Barbaric Culture and Black Critique: Black Antislavery Writers, Religion, and the Slaveholding Atlantic

by Stefan M. Wheelock

Overview

In an interdisciplinary study of black intellectual history at the dawn of the nineteenth century, Stefan M. Wheelock shows how black antislavery writers were able to counteract ideologies of white supremacy while fostering a sense of racial community and identity. The major figures he discusses—Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano, David Walker, and Maria Stewart—engaged the concepts of democracy, freedom, and equality as these ideas ripened within the context of racial terror and colonial hegemony. Wheelock highlights the ways in which religious and secular versions of collective political destiny both competed and cooperated to forge a vision for a more perfect and just society. By appealing to religious sensibilities and calling for emancipation, these writers addressed slavery and its cultural bearing on the Atlantic in varied, complex, and sometimes contradictory ways during a key period in the development of Western political identity and modernity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813937991
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	12/08/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Stefan M. Wheelock is Assistant Professor of English at George Mason University.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Ottobah Cugoano, Liberty, and Modern Atlantic Barbarism 25

Chapter 2 Interesting Narratives, Civility, and the Problem of Freedom 59

Chapter 3 David Walker, False Grammars, and American Racial Inheritance 101

Chapter 4 Maria Stewart and the Paradoxes of Early National Virtue 141

Conclusion 177

Notes 181

Index 201

Editorial Reviews

"In Stefan M. Wheelock’s strikingly insightful study, the profound roots of modern black intellectual history rise through the fractured instabilities of white discourses of civilization, philosophy, and progress. This is an important study of how black writing works and why we need to place it at the center of historical research. "—John Richard Ernest, University of Delaware, author of A Nation within a Nation: Organizing African-American Communities before the Civil War

"In terms of professional scholarship, Wheelock’s work is a breath of fresh air because it refuses to abide by any racial color line. This is not a book of only black writers. It is one where the works of Cugoano, Equiano, Walker, and Stewart are set in dynamic tension and conversation with white writers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, Granville Sharp, Jonathan Edwards, and Thomas Jefferson. "—author of Christian Century

" Barbaric Culture and Black Critique is an important intervention in the fields of Atlantic studies and antislavery history, which Wheelock argues have largely neglected the contributions of early black writers; the book does reveal the unique contributions to and disruption of white antislavery discourse in an engaging anddirect style. Beyond this, Wheelock’s work offers another perspective on the history of African American religious rhetoric as it was deployed in discretely political spaces. "—author of American Literature

"[I]n Barbaric Culture and, Black Critique, Stefan Wheelock uses theory and literary analysis to focus on a number of key works in black antislavery literature. Wheelock begins chronologically where Carron ends, with the entrance of black Christians into the public sphere via antislavery publications. His analysis insightfully unpacks why it martered that Catron's subjects embraced black Protestantism: religion offered a methodological base and heft that could forcefully take on slavery at its root. "—author of Anglican and Episcopal History

From the Publisher

Barbaric Culture and Black Critique is an important intervention in the fields of Atlantic studies and antislavery history, which Wheelock argues have largely neglected the contributions of early black writers; the book does reveal the unique contributions to and disruption of white antislavery discourse in an engaging anddirect style. Beyond this, Wheelock’s work offers another perspective on the history of African American religious rhetoric as it was deployed in discretely political spaces.

American Literature

[I]n Barbaric Culture and, Black Critique, Stefan Wheelock uses theory and literary analysis to focus on a number of key works in black antislavery literature. Wheelock begins chronologically where Carron ends, with the entrance of black Christians into the public sphere via antislavery publications. His analysis insightfully unpacks why it martered that Catron's subjects embraced black Protestantism: religion offered a methodological base and heft that could forcefully take on slavery at its root.

Anglican and Episcopal History

In Stefan M. Wheelock’s strikingly insightful study, the profound roots of modern black intellectual history rise through the fractured instabilities of white discourses of civilization, philosophy, and progress. This is an important study of how black writing works and why we need to place it at the center of historical research.

John Richard Ernest

In terms of professional scholarship, Wheelock’s work is a breath of fresh air because it refuses to abide by any racial color line. This is not a book of only black writers. It is one where the works of Cugoano, Equiano, Walker, and Stewart are set in dynamic tension and conversation with white writers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, Granville Sharp, Jonathan Edwards, and Thomas Jefferson.

Christian Century