Research Catalog

Title

The horrible gift of freedom : Atlantic slavery and the representation of emancipation / Marcus Wood.

Author

Wood, Marcus

Publication

Athens : University of Georgia Press, c2010.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xvi, 442 p., [12] p. of plates : ill. (some col.); 25 cm.

Summary

"Marcus Wood takes a troubled and troubling look at the iconography inspired by the abolition of slavery across the Atlantic diaspora. Why, he asks, did imagery showing the very instant of the birth of black slave freedom invariably personify Liberty as a white woman? Where did the image of the enchained kneeling slave, ubiquitous in abolitionist visual culture on both sides of the Atlantic, come from? And, most important, why was freedom invariably depicted as a gift from white people to black people?" "In order to assess what the inheritance of emancipation imagery means now and to speculate about where it may travel in the future, Wood spends the latter parts of this book looking at the 2007 bicentenary of the 1807 Slave Trade Abolition Act. In this context a provocative range of material is analyzed including commemorative postage stamps, museum exhibits, street performances, religious ceremonies, political protests, and popular film." "By taking a new look at the role of the visual arts in promoting the "great emancipation swindle," Wood brings into the open the manner in which the slave power and its inheritors have single-mindedly focused on celebratory cultural myths that function to diminish both white culpability and black outrage. This book demands that the living lies developed around the memory of the emancipation moment in Europe and America need to be not only reassessed but demolished." --Book Jacket.

Series Statement

Race in the Atlantic world, 1700-1900

Uniform Title

Race in the Atlantic world, 1700-1900

Subject

• Geschichte 1700-1900
• Slavery in art
• Liberty in art
• Slaves > Emancipation
• Race relations
• Kunst
• Sklaverei (Motiv)
• Freiheit (Motiv)

Note

• "A Sarah Mills Hodge Fund publications"--T.p. verso.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

"The horrible gift of freedom" : an odd title? -- The arts and craft of freedom : picturing liberty and the free slave -- Pragmatic popular propagations of the emancipation moment -- No-go areas and the emancipation moment : running-dancing-revolting slaves -- Stamping out the memory of slavery : the 2007 commemoratives and philatelic approaches to bondage and freedom -- Supine in perpetuity : the description of the Brookes in 2007 -- The horrible gift of freedom and the 1807/2007 bicentennial.

ISBN

• 9780820334264 (hardcover : alk. paper)
• 082033426X (hardcover : alk. paper)
• 9780820334271 (pbk. : alk. paper)
• 0820334278 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2009026743

OCLC

• 318869627
• SCSB-10868448

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library