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Disability Histories
Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean
Long before the English became involved in the African slave trade, they imagined Africans as monstrous and deformed beings. The English drew on pre-existing European ideas about monstrosity and deformity to argue that Africans were a monstrous race, suspended between human and animal, and as such only fit for servitude. Joining blackness to disability transformed English ideas about defective bodies and minds. It also influenced understandings of race and ability even as it shaped the embodied reality of people enslaved in the British Caribbean. Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy provides a three-pronged analysis of disability in the context of Atlantic slavery. First, she examines the connections of enslavement and representations of disability and the parallel development of English anti-black racism. From there, she moves from realms of representation to reality in order to illuminate the physical, emotional, and psychological impairments inflicted by slavery and endured by the enslaved. Finally, she looks at slave law as a system of enforced disablement.
Audacious and powerful, Between Fitness and Death is a groundbreaking journey into the entwined histories of racism and ableism.
Audacious and powerful, Between Fitness and Death is a groundbreaking journey into the entwined histories of racism and ableism.
272 pages, Paperback
Published April 13, 2020
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April 28, 2023
Quote Spotlight :
“The difference of temper between the Americans and the Negroes is so remarkable, that it is a … saying in the French islands, to thrash upon an Indian is to beat him; to beat is to kill him. But to thrash a negroe is to nourish him.” (80)
Summary
In Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy’s Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean, the author moves away from previous assertions that slavery created a dehumanized object. Instead, she argues that slavery created disabled humans, who live between the space of life and death, similar to what Orlando Patterson calls social death. Most of the book examines primary sources from Barbados and Jamaica from the 15th to 19th century, highlighting how white slave traders, slave masters, lawmakers, etc., perpetuated and exploited disability rhetoric. In making this connection between disability and slavery, Hunt-Kennedy has created the first book-length study of Caribbean slavery to make disability its primary focus.
The book is impactful because it puts disability in conversation with race to clarify where hostile rhetoric about disability originates. In highlighting this relation, it has become difficult for me to talk about disability rhetoric without talking about its racial tones. For example, in American discourse, non-disabled people must “help” disabled people, but with little regard for their agency. This is similar to how white British abolitionists asserted that British people should “help” enslaved folx by abolishing slavery, but not help them to the extent that they have human rights.
Even using the term disabled itself- as Hunt Kennedy highlights- I must be cognizant of how I use the word disability for different geographies and times. As Hunt-Kennedy highlights for her definition in the book’s context, disablement is “the deliberate, willful maiming of abled and physically strong individuals in war zones.” Using this type of language, she encouraged me to see that disability was an easy way to mark the already hypervisible Black body with additional marks of deformity to solidify Black bodies’ relationship with defectiveness. White people produced disablement, whether the disablement was due to an enslaved person’s working conditions or punishment for a transgression. However, they asserted these disabilities were just a natural part of Blackness (and this contradiction still haunts me after I have finished this book). Overall, I liked the book because it was informative and engaging. If you are looking for a more academic book but with accessible language, I suggest you pick it up!
Moreover, if you want to get more of a look inside a chapter I found particularly engaging, keep reading!
The most intriguing chapter- Chapter 5
In chapter 5, Hunt-Kennedy emphasizes how both white abolitionists and pro-slavery commentators used “disabled” and “able” bodies to prove their points on what should be the future of slavery in Britain. For example, white abolitionists would use a disabled Black person to show how English people should bestow humanitarian relief on enslaved Black people. On the other hand, pro-slavery commentators like plantation owners would use the image of a disabled Black person to show how monstrous Black bodies should be tamed. While the chapter goes into much more detail about these images, I was most interested in how Hunt-Kennedy connected these images to white society’s fear of the non-disabled revolutionary. As she explains, the Haitian Revolution and the Tacky’s War in Jamaica gave rise to the idea of the armed, able-bodied, dangerous, and revolutionary black man, which threatened all of England’s ability to maintain their colonies, and thus, their profits.
Because of this fear, the images of Black disabled people allowed the English to imagine Black people’s “proper” role for their society. Being able-bodied, in a traditional Western sense, Black people were not only England’s greatest asset but also their most significant threat, which conflicted them greatly. Disabled Black bodies assured them they were the superior race that couldn’t be defeated by this “other.”
In this same line of thought, I also thought it was interesting how much they underestimated disabled Black folx. Rebellions throughout the Atlantic World were often associated with the Afro-Creole religious practices of the enslaved. Many historians believe Obeah played an essential role in organizing Tacky’s War and voudou priests in organizing the Haitian Revolution. Obeah and other Afro-Creole religions like Vodou revalued disability as a spiritual gift, and the trust placed in religious figures were often tied to them having a physical disability. Mediating all these perspectives on disability in the Caribbean gave me a fulfilling look on how disabled bodies served a variety of purposes.
Takeaway for future work
As shown in the quote at the beginning of this post, many slave master’s believed that Black people needed to be disciplined and beaten to cure them of their monstrous qualities, which caused many life-changing disabilities. While white people may not call us monstrous beasts – at least not in popular discourse- anymore, there is still a sentiment that the disciplined, able-bodied Black person will be the most successful in life because of their capability to produce. This book showed me that this rhetoric has come from a racist, ableist past in which Black people (both disabled and non-disabled alike) are created for work and work only. And if they are not working, white people should equip them with the tools to work. In centering labor and being able-bodied at the center of Black people existing, I am afraid (both interpersonally and structurally), we cannot be free. Just as hostile disability rhetoric negatively impacts disabled people, it also creates a disabling environment for us all.
In thinking about this, how can we redefine a successful and fulfilling life outside of the content or labor we produce?
“The difference of temper between the Americans and the Negroes is so remarkable, that it is a … saying in the French islands, to thrash upon an Indian is to beat him; to beat is to kill him. But to thrash a negroe is to nourish him.” (80)
Summary
In Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy’s Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean, the author moves away from previous assertions that slavery created a dehumanized object. Instead, she argues that slavery created disabled humans, who live between the space of life and death, similar to what Orlando Patterson calls social death. Most of the book examines primary sources from Barbados and Jamaica from the 15th to 19th century, highlighting how white slave traders, slave masters, lawmakers, etc., perpetuated and exploited disability rhetoric. In making this connection between disability and slavery, Hunt-Kennedy has created the first book-length study of Caribbean slavery to make disability its primary focus.
The book is impactful because it puts disability in conversation with race to clarify where hostile rhetoric about disability originates. In highlighting this relation, it has become difficult for me to talk about disability rhetoric without talking about its racial tones. For example, in American discourse, non-disabled people must “help” disabled people, but with little regard for their agency. This is similar to how white British abolitionists asserted that British people should “help” enslaved folx by abolishing slavery, but not help them to the extent that they have human rights.
Even using the term disabled itself- as Hunt Kennedy highlights- I must be cognizant of how I use the word disability for different geographies and times. As Hunt-Kennedy highlights for her definition in the book’s context, disablement is “the deliberate, willful maiming of abled and physically strong individuals in war zones.” Using this type of language, she encouraged me to see that disability was an easy way to mark the already hypervisible Black body with additional marks of deformity to solidify Black bodies’ relationship with defectiveness. White people produced disablement, whether the disablement was due to an enslaved person’s working conditions or punishment for a transgression. However, they asserted these disabilities were just a natural part of Blackness (and this contradiction still haunts me after I have finished this book). Overall, I liked the book because it was informative and engaging. If you are looking for a more academic book but with accessible language, I suggest you pick it up!
Moreover, if you want to get more of a look inside a chapter I found particularly engaging, keep reading!
The most intriguing chapter- Chapter 5
In chapter 5, Hunt-Kennedy emphasizes how both white abolitionists and pro-slavery commentators used “disabled” and “able” bodies to prove their points on what should be the future of slavery in Britain. For example, white abolitionists would use a disabled Black person to show how English people should bestow humanitarian relief on enslaved Black people. On the other hand, pro-slavery commentators like plantation owners would use the image of a disabled Black person to show how monstrous Black bodies should be tamed. While the chapter goes into much more detail about these images, I was most interested in how Hunt-Kennedy connected these images to white society’s fear of the non-disabled revolutionary. As she explains, the Haitian Revolution and the Tacky’s War in Jamaica gave rise to the idea of the armed, able-bodied, dangerous, and revolutionary black man, which threatened all of England’s ability to maintain their colonies, and thus, their profits.
Because of this fear, the images of Black disabled people allowed the English to imagine Black people’s “proper” role for their society. Being able-bodied, in a traditional Western sense, Black people were not only England’s greatest asset but also their most significant threat, which conflicted them greatly. Disabled Black bodies assured them they were the superior race that couldn’t be defeated by this “other.”
In this same line of thought, I also thought it was interesting how much they underestimated disabled Black folx. Rebellions throughout the Atlantic World were often associated with the Afro-Creole religious practices of the enslaved. Many historians believe Obeah played an essential role in organizing Tacky’s War and voudou priests in organizing the Haitian Revolution. Obeah and other Afro-Creole religions like Vodou revalued disability as a spiritual gift, and the trust placed in religious figures were often tied to them having a physical disability. Mediating all these perspectives on disability in the Caribbean gave me a fulfilling look on how disabled bodies served a variety of purposes.
Takeaway for future work
As shown in the quote at the beginning of this post, many slave master’s believed that Black people needed to be disciplined and beaten to cure them of their monstrous qualities, which caused many life-changing disabilities. While white people may not call us monstrous beasts – at least not in popular discourse- anymore, there is still a sentiment that the disciplined, able-bodied Black person will be the most successful in life because of their capability to produce. This book showed me that this rhetoric has come from a racist, ableist past in which Black people (both disabled and non-disabled alike) are created for work and work only. And if they are not working, white people should equip them with the tools to work. In centering labor and being able-bodied at the center of Black people existing, I am afraid (both interpersonally and structurally), we cannot be free. Just as hostile disability rhetoric negatively impacts disabled people, it also creates a disabling environment for us all.
In thinking about this, how can we redefine a successful and fulfilling life outside of the content or labor we produce?
Displaying 1 of 1 review