Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market

“Slavery has never been represented, slavery can never be represented.”

Johnson’s reconstruction of life inside the antebellum slave market takes seriously this statement by former slave William Wells Brown. Like the slaves themselves, slavery is in an important sense ineffable. This way in which slavery cannot be indexed is intrinsic to Johnson’s representation of the antebellum South.

“I have read the narratives for symbolic truths that stretch beyond the facticity of specific events.”

For both Brown and Johnson, slavery is mercurial, a many-headed Hydra that Johnson attacks indirectly through his expositions of myriad sources and narratives. Johnson’s readings of historical sources typically grasp at this inherent polyvalence of slavery by drawing suggestive inferences and subtexts out of the historical material.

“The relentless objectification to which slaves in the market were subjected.”

Johnson’s approach to representing antebellum slavery seems to provide a counterpoint to the objectification that characterized the phenomenon. If slavery was a kind of interpretive violence, with a slaves’ value being read in her features, Johnson is careful to avoid perpetuating this violence.