Slavery, Surveillance and Genre in Antebellum United States Literature

200 Pages·2023·3.453 MB·English

by  Kelly Ross

Slavery, Surveillance, and Genre in
Antebellum United States Literature
OXFORD STUDIES IN AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY
Slavery,Surveillance,andGenrein TransamericanSentimentalismand
AntebellumUnitedStatesLiterature Nineteenth-CenturyUSLiterary
KellyRoss History
WritingPainintheNineteenth-Century MariaA.Windell
UnitedStates SpeculativeFictions
ThomasConstantinesco ExplainingtheEconomyintheEarly
LiteraryNeurophysiology UnitedStates
Memory,Race,Sex,andRepresentation ElizabethHewitt
inU.S.Writing,1860–1914 ModernSentimentalism
RandallKnoper Affect,Irony,andFemaleAuthorshipin
PicturesqueLiteratureandthe InterwarAmerica
TransformationoftheAmerican LisaMendelman
Landscape,1835–1874 GenreandWhiteSupremacyinthe
JohnEvelev PostemancipationUnitedStates
TimeandAntiquityinAmerican TravisM.Foster
Empire AnxietiesofExperience
RomaRedux JeffreyLawrence
MarkStorey FormsofDictatorship
TheLatinoContinuumandthe JenniferHarfordVargas
Nineteenth-CenturyAmericas TransoceanicAmerica
Literature,Translation,and MichelleBurnham
Historiography
NotQuiteHopeandOtherPolitical
CarmenLamas
EmotionsintheGildedAge
Violentologies NathanWolff
Violence,Identity,andIdeologyin
History,Abolition,andtheEver-Present
Latina/oLiterature
NowinAntebellumAmericanWriting
B.V.Olguin
JeffreyInsko
TransgressionandRedemptionin
TheCenteroftheWorld
AmericanFiction
JuneHoward
ThomasJ.Ferraro
RealistPoeticsinAmericanCulture,
TheArchiveofFear
1866–1900
WhiteCrisisandBlackFreedomin
ElizabethRenker
Douglass,Stowe,andDuBois
TheCivilWarDeadandAmerican
ChristinaZwarg
Modernity
JewishAmericanWritingandWorld
IanFinseth
Literature
ThePuritanCosmopolis
MaybetoMillions,MaybetoNobody
NanGoodman
SaulNoamZaritt
WhiteWriters,RaceMatters
PatriotismbyProxy
GregoryS.Jay
TheCivilWarDraftandtheCultural
FormationofCitizen-Soldiers,
1863–1865
ColleenGlenneyBoggs
Slavery, Surveillance,
and Genre in
Antebellum United
States Literature
KELLY ROSS
GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OX26DP,
UnitedKingdom
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Contents
Credits vii
Introduction 1
RacializedSurveillanceandSousveillanceintheAntebellum
UnitedStates 6
AntebellumGenresofSurveillance 13
1. FugitiveSlaveNarrativesasaLiteratureofSousveillance 19
Beforethe“SlaveasEyewitness”Trope:TheEx-Slave
NarratorasSpy 24
RacializedSurveillanceandSousveillanceinSlaveNarratives
ofthe1820sand1830s 33
ComplicatingtheDialecticofRacializedSurveillanceand
Sousveillance 46
2. InconspicuousandConspicuousDetectioninBall
andPoe 49
“OntheTrailoftheMurderer”:CharlesBallSolvesaCrime 53
Poe’sExperimentswithDetectioninTheNarrativeofArthur
GordonPym 56
PerfectingConspicuousDetectionintheDupinTales 69
3. WhiteOversightinTheConfessionsofNatTurner,
BenitoCereno,andTheHeroicSlave 76
TheDestructionofWhiteOversightinTheConfessions
ofNatTurner 80
BlackSurveillanceinBenitoCereno 85
WhiteUndersightinTheHeroicSlave 92
4. SpeculationFiction:IncidentsintheLifeofaSlaveGirl
andTheBondwoman’sNarrative 102
HypercommodificationinIncidentsintheLifeofaSlaveGirl 107
ProtectiveSpeculationinTheBondwoman’sNarrative 111
Coda 127
Acknowledgments 131
Notes 133
WorksCited 165
Index 183
Credits
PortionsofChapter1andtheCodaoriginallyappearedinPMLA 135,no.2
(March2020),publishedbytheModernLanguageAssociationofAmerica.

Introduction
IntheFebruary1837issueofTheSlave’sFriend,theeditorsreportedthatthe
magazine’s original frontispiece, “a good man teaching a school, was nearly
wornout”andhadbeenreplaced.Inthenewfrontispiece(seeFigureI.1),the
editorsexplained,“Youseethreelittleabolitionistsaresittingdown,whileone
ofthemisreadingtotheothers.OnonesideisacolumnwiththefigureofJus-
ticeonit,andontheothercolumnisthefigureofLiberty.YoucanknowJustice
bythescales,andLibertybythecap.”1PublishedbytheAmericanAnti-Slavery
Society from 1836 to 1839, The Slave’s Friend was an abolitionist periodical
aimedatchildren.2 Despitetheperiodical’sdidactictone,theeditorsneglect
tomentionperhapsthemoststrikingfeatureofthenewfrontispiece:theeye
floatingabovetheentirescene.ThisimageoftheEyeofProvidenceisafamil-
iar one, appearing on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States, on
modernone-dollarbills,andinthesinisterlogooftheUSInformationAware-
nessOffice.3IntheSlave’sFriendfrontispiece,God’sall-seeingeyepresumably
watches over the young abolitionists, observing their good behavior, yet the
artist has rendered the eye looking directly at the reader, not down at the
children below. This icon of divine surveillance thus disciplines the reader,
remindinghimorherthatnosecretisconcealedfromGod’seye.4
WhereasGod’seyewatchesfromaboveinTheSlave’sFriend’sfrontispiece,
the November 1823 issue of another early antislavery periodical, Genius
of Universal Emancipation, includes an image of “sousveillance”—a concept
developedbySteveManntodescribewatchingfrombelow.5 Thelowertwo-
thirdsofthiswood-blockprintdepictsaslavecofflebeingmarchedpastthe
USCapitolbuilding,whichoccupiesthetopthirdoftheframe(seeFigureI.2).
Becausetheartisthascompressedtheforegroundandbackground,itappears
thattheenslavedpeopleareliterallyunderground.Thisimagejuxtaposestwo
looks: the supervisory gaze of a man in a black hat, whom the accompany-
ing text identifies as a “member[] of Congress,” and the resistant look of the
enslaved man lifting his eyes and his manacled hands toward the Congres-
sionaloverseer.6 AsTeresaGoddupointsout,“thestandingslave,despitethe
coarsenessoftheimage,hasanidentifiableeye…[that]look[s]uptowardthe
promise of freedom on the horizon.”7 By commanding the Congressman to
“Behold,behold,thiscruelchain”(thecaptionabovetheimage),theenslaved
mandirectsthewhiteoverseer’sgazetofocusonhisfetters.Drawingattention
Slavery,Surveillance,andGenreinAntebellumUnitedStatesLiterature.KellyRoss,OxfordUniversityPress.
©KellyRoss(2022).DOI:10.1093/oso/9780192856272.003.0001