Antebellum Posthuman: Race and Materiality in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

by Cristin Ellis

Overview

From the eighteenth-century abolitionist motto “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?” to the Civil Rights-era declaration “I AM a Man,” antiracism has engaged in a struggle for the recognition of black humanity. It has done so, however, even as the very definition of the human has been called into question by the biological sciences. While this conflict between liberal humanism and biological materialism animates debates in posthumanism and critical race studies today, Antebellum Posthuman argues that it first emerged as a key question in the antebellum era.

In a moment in which the authority of science was increasingly invoked to defend slavery and other racist policies, abolitionist arguments underwent a profound shift, producing a new, materialist strain of antislavery. Engaging the works of Douglass, Thoreau, and Whitman, and Dickinson, Cristin Ellis identifies and traces the emergence of an antislavery materialism in mid-nineteenth century American literature, placing race at the center of the history of posthumanist thought. Turning to contemporary debates now unfolding between posthumanist and critical race theorists, Ellis demonstrates how this antebellum posthumanism highlights the difficulty of reconciling materialist ontologies of the human with the project of social justice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823278466
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	01/02/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	300
File size:	677 KB

About the Author

Cristin Ellis is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Mississippi.

Table of Contents

Introduction. Beyond Recognition: The Problem of Antebellum Embodiment
1. Animal: Racial Science and the Problem of Human Equality

2. Vegetable: Evolution and the Problem of Human Agency

3. Cosmos: Bioelectricity and the Problem of Human Meaning

4. Posthumanism and the Problem of Social Justice (Race and Materiality in the Twenty-first Century)

Coda. After Romantic Posthumanism


Notes

Works Cited

Index

Editorial Reviews

Antebellum Posthuman is a thought-provoking and timely contribution to the recent explosion of work on the desirability of moving beyond the 'human' as analytic framework or political horizon. Ellis’s consideration of Douglass, Thoreau, and Whitman uncovers posthumanism’s Romantic unconscious, challenging the contemporary faith in political progressiveness of the posthuman turn. Arguing for a renewed engagement with matter, Antebellum Posthuman persuasively models a close critical attentiveness that does not assume in advance what the outcome of that engagement will be.—Dana Luciano, Georgetown University

Antebellum Posthuman revisits classic works of the American nineteenth century, but finds original and compelling ways to understand their dialogue with contemporary critical and political demands.—Paul Downes, Nineteenth-Century Literature

From the Publisher

Can posthumanism develop an effective antiracist politics? This is the stirring question at the heart of Cristin Ellis’s Antebellum Posthuman. Her exceptionally well-written and cogently argued book ultimately answers that it cannot. Intriguingly, Ellis offers her skepticism about the political potential of the posthumanist world view in the spirit of strengthening, rather than undercutting, posthumanism’s reach... Above all, Antebellum Posthuman is beautifully written, both lyrical and commandingly precise.

African American Review

Antebellum Posthuman is a thought-provoking and timely contribution to the recent explosion of work on the desirability of moving beyond the 'human' as analytic framework or political horizon. Ellis’s consideration of Douglass, Thoreau, and Whitman uncovers posthumanism’s Romantic unconscious, challenging the contemporary faith in political progressiveness of the posthuman turn. Arguing for a renewed engagement with matter, Antebellum Posthuman persuasively models a close critical attentiveness that does not assume in advance what the outcome of that engagement will be.

Dana Luciano

Antebellum Posthuman revisits classic works of the American nineteenth century, but finds original and compelling ways to understand their dialogue with contemporary critical and political demands.

Nineteenth-Century Literature - Paul Downes