Captivating Subjects Writing Confinement, Citizenship, and Nationhood in the Nineteenth Century

• Main Authors: Haslam, Jason, Wright, Julia M
• Format: eBook Book
• Language: English
• Published: Toronto University of Toronto Press 2005; University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: 19th century; Captivity narratives; History; History and criticism; Imprisonment; Language & Literature; LITERARY CRITICISM; LITERARY CRITICISM / General; Prisoners' writings; Social aspects; Sources; Subjectivity; Western countries; Western countries
• DOI: 10.3138/9781442672734
• ISBN: 9780802089687; 0802089682; 9781487526146; 1442672730; 1487526148; 9781442672734

Ever since Michel Foucault's highly regarded work on prisons and confinement in the 1970s, critical examination of the forerunners to the prison - slavery, serfdom, and colonial confinements - has been rare. However, these institutions inform and participate in many of the same ideologies that the prison enforces. Captivating Subjectsis a collection of essays that fills several crucial gaps in the critical examination of the relations between Western state-sanctioned confinement, identity, nation, and literature. Editors Jason Haslam and Julia M. Wright have brought together an esteemed group of international scholars to examine nineteenth-century writings by prisoners, slaves, and other captives, tracing some of the continuities among the varieties of captivity and their crucial relationship to post-Enlightenment subjectivities. This volume is the first sustained examination of the ways in which the diverse kinds of confinement intersect with Western ideologies of subjectivity, investigating the modern nation-state's reliance on captivity as a means of consolidating notions of individual and national sovereignty. It details the specific historical and cultural practices of confinement and their relations to each other and to punishment through a range of national contexts.