Old Age and American Slavery reveals how antebellum southerners adapted to, resisted, and failed to overcome changes associated with age, both real and imagined, and the extent to which these struggles intersected with wider concerns over control, exploitation, resistance, and survival in a slave society. In doing so, it asks future scholars to rethink static hierarchies among Black and white southerners, to incorporate age into their work as a category of analysis and as a relation of power, and to address the contingent and contested networks of solidarity and support among enslavers and enslaved in the American South. Age shaped slavery, both as a system of economic exploitation and a contested site of personal domination, in crucial ways. Albeit never on equal terms, both Black and white southerners had to grapple with the realization that “old age [was] creeping up on me so fast,” and their efforts to do so were entwined in the wider struggles within and against slavery. The ravages of time came for all, and the conclusion reiterates how recognition of this fact shaped the dynamics of American slavery, and the lives of enslaved people and enslavers alike.

Historians have long stressed the significance enslavers accorded to public demonstrations of authority, dominance, and independence, as well as the wider significance of these ideals to the dynamics of slavery. Recent work on the violence and exploitation of slavery has reiterated the terrifying power enslavers wielded, and the harm this caused to enslaved people. In presenting enslavers as such dominant figures, however, there is a danger that we confirm their own self-image as masterful even while rejecting their claims of benevolence. A more nuanced narrative becomes possible when we consider how the performance of mastery came under pressure – both internal and external – as enslavers aged. Enslavers could not stop time from marching on and the pressures associated with aging – both real and imagined – wreaked havoc on their public and private claims of dominance. Enslaved people understood that mastery was never ordained, but instead embodied. Bodies, Black and white, enslaver and enslaved, were all subject to the “ravages of time.” Knowledge of this fact was applied when enslaved people crafted individual and collective strategies for survival and forms of resistance.

This chapter shows how the push for profit and dominance, and the dynamics of slavery, affected white southerners’ dealings with elderly “masters.” As enslavers aged, they could be forced to fight against the rising generation who looked at them and saw dependency and submissiveness, instead of autonomy and mastery. These traits – and general binaries of power/powerlessness – were understood as bound up with the racializing discourse of slavery and the gendered dynamics of patriarchy. Elderly enslavers – both men and women – sometimes came to believe that advanced age was a relation of powerlessness that marked them as closer to enslaved than enslaver and which served to unsettle existing power relations in the community. Those who fought against such depictions confronted communal perceptions of their inability to enact mastery, and these battles had particular emotional effects. Cross-cultural scholarship argues that communal assumptions of incapacity can be humiliating, and this chapter emphasizes how aged enslavers grappled with these perceptions. These old slavers are not objects of pity, but their experiences reveal the culture of exploitation that drove antebellum slavery.

The Introduction sets out the historiographical and theoretical grounding for this study on old age in slavery, and provide information on the demographic conditions of slavery appertaining to old age. This book challenges narratives of solidarity between enslaved people and their elders, and shows how far age affected the performance of mastery and shaped white southerners’ interactions with one another. In examining how individuals, families, and communities felt about the aging process and dealt with elders, it emphasizes the complex social relations that developed in a slave society. Showing how old age ran through the arguments of Black activists, abolitionists, proslavery propagandists, and enslavers, the book reveals how representations – and the realities of aging – spoke to wider debates on the politics of paternalism and resistance. Ultimately, by illuminating age as a crucial aspect of the complex web of relations that bound together enslavers and enslaved, the book asks readers to rethink existing narratives relating to networks of solidarity in the American South and emphasizes the all-encompassing violence and exploitation of American slavery.

Intergenerational disputes shaped by white southerners’ hopes to profit from slavery did not end with the death of an enslaver. These contests became particularly virulent when the matter revolved around posthumous manumissions, and this chapter shows how elderly enslavers who sought to emancipate enslaved people in wills had their actions challenged by rivals who utilized the discourse that conflated old age with weakness, both of body and mind, to diminish their reputation and deny their mastery. The aging process had public and political ramifications in a slave society built on dominance and mastery, and a focus on emancipation and age serves as a fitting end to this study which underlines the wider importance of age as a vector of power in the antebellum south. Contests over emancipations underscore how far understandings of aging as a period of declining force led to conflict between white southerners looking to rise at another’s expense. White enslavers looked to their aged peers who sought to free their slaves as reduced in authority and status, and as figures whose claims to mastery must be usurped for the good of both private and public interests associated with slavery.

Especially as we age, laughter is good for the soul. For a good, long life have a sense of humor. It can take us through life’s turns and twists. Mastery and grit are important for all ages. Create art. Good for the brain is the endeavor to want to improve. Stay active in your passions. Make modifications. Do what is possible. Keep going. Keep moving! Older people too often lose their confidence. They quit trying. They grow discouraged. They just quit living. The important thing is to keep trying at something you care about. Be willing to work for something and keep at it. It is part of our human nature to want to be able to create something.

Retirement, for some, can be one of the biggest risk factors for death. Deficits of retirement include short-term memory declines. Worsening in mobility. Increase in chronic medical conditions and mental health problems. Studies document that retirees are 40% more likely to have a heart attack or stroke than those who don’t retire. There is need to change the culture around work to consciously adapt to needs and desires of older workers. Rename retirement “repurposing.” Rather than retirement, find a repurposed career that recognizes our need for autonomy, mastery and purpose as we age. Research shows when real-life companies have made adjustments (shorter work days; environmental changes to relieve arthritis pain or low vision) for older workers, the overall productivity of the company increases!. Need to prepare for retirement when you are still young. Live for something that matters. Build new social relationships. Make play part of life. Studies show that retiring can improve health but only if post-retirement activities are purposeful, stimulating, and active.

Does Socrates believe that virtue is necessary for happiness? If so, those who lack virtue cannot be happy. But virtue, Socrates also believes, is a kind of knowledge. Yet Socrates himself persistently disclaims having the kind of knowledge that seems to be required. If Plato’s exemplar of a human being lacked knowledge, he must therefore also have lacked virtue. Accordingly, some scholars have concluded that neither Socrates nor any other human being can have any positive happiness – just relative degrees of wretchedness – in life. Provides a much more optimistic account of the Socratic view in which the craft model allows for self-improvement in knowledge and virtue, to such a degree that some positive happiness is possible for even very imperfect human beings. Undertakes detailed analyses of important texts in which Socrates attributes some achievement in craftsmanship and argues that positive achievement does not entail a perfection standard or anything like mastery of a craft – including the most important craft of virtue.

In the Gorgias, Socrates famously declares that he is alone among contemporary Athenians in taking up the “true craft of politics.” But the claim is extremely puzzling, since Socrates also claims to be ignorant and lacking in any significant wisdom of any kind. Crafts, for Socrates, involve cognitive achievement. But Socrates declares that he has accomplished little of such achievement. Shows how the model of craft-knowledge can resolve this paradox by allowing Socrates to regard taking up the craft of politics as an attempt to improve his ability in achieving the goals of that craft: benefiting others. Shows how Plato’s early dialogues give abundant evidence of Socrates’ activities in both of what he characterizes as the branches of politics: legislation and correction.

There are numerous ways to add value and make a contribution. We can offer gifts of the heart, the head, and the hand. We can provide emotional support, ideas, or tangible help. When it comes to adding value to our own lives, we can increase our happiness, study new things, find meaning in life, and develop physically and spiritually. There are really countless ways to make our life more exciting, goal-oriented, virtuous, and passionate, and it is up to each one of us to discover what actions will make that happen. Needless to say, our opportunities are influenced by the environment we live in. Some social ecologies are more supportive than others, but the aspiration to add value remains, regardless of the particular context. The needs to make a difference, to master the environment, and to express ourselves are well ingrained in all of us. We yearn to be in control of our destiny and to learn new skills. These needs are expressions of self-determination and the pursuit of meaning.

How can we tell that people are adding value? How do they add value to themselves? How do they help others? How do they achieve greatness in domains as varied as chess, music, sport, politics, business, physics, and literature? Excelling at friendship or parenting is part of interpersonal wellness. You want to be the best partner, friend, or parent that you can be. Shining in athletics is part of physical, occupational, and even psychological well-being. Leading social change is part of community wellness; your calling is to improve the social condition. Regardless of your particular focus, there are six investments you have to make. People who get better at anything invest in six things. We call them the six Ts: Transcendence: Going beyond the norm to pursue a passion and a purpose; Time: Dedicating thousands of hours; Thought: Concentrating and creating mental representations of the subject matter; Training: Practicing to reach stretch goals and acquire skills with a coach; Tenacity: Persevering and following through; and Trust: Believing in yourself, your mentors, and the process.

Sense of control over one’s life declines in the later portion of the life span, which is not surprising in the face of increased losses and decreased gains associated with aging. Unfortunately, the maintenance of sense of control is a key indicator of successful aging while low control beliefs are a risk factor for poor aging-related outcomes, such as lower concurrent and subsequent cognitive functioning. The simultaneous focus on the person and the environment is an important characteristic of research on control beliefs. We synthesize the state of the field and discuss the current understanding of the complex interplay of control beliefs and cognition. In addition, we propose that awareness of aging, which is the subjective interpretation of aging, may be an important future direction to elucidate the control-cognition relationships.

The final chapter brings the various threads of the book together and revisits hegemony and its afterlives in Egypt through the concept of haunting. I trace some of the ways in which hegemony and its afterlives fed into the 2011 revolution and ask why it was so important for each ruling class to portray itself as either a rupture or a continuity. Haunting allows me to lay out both how these different projects were formed and how they seeped into one another – in other words, how some projects haunted others. I posit that Nasserism set the terms of the political and economic debate in contemporary Egypt; the projects that came after consistently found that they had to work within these terms – or face serious crises. After discussing the concept of haunting, the chapter explores Nasserism and its promises as well as the afterlives of Nasserism that haunt contemporary Egypt, particularly in relation to economic liberalism. I then turn to the question of mastery and the ways in which Nasserism’s attempt to master the future also haunt us in important ways, and why, to become truly free, we must think about the future in ways that do not centre mastery or mastering. The book ends with Fanon and his call to create a new world – one in which all of us are free and in which decolonization becomes a reality rather than a dream.

Starting from the demonstration by Milman Parry and Albert Lord that a complex traditional system developed over centuries for the composition in performance of epic song by deeply experienced poets is the engine of Homeric poetry, this essay describes the way that meaning is generated and can be identified within such a system. In all of the elements of the poem, from the smallest compositional unit (the line and its components) to the largest (the overall song consisting of many scroll-length songs each of which consists of concatenated themes), the experienced interpreter must grasp both its horizontal and vertical aspects ‒ in other words, an element’s place within the hierarchy of the whole as well as what differentiates any given element from its likes elsewhere in the tradition.

This chapter and the two that follow cover the period from 1838 to enactment of the Fugitive Slave Act in October 1850. The chapter begins with an examination of the covert networks that helped fugitives from enslavement traverse the Borderland in at least a dozen places between Quincy, IL, and Chester, PA. It then discusses the cultural roots of the violence of mastery, and dozens of incidents in which slaveholders and slave catchers brought the violence of mastery into the Borderland, rampaging through entire communities, breaking into homes, and on a few occasions killing and dismembering escapees who resisted. The chapter explores the impact of this violence on the lives of abolitionists, free blacks, and Underground activists in the Borderland and the manner in which the Underground Railroad adapted its operations to meet the challenge by embracing speed and stealth. Finally, the chapter discusses the dynamics of fugitive rescues in the Borderland, noting particularly the different dynamics of urban and rural rescues and the rarity of interracial cooperation in these efforts.