Katherine Franke

So this is a solid and slim little volume that examines the moment between emancipation (in its many forms, not limited solely to the Emancipation Proclamation) and Reconstruction when freedmen were given land. Franke's historical work here is solid, and her analysis about how reparations might be made in the present is really interesting and worth chewing on. The language is mostly accessible, and I think this could be used really effectively in a college or even high school classroom--her invocations of Agamben, for example, are more nods than any serious theoretical work, though it is there for you if you are familiar with Agamben.

The struggle I had with this book ultimately was the struggle I have with a lot of writing about reparations in the form of land distribution, which is the question of whose land is being distributed, and what we have learned from the state distributing land and to whom. Though Franke does discuss, very briefly, the Dawes Act and the ways that land distribution has been used to undermine indigenous sovereignty, she does not spend any time thinking about the fact that it is still land belonging to indigenous people that would be distributed--which I get, because it's hugely complicated and messy. I genuinely think analyzing the case of freedmen who had been enslaved by nations of the five southeastern tribes--some of whom were promised land in the 1866 treaty, which ended enslavement in those nations--could have really built up her analysis. What happens when the land being distributed doesn't belong, in the eyes of the state, to white men? And how can we learn from the Dawes Act that the distribution of private property on the part of the state is always a move to make those involved conform to specific modes of citizenship, which are heavily gendered as well as raced? (She doesn't seem to touch on this even with the idea that single women could not own land under the Sherman distribution rules, which, given that she's written a book about marriage, seems odd to me.)

I do find her discussions of collective ownership in the present and how to get that land back into Black communities very compelling--she doesn't fully address the problem of capitalism and its relationship to property, but she seems to hint at it, and it gets its fullest address here. Overall I do think this book is a solid conversation starter engaged with other pieces talking about reparations, and many of my complaints are complaints I have about that conversation more broadly. I can definitely imagine incorporating this book into a syllabus, and also could be really useful for book clubs!… (altro)