The social momentum which led to Juneteeth's federal appropriation has transformed it into a festive footnote, a citation of American political progress that fails to ask what it means for the government to claim emancipation as a victory while many inheritors of slavery's legacy remain dubious, if not outright disdainful.
Explicitly concerned with the elusiveness of free ground, this groundbreaking text sets the complex stage of terror under slavery and its influence on scenes of Black self-making in the 19th century.
Calling us to consider 'the nonevent of emancipation' in a country where 'freedom did not abolish the lash,' Hartman frames the question of liberation that centers on the 'terrible spectacle' of bondage that lingers in our discourses of redress, resistance, and individual rights.
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