Human Insufficiency: Natural Slavery and the Racialization of Vulnerability in Early Modern England

by Jeffrey B. Griswold

Human Insufficiency argues that early modern writers depict the human political subject as physically vulnerable in order to naturalize slavery. Representations of Man as a weak creature--"poor" and "bare" in King Lear's words--strategically portrayed English bodies as needing care from people who were imagined to be less fragile. Drawing on Aristotle's depictions of the natural master and the natural slave in the Politics, English...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1032422696
• ISBN13: 9781032422695
• Release Date: October 2023
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 162 Pages
• Weight: 0.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"