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

该子项目考察了19世纪中期美国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，自愿自我照顾自己的身体和健康如何成为一项主要针对白人中产阶级男性的指导性社会和政治原则。身体上的自我照顾发展成为一个人合理行为能力的标志，从而成为一个以公民自由为基础的社会中政治参与的标志。在此背景下，该子项目探索，其次，自1865年以来，对身体自我保健的呼吁在多大程度上以及如何解决了400万前奴隶。第三，该子项目仔细审查了自由民自己与他们的身体和健康建立的关系，以及这种关系在解放过程中如何发生变化。在这个美国历史上最具变革的时期，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，以及他们自己是如何看待和接近它的，具有特别重要的意义。预防性自我保健需要自愿，它建立在自力更生和能力的基础上。然而，与此同时，自我保健实践在一个期望、需求和不同机会的领域中运作，这取决于具体针对的是谁。该子项目将仔细审查自愿性如何作为一种双重资源运作：健康和作为政治主体的承认，这个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，这个子项目将展示自愿性如何有助于区分有能力和没有能力的主体，被认为有能力和值得自由公民身份或不值得自由公民身份，以及它如何再现差异，特别是在种族方面。在方法上，子项目融合了话语分析和对健康实践的特写，以及前奴隶的自我定位。它将利用公共杂志上的出版物、（前）奴隶以访谈和自传形式的第一人称叙述，以及自由民局及其医务处的档案材料（1865-1868/72年，国家档案馆，RG 105）。子项目对研究单位及其目标做出了最重要的贡献。首先，它涉及健康和差异，因此在最近的冠状病毒危机期间，这一主题的戏剧性意义得到了加强。其次，它有助于更好地理解自愿性在转型和剧变阶段的具体意义。第三，它的灵感来自于后殖民时期和黑人研究对档案沉默的看法，它把迄今为止被边缘化的、次等的人的观点和代理摆在了前面。作为具体的产出，子项目的目标是由研究人员撰写专著，以及由研究人员和主要研究人员撰写的几篇文章、博客文章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.