Rebellious histories : the Amistad slave revolt and the cultures of late twentieth-century black transnationalism / Matthew J. Christensen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Christensen, Matthew J.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Slave rebellions--United States.

Slave rebellions.

Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)--History--20th century.

Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.).

Antislavery movements--United States.

Antislavery movements.

Sierra Leonean literature.

Sierra Leone--History.

Sierra Leone.

Amistad (Schooner).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (205 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Albany : SUNY Press, c2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

From the early 1970s to the mid-1990s, playwrights, novelists, filmmakers, visual artists, and prison writers from Sierra Leone and the United States brought a new attention to the events of the 1839 Amistad shipboard slave rebellion. As a testament of the human will to freedom, the story of the Amistad mutineers also describes the wide arc of the international circuits of capital, commerce, juridical power, and diplomacy that structured and reproduced the Atlantic slave trade for nearly four centuries. In Rebellious Histories, Matthew J. Christensen argues that for creative artists struggling to comprehend—and survive—pernicious manifestations of globalization like Sierra Leone's civil war, the Amistad rebellion's narrative of exploitative resource extraction, transatlantic migrations, armed rebellion, and American judicial intervention offers both a historical antecedent and allegory for contemporary global capitalism's reconfiguration of culture and subjectivity. At the same time, he shows how the mutineers' example provides a model for imagining utopian forms of transnationalism. With its wide-ranging comparative approach, Rebellious Histories brings a unique perspective to the study of the cultural histories of both slave resistance and globalization.

Contents:

Introduction : rebellious histories

Cinque/Sengbe : naming the transnational subject

Cannibals in the postcolony : Charlie Haffner's Amistad Kata-Kata and the moral economy of global consumption

Neoliberal masculinity, black transnationalism, and the United States ; disappearing borders in Amistad and echo of lions

Enslaving globalization : trans-atlantic slavery, Civil War, and modernity in Raymond Desouza-George's The broken handcuff

Conclusion : rebellious futures.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781438439716

1438439717

9781461904519

146190451X

OCLC:

802046112