Butler states in an interview that she responded to a present sense of shame for older African American generations, who reputedly showed humility towards their white masters: “Kindred was a kind of reaction to some of the things going on during the sixties when people were feeling ashamed of, or more strongly, angry with their parents for not having improved things faster, and I wanted to take a person from today and send that person back to slavery.”
The second chapter focuses on how the problem of historiography of slavery is depicted in Kindred. The third chapter explores the relationships within the slave community as well as towards their master. Jacobs suggests to better understand slavery, one shall “go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.” Butler chooses a similar way by sending Dana to the antebellum South. Overall, the analysis foregrounds social-emotional issues according to Butler’s intention: “I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people.”
Contents
1 Introduction
2 Handling history
2.1 Kindred as accurately fictionalized history
2.2 Challenges of history and historiography
2.2.1 Missing sources and perspectivism in past and present
2.2.2 Contemporary silencing of the historical past
2.2.3 Media’s misleading influence on the historical memory
3 Social complexities of slavery
3.1 Threats within the slave community
3.2 The meaning of home
3.3 Family bonds as bondage
3.3.1 The ‘happy mammy’ as a result of forced accommodation
3.3.2 Family love and emotional ties as tools of threat
3.4 Master-slave intricacies
3.4.1 Rufus’ and Dana’s “matching strangeness”
3.4.2 Further love-hate-relationships
3.4.3 Mental manipulations and psychological conditioning
3.5 Fear and threat of physical punishment
4 Concluding thoughts
5 Bibliography
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