Dualisms Shmooelisms

I really enjoyed reading the Thomas article, particularly for its engagement with the false dualisms of “law/sentiment, market relations/domestic relations, public/private, duty/feeling, magistrate/man and male/female” (Thomas 122). What is most interesting to me is the way in which slavery is simultaneously consistent and inconsistent with the notions of liberal individuality and autonomy the U.S. is founded on.  The ideal liberal subject is manifested in the idea of man (and I mean, man) meandering unencumbered through the public sphere, overseeing his business and debating political matters; the man for whom and by whom laws were/are written. By abstracting away from the physicality and encumbrance of the body and family life, man can attain the ultimate state of being: the rational, disembodied subject.

 Slavery is frankly about as antithetical to autonomy and unencumbrance as one can get. Unless you read between the lines.  For every man who can throw himself into the public sphere, there must be someone (usually, a woman) to maintain his domestic sphere, attending to the children, fixing meals, seeing to the ‘vulgarities’ of bodily function.  Unencumbrance and autonomy must rely upon their counterparts to exist. In this sense, slavery is a mechanism through which the ideal liberal subject is enabled, through which social hierarchy is constructed and maintained.  Slaveholders were, in most cases, “freed” from the imperative of bodily labor because it was preformed instead by black bodies.  I’m reminded of State v. Mann, the overview of which states, “The court found that for the sake of their happiness, slaves needed to surrender their will in implicit obedience to that of another.  Such obedience was the consequence only of uncontrolled authority over the body.” 

It is Stowe’s belief in the preservation of the dualisms I mentioned at the beginning of the post that makes her so morally indignant at the idea of slavery.  Uncle Tom’s Cabin depicts what, “for [Stowe], most poignantly dramatizes the evils of slavery—the breakup of black families” (Thomas 121).  Indeed, slavery represents the horror of the dissolution between public and private spheres; when the public enters the private, the market breaks up families.  However, it is Stowe’s reliance upon problematic and essentialist dichotomies that makes her argument so persuasive and effective.  I often wonder how “practical” radical arguments are in terms of shifting dynamics of power.  It seems that if your aim is to change policy, you have to work within the nomos of which you are a part, appealing to some popular albeit problematic notions while challenging others.  This pretty much sums up everything I despise about politics.  But you have to hand it to Stowe, while many of her arguments and assumptions are problematic, her book was effective.