The Body of Property : Antebellum American Fiction and the Phenomenology of Possession

What does it mean to own something? How does a thing become mine? Liberal philosophy since John Locke has championed the salutary effects of private property but has avoided the more difficult questions of property’s ontology. Chad Luck argues that antebellum American literature is obsessed with precisely these questions. Reading slave narratives, gothic romances, city-mystery novels, and a range of other property narratives, Luck unearths a wide-ranging literary effort to understand the nature of ownership, the phenomenology of possession. In these antebellum texts, ownership is not an abstract legal form but a lived relation, a dynamic of embodiment emerging within specific cultural spaces―a disputed frontier, a city agitated by class conflict. Luck challenges accounts that map property practice along a trajectory of abstraction and “virtualization.” The book also reorients recent Americanist work in emotion and affect by detailing a broader phenomenology of ownership, one extending beyond emotion to such sensory experiences as touch, taste, and vision. This productive blend of phenomenology and history uncovers deep-seated anxieties―and enthusiasms―about property across antebellum culture. Explores The Embodied Aspects Of Ownership And Private Property As These Emerge In A Range Of American Literary Texts Across The Late Eighteenth And Early Nineteenth Century-- Machine Generated Contents Note: -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Pierson V. Post And The Literary Origins Of American Property -- American Literature And The Problem Of Property -- Property In Antebellum Culture -- A Phenomenology Of Property -- The Space Of Property -- Chapter One -- Walking The Property: Ownership, Space, And The Body In Motion In Edgar Huntly -- Condillac's Statue And The Primacy Of Touch -- Touching On The Other: Bodily Frontiers And The Production Of Space -- Walking The Property: Mobility And The Appropriation Of Space -- Chapter Two -- Eating Dwelling Gagging: Hawthorne, Stoddard And The Phenomenology Of Possession -- Possession Without Acquisition: Eating, Enjoyment, And The -- Beginning Of Property -- Home Bodies: Domestic Space And Possession Proper -- Mother's Milk: Private Property And The Feminine Economy Of The Gift -- Chapter Three -- Anxieties Of Ownership: Debt, Entitlement And The Plantation Romance -- Southern Discomfort: Debt In The Slaveholding South -- Owning And Owing: Woodcraft And The Phenomenology Of Debt -- Slave Narrative And The Senses Of Entitlement -- The Structure Of The Debt: Swallow Barn And The Space Of The Plantation -- Chapter Four -- Feeling At A Loss: Theft And Affect In George Lippard -- A Culture Of Theft -- Distress Signals: Theft, Body, Affect -- Kleptophobia And The Architecture Of Loss -- Invasion Of The Body Snatchers: The Market In The Grave -- Epilogue -- Wisconsin, 2004: Racial Violence And The Bodies Of Property -- Notes -- Works Cited. Chad Luck. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Cover Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Pierson v. Post and the Literary Origins of American Property 1 Walking the Property: Ownership, Space, and the Body in Motion in Edgar Huntly 2 Eating Dwelling Gagging: Hawthorne, Stoddard, and the Phenomenology of Possession 3 Anxieties of Ownership: Debt, Entitlement, and the Plantation Romance 4 Feeling at a Loss: Theft and Affect in George Lippard Epilogue: Wisconsin, 2004: Racial Violence and the Bodies of Property Notes Works Cited Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T V W Y