The Intimacy of State Violence: Slavery, Family Separation, and the Emotional Terrain of Survival

• In Event: Human Rights from Global Perspective: Violence, Slavery, and Rule of Law

Abstract

This study examines the affective and emotional dimensions of family regulation during slavery, analyzing how enslaved individuals navigated the trauma of forced separation, surveillance, and institutional control. Using van Manen’s (1990) lived experience methodology and Davidson and Milligan’s (2004) emotional geography framework, this research explores how enslaved families experienced and responded to state-sanctioned disruption. By centering first-person narratives from the Federal Writers' Project and published slave autobiographies, the study investigates four key dimensions: daily experiences, emotional geographies, temporality, and agency. The findings reveal that enslaved individuals developed complex strategies of resilience and resistance, preserving familial bonds despite systematic efforts to dismantle them. The research also highlights how the spatial and temporal constraints of enslavement shaped emotional experiences of kinship, loss, and survival. By historicizing family regulation within the context of slavery, this paper establishes critical links between past and present systems of institutional control, demonstrating the enduring legacies of racialized family disruption. Ultimately, this study contributes to abolitionist scholarship by challenging dominant narratives of family regulation as protective or rehabilitative, instead foregrounding its function as a tool of social control that continues to shape the lived experiences of Black families today.

Author

• Ihsan Al-zouabi, Rutgers University-Newark