Category: language

Saidiya Hartman, Columbia University
Torkwase Dyson,  Artist & Scholar
Marisa Fuentes, Rutgers University
Sarah Haley, Columbia University
Cameron Rowland, Artist & Scholar
Alex Weheliye, NorthWestern University

In Scenes of Subjection, Saidiya Hartman’s first book, now revised and expanded—her singular talents and analytical framework turn away from the “terrible spectacle” and toward the forms of routine terror and quotidian violence characteristic of slavery, illuminating the intertwining of injury, subjugation, and selfhood even in abolitionist depictions of enslavement. By attending to the withheld and overlooked at the margins of the historical archive, Hartman radically reshapes our understanding of history, in a work as resonant today as it was on first publication, now for a new generation of readers. This 25th anniversary edition features a new preface by the author, a foreword by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, an afterword by Marisa J. Fuentes and Sarah Haley, notations with Cameron Rowland, and compositions by Torkwase Dyson.