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Disability is often mentioned in discussions of slave health,
mistreatment and abuse, but constructs of how "able" and "disabled"
bodies influenced the institution of slavery has gone largely
overlooked. This volume uncovers a history of disability in African
American slavery from the primary record, analyzing how concepts of
race, disability, and power converged in the United States in the
first half of the nineteenth century. Slaves with physical and
mental impairments often faced unique limitations and conditions in
their diagnosis, treatment, and evaluation as property. Slaves with
disabilities proved a significant challenge to white authority
figures, torn between the desire to categorize them as different or
defective and the practical need to incorporate their "disorderly"
bodies into daily life. Being physically "unfit" could sometimes
allow slaves to escape the limitations of bondage and oppression,
and establish a measure of self-control. Furthermore, ideas about
and reactions to disability-appearing as social construction, legal
definition, medical phenomenon, metaphor, or masquerade-highlighted
deep struggles over bodies in bondage in antebellum America.
Disability is often mentioned in discussions of slave health,
mistreatment and abuse, but constructs of how "able" and "disabled"
bodies influenced the institution of slavery has gone largely
overlooked. This volume uncovers a history of disability in African
American slavery from the primary record, analyzing how concepts of
race, disability, and power converged in the United States in the
first half of the nineteenth century. Slaves with physical and
mental impairments often faced unique limitations and conditions in
their diagnosis, treatment, and evaluation as property. Slaves with
disabilities proved a significant challenge to white authority
figures, torn between the desire to categorize them as different or
defective and the practical need to incorporate their "disorderly"
bodies into daily life. Being physically "unfit" could sometimes
allow slaves to escape the limitations of bondage and oppression,
and establish a measure of self-control. Furthermore, ideas about
and reactions to disability-appearing as social construction, legal
definition, medical phenomenon, metaphor, or masquerade-highlighted
deep struggles over bodies in bondage in antebellum America.
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