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6%OFFDennis Childs - Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary - 9780816692415 - V9780816692415
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Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary

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Description for Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary Paperback. Num Pages: 280 pages, 12. BIC Classification: 1KBB; JFFJ; JFSL3; JKVP; JPVH. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 218 x 140 x 18. Weight in Grams: 322.

The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, passed in 1865, has long been viewed as a definitive break with the nation’s past by abolishing slavery and ushering in an inexorable march toward black freedom. Slaves of the State presents a stunning counterhistory to this linear narrative of racial, social, and legal progress in America.

Dennis Childs argues that the incarceration of black people and other historically repressed groups in chain gangs, peon camps, prison plantations, and penitentiaries represents a ghostly perpetuation of chattel slavery. He exposes how the Thirteenth Amendment’s exception clause—allowing for enslavement as “punishment for a crime”—has ... Read more

Childs seeks out the historically muted voices of those entombed within terrorizing spaces such as the chain gang rolling cage and the modern solitary confinement cell, engaging the writings of Toni Morrison and Chester Himes as well as a broad range of archival materials, including landmark court cases, prison songs, and testimonies, reaching back to the birth of modern slave plantations such as Louisiana’s “Angola” penitentiary.

Slaves of the State paves the way for a new understanding of chattel slavery as a continuing social reality of U.S. empire—one resting at the very foundation of today’s prison industrial complex that now holds more than 2.3 million people within the country’s jails, prisons, and immigrant detention centers.

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Product Details

Format
Paperback
Publication date
2015
Publisher
University of Minnesota Press
Condition
New
Number of Pages
280
Place of Publication
Minnesota, United States
ISBN
9780816692415
SKU
V9780816692415
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-50

About Dennis Childs
Dennis Childs is associate professor of literature and an affiliated faculty member of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego.

Reviews for Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary
“Slaves of the State cannot receive enough superlatives: eye-opening, deeply disturbing, intellectually stimulating, terrible, brilliant. Dennis Childs has written a moving and intricately researched book, which weaves novels and memory, the past and the present, ancient artifacts and modern tools of repression to reveal an unwelcome truth about modern day America and the biggest prison system on earth."—Mumia Abu-Jamal, author ... Read more

Goodreads reviews for Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary


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