This is a tad off topic, but hopefully does not do too much violence to Lyle's stimulating and interesting thread:
Stanley Elkins, in his classic work SLAVERY: A PROBLEM IN AMERICAN INSTITUTIONAL AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE (the third edition was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1976; the first edition was published in the late 1950s, presumably by the same press), advanced the thesis that the experience of slavery was psychologically debilitating to those who lived through it. ("Classic," of course, can mean in practice "an old book that no one reads anymore.") Elkins' thesis drew considerable attention, and I don't think anyone now believes it holds, at least in the form that he initially advanced it. He famously relied on psychological studies of survivors of Nazi concentration camps, for example, to sustain his analysis of the psychological deformations of character inflicted on the personalities of slaves. Most people now would argue that the analogy is flawed--that the psychological situations were not comparable.
On the other hand, there is ample evidence from contemporaries in the 1860s and 1870s that many people believed at the time that slavery did in fact disrupt the character of slaves. Much of the force of Booker T. Washington's arguments, for example, derived from such an analysis of the effects of slavery. Belief and reality are two different things, and we should not minimize the importance of ideology in construction of contemporary beliefs. But there is often a connection of some sort, as Gordon Wood has so eloquently argued for a very different historiographic context.
I am unaware of any recent scholarship that has tried to develop Elkins' insights, or to modify the analogies from which he reasoned. I am quite sure I will benefit from comments on this, should anyone have them. Is there recent work along these lines with which I should be familiar?
Many thanks!
All best wishes,
Kevin
___________________________
Kevin R. Hardwick
Associate Professor
Department of History, MSC 8001
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, Virginia 22807
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