Feminist to Know: Saidiya Hartman

Saidiya Hartman (1961-present) is one of the most influential Black scholars alive today, who has made pivotal interventions in the historicization of U.S. enslavement. Hartman identifies as a cultural historian and her major works include theory (Scenes of Subjection), creative nonfiction (Lose Your Mother), and historical fiction (Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments). Two of her major theoretical contributions include critical fabulation and afterlives of slavery.

“Critical fabulation” is a way of bridging the gaps in slave narratives by combining research, critical theory, and fiction. The effect (in her own words) is to “illuminate the contested character of history, narrative, event, and fact, to topple the hierarchy of discourse, and to engulf authorized speech in the clash of voices.”

The concept of “afterlives of slavery” fundamentally reframes the historicized timeline of enslavement. It challenges the concept that slavery is “over,” and instead reframes modern racism, in all forms, as a present-day manifestation of slavery’s presence.

In 2019, Hartman was selected as a MacArthur fellow. Hartman is a professor in Columbia University’s English and Comparative Literature Department.

“The slave ship is a womb/abyss. The plantation is the belly of the world. Partus sequitur ventrem—the child follows the belly. The master dreams of future increase. The modern world follows the belly.” (from “The Belly of the World,” 2016)