Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T22:39:47.590Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Nat Turner and the Work of Enthusiasm

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Abstract

The discourse of enthusiasm in the antebellum United States played a pivotal role in cultural debates surrounding the right of black people to participate in the “age of Revolution,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson called the era in 1837. This argument is explored through the textual archive of Nat Turner's Rebellion (1831). During this period, enthusiasm could refer to either a democratic-sublime or a fanatical-delusional passion for freedom. The term was applied to Turner pejoratively, not so much because his rebellion represented an instance of wild fanaticism to white audiences but because it represented an instance of familiar democratic revolt inadmissibly claimed by black people. Turner makes his own rhetorical claims for the meaning of enthusiasm: the word signifies an ardent zeal that inspires both direct dissent against slavery and acts of communication that transmit to readers a fervor for occluded black freedoms.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Allmendinger, David F. Jr. “The Construction of The Confessions of Nat Turner.” Greenberg, Nat Turner 24–42.Google Scholar
Berlant, Lauren. “Intuitionists: History and the Affective Event.” American Literary History 20.4 (2008): 845–60. Print.Google Scholar
Breen, Patrick H. “A Prophet in His Own Land: Support for Nat Turner and His Rebellion within Southampton's Black Community.” Greenberg, Nat Turner 103–18.Google Scholar
Brennan, Teresa. The Transmission of Affect. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Brodhead, Richard. “Prophets in America ca. 1830: Emerson, Nat Turner, Joseph Smith.” Journal of Mormon History 29.1 (2003): 4265. Print.Google Scholar
Brown, William Wells. The Black Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements. 2nd ed. 1863. New York: Johnson Rpt., 1968. Print. Basic Afro-Amer. Rpt. Lib.Google Scholar
Brown, William WellsThe History of the Haitian Revolution.” Pamphlets of Protest: An Anthology of Early African American Protest Literature, 1790-1860. Ed. Newman, Richard, Rael, Patrick, and Lapsanksy, Phillip. New York: Routledge, 2001. 240–53. Print.Google Scholar
Buck-Morss, Susan. Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2009. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. New York: Penguin, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Chireau, Yvonne P. Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition. Berkeley: U of California P, 2003. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cromwell, John W. “The Aftermath of Nat Turner's Insurrection.” Tragle, Southampton Slave Revolt 370–92.Google Scholar
Dew, Thomas R.Abolition of Negro Slavery.” Turner, Confessions 112-31.Google Scholar
Douglass, Frederick. “If There Is No Struggle There Is No Progress.” Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787-1900. Ed. Foner, Philip Sheldon and Branham, Robert J. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1998. 308–12. Print.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Penguin, 1989. Print.Google Scholar
Egerton, Douglas R. “Nat Turner in a Hemispheric Context.” Greenberg, Nat Turner 134–47.Google Scholar
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Selected Writings of Emerson. Ed. McQuade, Donald. New York: Modern Lib., 1981. Print.Google Scholar
Foner, Eric, ed. Nat Turner. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1971. Print.Google Scholar
Garrison, William Lloyd. “The Liberator, September 3, 1831.” Foner 80-83.Google Scholar
Gibbs, Anna. “After Affect: Sympathy, Synchrony, and Mimetic Communication.” Gregg and Seigworth 186-205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso, 1993. Print.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Kenneth S. Introduction. Turner, Confessions 1-36.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Kenneth S. Nat Turner: Slave Rebellion in History and Memory. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Gregg, Melissa, and Seigworth, Gregory J., eds. The Affect Theory Reader. Durham: Duke UP, 2010. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harding, Vincent. “Symptoms of Liberty and Blackhead Signposts: David Walker and Nat Turner.” Greenberg, Nat Turner 79102.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Trans. Knox, T. M. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1975. Print.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics. Trans. Bosanquet, Bernard. New York: Penguin, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Trans. Speirs, E. B. and Sanderson, J. Burden. Vol. 1. New York: Humanities, 1962. Print.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. Phänomenologie des Geistes. Hamburg: Meiner, 1952. Print.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. Miller, A. V. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977. Print.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. The Philosophy of History. Trans. Sibree, J. New York: Dover, 1956. Print.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970. Print. Vol. 12 of Werke.Google Scholar
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. Black Rebellion: A Selection from Travellers and Outlaws. New York: Arno, 1969. Print.Google Scholar
Inglis, Charles. “The True Interest of America Impartially Stated.” Founding the Republic: A Documentary History. Ed. Patrick, John J. Westport: Greenwood, 1995. 1923. Print.Google Scholar
Johnson, Samuel. A Dictionary of the English Language: A Digital Edition of the 1755 Classic by Samuel Johnson. Ed. Brandi Besalke. 23 Nov. 2013. Web. 13 June 2015.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. “The Contest of Faculties.” Political Writings. Ed. Reiss, H. S. Trans. Nisbet, H. B. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. 176–90. Print.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel Critique of the Power of Judgement. Ed. Guyer, Paul. Trans. Guyer and Matthews, Eric. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime and Other Writings. Ed. and trans. Frierson, Patrick and Guyer, Paul. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011. Print.Google Scholar
Levine, Lawrence W. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. New York: Oxford UP, 1977. Print.Google Scholar
Masur, Louis P. “Nat Turner and Sectional Crisis.” Greenberg, Nat Turner 148–62.Google Scholar
Mee, Jon. Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the 1790s. Oxford: Clarendon, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
“New York Morning Courier and Enquirer, October 3, 1831.” Foner 91-93.Google Scholar
Pocock, J. G. A.Enthusiasm: The Antiself of Enlightenment.” Enthusiasm and Enlightenment, 1650-1850. Ed. Klein, Lawrence and Vopa, Anthony J. La. San Marino: Huntington Lib., 1998. 728. Print.Google Scholar
Raboteau, Albert J. Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1978. Print.Google Scholar
Rucker, Walter C. The River Flows On: Black Resistance, Culture, and Identity Formation in Early America. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Scales, Laura Thiemann. “Narrative Revolutions in Nat Turner and Joseph Smith.” American Literary History 24.2 (2012): 205–33. Print.Google Scholar
Seigworth, Gregory J., and Gregg, Melissa. “An Inventory of Shimmers.” Gregg and Seigworth 1-25.Google Scholar
Smith, Caleb. The Oracle and the Curse: A Poetics of Justice from the Revolution to the Civil War. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2013. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Theophus H. Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black America. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. New York: Penguin, 2000. Print.Google Scholar
Sundquist, Eric. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Toscano, Alberto. Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea. London: Verso, 2010. Print.Google Scholar
Tragle, Henry Irving. “Introduction: A Selection of Newspaper Accounts Relating to the Southampton Slave Revolt.” Tragle, Southampton Slave Revolt 3135.Google Scholar
Tragle, Henry Irving. The Southampton Slave Revolt of 1831: A Compilation of Source Materials. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1971. Print.Google Scholar
Tucker, Susie I. Enthusiasm: A Study in Semantic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1972. Print.Google Scholar
Turner, Nat. The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents. Ed. Greenberg, Kenneth S. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin's, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Warner, Samuel. “Authentic and Impartial Narrative of the Tragical Scene… .” Tragle, Southampton Slave Revolt 280300.Google Scholar
Webster, Noah. An American Dictionary of the English Language. Vol. 1. New York: S. Converse, 1828. Print.Google Scholar