Description
Book SynopsisIn
The Brink of Freedom David Kazanjian revises dominant understandings of nineteenth-century conceptions of freedom by examining the letters of black settler colonists in Liberia and the letters and literature of Mayan rebels and their Creole antagonists in Yucatán, showing how they disrupted liberal formations of freedom.
Trade Review"Terrific. . . . Innovative." -- Sean X. Goudie * American Literary History *
"Kazanjian has constructed an extensively well-researched and theoretically complex study that develops a new approach to comparative scholarship, highlights new paths to archival research, and suggests new reading strategies that help us examine how non-European actors imagined a future defined by freedom, one of the principal tenets of modernity and of nineteenth-century liberalism." -- Ty West * The Latin Americanist *
“
The Brink of Freedom is an innovative study that serves as a model for interdisciplinary research.” -- Christina C. Davidson * Hispanic American Historical Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction. Atlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities 1
Part I. Liberia: Epistolary Encounters
Prelude 35
1. It All Most Cost Us Death Seeking Life: Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities 53
2. Suffering Gain and It Remain: The Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia 91
Part II. Yucatán: Una Guerra Escrita
Prelude 133
3. En Sus Futuros Destinos: Casta Capitalism 155
4. Por Eso Peleamos: Recasting Libertad 191
Coda: Archives for the Future 227
Acknowledgments 239
Notes 243
Bibliography 285
Index 315
