Neo-slave narratives: genre, form, and the question of “freedom”
This course explores neo-slave narratives, contemporary literary text that return to the historical question of American racial slavery in order to re-imagine the violent destruction of life itself and to retell a story of dehumanization, accommodation, resistance, resignation, and revolt. In other words, this is a course about aesthetics and politics that takes as it central concern the production of a literary genre that responds to racial capitalism. Over the course of the quarter we will examine the relationship between nineteenth century slave narratives and contemporary neo-slave narratives, paying particular attention to how texts construct gendered, raced and sexualized understandings of both bondage and “freedom.” Slave narratives by women and neo-slave narratives that imagine women’s experiences in slavery will be of special interest. Three central questions will guide our inquiry throughout: how and why have neo-slave narratives become a cultural preoccupation in recent decades? How do neo-slave narratives mediate life in the context of racial capitalism? How might we want to constitute the genre’s scope? And how can we understand the relationships among genre, narrative form, and literary aesthetics that are produced by neo-slave narratives? Readings will include a wide selection of theoretical and historical texts about dehumanization, bondage, and incarceration and a more limited selection of slave narratives and neo-slave narratives.