Context And Terminology Flashcards
Physiognomy
Study of faces to try and identify a criminal look
Bildungsroman
Coming of age novel with a young character that progresses to a grown adult
Homogenous
Treatment of a group as a singular - no individualism
Protean figure
An adaptable, constantly changing figure
Discourse, narrative
Typical dialogue or belief of the time
Prelapsarian
Paradise before the fall
Race context
- Alexander Stephens’ cornerstone speech: black people are ‘the granite’ society is built on, ‘subordination is his place’, ‘it is best for both races’
- Josiah Nott (pseudoscientist) - black people are ‘biologically inferior’
- John C Calhoun said it was for the ‘positive good’
Religion context
- the curse of Canaan used to justify slavery ‘suffering and slavery of the negro race was the consequence of the curse’
- Fredrick Douglass said he ‘hated the corrupt, slave holding, women whipping and hypocritical Christianity of this land’
American exceptionalism
The belief that America was the land ‘chosen by god’ and had a ‘divine purpose’ to influence and lead the rest of the world
The Declaration of Independence
- a decent respect to the opinions of mankind
-all men are created equal - unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
- it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it (the government)
- it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government
Masterless men context
‘Excess workers when a capitalist system is predicated on slave labor.’
‘Need for white labourers in the American south drastically reduced’
‘’Racial capitalism’’
Made the white man almost as much a slave as the black slave himself
‘’Second degree slavery’’
