In:A Comparative Literary History of Modern Slavery: The Atlantic world and beyond
Edited by Madeleine Dobie, Mads Anders Baggesgaard and Karen-Margrethe Simonsen
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXVI] 2024
► pp. 18–33
Chapter 1Slavery, sentimentality and the abolition of affect
Published online: 12 December 2024
https://doi.org/10.1075/chlel.xxxvi.01fes
https://doi.org/10.1075/chlel.xxxvi.01fes
Abstract
This essay addresses the way details about the unspeakable conditions on the slave ships interrupt the
sentimentalization of the plight of the enslaved in order to examine the political volatility of affect — in particular, disgust — in
the late eighteenth-century metropolitan debates over the abolition of the slave trade. While disgust, with its capacity to assign
abject qualities to objects, would seem to be the province of the proslavery advocates seeking to strip the enslaved of their claim to
humanity, this volatile affect also plays a role in abolitionist efforts to convert visceral responses to descriptions of the Middle
Passage into an impetus for action, making dehumanizing revulsion into moral outrage.
Keywords: abolition, Great Britain Parliament, sentimentality, affect, slave trade, disgust
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