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Title: Double Character by Ariela J. Gross ISBN: 0-691-05957-8 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 15 December, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $47.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: An excellent examinination of antebellum race
Comment: Ariela Gross's book, "Double Character", is an excellent examination of the role of the courtroom in antebellum slavery. Gross attempts to show that the courts are an important arena where discourses about slave "character" and "nature" crystallized, where certain types of explanations, (like medical ones) grew in favor while other explanatory modes were discouraged. The title refers to the fact that slaves were simultaenously regarded as people and as property (capital). At the center of all this were slave bodies, whose humanitty was clear, and whose legal status as chattel was also clear. The tortured legal reasoning that attempted to negotiate these contradictions provides a fascinating portrait of antebellum race.
Gross's sources are excellent--she focuses on cases heard on appeal to state Supreme Courts in the deep South (Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina). At that time Supreme Courts had to hear all cases appealed (not the case today) so they become an invaluable source for collecting trial records. She also examines one court in depth (Adams County, Mississippi) and two smaller courts in South Carolina to deepen and contextualize her scope.
She conclusively demonstrates that the Southern "honor culture" that dominated mainstream white life was dependent on the dishonoring of black bodies, managed to a great deal through the court system, where slaves were not allowed to speak. The issue of slave character and by extension, the character of the master, were always in contention in these trials over transactions gone bad.
However, she also argues that even though slaves could not speak in court, nonetheless courts were forced to deal with the humanness of slaves. In cases regarding breach of warranty, slaves were relied on to give information about their medical condition, as well as information about buyer's treatment of them. Even though they themselves could not speak, their words were often repeated in court by others.
Gross also deals with the issue of paternalism of slave masters better than other scholars. She contextualizes paternalism as a narrow discourse alongside strict disciplinary codes and "shrewd business practices". Rather than draw a distinction between paternalism and violence, like Walter Johnson, or subsume all of slavery as a paternalist enterprise (like Eugene Genovese) we see the complex and mulitfaceted nature of master/slave dynamics.
If there are problems here, it is that her study sometimes attempts to beyond itself too far, and in doing so draws on secondary literature a bit much, especially towards the end. Her connection of the courtroom to medical discourse and the slave marketplace seem a bit stretched, but she does draw on the best of the secondary literature in these areas--its just that these connections seem tenous sometimes.
Nonetheless, this is a solid study and deserves to be regarded as such in the interdisciplinary field of American Studies. As a study in methodology, Gross is also quite interesting--she combines statsitical analysis and regression with critical race theory and cultural anthropology. Each of these modes of analysis complements and strengthens the other. Within the field of African- American historiography, this is also a major effort.
--Christopher Chase, PhD Fellow, American Studies
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent book!!
Comment: Written with grace and clarity.
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Title: Challenging the Boundaries of Slavery (The Nathan I. Huggins Lectures) by David Brion Davis ISBN: 0674011821 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 04 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow by David L. Chappell ISBN: 080782819X Publisher: University of North Carolina Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: A Hideous Monster of the Mind: American Race Theory in the Early Republic by Bruce R. Dain ISBN: 0674009460 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Sensory Worlds in Early America by Peter Charles Hoffer ISBN: 0801873533 Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Struggle for Racial Uplift (African American History Series (Wilmington, Del.), No. 1.) by Jacqueline M. Moore ISBN: 0842029958 Publisher: SR Books Pub. Date: 15 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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