ABSTRACT
African American history is, from its beginnings, a history not merely coterminous with but actively constituted by punitive violence. Some of the major problems of studying representations of violence in black American history may be briefly set out. Violence is thus to be understood as originary or formative in the African American experience, rather than as representing a turn away from some prelapsarian, non-violent moment. At many other times, however, resistance to institutionalized violence has taken the form of an answering violence by African Americans themselves, enacted against both persons and property. Violence’s durability as a resource adopted by African Americans in the attempt to liberate or even simply to protect themselves can be seen by scanning the early entries in Charles M. Christian’s valuable chronology, Black Saga. The chapter also provides an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
