Sanctuary

Reading Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno” alongside American slave law, Dred Scott v. Sandford, The State of Missouri v. Celia, and the Civil Rights Cases (1883), this chapter addresses the substantive social and legal implications of legal recognition for black Americans. Engaging Hannnah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben, and Gerald Neuman, this chapter offers a detailed account of the concept of sanctuary and the anomic legal status of black Americans, and demonstrates how the denial of legal subjectivity and political recognition rendered blacks excessive to the law and vulnerable to assault. “Benito Cereno” provides both a rubric for reading the relation of the law to the black body that continues to inform our legal culture, and insight into the way in which race simultaneously informed U.S. empire and home. Focusing specifically on Haiti, and the implications of her revolution for both U.S. race relations and imperial ambitions during the 19th century, this chapter opens up the question of legal recognition from a study of individuals to relations among nation-state powers.

Computer Science · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories