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Antebellum abolitionist writing has long been revered by cultural historians and literary scholars for its social and political role in bringing about the end of slavery in the United States. But what happened to abolitionist texts, which originally urged a pointed and timely social agenda, after emancipation? Most critical conversations around major abolitionist texts focus on their original publications. This study, however, demonstrates the significance of the republication, adaptation, and reception of those texts years later, well after slavery had been abolished but when the many legacies of slavery still defined a rapidly evolving political culture. Drawing on archival research and the methodological tools of book history, “Beyond Obsolescence” traces and analyzes texts that were revised, adapted, and republished during Reconstruction (1863 to 1877)—a time during which linguistic and narrative revisions both reflected and helped to produce the dramatic shifts occurring across the social landscape of the United States. The dissertation investigates a series of case studies that propose a way to read such textual revision in relationship to the shifting political culture of Reconstruction and the changing identities of African Americans within that political culture. Through a consideration of the writings and revised texts of Harriet Jacobs, Lydia Maria Child, William Wells Brown, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and George Aiken, the project demonstrates how writers, editors, and playwrights reshaped their work in response to the demands of their audiences as well as public debates about the meaning of slavery, emancipation, and Constitutional change. These dynamic texts would keep alive a rich tradition of abolitionism even as they underwent revisions to meet the exigencies of a postbellum environment. Ultimately, “Beyond Obsolescence” provides a novel account of some of the most familiar anti-slavery texts and brings to light a crucial but overlooked history of US abolitionist literature. / text

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo reconstituir e investigar algumas ações abolicionistas ocorridas no município de Jacareí na década de 1880, especialmente através da atuação de indivíduos que protagonizaram dois marcos da história desse movimento na localidade: o ato de expulsão de abolicionistas ocorrido em 26 de novembro de 1883 e a fundação do Clube Abolicionista em agosto de 1887. A partir da análise de fontes documentais produzidas pela Polícia, pela Justiça, em suas instâncias municipais e provinciais, e por escravocratas e abolicionistas da localidade podemos identificar as distintas formas de atuação dos sujeitos das ações abolicionistas naqueles momentos específicos, em 1883 e 1887, e as diferentes percepções que tais agentes tinham sobre a legitimidade da escravidão e da propriedade escrava. / This paper aims to reconstruct and investigate some abolitionists actions that occurred in the Jacareí municipality in the 1880s, especially through the actions of individuals who leaded two milestones in the history of this movement in the locality: the expulsion of abolitionists occurred in November 26th of 1883 and the foundation of the Clube Abolicionista in August of 1887. Through the analysis of documentary sources produced by the Police, Justice, in their municipal and provincial authorities, and by the slaves owners and abolitionists of the locality, we can identify the different forms of operation adopted by the subjects of the abolitionism actions in those specific moments of 1883 and 1887, and the different perceptions that these agents had on the legitimacy of slavery and the slave ownership.

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo reconstituir e investigar algumas ações abolicionistas ocorridas no município de Jacareí na década de 1880, especialmente através da atuação de indivíduos que protagonizaram dois marcos da história desse movimento na localidade: o ato de expulsão de abolicionistas ocorrido em 26 de novembro de 1883 e a fundação do Clube Abolicionista em agosto de 1887. A partir da análise de fontes documentais produzidas pela Polícia, pela Justiça, em suas instâncias municipais e provinciais, e por escravocratas e abolicionistas da localidade podemos identificar as distintas formas de atuação dos sujeitos das ações abolicionistas naqueles momentos específicos, em 1883 e 1887, e as diferentes percepções que tais agentes tinham sobre a legitimidade da escravidão e da propriedade escrava. / This paper aims to reconstruct and investigate some abolitionists actions that occurred in the Jacareí municipality in the 1880s, especially through the actions of individuals who leaded two milestones in the history of this movement in the locality: the expulsion of abolitionists occurred in November 26th of 1883 and the foundation of the Clube Abolicionista in August of 1887. Through the analysis of documentary sources produced by the Police, Justice, in their municipal and provincial authorities, and by the slaves owners and abolitionists of the locality, we can identify the different forms of operation adopted by the subjects of the abolitionism actions in those specific moments of 1883 and 1887, and the different perceptions that these agents had on the legitimacy of slavery and the slave ownership.

The narratives of abolitionist thinkers Frederick Douglass - My Bondage and My Freedom - and Harriet Jacobs - Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - both include instances of the authors engaging in resistance against their slaveholders that do not free them from slavery. I begin with these narratives of resistance and make the interpretive claim that both Douglass and Jacobs took themselves to be free in their acts of resistance even though they were still in conditions we would not associate with freedom. In doing so, I determine that Douglass takes himself to be free because he is able to regain an internal sense of self-respect. Differently, I argue that Jacobs takes herself to be free because she is able to exert control over her material circumstances by identifying and pursuing her goal of sexual and reproductive autonomy to the best of her ability. This difference in understanding of freedom is surprising since Douglass and Jacobs find themselves in similar situations. I proceed by addressing this surprise and making the claim that the form of freedom Jacobs found in resistance is preferable to the form of freedom found by Douglass. In order to make this claim, I draw on Isaiah Berlin's discussion of freedom in "Two Concepts of Liberty" and find that Douglass achieves a form of freedom that isolates himself from his external desires whereas Jacobs does not. Jacobs' act of resistance is tightly connected to her desires. I demonstrate that connection to desires in resistance is important because it allows an agent to develop a sense of practical agency which allows them to adapt to future circumstances. Jacobs' understanding of freedom is ultimately preferable because it tells us what it is like to find freedom in our immediate circumstances through persistence. / Master of Arts / It might seem unusual to think of ourselves as being free when we are in circumstances where we are clearly dominated, interfered with, and unable to act according to our will. However, in this paper I argue that this occurs in the narratives of abolitionist thinkers Frederick Douglass - My Bondage and My Freedom - and Harriet Jacobs - Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. This paper is - in part - an attempt to understand what Douglass and Jacobs could possibly mean when they say they are free even though they are not in conditions we would typically associate with freedom. I proceed by demonstrating that Douglass finds freedom because he is able to regain his sense of internal self-respect while isolating himself from the consequences of his act of resistance. Jacobs finds freedom in a different way. To Jacobs, freedom means exerting control over her conditions in a way that brings her material circumstances closer to what she desires - even if the result is imperfect. This difference in the meanings of freedom is surprising because it highlights just how rich and complicated freedom found in resistance is. After establishing this, I then transition to addressing if one form of freedom is preferable to another. I argue that the form of freedom Jacobs found in resistance is preferable to the form of freedom found by Douglass. I draw on the literature to demonstrate that the form of freedom found by Douglass is internal, individual, and achieved by Douglass giving up the things he desires. Differently, Jacobs' act of resistance is tightly connected to the things she desires. I demonstrate that connection to desires in resistance is important because it allows an agent to develop a sense of practical agency which is a quality that allows them to adapt their actions to future circumstances by taking both their desires and conditions into account. Jacobs' understanding of freedom is ultimately preferable because it tells us what it is like to find freedom in our immediate circumstances through persistence.

This ethnographic dissertation project is an applied philosophical project that takes an ontological and critical phenomenological approach to the enactment of carceral bodies. This dissertation set out to answer two central questions. First, how do jail intake processes enact carceral bodies (analog and digital) and what are the ontological implications? Second, how are jail intake processes reflective of the values and logics of a carceral society? The process of answering these questions offers an early attempt at empirical abolitionist science and technology studies research as it offers an intervention in the essentializing biomedical and criminological understandings of "the criminal." This is achieved by tracing the enactment pf carceral bodies across the domains of datafication, space, and time. First, with the advent of digital technologies, the science and technology of criminality continues to be informed by the desire to use metrics to identify and define criminal man. Like their precursors, however; when taken together these quantified characteristics contribute to the production of a body predisposed not to crime but to incarceration. This predisposition arises out of datafication and algorithmic characterization. The data comprising the raw material of this assignation pulls together the digitization of one's race, ethnicity, school (reflective of the school-to-prison-pipeline), address, sex, socio-economic status, disability status, mental health status, etc. Carceral algorithms, and the structures they arise out of, inform one's incarcerability. The carceral body of data and its risks are multiple and are represented in a number of ways, just as it is experienced variously. There are infinite permutations of the intake process across which categories come to stand in for human suffering, for risk, for job performance, etc. The data generated and its infrastructures are reflective of the broader political and socioeconomic context. The role of data collection, management, and analysis surrounding the intake process makes visible the politics and stakes of the carceral bodies enacted. The two primary epistemologies and attendant professions brought to bear upon the carceral body are medicine and criminology. These epistemologies rely upon quantification, categorization, and calculations of risk to generate data from which carceral knowledge is made (and in turn makes). This project characterizes the data infrastructures of the jails as socio-technical objects, practices, and architectures that are multiple and complex. It is through this lens that managerialism, algorithms, and knowledge production are characterized. Together, these facets provide insight into the making of carceral bodies of data and the logics and mechanisms of the carceral-data-industrial-complex. Second, this project addresses the spatialities that carceral bodies are generative of and situated in. The spaces of intake are suffused with values, politics, and epistemologies that play out in a number of ways. In order draw out these facets, the ontological approach was integrated with carceral geography. This approach elevates micro-scales of space and time, placing the personal and particular beside within the broader social and political contexts. This shift in scale has important implications for the study of correctional facilities as it is from this scale that the complexities, relationalities, materialities, contradictions, and multiplicities are visible. This approach relates to Foucault's carceral archipelago, which conveys the complexities of carceral spaces, surveillances, and their leakiness. Carceral geography's reading of Foucault requires an engagement across carceral societies that incorporates the body as a prime site from which to understand complex dynamics of control. Carceral geography offers a helpful approach drawing out spatialities enacted through performances and experiences, making concertina wire fences permeable and ever-mutable. The carceral body carries carceral spaces within it and beyond it that arise out of epistemes, policies, and practices that are mutually reinforcing and enmeshed. These embodied spaces include emotions and mental self-scapes alongside digitally recorded diagnoses and correctional designations. When considering how security infrastructures permeate society, well beyond correctional facility gates, this has important implications for this carceral society. The buildings and physical spaces of incarceration are read as reflective of the values and logics of the state, this brings into view the extra-penological function of incarceration, in which specific populations are disproportionately removed and disciplined/ punished by the state even before they are determined to be guilty or not guilty by a court. This hyper-incarceration of certain populations underlines the spatial logics of carceral networks that reflect the machinations of a neoliberal state that disappears those who have been Othered via carceral networks. This takes on even more problematic hues when considering the torturous conditions unsuitable for any creature, including humans. Third, despite Western constructs of linear or absolute time, the study of the carceral temporal body demonstrates the relativities, multiplicities, and disjunctures that challenge the notion of a universal clock. This dissertation tells of carceral bodies made into and across multiple time points. Bodies become metaphoric timeclocks through managerial oversight processes in which they are assigned varying times across different electronic record systems, with these different from their time of arrest and remand. In this space, the temporal jurisdictions diverge, giving rise to frictions and conflict. Further, these assigned temporalities differ greatly from the ways time is experienced across embodied states (e.g. experiencing acute withdrawal symptoms). The theoretical frameworks employed to understand carceral time are designed to address how carceral bodies come to be anticipated. In part, this is enacted through professional and bureaucratic routines that are often protracted and repetitive. These routines give rise to waiting and urgency. This empirical engagement with carceral temporalities draws out epistemic and experiential forces. Ultimately, this dissertation suggests that drawing out the ontological multiplicities of mass incarceration can countermand its fixities and generate abolitionist epistemologies. Abolition has generative potentials that coalesce with science and technology studies' investment in the otherwise. Over time carceral abolition has come to refer to a wide range of social movements, theoretical frameworks, and activism. The various approaches to abolition share a sense of urgency and resistance to gradual or eventual change, as this has historically led to the perpetuation and maintenance of racialized criminal justice systems and mass incarceration. Carceral epistemologies (e.g. penology, criminology, biomedicine, public health) are steeped in racisms and classisms, which inform broader imaginaries of crime and criminality. As political discourse has been reduced to simplistic chants and pithy soundbites, the aim of this dissertation has been to "complicate the discourse" surrounding the carceral-industrial-complex and the carceral body in particular. Understanding the carceral body through its ontological multiplicities serves as the grounds from which resistances to the status quo can be formulated. This is vitally important in light of the diffuse assemblages detailed in this project and the pervasiveness of carceral logics. In sum, this dissertation has demonstrated that carceral bodies are made and not born. It points to the difficult work still needed and the utility of ethnography in eliciting the multiplicities of practices and materialities in carceral settings. The abolitionist dreams arising from this project demand the embrace of ontological multiplicities as new logics and imaginaries unweave the criminal justice system. While it does not fall within the purview of this project to delineate a specific set of directives, it does suggest that abolitionist dis-epistemology requires logics and tactics equally as multifaceted and nuanced as the criminal justice system itself. / Doctor of Philosophy / This is an applied philosophy project based on ethnographic research in the New York City jails. It provides insight into the practices of jail intake as a way to draw out the ways in which carceral bodies come to be enacted. The project grows out of feminist science studies. The two central questions are 1) how do jail intake processes produce carceral bodies (analog and digital) and what are the implications? 2) how are jail intake processes reflective of the values and logics of a carceral society? These questions are addressed through the domains of data, space, and time, which serve as the organizing framework of this project. The focus on intake enactments draws out the multiplicities of carceral realities, which has the potential to resist essentializing conceptualizations of the criminal. In doing so, this dissertation project demonstrates the potential for abolitionist science and technology studies to disrupt the criminal justice status quo.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University / In the following thesis I have attempted to illustrate words of a hundred years ago with appropriate photographs of present-day remains of an era. The years covered in the major sections are 1831 to 1848; the subject is slavery and abolition in New England. The Liberator was the most renowned antislavery paper. Selections from it form the text of the major part of this thesis. Complete bound editions of The Liberator may be found in the Boston Public Library, Main Branch, Copley Square. With the permission of the Supervisor I was able to photograph portions of the paper.

Esta tese investiga as performances de confronto político desempenhadas pelas associações abolicionistas após a promulgação da lei 3.353, que declarou extinta a escravidão no Brasil. O objetivo é entender o que se passa com um movimento social depois que sua principal reivindicação é atingida. Neste caso, trata-se de investigar se os principais atores do movimento abolicionista, a saber, as associações abolicionistas, continuaram em atividade e o que faziam após a abolição. A via metodológica escolhida para a investigação consistiu na quantificação da informação disponível na própria imprensa abolicionista. A pesquisa consistiu no levantamento e leitura de periódicos abolicionistas da província do Rio de Janeiro, publicados entre 13 de maio de 1888 (data da lei áurea) e 15 de novembro de 1889 (data da proclamação da república). A partir desta leitura dos jornais foi construído um banco de dados, com identificação das associações abolicionistas que permaneceram em atividade mesmo depois de atingida a sua principal demanda, bem como das suas performances políticas. A intenção desta tese é tripla: correlacionar performances encenadas no pós-abolição com as do pré-abolição para verificar se elas preservam o padrão de ativismo construído pelo movimento abolicionista; argumentar que as associações são uma ponte organizacional suspendida no tempo, permitindo a transmissão de padrões de performances de um período a outro, assim promovendo a ligação entre ciclos de ativismos; e por último, analisar as interações de confronto das associações com as instituições políticas, observando as aberturas e fechamentos institucionais a elas. A tese demonstra a continuidade do ativismo abolicionista no pós-abolição, identificando 10 associações, sendo a Confederação Abolicionista a matriz organizacional, atuantes no imediato pós-abolição no Rio de Janeiro num contexto adverso, no qual as instituições políticas se mostraram mais refratarias do que receptivas aos abolicionistas. / This thesis investigates the performances of contentious politics that were carried out by abolitionist associations after the enactment of the 3.353 law, which declared that slavery in Brazil was extinguished. The goal is to understand what happens with a social movement when it accomplished its main claim. In this case, it is about revealing if the main actors of the abolitionist movement the abolitionist associations maintained their activities and what they did after the abolition of slavery. The methodological path chosen for the investigation consists in quantifying the information made available by the abolitionist press itself. The research consisted in reading and mapping abolitionist journals from the province of Rio de Janeiro, published between May, 13th of 1988 (the day the Golden Law Lei Áurea - was signed) and November, 15th (the day of the proclamation of the Republic). From the reading of the journals, we built a database, identifying the abolitionist associations that kept their activities even after achieving their main goal, as well as their political performances. We have three goals: to correlate performances in mis-en-scène in the post-abolition with the ones from the pre-abolition period, in order to see if they maintain the activism standard which was built by the abolitionist movement; to argue that associations are an abeyance organizational bridge in time, allowing the transmission of performance patterns from one period to another, thus promoting the connection between activism cycles; lastly, to analyze the interaction of contention of associations with political institutions, observing the institutional opennes and closures that they were subject to. The thesis shows the continuity of abolitionist activism in the post-abolition period, identifying 10 acting associations after the abolition in Rio de Janeiro. The Abolitionist Confederation was the organizational matrix even in an adverse post-abolition context, in which the political institutions demonstrated being more refractory than receptive to the abolitionists.

Esta tese investiga as performances de confronto político desempenhadas pelas associações abolicionistas após a promulgação da lei 3.353, que declarou extinta a escravidão no Brasil. O objetivo é entender o que se passa com um movimento social depois que sua principal reivindicação é atingida. Neste caso, trata-se de investigar se os principais atores do movimento abolicionista, a saber, as associações abolicionistas, continuaram em atividade e o que faziam após a abolição. A via metodológica escolhida para a investigação consistiu na quantificação da informação disponível na própria imprensa abolicionista. A pesquisa consistiu no levantamento e leitura de periódicos abolicionistas da província do Rio de Janeiro, publicados entre 13 de maio de 1888 (data da lei áurea) e 15 de novembro de 1889 (data da proclamação da república). A partir desta leitura dos jornais foi construído um banco de dados, com identificação das associações abolicionistas que permaneceram em atividade mesmo depois de atingida a sua principal demanda, bem como das suas performances políticas. A intenção desta tese é tripla: correlacionar performances encenadas no pós-abolição com as do pré-abolição para verificar se elas preservam o padrão de ativismo construído pelo movimento abolicionista; argumentar que as associações são uma ponte organizacional suspendida no tempo, permitindo a transmissão de padrões de performances de um período a outro, assim promovendo a ligação entre ciclos de ativismos; e por último, analisar as interações de confronto das associações com as instituições políticas, observando as aberturas e fechamentos institucionais a elas. A tese demonstra a continuidade do ativismo abolicionista no pós-abolição, identificando 10 associações, sendo a Confederação Abolicionista a matriz organizacional, atuantes no imediato pós-abolição no Rio de Janeiro num contexto adverso, no qual as instituições políticas se mostraram mais refratarias do que receptivas aos abolicionistas. / This thesis investigates the performances of contentious politics that were carried out by abolitionist associations after the enactment of the 3.353 law, which declared that slavery in Brazil was extinguished. The goal is to understand what happens with a social movement when it accomplished its main claim. In this case, it is about revealing if the main actors of the abolitionist movement the abolitionist associations maintained their activities and what they did after the abolition of slavery. The methodological path chosen for the investigation consists in quantifying the information made available by the abolitionist press itself. The research consisted in reading and mapping abolitionist journals from the province of Rio de Janeiro, published between May, 13th of 1988 (the day the Golden Law Lei Áurea - was signed) and November, 15th (the day of the proclamation of the Republic). From the reading of the journals, we built a database, identifying the abolitionist associations that kept their activities even after achieving their main goal, as well as their political performances. We have three goals: to correlate performances in mis-en-scène in the post-abolition with the ones from the pre-abolition period, in order to see if they maintain the activism standard which was built by the abolitionist movement; to argue that associations are an abeyance organizational bridge in time, allowing the transmission of performance patterns from one period to another, thus promoting the connection between activism cycles; lastly, to analyze the interaction of contention of associations with political institutions, observing the institutional opennes and closures that they were subject to. The thesis shows the continuity of abolitionist activism in the post-abolition period, identifying 10 acting associations after the abolition in Rio de Janeiro. The Abolitionist Confederation was the organizational matrix even in an adverse post-abolition context, in which the political institutions demonstrated being more refractory than receptive to the abolitionists.

This thesis considers the experiences that motivated the creation of an 1863 painting by American artist Eastman Johnson entitled The Lord is My Shepherd. An examination of the painting—which depicts a black man reading a Bible—reveals multiple artistic, social, political, and spiritual influences. Created in the midst of the American Civil War, the painting's inspiration derived from Johnson's New England childhood, training in Europe, encounters with the Transcendentalist movement, and his abolitionist views. As a result, The Lord is My Shepherd is a culminating work in Johnson's oeuvre that was prompted by years of experience and observations in an age of rampant racism and civil war. It is also argued that The Lord is My Shepherd has diaristic qualities in that Johnson explored significant social and political issues of the day such as slavery through his work. Before now, this painting has been considered a relatively minor work within Johnson's oeuvre. This thesis seeks to change that perception and raise awareness of the contextual significance of The Lord is My Shepherd.