The logic of slavery : debt, technology, and pain in American literature

Resource Information

The work The logic of slavery : debt, technology, and pain in American literature represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Bryn Athyn College, Swedenborg Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The logic of slavery : debt, technology, and pain in American literature

Title remainder

debt, technology, and pain in American literature

Statement of responsibility

Tim Armstrong, Royal Holloway, University of London

Creator

• Armstrong, Tim, 1956-

Subject

• American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism
• American literature -- African American authors | History and criticism
• Commodification
• Reification
• Slavery -- Economic aspects
• Slavery -- Psychological aspects
• Slavery -- United States -- History
• Slavery in art
• Slavery in literature
• American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism

Language

eng

Summary

"In American history and throughout the Western world, the subjugation perpetuated by slavery has created a unique "culture of slavery." That culture exists as a metaphorical, artistic, and literary tradition attached to the enslaved - human beings whose lives are "owed" to another, who are used as instruments by another, and who must endure suffering in silence. Tim Armstrong explores the metaphorical legacy of slavery in American culture by investigating debt, technology, and pain in African-American literature and a range of other writings and artworks. Armstrong's careful analysis reveals how notions of the slave as a debtor lie hidden in our accounts of the commodified self and how writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rebecca Harding Davis, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison grapple with the pervasive view that slaves are akin to machines. Finally, Armstrong examines how conceptions of the slave as a container of suppressed pain are reflected in disciplines as diverse as art, sculpture, music, and psychology"--

Member of

• Cambridge studies in American literature and culture, 163

Assigning source

Provided by publisher

Cataloging source

DLC

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

PS217.S55

LC item number

A76 2012

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture

Series volume

163