Slavery

doi:10.1017/9781009071550.003

1 - Slavery

from Part I - Histories

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 July 2022

Maisha L. Wester

Edited by

Stephen Shapiro and

Mark Storey

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Stephen Shapiro: Affiliation:
University of Warwick
Mark Storey: Affiliation:
University of Warwick

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Summary

Modern Black horror literature and film depict the complex mechanisms of social death threatening contemporary African Americans. Drawing on slavery to metaphorize social death, texts like Linden Hills and Stigmata, films such as The House Invictus and popular media like Lovecraft Country and “This Is America” also reveal how the lure of the American Dream seduces African Americans into colluding in their own suffering and the suffering of others like them. Yet even as slavery is presented as a point of historical horror, it is also presented as a source of ancestral knowledge, as African American artists rewrite the history of Black slave resistance to urge modern audiences to a much needed and long-overdue revolution.

Keywords

American Gothic Black horror fiction and film slave insurrection social death ancestral resistance intraracial oppression social/racial revolution

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Companion to American Horror , pp. 15 - 28

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009071550.003 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2022

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References

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