Double Consciousness: Subjectivity and Nationhood in the Antebellum Slave Narrative

There are two sets of systems in terms of slavery in antebellum America, namely, the northern free states and the southern slave states. The plantation systems in the south and the industrial systems of the north might be said to conflict with each other. Slave narratives written by fugitives witness the different systems of miserable life in slave states and their comparatively free life in the north. In this paper, through reading of slave narratives before the Civil War, I want to discuss how the two economic and political systems in the slave states and free states coexist and conflict with each other, and, importantly, how slaves adopted strategies to convert the loopholes of the slavery to win their freedom. By taking the “double consciousness” as a framework and exploring its metaphorical meanings, I analyze a number of psychological, performance and text moments where the authors of slave narratives explore the “two-ness” created by the systems of slavery. 1. Double Consciousness and Slave Narratives in the Antebellum U.S. In The Souls of Black Folk (1903), W. E. B. Du Bois mentions the double consciousness and “twoness” of the blacks in the United States: It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused attempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, —an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. [1] Du Bois’s remarks on the two selves of blacks offers an insightful perspective to analyze the ramifications of psychological personality that slavery and racism exert upon the African American people. By adopting a Hegelian binary opposition perspective, the “two warring ideals in one dark body” admits the particular dilemma that blacks face. As is written by David W. Blight in his introduction to The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois “does search for the spirit of the Age of Emancipation, for the searing ironies in America’s promise, and for the troubled uncertainties of the post-freedom generations of black people” [2]. The concept of “double consciousness” provides an important framework for numerous interpretations regarding the African Americans’ role for the development of American culture. The two-ness of black people, according to Du Bois, however, is a more general cultural unconsciousness of the whole black people in the 19th and 20th America, with its focus more on the period of Jim Crow. My focus here is more specific to the antebellum slave narrative, where the two systems juxtapose with each other and the slaves are themselves a direct victim of the slavery. Slaves’ dividing subjectivities, to some extent, are closely related with two systems, the liberal system and the slavery one. Under the two conflicting systems, African Americana slaves, and even slaveholders, are divided into two subjectivities. People have to act differently and even change themselves to adapt to the differences of systems. To survive, slaves have to use a number of different and even conflicting strategies. 2021 International Conference Education and Management (ICEM2021)