This weighty book intends to "tell the story of slave life as carefully and accurately as possible." Less given over to theoretical and topical polemic than Genovese's earlier works on Southern slavery, it is by no means a catalogue. It amplifies Genovese's stress on the humanity slaves were able to preserve through de facto accommodations on the part of both slave and master, through the reciprocal play of "elementary human reactions" across class and color lines, and through the slaves' "strong sense of stewardship" for one another. This is a necessary transcendence of many other historians' dehumanizing view of both slaves and slaveholders, and to it Genovese brings his intellectual expansiveness and depth of feeling as he further documents key points featured in The World the Slaveholders Made (1969) and The Red and the Black (1972): the resourcefulness and egalitarianism of many house servants, the protective, responsible character of many black drivers, the prevalence of family stability and the nourishment Christianity afforded against degradation. Some critics will argue persuasively that Genovese has not done justice to southern slavery's deprivation, brutality and murder. As a matter of page-by-page arithmetic, Genovese certainly places more weight on young folks' play by the cabin door than on "evidence of widespread dirt-eating." The question - raised very differently by Fogel and Engerman in Time on the Cross (KR, p. 220), whose econometric inferences crosshatch Genovese's view - is one of method and concept in shaping the evidence. The subject will be pursued in debates, and anyone concerned with human development should read Genovese's book to knowledgeably participate.
1 有用 司马文岚 2020-12-02 23:46:44
可以与斯科特“弱者的武器”对读:强调为什么奴隶的日常反抗非但不能推翻奴隶制,相反起到了加强的作用。第一,日常反抗把奴隶-奴隶主之间的矛盾私人化和地方化,奴隶只记得某些奴隶主的坏,而不去反思奴隶制本身。第二,这些日常反抗提前暴露和削弱了奴隶反抗的实力。总的来说,阶级觉悟不够。
1 有用 司马文岚 2020-12-02 23:46:44
可以与斯科特“弱者的武器”对读:强调为什么奴隶的日常反抗非但不能推翻奴隶制,相反起到了加强的作用。第一,日常反抗把奴隶-奴隶主之间的矛盾私人化和地方化,奴隶只记得某些奴隶主的坏,而不去反思奴隶制本身。第二,这些日常反抗提前暴露和削弱了奴隶反抗的实力。总的来说,阶级觉悟不够。