Scenes of Subjection

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Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism Winner of the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction “Hartman has influenced an entire generation of scholars and afforded readers a proximity to the past that would otherwise be foreclosed.” “I’m enthralled by [Hartman’s] gift for combining historical research with evocative imaginative leaps. Her writing in [ ] is a profound act of reclamation, and a simply stunning read.” “Hartman, one of our most brilliant contemporary thinkers, introduced the term ‘critical fabulation’ into my world. She’s a theorist and writer who actually changes what’s possible in my thought patterns. It’s exciting.” “I was inspired, surprised, and deeply moved. . . . [Hartman’s] mode is intimate, radical and always alive to the details.” “[ ] left me awestruck and grateful. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything like it—radical, rigorous, lyrical, attentive. . . . I read this thinking that I want to be wherever Saidiya Hartman is.” “Daring, and often inspiring. . . . Hartman is a tremendously gifted writer with the eye and the lyrical prose of a novelist. . . . The talent to do what Hartman does in [ ] is rare.” The groundbreaking debut by the award-winning author of , revised and updated. Meticulously researched…. The 25th-anniversary edition of this pathbreaking work of scholarship is a gift to those interested in thinking deeply and expansively about slavery’s ever-running machinations. Innovative…. [Hartman’s] writing is impassioned and even lyrical at times…. This is a powerful and thought-provoking examination of slavery’s far-reaching legacy. Audacious. Original and provocative. What Hartman has to say about both slavery and its continuing resonances should be heard as widely as possible. A major scholarly contribution. The brilliance of the book—a brilliance that is considerable, formidable and rare—is present in the space Hartman leaves for the ongoing (re)production of [black] performance in all its guises and for a critical awareness of how each of those guises is always already present in and disruptive of the supposed originarity of that primal scene [of violence]. Sharpens our understanding of whiteness, property, and happiness in startling ways. In , Saidiya Hartman prepared an intellectual ground for the phrase [the afterlife of slavery] to take root. Insisting that the conventional wisdom that slavery had died with legal emancipation was wrong, and that slavery was, as she put, ‘transformed rather than annulled by the 13th amendment of the US constitution,’ Hartman challenged us to consider that slavery didn’t just have a lingering trace or a shadowy aftereffect in the post-emancipation moment. US

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