Slavery and Ontology
“The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. Freedom and slavery are mental states.”
* Mahatma Gandhi
The history of slavery in the United States tells a story of magnanimous cruelty and brutality. Evidenced in every historical text handed down from before the aftermath of the American Civil War, slaves in North America faced the most extreme physical hardships imaginable. However, a seemingly overlooked aspect of the cycle of violence in the American machine of slavery solidifies when the period is examined from less a historical lens and more a philosophical approach is taken. This approach lends itself to the consideration that the larger brutalization of slaves in the United States was not through corporeal damage but a commencement of hostilities against the very being of slaves, as this attack perpetuated the institution of slavery against both those bonded and their owners. Methods of ontological carnage wrought against the slaves incorporated the elimination virtually every route of reprieve. The evaporation of a family and community support structure hindered any attempts to organize large-scale rebellion. Additionally, the very nature of slavery purges the ability of unbound physical movement, a required aspect of the human psyche for ontological advancement (Hardt and Negri 170). Finally, the double-edged gift of Anglo-religion granted to the slaves effluenced the possibility of salvation, by moralizing and divinating the mechanics of slavery.
Regarding the ontology of slaves and the foray against it, Martin Heidegger indicates in his Sein und Zeit that slaves are “given the agent of intentional acts which are connected by the unity of a meaning. Thus physical being has nothing to do with being a person” (48). Slaves were regarded as being nothing but the physical, as ‘non-people’. This aided the perpetuation of the institution of slavery immensely. If through mechanical dehumanization, the slaves could be removed of any being, there could be no denial of their status as slaves. As a tactic, however, simply subtracting ‘personage’ from slaves was ineffective for subjugating a populace greater than the non-slaves imposing the rules of the system. Coupling this dehumanization with the amputation of a community support system by the breaking and separating of families, however, proved very effective for imprisoning and consequentially extracting submissiveness from an entire people (Wikipedia). In her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe describes a heartbreaking scene where a mother and her son are torn apart by slave traders. “The poor victims of the sale, who had been brought up in one place together for years, gathered round the old mother whose agony was pitiful to see” (Stowe 137). Scenes similar to the one Stowe describes were a common occurrence under the tutelage of American slavery; and, to be sure, the political or revolutionary power of the slaves could have been greatly advanced if such attacks against the being of slaves had been limited.
Modern philosophy regards free movement of the subaltern as a crucible for revolution against the hands of the oppressor. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri assert in their Empire, that “The movements of the [free people of the world] designate new spaces, and [their] journeys establish new residences. Autonomous movement is what defines the place proper to [freedom]” (397). This autonomous movement, literally the ability to move physically without persecution, arbitrates the free from the fettered. This is manifest in American history, the very conception of the frontier and the idea and practice of an open space of democracy are littered with this ideology. Slavery, however, as a systematic oppressor, must necessarily limit the movement of its subjects, both key-holder and shackled. If slaves had been permitted passage without hindrance, they would hardly have been slaves. But, slaves generated the first real American ontological crisis, as an insurmountable barrier to the formation of a free people. The great American anti-colonial constitution had to integrate this paradigmatic colonial institution at its very heart. “Black labor was an essential support of the new United States: African Americans had to be included in the Constitution but could not be included equally” (Hardt and Negri 171). A delicate solution to this peculiar was drafted into the new Constitution, arrived at by the tumultuous navigation of post-revolutionary/birth-democratic politics. The framers of the United States of America were forced to quantify the political value of the different races. They declared that the number of representatives “shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons” [emphasis added] (U.S. Constitution). Black slavery was paradoxically angled against and core to the founding of the nation. The dual-nature of the legal standing of slavery precludes any potential for the slaves breaking the machinery and tearing down the livery of systematic, legal oppression. The absence of any hope for a sliver of freedom, led many slaves to believe their relief would come after death.
The precursor of mass conversion to the Anglo-religion by North American slaves was the first "racial benefit" in the United States. In many states, a Christian could not be a permanent slave. However, because Christianity welcomed converts, this boundary was less than ideal for its primary function. It was too porous. The issue of slavery gave conversion to Christianity high value, regardless of religious benefit. Because substantial numbers of slaves converted to Christianity, a more rigid boundary was needed. A new, rigid boundary, long sought after by slave owners and their kin, was established on September 23, 1667, when the municipal government of Williamsburg, Virginia ruled that slaves could no longer gain their freedom by converting to Christianity (Wikipedia). The new legal status of conversion proffered only the hope of salvation in the eyes of God. There would be no conversion to whiteness by black slaves.
The teachings of Christianity to the slaves were not standard, but closer to the archaic lessons presented to the serfs under the guidance of feudal landlords. These politically spun sermons hunted the humanity, the ontology, of the slaves by fashioning a belief based on acquiescing their subjugation. The cry of “obey thy master, the holder of the whip” could be heard across the eastern seaboard of the nineteenth century. This contrived message broke the spirit of rebellion in many slaves, as eternal rewards were supposedly taken from the disobedient. This promise of an ethereal reward, brokered for a corporeal experience of misery and pain, loss and injustice, was ontologically destructive for many slaves, as according to the Gospel, not the law, they and their masters were of one body in Christ; a bitter pill. But the devastation did not punctuate there, as these teachings accompanied quick rejection of any optimism for the slaves once freed, as the freed-people were treated with absolute anathema, being descents from “the cursed race of Canaan”. There would be no acculturation of the being, even in the case of freedom. Thus the borders were shut, the cells locked, and the shackles fixed on the slaves, literally in the present, ontologically in the future.
The process their dehumanization – the production of subjectivity as power, as the constitution of an autonomy that was reduced to non-being, non-personage, removed from any transcendent synthesis – was painstaking for slaves. Slaves were not afforded the luxury of hope. Slavery as a system fostered the flight of humanity for generations of African Americans. The removal of family support from individuals, the breakdown of free movement, and the exodus of free thought (replaced with visions of grandiose but unattainable afterlives) all perpetuated the ontological destruction of a slave populace. The revival of that same being, denigrated for over two hundred years, began repair at the famous words of the Great Emancipator, “ . . . on the first day of January . . . all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” (Lincoln 1)
Works Cited
Constitution of The United States of America. Article I, Section 2.
Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. Empire. Boston, MA: Harvard Publishing, 2000.
Heidegger, Martin. Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeir Verlag, 1953.
Lincoln, Abraham. Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. September 22, 1862.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. New York, NY: Bantam Dell, 1851-52.
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. "History of slavery in the United States." 13 May 2006. 13 May 2006.
***Forgive me for the MLA; this was a class assignment ^^ ***