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

该子项目考察了世纪中期美国非自愿性与健康之间的关系。首先，它展示了自19世纪50年代以来，一个人的身体和健康的自愿自我护理是如何成为一项指导性的社会和政治原则的，这主要针对白色中产阶级男性。身体的自我照顾发展成为一个人的合理行为能力的标志，因此，在一个以公民自由为基础的社会中，政治参与的能力。在此背景下，该子项目探讨，第二，在何种程度上，以及如何自1865年以来，呼吁身体自我照顾也解决了400万前奴隶。第三，该分项目审查了自由人自身与其身体和健康的关系，以及这种关系在解放过程中是如何变化的。在这个美国历史上最具变革性的时期，美国黑人的健康政治和自愿自我保健对于理解他们在美国社会中的地位，以及他们自己如何看待和对待它特别重要。预防性自我保健要求非自愿，它建立在自力更生和能力的基础上。然而，与此同时，自我护理实践在期望、必需品和不同机会的领域中运作，这取决于具体针对的是谁。该分项目将审查非自愿性如何作为一种双重资源发挥作用：健康和作为政治主体的承认，这种政治主体知道如何利用其自由，从而有资格成为一个有生产力的公民。因此，该子项目将展示非自愿性如何有助于区分有能力和无能力的主体，被认为有能力和值得自由公民身份的与否，以及它如何再现差异，特别是沿着种族的界线。在方法上，该分项目将话语分析和关于保健做法的特写以及以前被奴役者的自我定位结合起来。它将利用公共杂志上的出版物、（前）奴隶以访谈和自传形式进行的第一人称叙述以及自由民局及其医疗部门（1865-1868/72，国家档案馆，RG 105）的档案材料。首先，它涉及健康和差异，因此，在最近的科罗纳危机期间，这一主题加强了其戏剧性的意义。第二，它有助于更好地理解非自愿性在转型和动荡阶段的具体意义。第三，它受到后殖民主义和黑人研究对档案沉默的看法的启发，它突出了迄今为止被边缘化的下层人民的观点和机构。作为具体产出，该子项目的目标是由研究人员撰写一本专著，并由研究人员和主要研究人员撰写几篇文章、博客和对合作小组项目的贡献。

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.