Slavery in black and white: the racialisation of (male) slavery in Frederick Douglass’s <i>Narrative</i> and/vs. Toni Morrison’s <i>A Mercy</i>

Armengol, Josep M.

doi:10.1080/13688790.2017.1410770

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Most people remained under state control for reasons other than fear of violent punishment. The poorest subjects of the state often defended the same structures that kept them poor as long as they had access to other forms of social prestige (e.g., Armengol, 2017;Garnsey and Woolf, 1989;Howson, 1990;O'Toole, 2012;Robinson, 2000;Scott, 1985;Tutino, 2011: 24;Woolf 1997Woolf , 2000Woolf , 2012.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prosperity and prestige: Archaeological realities of unfree laborers under Inka imperialism

Quave

2020

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

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Inka imperial policies reorganized the social and labor landscapes of their subjects on a grand scale and unprecedented degree in the Americas. The two most numerous categories of resettled laborers created by these imperial policies were the mitmaqkuna and yanakuna, who together represented at least a third of the total subject population. The Inkas resettled them, often far from their homelands. They were responsible for the daily provisioning of Inka settlements and keeping the peace among conquered populations. Despite their central role in Inka state consolidation and economy, we know little about these populations outside of ethnohistorical interpretations of their privileged status relative to normal tribute-paying communities. Because ethnohistoric documents were written with Inka and Spanish state interests in mind, archaeological evidence is crucial to evaluate their lived experiences. We compare the ethnohistoric and archaeological evidence of the lives of the mitmaqkuna and yanakuna in two regions: the mitmaqkuna site of Yanawilka in the Vilcas Huamán province and the yanakuna site of Cheqoq in the rural Inka heartland of Cuzco. Archaeological comparisons yield evidence contradicting the long-held assumption that prestige is synonymous with autonomy, power, or even wealth in imperial contexts.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prosperity and prestige: Archaeological realities of unfree laborers under Inka imperialism

Quave

2020

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

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“Poison may lurk at the bottom”: The ruin of Jacob Vaark and paradise already lost in Toni Morrison's A Mercy

Hillier

2024

Orbis Litterarum

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The essay advances a sustained close reading of perhaps the most complete representation of a white male character in Toni Morrison's oeuvre, Jacob Vaark, the Anglo‐Dutch settler portrayed in her ninth novel, A Mercy (2008). Interpretations that comprehend Vaark's conduct as illustrating a fall from grace, whether that falling off is construed as rapid or gradual, overlook the various textual clues that Vaark's ethical standards have eroded even before he steps into the narrative and is confronted with material temptations. Vaark is a man already selfish, covetous, lascivious, hypocritical, and unexpectedly and chillingly indifferent to the misery of others. Hilary Mantel has complained of Morrison's portrait of Vaark that, “Having created him carefully, Morrison sweeps him out of the story”; rather, Morrison's novel provides the reader with a forceful, disturbing, and resonant figure who casts a long shadow over the other characters throughout the narrative. Through Vaark's corruption, Morrison unmasks an American project that is neither experimental nor instinct with promise or possibility, but tainted ab ovo and vitiated from before the beginning.

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Sexuality and Healing in the African Diaspora: A Transnational Approach to Toni Morrison and Gyasi

Gallego

2019

Humanities

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This article examines the literary production of two writers from the African diaspora, specifically African American Toni Morrison’s A Mercy (2008), and Ghanaian-American Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing (2016), to explore their significance as counter-narratives that defy the “official” historiography of enslavement times in order to set the records straight, as it were. By highlighting these women writers’ project of resistance against normative definitions of black bodies, it is my contention that these works effectively mobilize notions of race, gender, and sexuality. Revisiting the harmful and denigrating legacy of stereotypical designation of enslaved women, these writers make significant political and literary interventions to facilitate the recovery, wholeness, and sanctity of the violated and abjected black body. In their attempt to counter ongoing processes of commodification, exploitation, fetishization, and sexualization, I argue that these writers chronicle new forms of identity and agency that promote individual and generational healing and care as forms of protest and resistance against toxic definitions of hegemonic gender and sexuality.

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Slavery in black and white: the racialisation of (male) slavery in Frederick Douglass’s Narrative and/vs. Toni Morrison’s A Mercy

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Prosperity and prestige: Archaeological realities of unfree laborers under Inka imperialism

Prosperity and prestige: Archaeological realities of unfree laborers under Inka imperialism

“Poison may lurk at the bottom”: The ruin of Jacob Vaark and paradise already lost in Toni Morrison's A Mercy

Sexuality and Healing in the African Diaspora: A Transnational Approach to Toni Morrison and Gyasi

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