Defying Appropriation of Racial Discourse in Steve McQueen's Twelve Years a Slave

Abstract

The major thrust of this study is to probe how White Americans used the idea of racial differences of Blacks as a means to oppress and enslave them in the film Twelve Years a Slave. When racial inferiority pertaining to Blacks got stabilized and normalized, even Blacks accepted their inferior plight giving Whites a chance to enslave them. The notion of Black people's intrnalized racial inferiority was exploited as a springboard to promote slavery. Repeatedly Blacks were told to believe that they are inferior and it would be better if they simply accept White people as their masters. The more discourses on Blacks' innate inferiority circulated, the more easily they accepted their inferior and marginalized lot. As this discursive practice got normalized giving rise to institutionalized forms of slavery, it became quite easier for Whites to sell Blacks as though they are sellable commodities. To probe this issue, the theoretical idea of Althusser's notion of ideological state apparatus is used to probe the issue at hand. Additionally, Foucault's idea of how self is cultivated following an individual's exposure to discursive, systematic and societal practice constitutes the methodological basis of this study.