De-Romanticizing the History of Slavery in the United States: The Tragic Mode in Saidiya Hartman’s Scenes of Subjection

This article starts with Scenes of Subjection, the first book published by African-American historian Saidiya Hartman, to reflect on the forms of narrating the past of slavery. First, I briefly overview slavery historiography in the United States and describe her place in this scenario. Then, I present some of the problematizations elaborated by historian Hayden White about the forms of past entanglement in the writing of history, something that is essential to understanding the work developed by Hartman and which relates to the next subtopic, in which I discuss the narrative possibilities of tragedy and the tragic. Finally, I discuss how, by applying these demands, Scenes of Subjection provokes us to think, theoretically and methodologically, about other forms of writing slavery history.

history writing; narrative; slavery