The Fugitive's Properties: Law and the Poetics of Possession

Stephen M. Best

ISBN 10: 0226044343 / ISBN 13: 9780226044347

Published by University of Chicago Press, 2004

About this Item

First printing. Softcover volume, measuring approximately 6" x 9", is like new. xii/362 pages. "In this study of literature and law before and since the Civil War, Stephen M. Best shows how American conceptions of slavery, property, and the idea of the fugitive were profoundly interconnected. "The Fugitive's Properties" uncovers a poetics of intangible, personified property emerging out of antebellum laws, circulating through key nineteenth-century works of literature, and informing cultural forms such as blackface minstrelsy and early race films. Best also argues that legal principles dealing with fugitives and indebted persons provided a sophisticated precursor to intellectual property law as it dealt with rights in appearance, expression, and other abstract aspects of personhood. In this conception of property as fleeting, indeed fugitive, American law preserved for much of the rest of the century slavery's most pressing legal imperative: the production of personhood as a market commodity. By revealing the paradoxes of this relationship between fugitive slave law and intellectual property law, Best helps us to understand how race achieved much of its force in the American cultural imagination. A work of ambitious scope and compelling cross-connections, "The Fugitive's Properties" sets new agendas for scholars of American literature and legal culture.".

Seller Inventory # ABE-1624092106529

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Fugitive's Properties: Law and the Poetics of Possession
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226044343
• ISBN 13: 9780226044347
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: As New

About this title

Synopsis

In this study of literature and law before and since the Civil War, Stephen M. Best shows how American conceptions of slavery, property, and the idea of the fugitive were profoundly interconnected. The Fugitive's Properties uncovers a poetics of intangible, personified property emerging out of antebellum laws, circulating through key nineteenth-century works of literature, and informing cultural forms such as blackface minstrelsy and early race films.

Best also argues that legal principles dealing with fugitives and indebted persons provided a sophisticated precursor to intellectual property law as it dealt with rights in appearance, expression, and other abstract aspects of personhood. In this conception of property as fleeting, indeed fugitive, American law preserved for much of the rest of the century slavery's most pressing legal imperative: the production of personhood as a market commodity. By revealing the paradoxes of this relationship between fugitive slave law and intellectual property law, Best helps us to understand how race achieved much of its force in the American cultural imagination. A work of ambitious scope and compelling cross-connections, The Fugitive's Properties sets new agendas for scholars of American literature and legal culture.

About the Author

Stephen M. Best is an associate professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.