Our Bondage and Our Freedom: Struggles for Liberty in the Lives and Works of Frederick Douglass and His Family (1818-1920)

该项目致力于开发另一种跨学科框架，结合他的女儿和儿子罗塞塔、刘易斯·亨利、小弗雷德里克·小弗雷德里克、查尔斯·雷蒙德和安妮·道格拉斯撰写的传记和著作，调查弗雷德里克·道格拉斯作为著名的前奴隶和自我解放的传奇人物的例子。通过在弗雷德里克·道格拉斯被忽视的家庭成员的背景下重新解读神话人物弗雷德里克·道格拉斯的著作，有可能重新概念化占主导地位的学术范式，根据这些范式，标志性的和特殊的少数人被理论化，高于个人，当涉及到黑人生活时，许多人被看不见。这是一个将早期、中期和高级职业学者、活动家、档案保管员和艺术家聚集在一起的跨学科项目，针对专业和普通受众，这项拟议的研究包括一本文学传记、一本家庭传记/学术选集、一个英国展览、两个美国同伴展览、导游展览和爱丁堡黑人历史城市之旅、一个公共教育计划、一个学术会议、一个关于参与奖学金的美国研讨会、两个参考期刊特刊、一个纪念牌匾、一个展览指南和4个教育学习指南和在线资源，供大学、学校、成人学习环境和普通公众使用。这个项目的核心是这样一种信念，即要公正地对待被买卖为跨大西洋奴隶的黑人妇女、儿童和男子创作的研究不足的著作和艺术品，对他们来说，文字和图像仍然是有争议的领域，唯一的方法是发展一种跨学科、多学科的学术实践。占主导地位的理论模型并不适用。研究人员必须开发另一种分析方法，以审查黑人创作的文学和视觉艺术传统，这些传统是在法律、物理、文化、历史、心理和想象力征服的间隙形成的。就像黑人作家和艺术家在承担表现的负担时，自我反省地发展了实验性的文本和视觉实践一样，正如道格拉斯所坚持的那样，当面对不可能表现动产奴隶制的悲剧及其痛苦的遗产时，语言是没有力量的，图像是沉默的，我们作为学者必须通过开发一种新的理论语言来承担解释的负担。我认为，我们还没有通过论证在黑人研究、非洲侨民研究、奴隶制研究、美国研究、记忆研究和社会正义研究中使用跨学科方法的知识和政治必要性，作为调查黑人生活中原本缺失的历史、社会、文化、哲学、意识形态、政治、心理和审美背景的唯一途径，来达到这一目的。我从奥德丽·洛德那里得到灵感，认为对黑人文学和视觉艺术传统的跨学科研究表明，成功地拆除了“主人的房子”的不是“主人的工具”，而是“奴隶的工具”。在2018年道格拉斯诞辰200周年之际，在黑人生命也是命的时代，现在需要的道格拉斯不是代表性的白手起家的人，而是一个容易犯错的凡人。不仅是道格拉斯，还有他的家庭成员，他们对他们所经历的痛苦绝望地写在纸上，因为他们经历的“灵魂上的伤口”无视文字或视觉表达。学者、档案保管员、艺术家和活动家有责任利用一切可用的智力工具，不仅讲述被奴役的人的故事，而且讲述黑人妇女和男子在解放后时代才享有名义上的自由的故事。道格拉斯的战斗口号“我的束缚和自由”可以理解为：“我们的束缚和我们的自由。”

Working to develop an alternative interdisciplinary framework, this project investigates the legendary example of Frederick Douglass as a renowned formerly enslaved and self-emancipated liberator in conjunction with the under-researched biographies and writings authored by his daughters and sons: Rosetta, Lewis Henry, Frederick Jr., Charles Remond and Annie Douglass. By reinterpreting the writings of the mythologised figure of Frederick Douglass within the context of his neglected family members, it is possible to reconceptualise dominant scholarly paradigms according to which the iconic and exceptional few are theorised over and above the individual and invisibilised many when it comes to black lives. An interdisciplinary project drawing together early, mid and senior career academics, activists, archivists and artists and aimed at specialist and general audiences, this proposed research consists of a literary biography, a family biography/scholarly anthology, a UK exhibition, 2 US companion exhibits, guided exhibition and Edinburgh black history city tours, a public educational programme, an academic conference, a US workshop on engaged scholarship, 2 refereed journal special issues, a commemorative plaque, an exhibition guide and 4 educational learning guides and online resources for use in universities, schools, adult-learning environments and by the general public. At the heart of this project is the conviction that the only way in which to do justice to the under-researched writings and artworks produced by black women, children and men bought and sold into transatlantic slavery, and for whom the written word and the image remained contested terrain, is to develop a cross-, multi- and inter- disciplinary scholarly practice. Dominant theoretical models do not apply. Researchers must develop alternative analytical approaches in order to examine black authored literary and visual arts traditions forged in the interstices of legal, physical, cultural, historical, psychological and imaginative subjugation. Just as black authors and artists developed self-reflexively experimental textual and visual practices as they took on the burden of representation by acknowledging that, as Douglass insisted, "language has no power" and "images are mute" when faced with the impossibility of representing the tragedies of chattel slavery and its traumatising legacies, we as scholars must take on the burden of interpretation by developing a new theoretical language. I take the view that we are not there yet by arguing for the intellectual and political necessity of working with interdisciplinary methodologies within Black Studies, African Diasporic Studies, Slavery Studies, American Studies, Memory Studies and Social Justice Studies as the only way in which to investigate the otherwise missing historical, social, cultural, philosophical, ideological, political, psychological and aesthetic contexts of black lives. I take inspiration from Audre Lorde to argue that an interdisciplinary examination of black literary and visual arts traditions establishes that it is not the "master's tools" but the "slaves' tools" that succeed in "dismantling" the "master's house." During the two-hundred year anniversary of his birth in 2018 and in a Black Lives Matter era, the Douglass needed now is no representative self-made man but a fallible, mortal individual. It was not only Douglass but his family members who despaired of "committing to paper the pain" they experienced as the "wounds upon the soul" defied textual or visual expression. The onus is on academics, archivists, artists and activists to harness every intellectual tool available in order to tell the story not only of the enslaved but of black women and men experiencing freedoms that were in name only in a post-emancipation era. For Douglass' rallying cry, "My Bondage and My Freedom" it is possible to read: "Our Bondage and Our Freedom."