Slavery and Biopolitics: Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom as Biopolitical Theory

This article calls for an extension of biopolitical theory through an examination of how Frederick Douglass supplements biopolitical theory with a map of the modalities of political subjugation circumscribing black bodies during the era of slavery. I aim to articulate Douglass’s theoretically rich account of biopolitics in his My Bondage and My Freedom and provide a more comprehensive approach to the rise of modern power in a manner accounting for race, racism, and plantation slavery. The gsoal, then, is to not sprinkle references to theorists of biopolitics—Agamben, Foucault, and Esposito—who have guided much of the critical scholarship, but to point out the lack of attention paid to the institution of slavery and the political forces of race and racism within biopolitical theory. This article puts pressure on the dominant categories driving biopolitical theory and discloses how Douglass offers a comprehensive account of the intersections between slaves as bare life and political power, and demonstrates how slavery was central to the formation of modern forms of power.