The Global and International Studies Program would like to announce our sixth Works-in-Progress speaker, Dr. Stacy Douglas, whose paper “One Day: The Aesthetics of Liberalism in Steve McQueen’s ‘Twelve Years A Slave'” will be presented on Friday, February 5th at 12pm in Room 2420 R River Building. The discussant for this paper will be Dr. Kristin Bright (Anthropology, Carleton University).
All papers will be pre-circulated two weeks in advance of each paper presentation. Please register in advance using the form below in order to receive copies of discussion papers.
Steve McQueen’s 2013 film Twelve Years a Slave tells the true tale of Solomon Northup, a free black man who wakes one day in 1841 to find he has been kidnapped and sold into slavery in the southern United States. He spends the next twelve years under unimaginably violent conditions, attempting to escape and return home. The narrative device of awaking in a seemingly alternate legal universe is used widely in film and literature. Another example of suddenly and inexplicably finding oneself in unfamiliar surroundings is borne out in Franz Kafka’s work The Trial. There, Josef K. awakes on the morning of his 30th birthday to find that he has been accused of a crime, the details of which he is never told. Although the stories of Solomon Northup and Josef K. differ in several important ways, they share an experience of having their everyday belief in the stability of law interrupted by a single momentous day. This paper explores this device and its resonances with a more general liberal story about the possibility of encountering law’s violence as a distinct moment, rather than as everyday experience.