6 ms·

Casting this as a slave narrative may be under-selling it. The whole point was that he went far enough away (sailing, Australia) to not only speak with the ang

by w10-1 2y ago

Casting this as a slave narrative may be under-selling it. The whole point was that he went far enough away (sailing, Australia) to not only speak with the anger of the injustice (what happened to him), but to target the structural aspects (how enslavers are made) and how the justification was built in to the Constitution. In so doing, he anticipated the evolution of structuralism, post-structuralism, and critical theory. It seems to have been just one historian who found and validated the story. The author sister was the subject of fawning but incomplete treatment (her story was sympathetic, not damning); the historian found the author's work and traced the author's sailor gigs to validate the connections. There can be an element of passivation to history: "don't worry, we're understanding more and getting better". Thanks to both the author and the historian, it appears much was understood even then, and we shouldn't rest on tides that might not be rising. Critical theory has fatal flaws and anger almost never leads to insight or the right incentives, but how else would normalized and profitable injustice be stripped of a legal veil?

csours 2y ago
I feel like critique in an academic context is a tool for communication, one way among many of understanding a system (or systems). However, that same critique is easily moralized in a political context, and communication stops cold. In the political context it is just blame, in academia it is structural analysis.
wakawaka28 2y ago
[flagged]
- taeric 2y ago
  Thanks, I was trying to find a way to word the caveat that you put here really well. I am glad writings like this can be found. Further glad that people study it. But the point of slave narrative being a genre that was "homegrown" in the states is so awkwardly touched here. Calling in to question the influence of white editors and how that likely silenced some narratives completely ignores why there aren't similar narratives from many other places. Worse, it continues with the common narrative that slavery was solely a United States thing. Specifically pushing that the published narratives were specifically edited to shape a more positive view of the nation. Ignoring any other reason edits may have happened.
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    Nevermind that the US gets an unfair share of criticism for slavery. It is almost always portrayed as whites versus the world when it was really the case that seemingly anyone who could take slaves would do it. Africa was full of slaves, many of them being white. Certainly the Roman slaves were almost 100% white. How many people know about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War or the Barbary slaves in general? Or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufferings_in_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufferings_in_Africa
    - EarthBlues 2y ago
      It’s true that slavery was practiced by many civilizations throughout history, and it continues today. I’m also not a fan of the contemporary, “critical” approach, or at least the way it has unfolded in mainstream public life in the US (happy to elaborate as to why). That said, chattel slavery as it existed in the US really was exceptionally bad for a lot of reasons. (1) slavery and treating people of other ethnicities badly wasn’t a new thing, but the ideology of there being a natural hierarchy of races was a new idea and it led to new cruelties. (2) In the European Middle Ages, there had been a taboo against Christians holding other Christians as slaves. The western slavers knowingly took advantage of the chaos in early modern Europe and did it anyway, over opposition, constructing the above ideology to justify it. (3) the scale of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was unprecedented. It dwarfed the Barbary and Indian slave trade. Maybe Rome or the golden age Islamic slave network were on a comparable scale when various factors are accounted for, but neither were chattel systems, and they lacked the whole racial dimension.
      - taeric 2y ago
        This is not actually held together that well, sadly. Your first point, I suspect, is almost certainly not true. The concepts of racial or familial lineage with divine connotations is pretty old. The entire "divine right of kings" and related hierarchies have long been there. I /think/ you are trying to say that it was a scientifically supported hierarchy and it was bad for that reason. I think that is defendable? Not clear what point 2 has to do with US slavery? Similar existed in the Barbary area, where it was just a different religion being preferenced. Your third point is the most amusing of them to hold against slavery as it existed in the US, though. Yes, the trans-Atlantic slave trade was unprecedented. With the majority of those enslaved not going to north america... I think I said this in another thread, but worth repeating. There is nothing at all "well actually" in what I'm saying. Slavery is bad. Period. I wish people didn't plaster over how bad it was elsewhere in a rush to attack the US, though.
- wredcoll 2y ago
  The united states of america was pretty late to the party of abolishing slavery.
  - taeric 2y ago
    I mean, in the West, sure? Notably was not the last place in the world to do so. And debtor prisons are still a thing. As is trafficking.
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    I don't think you can rightly claim that the US was late to free the slaves when it happened so soon after the formation of the country, and the practice was globally accepted for thousands of years prior to that. It continued in Africa long after it was abolished in the West. One of the first wars fought by the US was over slavery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War Anti-slavery sentiments built up over time. Abraham Lincoln was moved by this popular book for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufferings_in_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufferings_in_Africa Of course these things aren't often taught in school.
    - Nevermark 2y ago
      Lateness can be debated. But the US wasn't just coasting on history. And your link makes clear the Barbary form of slavery had little in common with the extreme form practiced in the US. The violent rejection of England and monarchy allowed the founders to make a dramatic break from the past. A new approach to human rights, a government of the people, for the people. Ideals broadcast and institutionalized via the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, ..." All the mindful attention, negotiation and agreements, toward implementing a system explicitly establishing liberty and justice for all, adds a thick layer of criminal responsibility for the systematic exception made, to continue upholding one form of extreme injustice. The complete violation of all those principles, held dear, for one unfortunate group.
      - 2y ago
- biorach 2y ago
  > The West is blamed for slavery when it is the West that set the norm that slavery is unacceptable. Not sure who is blaming the West for slavery, but whatever. The West did set the norm that slavery is unacceptable, but only after embracing slavery on a vast scale for centuries, overlapping to a great degree with the Enlightment and with the birth of representative democracy. I think that is the underlying dissonance - the founding fathers expounded at length on equality, liberty from arbitrary rule and so on, while the South prospered on the back of slavery. A similar criticism could be made of French revolutionaries, and British liberals of the 17th/early 18th centuries.
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    >The West did set the norm that slavery is unacceptable, but only after embracing slavery on a vast scale for centuries, overlapping to a great degree with the Enlightment and with the birth of representative democracy. Yes the West abolished slavery after embracing philosophy invented by the West. Then it forcibly ended slavery everywhere else that it could. >I think that is the underlying dissonance - the founding fathers expounded at length on equality, liberty from arbitrary rule and so on, while the South prospered on the back of slavery. A similar criticism could be made of French revolutionaries, and British liberals of the 17th/early 18th centuries. Thousands of Southern slave owners were themselves black. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_slave_owners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_slave_owners Many slaves were sold to Europeans by their own people. Yet in modern times we only hear about a particular angle that pushes blame solely on the very cultures and nations that forcefully ended slavery, often at great cost.
    - biorach 2y ago
      > Yes the West abolished slavery after embracing philosophy invented by the West. Then it forcibly ended slavery everywhere else that it could. The reality was a lot less glorious than that. And with a lot of less than glorious moral compromises and cognitive dissonance. Again, I refer you to the founding fathers. > Yet in modern times we only hear about a particular angle that pushes blame solely on the very cultures and nations that forcefully ended slavery We don't only hear that angle, it's trivially easy to access balanced and detailed history. Maybe you're spending your time arguing with zealots on social media but the rest of us can actually educate ourselves > blame solely on the very cultures and nations that forcefully ended slavery In fairness those societies were also responsible in the first place for the expansion of slavery into an unprecedentedly vast system Can we just accept that, and not feel so defensive?
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  The West, and specifically America, is blamed not so much for slavery but for the following things all together: 1. Chattel Slavery 2. Racism as a form of pseudo-scientific theory that established why different "races" were of lower quality than others, and thus any member of the lower race deserved to be enslaved by members of the higher race. 3. Laws in various states of the U.S that established black people could be enslaved when traveling in that state, or that free black people traveling in the region would not be allowed to do so https://medium.com/luminasticity/the-free-slave-8336f214da45 https://medium.com/luminasticity/the-free-slave-8336f214da45 4. After finding slavery unacceptable, the U.S with its pseudo-scientific cover of Racism in much of the country still treated black people as if they were enslaved, and often killed them for no particular reason discernible to reason. 5. One can argue as to the exact point that Black people became equal in the U.S, some might argue that it isn't the case yet, but anyone fairly arguing would have to concede that there are a number of Black people still living who were at least children when it was not the case that this state of equality existed - even if they wanted to argue that it does exist now. on edit: changed either to still
  - Aloisius 2y ago
    It must be a nice consolation for the various European powers that their colonies breaking away seems to have absolved them of any blame not just the institutionalization of chattel slavery, but apparently also the creation of scientific racism.
    - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
      Yes, it was - same as I suppose it is a great inconvenience to you that the Brits were calling for the abolishing of slavery long before the Civil War. That said, sure, scientific Racism was project of Western Civilization, but it seems really that America - at least where Black people were the subject (and maybe also Indians, but they were more to be exterminated - not enslaved) - put a lot more heart and soul into it than other participants.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
PrismCrystal 2y ago
You're not using the terms "structuralism" and "post-structuralism" correctly. The term "structuralism" has its roots in Saussure, in linguistics and the notion of l'arbitraire du signe. Semiotics and the post-structuralists then took this further. While today people might talk of "structural racism", the similarity to the term "structuralism" is merely coincidental, through sure, one might try to apply the idea there, too.
- Wolfenstein98k 2y ago
  I feel like I didn't know anything more by the end of the comment then at the start. Can you word it again but more clearly? It currently reads like a signal of what you have memorised, rather than an effort to increase the knowledge of the reader.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    Structuralism can mean different things based on the context, I think the post you're replying to is meaning Structuralism in the philosophical context, but I think the post they're replying to is meaning it in the literary context (which derives from the philosophical), while the author of the post you're replying to seems to think they(the original poster) are somehow referring to structural Racism, which that interpretation of the primary poster does not make sense to me (hence my saying I think they mean Literary structuralism) So structuralism in literary theory is that the structure of a text is the important thing which can end up being a lot like those articles you see every now and then "There are only 10 basic plots in the world, here they are" or some stuff like that (I obviously say this as someone who does not much care for structuralism so take my words with a giant grain of salt) on edit: clarification
  - pessimizer 2y ago
    > You're not using the terms "structuralism" and "post-structuralism" correctly. The first sentence is the important part. "Structuralism" is in no way related to "structural" or "institutional" racism. "Structuralism" is what the next sentences are describing, and it doesn't matter if you understand them; they were probably added as ample evidence that the first sentence was true, and possibly as stuff to google if you're interested in a subject completely unrelated to this discussion about the article. Structuralism is some French theories about how creative writing should be structured.
medo-bear 2y ago
> In so doing, he anticipated the evolution of structuralism, post-structuralism, and critical theory. That is a bit of a word salad. How about just calling spade a spade. This is an account of hypocricy of america's freedom mythology
thaumasiotes 2y ago
> The whole point was that he went far enough away (sailing, Australia) to not only speak with the anger of the injustice (what happened to him), but to target the structural aspects (how enslavers are made) Going far away won't help with targeting enslavers. If you're enslaved in Africa, the enslavers are in Africa.
- tim333 2y ago
  Dunno. A lot of the slavery in Africa went partly as the result of British abolitionists.

by w10-1 2y ago

csours 2y ago

I feel like critique in an academic context is a tool for communication, one way among many of understanding a system (or systems). However, that same critique is easily moralized in a political context, and communication stops cold. In the political context it is just blame, in academia it is structural analysis.

wakawaka28 2y ago

[flagged]

taeric 2y ago
Thanks, I was trying to find a way to word the caveat that you put here really well. I am glad writings like this can be found. Further glad that people study it. But the point of slave narrative being a genre that was "homegrown" in the states is so awkwardly touched here. Calling in to question the influence of white editors and how that likely silenced some narratives completely ignores why there aren't similar narratives from many other places. Worse, it continues with the common narrative that slavery was solely a United States thing. Specifically pushing that the published narratives were specifically edited to shape a more positive view of the nation. Ignoring any other reason edits may have happened.
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  Nevermind that the US gets an unfair share of criticism for slavery. It is almost always portrayed as whites versus the world when it was really the case that seemingly anyone who could take slaves would do it. Africa was full of slaves, many of them being white. Certainly the Roman slaves were almost 100% white. How many people know about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War or the Barbary slaves in general? Or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufferings_in_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufferings_in_Africa
  - EarthBlues 2y ago
    It’s true that slavery was practiced by many civilizations throughout history, and it continues today. I’m also not a fan of the contemporary, “critical” approach, or at least the way it has unfolded in mainstream public life in the US (happy to elaborate as to why). That said, chattel slavery as it existed in the US really was exceptionally bad for a lot of reasons. (1) slavery and treating people of other ethnicities badly wasn’t a new thing, but the ideology of there being a natural hierarchy of races was a new idea and it led to new cruelties. (2) In the European Middle Ages, there had been a taboo against Christians holding other Christians as slaves. The western slavers knowingly took advantage of the chaos in early modern Europe and did it anyway, over opposition, constructing the above ideology to justify it. (3) the scale of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was unprecedented. It dwarfed the Barbary and Indian slave trade. Maybe Rome or the golden age Islamic slave network were on a comparable scale when various factors are accounted for, but neither were chattel systems, and they lacked the whole racial dimension.
    - taeric 2y ago
      This is not actually held together that well, sadly. Your first point, I suspect, is almost certainly not true. The concepts of racial or familial lineage with divine connotations is pretty old. The entire "divine right of kings" and related hierarchies have long been there. I /think/ you are trying to say that it was a scientifically supported hierarchy and it was bad for that reason. I think that is defendable? Not clear what point 2 has to do with US slavery? Similar existed in the Barbary area, where it was just a different religion being preferenced. Your third point is the most amusing of them to hold against slavery as it existed in the US, though. Yes, the trans-Atlantic slave trade was unprecedented. With the majority of those enslaved not going to north america... I think I said this in another thread, but worth repeating. There is nothing at all "well actually" in what I'm saying. Slavery is bad. Period. I wish people didn't plaster over how bad it was elsewhere in a rush to attack the US, though.
wredcoll 2y ago
The united states of america was pretty late to the party of abolishing slavery.
- taeric 2y ago
  I mean, in the West, sure? Notably was not the last place in the world to do so. And debtor prisons are still a thing. As is trafficking.
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  I don't think you can rightly claim that the US was late to free the slaves when it happened so soon after the formation of the country, and the practice was globally accepted for thousands of years prior to that. It continued in Africa long after it was abolished in the West. One of the first wars fought by the US was over slavery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War Anti-slavery sentiments built up over time. Abraham Lincoln was moved by this popular book for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufferings_in_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufferings_in_Africa Of course these things aren't often taught in school.
  - Nevermark 2y ago
    Lateness can be debated. But the US wasn't just coasting on history. And your link makes clear the Barbary form of slavery had little in common with the extreme form practiced in the US. The violent rejection of England and monarchy allowed the founders to make a dramatic break from the past. A new approach to human rights, a government of the people, for the people. Ideals broadcast and institutionalized via the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, ..." All the mindful attention, negotiation and agreements, toward implementing a system explicitly establishing liberty and justice for all, adds a thick layer of criminal responsibility for the systematic exception made, to continue upholding one form of extreme injustice. The complete violation of all those principles, held dear, for one unfortunate group.
    - 2y ago
biorach 2y ago
> The West is blamed for slavery when it is the West that set the norm that slavery is unacceptable. Not sure who is blaming the West for slavery, but whatever. The West did set the norm that slavery is unacceptable, but only after embracing slavery on a vast scale for centuries, overlapping to a great degree with the Enlightment and with the birth of representative democracy. I think that is the underlying dissonance - the founding fathers expounded at length on equality, liberty from arbitrary rule and so on, while the South prospered on the back of slavery. A similar criticism could be made of French revolutionaries, and British liberals of the 17th/early 18th centuries.
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  >The West did set the norm that slavery is unacceptable, but only after embracing slavery on a vast scale for centuries, overlapping to a great degree with the Enlightment and with the birth of representative democracy. Yes the West abolished slavery after embracing philosophy invented by the West. Then it forcibly ended slavery everywhere else that it could. >I think that is the underlying dissonance - the founding fathers expounded at length on equality, liberty from arbitrary rule and so on, while the South prospered on the back of slavery. A similar criticism could be made of French revolutionaries, and British liberals of the 17th/early 18th centuries. Thousands of Southern slave owners were themselves black. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_slave_owners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_slave_owners Many slaves were sold to Europeans by their own people. Yet in modern times we only hear about a particular angle that pushes blame solely on the very cultures and nations that forcefully ended slavery, often at great cost.
  - biorach 2y ago
    > Yes the West abolished slavery after embracing philosophy invented by the West. Then it forcibly ended slavery everywhere else that it could. The reality was a lot less glorious than that. And with a lot of less than glorious moral compromises and cognitive dissonance. Again, I refer you to the founding fathers. > Yet in modern times we only hear about a particular angle that pushes blame solely on the very cultures and nations that forcefully ended slavery We don't only hear that angle, it's trivially easy to access balanced and detailed history. Maybe you're spending your time arguing with zealots on social media but the rest of us can actually educate ourselves > blame solely on the very cultures and nations that forcefully ended slavery In fairness those societies were also responsible in the first place for the expansion of slavery into an unprecedentedly vast system Can we just accept that, and not feel so defensive?
bryanrasmussen 2y ago
The West, and specifically America, is blamed not so much for slavery but for the following things all together: 1. Chattel Slavery 2. Racism as a form of pseudo-scientific theory that established why different "races" were of lower quality than others, and thus any member of the lower race deserved to be enslaved by members of the higher race. 3. Laws in various states of the U.S that established black people could be enslaved when traveling in that state, or that free black people traveling in the region would not be allowed to do so https://medium.com/luminasticity/the-free-slave-8336f214da45 https://medium.com/luminasticity/the-free-slave-8336f214da45 4. After finding slavery unacceptable, the U.S with its pseudo-scientific cover of Racism in much of the country still treated black people as if they were enslaved, and often killed them for no particular reason discernible to reason. 5. One can argue as to the exact point that Black people became equal in the U.S, some might argue that it isn't the case yet, but anyone fairly arguing would have to concede that there are a number of Black people still living who were at least children when it was not the case that this state of equality existed - even if they wanted to argue that it does exist now. on edit: changed either to still
- Aloisius 2y ago
  It must be a nice consolation for the various European powers that their colonies breaking away seems to have absolved them of any blame not just the institutionalization of chattel slavery, but apparently also the creation of scientific racism.
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    Yes, it was - same as I suppose it is a great inconvenience to you that the Brits were calling for the abolishing of slavery long before the Civil War. That said, sure, scientific Racism was project of Western Civilization, but it seems really that America - at least where Black people were the subject (and maybe also Indians, but they were more to be exterminated - not enslaved) - put a lot more heart and soul into it than other participants.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

PrismCrystal 2y ago

You're not using the terms "structuralism" and "post-structuralism" correctly. The term "structuralism" has its roots in Saussure, in linguistics and the notion of l'arbitraire du signe. Semiotics and the post-structuralists then took this further. While today people might talk of "structural racism", the similarity to the term "structuralism" is merely coincidental, through sure, one might try to apply the idea there, too.

Wolfenstein98k 2y ago
I feel like I didn't know anything more by the end of the comment then at the start. Can you word it again but more clearly? It currently reads like a signal of what you have memorised, rather than an effort to increase the knowledge of the reader.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  Structuralism can mean different things based on the context, I think the post you're replying to is meaning Structuralism in the philosophical context, but I think the post they're replying to is meaning it in the literary context (which derives from the philosophical), while the author of the post you're replying to seems to think they(the original poster) are somehow referring to structural Racism, which that interpretation of the primary poster does not make sense to me (hence my saying I think they mean Literary structuralism) So structuralism in literary theory is that the structure of a text is the important thing which can end up being a lot like those articles you see every now and then "There are only 10 basic plots in the world, here they are" or some stuff like that (I obviously say this as someone who does not much care for structuralism so take my words with a giant grain of salt) on edit: clarification
- pessimizer 2y ago
  > You're not using the terms "structuralism" and "post-structuralism" correctly. The first sentence is the important part. "Structuralism" is in no way related to "structural" or "institutional" racism. "Structuralism" is what the next sentences are describing, and it doesn't matter if you understand them; they were probably added as ample evidence that the first sentence was true, and possibly as stuff to google if you're interested in a subject completely unrelated to this discussion about the article. Structuralism is some French theories about how creative writing should be structured.

medo-bear 2y ago

> In so doing, he anticipated the evolution of structuralism, post-structuralism, and critical theory. That is a bit of a word salad. How about just calling spade a spade. This is an account of hypocricy of america's freedom mythology

thaumasiotes 2y ago

> The whole point was that he went far enough away (sailing, Australia) to not only speak with the anger of the injustice (what happened to him), but to target the structural aspects (how enslavers are made) Going far away won't help with targeting enslavers. If you're enslaved in Africa, the enslavers are in Africa.

tim333 2y ago
Dunno. A lot of the slavery in Africa went partly as the result of British abolitionists.