and early philanthropic ventures (299+301) remind me a lot of early Disability Studies readings I did on the charity model and Non-Profit Industrial Complex.
-miscegentation + construction of whiteness 324-333. Tons here, loss of legal white privlege for yts who have sex with black people. miscegenation being a threat to the capitalist order. race blindness emerging as a legal position, its incompatibility with any honest legal history and its preclusion of reparations.
-334 the explicitly racist character of the law and the defenses used to continue it (in contrast to implicit race blindness techniques also being tried at the time).
-formation of whiteness and POC/Blackness as viewed through Plessy (344-348)
-354-onwards, thinking about public and private spheres as legal catagories. This exploration is one of the most portable pieces of this book and also probably one of the most fundamental critiques of law as constructed in most of the west.


Personal Notes:
-I loved the interstitial art to work through different concepts, sometimes abstractly, and sometimes almost like a graph or chart. I think they were good in and of themselves but also really expand what scholarship's ways of conveying information can look like.
-The actual writing, the construction of the arguments, the strategic rephrasing, all of that was wonderful. She's really firing on all cylinders at the sort of sword/entence/paragraph/chapter structural level to make a really big argument as straightforward as possible. Her wording is very particular and every time she introduces a new phrase or word (i.e social death, libidinal economy, (re)member) it feels like absolutely the right choice. It also feels like every chapter is connected and she often pre-views arguments in earlier chapters. One of my favorite parts of Hartman's writing is that strong argumentative foundation that allows the rest to flower.
-Her focus on the quotidian was, I think, very astute. I've found myself generally more and more interested in scholars, artists, and activists who focus more on community level interactions rather than the "Great Man" model. Here I think what's interesting is Hartman, kind of like Robin Kelly, is looking at acts that don't even appear to be political at first, and recasting them as something vital and important and fundamentally connected to liberation. It makes me really excited to read Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments becuase I think that book is an even more distilled/intentional look at the everyday experiences of people and how they are important.
-The one thing I felt was lacking for me were more concrete historical indicators, this is maybe my readerly preference towards critical geographies coming out, but I love demographics, economic data, specific historical events, etc. I mean, I think scholarship has come a long way since Hartman wrote this in terms of blending disciplines. I read this more as a legal/literary analysis of history than like a play-by-play of events and trends, but just for me, that would have filled out certain arguments a little bit.
-I think if she wrote this today she could have incorporated Disability studies in a really profound way. Just a thought.

[Tiffany · Rating 2 out of 5]

Simple (important) concepts, hard sentences. Repetitive. Grueling to get through at times.

[Miguel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scenes of Subjection is an encyclopedic text (though Hartman makes no such claim) detailing the means of domination and terror of black men and women in the era of North American chattel slavery and Reconstruction alongside means of resistance and insurgence. Hartman begins with Frederick Douglass (making one of her most memorable and reproduced points — a point precisely about not reproducing sensationalized images of black suffering) and ends with a virtuoso reading of Plessy v. Ferguson.

Her book is split between the period of chattel slavery and the post-emancipating periods. Hartman identifies the quotidian violence punitively heaped upon the enslaved and the involvement of the state. She explores the state's disavowal of its role in white supremacy, the means by which notions of white supremacy are propagated, and the features of language (both legal and social) that are culpable in these formations. Hartman is at her best making incisive readings of legal precedent and social convention that produce serious theoretical points. Hartman also includes important strategic conclusions (such as: "challenges to the inequalities sanctioned in [the private sphere] and the demand for remedies cannot simply seek solutions in state intervention .... Instead remedy depends upon the deconstruction of the private, exposing its overdetermination by the state and making legible the ascription of the state's duties.") Hartman references robust historical detail ranging from pamphlets and public debates to literature and legal transcripts.

Hartman's text is essential both for its content and its method. Scenes is a model of hybrid historical-theoretical work that does not privilege the so-called disinterested historical archive but rather exposes the blindspots by thorough interrogation of that archive and of common sense understandings of history. Hartman is able to not only reveal much of what history effaces, but reveal precisely how that effacement took place.

[Alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read every last word of this puppy and now I don't know how to act

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely a must read for students of African Ametican history. A couple critiques. 1) I know Hartman explicitly rejects the label of Afro-pessimist that people such as Wilderson try to put on her, but you can see why the temptation is there. I wish Hartman had spent more time thinking about Blackness on its own terms rather than thinking about how white people attempted to constrain Blackness, but I guess that would be a different project. 2) I think Hartman is not a good reader of Marx. Marx pretty much says that the distinction between slave and free laborer is an illusion (since the both are subject to death if they decide to start working and must do whatever work they are told to do with no power to resist outside withholding their labor). Hartman seems to reject Marx's thinking as too simplistic/not attentive to race only to ultimately make the identical point. Obviously racism makes capitalism worse, but the overall argument still rings incredibly resonant with Marx despite Hartman seeming to think she is doing something fundamentally different.