Description
Book SynopsisArmstrong charts the legacy of slavery in the United States by tracing the representations of global slavery's victims and perpetrators in popular culture after the Civil War. In doing so, she reveals the rhetorical manoeuvres that were used to justify exploitation and forced labour both in the US and globally.
Trade Review'This important and original interdisciplinary book sheds new light on how the US used slavery to mould its own post-war identity through the rhetorical tool of 'othering'. Wide-ranging in its theoretical and methodological scope and geographic context, Armstrong successfully draws upon diverse forms of popular culture to decipher how the nation sought to identify itself as an antislavery imperialist power between the ending of the Civil War and the onset of World War I.' Emily West, Professor of American History, University of Reading
'In this elegant and deeply-researched book, Catherine Armstrong discusses how Americans came to terms with unfree forms of labour in an era when slavery had been abolished. Overlooking the domestic persistence of unfree labour, many Americans linked the continuation of slavery around the world to non-white 'others' that in turn helped to justify the need for white imperialism. This book has powerful resonances for the analysis of modern-day slavery.' Tim Lockley, University of Warwick
'Drawing astutely on recent scholarship, Armstrong illumines how, from Reconstruction to WWI, Americans manipulated their depictions of slavery, including its perpetrators and victims, to reinforce either a conservative or progressive racial, imperial, or gendered agenda … Recommended.' J. D. Smith, Choice
Table of ContentsList of figures; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. A rhetorical continuum? How representations of antebellum slavery endure in post-war culture; 2. Global contexts: how external factors drive US perceptions of slavery; 3. Othering the slave owner; 4. Othering the enslaved; 5. Gender and the rhetoric of slavery; 6. Resistance and the slavery counter-narrative; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.
