Human Insufficiency: Natural Slavery and the Racialization of Vulnerability in Early Modern England (Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture)

Synopsis

Human Insufficiency argues that early modern writers depict the human political subject as physically vulnerable in order to naturalize slavery. Representations of Man as a weak creature—“poor” and “bare” in King Lear’s words—strategically portrayed English bodies as needing care from people who were imagined to be less fragile. Drawing on Aristotle’s depictions of the natural master and the natural slave in the Politics, English writers distinguished the fully human political subject from the sub-human Slave who would care for his feeble body. This justification of a nascent slaving economy reinvents the violence of enslaving Afro-diasporic peoples as a natural system of care. Human Insufficiency’s most important contribution to early modern critical race studies is expanding the scope of the human as a racialized category by demonstrating how depictions of Man as a vulnerable species were part of a discourse racializing slavery.

Copyright:

2023

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781000989977

Related ISBNs:

9781032422701, 9781003362029, 9781032422695

Publisher:

Taylor and Francis

Date of Addition:

10/30/23

Copyrighted By:

Jeffrey B. Griswold. The right of Jeffrey B. Griswold to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Literature and Fiction, Social Studies, Language Arts

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.