<p>Responding to African American literary criticism's recent engagements with contemporary U.S. imprisonment, <italic>From Slave Ship to Supermax</italic> traces the development of a heretofore un-theorized tradition in African American literature in which fiction writers bring to light the voice, critical thinking, and literary production of actual prisoner abuse survivors. This dissertation treats novelists James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Charles Johnson, and Ernest Gaines as the contemporary prison's literary intermediaries, as writers whose fictional narratives of jailhouse beatings, rape and wounding on slave ships, and state-sponsored execution are inspired and haunted by the critically-unexamined abuse stories of late-twentieth century prisoners. Drawing from the field of African American literary theory, political prisoners' writings, as well as prisoners' low-circulating zines, journals, and pamphlets, I argue that the production and distribution of abuse narratives by African American fiction's captive characters illuminate the clandestine and insurgent literary practices of actual abused prisoners. This revelatory work accomplished by Baldwin, Morrison, Johnson, and Gaines demonstrates the radical utility of African American fiction at a moment in which prisoner abuse is widespread, underrepresented, and rarely documented in a way that affords the abused prisoner any measure of authorial control. In contradistinction to the victimization narratives that typify mainstream prisoner abuse stories, stories which appear in the human rights literature of advocacy organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, this dissertation concludes that contemporary African American novelists emphasize the authorial control of abused captives and thus make apparent the rich complexities of their interior lives and the way in which the repressive spaces to which</p><p>they are confined are also generative sites for reimagining the self and community.</p> / Dissertation

218f. / Submitted by Hozana Azevedo (hazevedo@ufba.br) on 2013-05-09T13:53:59Z No. of bitstreams: 1 “Perseguidores da espécie humana”, UFBA 2011.pdf: 2866168 bytes, checksum: 18e45ab29ae7c18c55a49c748a0abf4e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ana Portela(anapoli@ufba.br) on 2013-05-17T18:07:44Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 “Perseguidores da espécie humana”, UFBA 2011.pdf: 2866168 bytes, checksum: 18e45ab29ae7c18c55a49c748a0abf4e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-05-17T18:07:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 “Perseguidores da espécie humana”, UFBA 2011.pdf: 2866168 bytes, checksum: 18e45ab29ae7c18c55a49c748a0abf4e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / CNPq / O objetivo desta dissertação é um estudo dos capitães negreiros atuantes no tráfico atlântico de escravos africanos na Cidade da Bahia na primeira metade do século XVIII. Esta pesquisa intentou compreender as experiências destes sujeitos em busca de riqueza e distinção social na Salvador setecentista, suas condições materiais e os perigos enfrentados na lida no mar. Por fim, analiso a vida econômica desses sujeitos que além de comandar as embarcações, faziam o comércio na costa africana para os proprietários das embarcações, para outras pessoas e para eles mesmos, uma vez que eles também investiam no tráfico de escravos. O conhecimento de tais indivíduos lança luz sobre um lado da História da Diáspora Africana, que é conhecer os agentes responsáveis pela condução forçada dos africanos em diversos tipos de embarcações à vela, sob condições higiênicas e sanitárias inapropriadas que atingiam todos os presentes: africanos escravizados, tripulantes e os capitães negreiros / Salvador