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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/110925 |
| Date | 23 June 2022 |
| Creators | Malley, Colleen Margaret |
| Contributors | Philosophy, Yaure, Philip Christopher, Hersch, Gil, MacKenzie, Jordan |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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