Voluntariness, Self-Care, and Health in the Mid-19th Century United States

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The subproject examines the relation between voluntariness and health in the mid-19th century United States. It shows, first, how since the 1850s voluntary self-care of one’s body and health became a guiding social and political principle, which primarily addressed white middle class men. Bodily self-care developed into a sign of a person’s ability to reasonable behavior and therefore to political participation in a society based on the freedom of its citizens. Against this backdrop, the subproject explores, secondly, to what extent and how since 1865 the call for physical self-care also addressed the four million former slaves. Thirdly, the subproject scrutinizes the relation that the Freedpeople themselves built to their bodies and their health, and how this changed in the emancipation process. In this most transformative period in American history, the politics of health and voluntary self-care by Black Americans are of particular importance for understanding their position in American society, how they themselves saw it and approached it. Preventive self-care demands voluntariness, it builds on self-reliance and competence. Yet at the same time, self-care practices operate in a field of expectations, necessities, and different opportunities, depending on who exactly is addressed. The subproject will scrutinize how voluntariness operates as a twofold resource: of health and of the recognition as political subject that knows how to use its freedom and thus qualifies as a productive citizen. Thus, the subproject will show how voluntariness contributes to distinguishing between able and unable subjects, deemed capable and worthy of liberal citizenship or not, and how it reproduces difference, here in particular along the lines of race. Methodologically, the subproject merges discourse analysis and close-ups on health practices and the self-positioning of formerly enslaved people. It will draw on publications in public magazines, on first person narratives by (former) slaves in the form of interviews and autobiographical slave narratives, and on archival material by the Freedmen’s Bureau and its Medical Division (1865-1868/72, National Archives, RG 105).The subproject makes a most important contribution to the research unit and its goals. First, it addresses health and difference, and therefore a topic that has reenforced its dramatic significance during the recent Corona crisis. Second, it contributes to a better understanding of the specific significance of voluntariness in phases of transformation and upheaval. Third, it is inspired by postcolonial and Black studies perspectives on the silence of the archives, and it upfronts the perspectives and agency of so far marginalized, subaltern people. As concrete output, the subproject aims for a monograph by the researcher, and for several articles, blogposts, and contributions to collaborative group projects by both researcher and principal investigator.