I would rather have titled this post hell because the account of Harriet Jacobs can only come from a place that is hell or worse. The account was persistently painful to read. It was unbearable on some places but that is because it is not a fictional tale but rather the reality of so many lives.
Despite all that I know about the subaltern I have never been more agonized with the thought of subalternity and how it attaches itself to someone making them voice-less. There were so many things that came to mind while reading this painful account. And I would like to approach this particular blog more personally than I have ever done so before.
The first time I truly related tot he text was when Benjamin says after being caught in his journey to freedom, "No, I did not think of him. When a man is hunted like a wild beast he forgets there is a God, a heaven. He forgets every thing in his struggle to get beyond the reach of the bloodhounds."
This told me how the hardship of the level that the slaves endure can drive them either way and this came into contrast with what I know or have read about the slaves and how they turned to Christianity in order to justify the hardships they bear. Some or even most of them did but there were some who refused to have faith on a cruel divine.
The other thing that I noticed was how blackness or color is a common feature associated with slaves or slavery, yet Harriet Jacobs makes a comment in her account at the time when her master has started making advances towards her, "No matter whether the slave girl be as black as ebony or as fair as her mistress. In either case, there is no shadow of law to protect her from insult, from violence, or even from death; all these are inflicted by fiends who bear the shape of men." So there are certain attributes of this condition that will apply to just one gender. The other reason why being a woman AND a slave is also a much more horrible place to be is because a woman's worth is only valued by if she increases her Master's stock of slaves as Jacobs points out. All of this is a testament to the intersectionality and how a person can be the subaltern buried under so many different layers of subalternity. For instance the mother slave is silenced in all accounts. She has no control over he her own life or body or sexuality. She has no control over her own marriage or relationships. She has no control over whose child she bears and even when she has born her masters child, she has no control over their condition and where they might be taken or what might be made of them. And this applies to so many others.
Another thing that came to light when I was reading was the idea that even though the slave is dehumanized in the eyes of the master, on a certain level this dehumanization is reciprocated when the slave holders are referred to as blood hounds or when their hearts are called a "mystic clock that beats in their chest and they are deaf to it".
I inferred from this that it feels better to dehumanize one's attackers and torturers because it is easier to say that a monster did these horrible things than to say that another human being did these horrible things.
The torture of the life of a bond-man or a bond-woman is experienced so deeply and is a violation that is so great as Jacobs says, "I know that some are too much brutalized by slavery to feel the humiliation of their position; but many slaves feel it most acutely, and shrink from the memory of it."
It is unbearable to imagine how these brutalities left scars that couldn't possibly heal and even if they could, they didn't until the end of their lives.
A question that came to mind constantly was where d I find the subaltern or who is the subaltern. It is the slave girl, it is the slave girl's brother or her uncles or her mother or her father or ever her mistress who was distressed by her husband to an extent. If I take spivaks definition of how the subaltern is excluded from the access to power structures then I must say apart from the very wealthy slave owners I become inclined to call several of the people mentioned in jacobs' account the subaltern. Subalternity in my opinion was a characterisitic that attaches itself to these people, to some more than others but in most ways it silences them not because they cant speak but because their voice isn't part of the dominant narrative no one is willing to hear them. They are simply not heard. The other thing that it very obviously does is that strips the subaltern from any agency. Even the mistress of the happy family when married to her slave holding husband was incapable of stopping any of the horrific acts he did on to her slaves, The lack of agency finds the slaves from birth but can manifest in so many ways later in life.
Despite all that I know about the subaltern I have never been more agonized with the thought of subalternity and how it attaches itself to someone making them voice-less. There were so many things that came to mind while reading this painful account. And I would like to approach this particular blog more personally than I have ever done so before.
The first time I truly related tot he text was when Benjamin says after being caught in his journey to freedom, "No, I did not think of him. When a man is hunted like a wild beast he forgets there is a God, a heaven. He forgets every thing in his struggle to get beyond the reach of the bloodhounds."
This told me how the hardship of the level that the slaves endure can drive them either way and this came into contrast with what I know or have read about the slaves and how they turned to Christianity in order to justify the hardships they bear. Some or even most of them did but there were some who refused to have faith on a cruel divine.
The other thing that I noticed was how blackness or color is a common feature associated with slaves or slavery, yet Harriet Jacobs makes a comment in her account at the time when her master has started making advances towards her, "No matter whether the slave girl be as black as ebony or as fair as her mistress. In either case, there is no shadow of law to protect her from insult, from violence, or even from death; all these are inflicted by fiends who bear the shape of men." So there are certain attributes of this condition that will apply to just one gender. The other reason why being a woman AND a slave is also a much more horrible place to be is because a woman's worth is only valued by if she increases her Master's stock of slaves as Jacobs points out. All of this is a testament to the intersectionality and how a person can be the subaltern buried under so many different layers of subalternity. For instance the mother slave is silenced in all accounts. She has no control over he her own life or body or sexuality. She has no control over her own marriage or relationships. She has no control over whose child she bears and even when she has born her masters child, she has no control over their condition and where they might be taken or what might be made of them. And this applies to so many others.
Another thing that came to light when I was reading was the idea that even though the slave is dehumanized in the eyes of the master, on a certain level this dehumanization is reciprocated when the slave holders are referred to as blood hounds or when their hearts are called a "mystic clock that beats in their chest and they are deaf to it".
I inferred from this that it feels better to dehumanize one's attackers and torturers because it is easier to say that a monster did these horrible things than to say that another human being did these horrible things.
The torture of the life of a bond-man or a bond-woman is experienced so deeply and is a violation that is so great as Jacobs says, "I know that some are too much brutalized by slavery to feel the humiliation of their position; but many slaves feel it most acutely, and shrink from the memory of it."
It is unbearable to imagine how these brutalities left scars that couldn't possibly heal and even if they could, they didn't until the end of their lives.
A question that came to mind constantly was where d I find the subaltern or who is the subaltern. It is the slave girl, it is the slave girl's brother or her uncles or her mother or her father or ever her mistress who was distressed by her husband to an extent. If I take spivaks definition of how the subaltern is excluded from the access to power structures then I must say apart from the very wealthy slave owners I become inclined to call several of the people mentioned in jacobs' account the subaltern. Subalternity in my opinion was a characterisitic that attaches itself to these people, to some more than others but in most ways it silences them not because they cant speak but because their voice isn't part of the dominant narrative no one is willing to hear them. They are simply not heard. The other thing that it very obviously does is that strips the subaltern from any agency. Even the mistress of the happy family when married to her slave holding husband was incapable of stopping any of the horrific acts he did on to her slaves, The lack of agency finds the slaves from birth but can manifest in so many ways later in life.
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