Sovereignty and Post-Coloniality. The Reproduction of Hegemonic Discourse and Legitimization of Sovereign Violence Against the American Slave

Essay from the year 2016 in the subject History - America grade: A course: History of the United States language: English abstract: I aim to explore the question of American slavery in the mid 19th century by looking through literary legal and post-colonial lenses in an effort to show how abolition-era literary narratives utilize stereotype to reproduce a racist discourse and further how legal documents and actions reduce the slave to 'homo sacer' through a state of exception ultimately making the slave the subject of legitimized sovereign violence.Uncle Tom's Cabin published in 1852 by Harriet Beecher Stowe is an anti-slavery abolition-era narrative detailing the lives of a black slave family in the south. Though written with good intentions and anti-slavery sentiments Stowe deploys a hegemonic ideology by confining slaves to their stereotypic bounds-lamenting slavery while utilizing a typical Africanist-African-American depiction of slaves. Stowe reproduces a racist discourse by constructing stereotypical characterizations of black slaves; specifically their appearance and how they behave in comparison to their white counterparts.