Using Black Bodies in White German Abolitionist Theater

The late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century German Sklavenstücke (slave plays) articulate a nuanced critique of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade and thus serve as a transnational contribution within the larger discursive abolitionist context. Applying a critical Black studies reading, I challenge the empathetic limitations of white abolitionist cultural productions that create unsettling power relations in which the enslaved are spoken for and about in a performative manner. This highlights epistemic violence alongside explicit physical violence and torture that center the Black pained body as a staged spectacle in supposed efforts to elicit empathetic political action.