Taxonomy of an Enslaved Heart

“Taxonomy of an Enslaved Heart” opens up the figuration of heartache, so common to sentimental writings, to consider how it can signify anatomical pain as well. What does it mean to read figuratively—accepting that every instance of a heart broken or throbbing or heavy indexes emotional pain addressing the reader’s sympathy—and, at the same time, to literalize these instances, so that each one refers to a specific episode in the history of a circulatory system? This essay attempts to hold both in tension, even as they resist each other. Attending to texts by Harriet Jacobs, Mary Prince, Sojourner Truth, and James Baldwin, the essay argues for what it calls the story of the heart: a minoritized account of pain that deforms sentimental language to register at once somatically, mentally, and intersubjectively. Because of its insecure legibility, the story of the heart subverts the biopolitical logic of legitimacy that traps many patients who are Black, disabled, or both today. What emerges from holding figuration with literalization subtly shifts the illnesses we know and the conditions by which we know them.