Description
Contesting Slave Masculinity in the American South demonstrates the significance of internal divisions, comparison, and conflict in shaping gender and status in slave communities of the American South. David Stefan Doddington seeks to move beyond unilateral discussions of slave masculinity, and instead demonstrates how the repressions of slavery were both personal and political. Rather than automatically support one another against an emasculatory white society, Doddington explores how enslaved people negotiated identities in relation to one another, through comparisons between men and different forms of manhood held up for judgment. An examination of the framework in which enslaved people crafted identities demonstrates the fluidity of gender as a social and cultural phenomenon that defied monolithic models of black masculinity, solidarity, and victimization. Focusing on work, authority, honor, sex, leisure, and violence, this book is a full-length treatment of the idea of 'masculinity' among slave communities of the Old South.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements; Introduction: 'Are you men?'; 1. 'If I had my life to live over, I would die fighting rather than be a slave again': resistance, manhood, and survival in slavery; 2. 'The best amongst them was picked for that job': authority, discipline, and masculinity; 3. 'I never seen such a worker as my father': work, industry, and masculinity; 4. 'He am big and 'cause he so he think everybody do what him say': manhood, sex, and power; 5. “The best man whipped and the other one took it”: violence, leisure, and masculinity; Conclusion: contesting slave masculinity; Bibliography; Index.
