- Postcolonial Studies, Narratology, Decolonial Thought, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Early American History, Early American Literature, and 31 moreHistory of Slavery, Critical Whiteness Studies, African American Studies, Cultural Studies, Theories of Racism, Critical Whiteness Theory, African American Literature, Critical Theory, American Literature, Black Studies Or African American Studies, Democracy, American Studies, Latin American literature, Political Philosophy, Techno, Contemporary Art, Literature, Gender Studies, Visual Arts, Creative Writing, Contemporary Poetry, Art History, History, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, Philosophy, Women's Studies, Sylvia Wynter, Early Modern History, Law and Literature, Afro-Pessimism, Saidiya Hartman, Modernity/coloniality/decoloniality, and Critical Race Theoryedit
- Samira Spatzek is a Northamericanist and literary scholar. Her research interests include, among others, African Amer... moreSamira Spatzek is a Northamericanist and literary scholar. Her research interests include, among others, African American literature, history, and literary history, fashion studies, Critical Race Theory, Critical Whiteness Studies, and the field of Law and Literature. She studied English-speaking cultures, linguistics, and American studies at the University of Bremen, the University of Sheffield (UK), and the University of Groningen (NL). She holds a PhD in American studies from the University of Bremen (summa cum laude).
Before joining EXC 2020 as research-track postdoc and academic coordinator in 2021, and the culture department of the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies (affiliated), Spatzek was a research assistant at the University of Bremen and a postdoctoral researcher at TU Dresden. From 2015 to 2018, her PhD project was funded by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Foundation. In 2022, she won the John W. Kluge Fellowship for her second book project "The Cultural Work of Competing Fashion Literatures in Nineteenth-Century America" to do archival research at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
Spatzek has published in various peer-reviewed journals, including Amerikastudien / American Studies and Esclavages & Post-esclavages. She was co-editor of Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies (COPAS) from 2016 to 2022. Her first book Unruly Narrative: Private Property, Self-Making, and Toni Morrison’s A Mercy was published with De Gruyter in 2022.
https://www.temporal-communities.de/people/spatzek/index.htmledit
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Access at: https://journals.openedition.org/slaveries/3994 The article examines Toni Morrison’s historical novel A Mercy for the ways in which it interrogates the intricate connections between slavery, self-making, private property, and... more
Access at: https://journals.openedition.org/slaveries/3994
The article examines Toni Morrison’s historical novel A Mercy for the ways in which it interrogates the intricate connections between slavery, self-making, private property, and narrative. The rich pool of critical readings of A Mercy often situates itself within an environment of 21st- century ‘post-racial’ discourse, not least since it was published one week after Barack Obama was elected as President of the USA in 2008. The article pushes against such readings by means of an examination of the character of the enslaved mother minha mãe. By showing how this character revisits the African American slave narrative tradition, and by reading the minha mãe in line with the groundbreaking work of Black feminist scholars on the entanglements between slavery, property, and reproduction, my close reading of the minha mãe text establishes Atlantic slavery’s sexual economies as the novel’s explicit frame of reference and signification. My reading of A Mercy is also an attempt at positioning the novel within a broader critical context of recent Black Studies theorizing, in which questions concerning narrative’s ability to account for the social death of the enslaved on a deeper level have taken centre stage. My reading situates itself within African American studies, Black feminist thinking, and Early American studies.
First, I situate the minha mãe and her textual fragment in A Mercy against the novel’s critical reception and the prominent tendency to read this character only in tandem with the novel’s other characters—and not as a character that needs to be examined in its own right.
Second, I juxtapose the minha mãe fragment with the tradition of the women-authored African American slave narratives. I suggest that the textual fragment of the minha mãe invokes and allegorizes the slave narratives authored by Mary Prince and Harriet Jacobs, creating intertextual moments with them. In their respective narratives, Prince and Jacob follow the literary conventions of the slave narrative as a genre in that they more or less implicitly draw attention not only to the sexual subjection by their master but also to how the regimes of property ruptured recognized kinship relations for the enslaved. The character of the minha mãe takes up these concerns raised by Prince’s and Jacobs’ narratives and brings them to the novel’s fictional representation of colonial Virginia.
Third, the article expands on this argument by suggesting that the fragment of the minha mãe, while relying on particular features of the slave narrative tradition, in fact also challenges the generic structure of these narratives, which are strongly invested in an ethos of liberation. Unlike the protagonists of the above mentioned women-authored slave narratives, the minha mãe does not gain freedom at the end of her text. Her fragment, as I suggest, therefore needs to be read as a challenge to the slave narrative script and its narrative gestures to liberation.
In conclusion, the article enters its close reading of the minha mãe into conversation with recent Black Studies theoretical trajectories stressing the varied ways in which the ‘afterlife’ (Hartman) of New World slavery continues to structure Black existence in the U.S., and their inquiry into whether narrative can account for the enslaved. Finally, I suggest that A Mercy takes up these theoretical concerns with the minha mãe and argue that her textual fragment in the novel amplifies them through its non-resolution.
The article examines Toni Morrison’s historical novel A Mercy for the ways in which it interrogates the intricate connections between slavery, self-making, private property, and narrative. The rich pool of critical readings of A Mercy often situates itself within an environment of 21st- century ‘post-racial’ discourse, not least since it was published one week after Barack Obama was elected as President of the USA in 2008. The article pushes against such readings by means of an examination of the character of the enslaved mother minha mãe. By showing how this character revisits the African American slave narrative tradition, and by reading the minha mãe in line with the groundbreaking work of Black feminist scholars on the entanglements between slavery, property, and reproduction, my close reading of the minha mãe text establishes Atlantic slavery’s sexual economies as the novel’s explicit frame of reference and signification. My reading of A Mercy is also an attempt at positioning the novel within a broader critical context of recent Black Studies theorizing, in which questions concerning narrative’s ability to account for the social death of the enslaved on a deeper level have taken centre stage. My reading situates itself within African American studies, Black feminist thinking, and Early American studies.
First, I situate the minha mãe and her textual fragment in A Mercy against the novel’s critical reception and the prominent tendency to read this character only in tandem with the novel’s other characters—and not as a character that needs to be examined in its own right.
Second, I juxtapose the minha mãe fragment with the tradition of the women-authored African American slave narratives. I suggest that the textual fragment of the minha mãe invokes and allegorizes the slave narratives authored by Mary Prince and Harriet Jacobs, creating intertextual moments with them. In their respective narratives, Prince and Jacob follow the literary conventions of the slave narrative as a genre in that they more or less implicitly draw attention not only to the sexual subjection by their master but also to how the regimes of property ruptured recognized kinship relations for the enslaved. The character of the minha mãe takes up these concerns raised by Prince’s and Jacobs’ narratives and brings them to the novel’s fictional representation of colonial Virginia.
Third, the article expands on this argument by suggesting that the fragment of the minha mãe, while relying on particular features of the slave narrative tradition, in fact also challenges the generic structure of these narratives, which are strongly invested in an ethos of liberation. Unlike the protagonists of the above mentioned women-authored slave narratives, the minha mãe does not gain freedom at the end of her text. Her fragment, as I suggest, therefore needs to be read as a challenge to the slave narrative script and its narrative gestures to liberation.
In conclusion, the article enters its close reading of the minha mãe into conversation with recent Black Studies theoretical trajectories stressing the varied ways in which the ‘afterlife’ (Hartman) of New World slavery continues to structure Black existence in the U.S., and their inquiry into whether narrative can account for the enslaved. Finally, I suggest that A Mercy takes up these theoretical concerns with the minha mãe and argue that her textual fragment in the novel amplifies them through its non-resolution.
Research Interests:
The online journal Current Objectives in Postgraduate American Studies (COPAS), dedicated to publishing the work of early career researchers in American Studies in Germany and beyond, turns twenty in 2019. To celebrate this, COPAS is... more
The online journal Current Objectives in Postgraduate American Studies (COPAS), dedicated to publishing the work of early career researchers in American Studies in Germany and beyond, turns twenty in 2019. To celebrate this, COPAS is looking for contributions to our anniversary thematic issue on "White Supremacy in the United States: Politics, Economies, Histories, Affects, and Poetics."
Research Interests:
In this interview, Frank Wilderson talks about the current state of the discipline of Black Studies in the United States of America and beyond and the ways in which Afro-pessimism takes part in shaping this discipline. He also discusses... more
In this interview, Frank Wilderson talks about the current state of the discipline of Black Studies in the United States of America and beyond and the ways in which Afro-pessimism takes part in shaping this discipline. He also discusses their stakes in current social justice movements such as Black Lives Matter and the relevance he ascribes to Black lived experience and structural positionalities. Commenting on the role that gratuitous violence and the concept of social death play in his work, Wilderson also addresses the challenges Afro-pessimism poses especially to non-Black scholars who want to think through and with this theoretical stream of thought.
Research Interests:
Warum wissen wir so wenig über Verflechtungen deutscher Handelsstädte in Kolonialismus und Versklavung? Dieser und weiteren Fragen gingen Schülerinnen und Schüler nach und förderten manch verdeckten Zusammenhang zutage. [Why do we know... more
Warum wissen wir so wenig über Verflechtungen deutscher Handelsstädte in Kolonialismus und Versklavung? Dieser und weiteren Fragen gingen Schülerinnen und Schüler nach und förderten manch verdeckten Zusammenhang zutage.
[Why do we know so little about German trade cities' relations to colonialism and enslavement? Students considered this and other questions and brought to light many a hidden link.]
[Why do we know so little about German trade cities' relations to colonialism and enslavement? Students considered this and other questions and brought to light many a hidden link.]
Research Interests:
This study puts Toni Morrison’s novel A Mercy in conversation with John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1689), re-visiting the Trea- tises in light of recent Black Studies interventions in the topos of Western subjectivity. While... more
This study puts Toni Morrison’s novel A Mercy in conversation with John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1689), re-visiting the Trea- tises in light of recent Black Studies interventions in the topos of Western subjectivity. While situating both the Treatises and the scholarly engage- ment with them in their historical moment, it develops a post-slavery reading of the early modern conceptions of individual liberty and proper- ty by means of A Mercy’s characters.
Official Conference Poster of the Postgraduate Forum (PGF) of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS) that took place from Oct 6 to Oct 8, 2016 at the University of Hamburg
Research Interests:
Die Projektbroschüre wendet sich an Lehrer*innen und Multiplikator*innen der (außer)schulischen Bildungsarbeit. Sie gibt aus rassismuskritischer Perspektive Anregungen zum Umgang mit Kolonialismus und Kolonialrassismus im Unterricht.... more
Die Projektbroschüre wendet sich an Lehrer*innen und Multiplikator*innen der (außer)schulischen Bildungsarbeit. Sie gibt aus rassismuskritischer Perspektive Anregungen zum Umgang mit Kolonialismus und Kolonialrassismus im Unterricht. Neben einem Beitrag von Jule Bönkost zu kritischen Zugängen zu Kolonialismus und Kolonialrassismus im Schulunterricht, einem Überblick über das Programm 2017 und Teilnehmendenberichten befassen sich Paula von Gleich und Samira Spatzek am Beispiel des Projektes „Das Gewebe der Sklaverei: auf den Spuren transatlantischer Versklavung in Bremen“ damit, wie das Thema Kolonialismus und Kolonialrassismus praktisch bearbeitet werden kann. Herausgegeben von ARiC Berlin e. V. und dem IDB | Institut für diskriminierungsfreie Bildung.
Research Interests:
This study deals with the formative powers of modern liberal ideas of private property. The liberal subject emerged with the formations of European liberalism, Atlantic slavery, and settler colonial expansion in the New World. Toni... more
This study deals with the formative powers of modern liberal ideas of private property. The liberal subject emerged with the formations of European liberalism, Atlantic slavery, and settler colonial expansion in the New World. Toni Morrison’s A Mercy is thus identified as a key literary text that generates a fundamental critique of the connections between self-making and private property at its 17th-century scene.