Lit Med. 2021;39(2):273-295. doi: 10.1353/lm.2021.0024.
With careful attention to nineteenth-century race science's psychiatric discourses about slavery and insanity that led to the management and containment of African Americans in or on plantations, asylums, and society writ large, this article examines various themes, narrative sketches and intertextualities in Incidents that illustrate Harriet Jacobs's theoretical conceptions about the devastating mental harm caused by forms of violence that were integral to the practice of slavery vis-à-vis black women-sexualized violence, forced and controlled reproduction, separation from children between and within plantations, runaway attempts, witnessing violence, and hazardous labor conditions. I argue that Jacobs's narrative troubles visions of resiliency and resistance during slavery that elide the impact of the institution's routinized violence. It demonstrates that enslaved women's embodied experiences of psychological suffering were vexed, multilayered, and ongoing.
本文通过仔细研究 19 世纪种族科学关于奴隶制和精神错乱的精神病学论述，这些论述导致了对非洲裔美国人在种植园、精神病院和整个社会中的管理和控制，探讨了《Incidents》中的各种主题、叙事素描和互文性，这些主题、叙事素描和互文性说明了哈丽雅特·雅各布斯关于奴隶制实践中对黑人女性造成的毁灭性精神伤害的理论概念——性暴力、强制和控制生育、种植园内外的母子分离、逃跑企图、目睹暴力和危险的劳动条件。我认为，雅各布斯的叙述扰乱了奴隶制时期关于韧性和抵抗的观点，这些观点忽略了该制度常规化暴力的影响。它表明，被奴役妇女的心理痛苦的身体体验是复杂的、多层次的和持续的。
