| Reviews / Comptes Rendus | Labour/Le Travail, 58

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Mark Simpson, Trafficking Subjects: The Politics of Mobility in Nineteenth- Century America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2005)

SCHOLARS HAVE fought for years to challenge the myth of American exceptionalism, to displace the archetype of the rugged individual, and to incorporate the stories of slaves, American Indians, women, and immigrants. In his bold and skilful work, Trafficking Subjects: The Politics of Mobility in Nineteenth- Century America, Mark Simpson not only adds to this valuable body of literature, but also challenges the ways in which growth and expansion have signified progress in traditional narratives. Utilizing a concept he terms the "politics of mobility," he frames his work around "the contestatory processes that produce different forms of movement, and that invest these forms with social value, cultural purchase, and discriminatory power." (xiii-xiv) Put simply, Simpson maintains that in order to understand past struggles for social justice, we must understand the contest over the freedom of movement.

Drawing from a range of sources, Simpson explores the place of travel in the American consciousness as well as the laws, customs, and ideologies that shaped disparate travel experiences. The core of Trafficking Subjects is thus an investigation of "how mobility, as a process, a practice, and a social resource, comes ... to be distributed, invested, directed and determined." (xvi) In each of his four chapters he traces the process by which travel became commodified and regulated during the 19th century, arguing that most often, forced movement (or compulsory stasis) was a result of industrialization and developing ideologies of race and gender. Thus, he seeks to "historicize and critique the traveling ideal that ... treats as universal the common condition and capacity of all persons, what are in fact the dispositions, privileges, and values ... of a particular social class." (xxiii) The result is a smart and valuable contribution to the historiography that challenges the illusion at the center of both American modernity and identity: the claim of "spatial expansion as progress." (xx)

Simpson begins his analysis with a close reading of Thomas Gray's Confessions of Nat Turner, arguing that Nat Turner's weapon was his illicit mobility. The foundation of power in the plantation system was the white man's ability to control the movement of slaves as well as the movement (dissemination) of information. Thus Turner's education, organization, and mobilization of the black community threatened not only the continuation of the slave system but also the racial hierarchy and identity of the South. Such resistance further provided an opportunity for slaves to redefine their identities, as they experienced empowerment through exercising the freedom of movement. It therefore became imperative that Gray present the authoritative account in Confessions, as the white community needed to reassert the control it had lost as a result of the slave revolt and the wild rumours that ensued. Simpson's analysis of the function of race and mobility in Nat Turner's revolt was strong and convincing, yet I was left to wonder how gender norms influenced the phenomenon he so aptly described. Given what we know about rumour as an expression of women's voice, power, and movement, might Gray's Confessions have been an attempt to reassert male power as well? If so, then Simpson's framework also provides an excellent lens for understanding the codes of white—and black— masculinity at work in Gray's account.

Building on his analysis of the regulation and diffusion of knowledge, Simpson asserts that triumphant narratives of "progress" have served to silence the political struggle, conflictual social relations, and violence endemic to American history. In order to uncover these tensions, he reasons, readers must question the lofty motives and simplistic conclusions of 19th-century authors, as many are influenced by — indeed even funded by — the quest for expansion. Thus, "philanthropic extension and discovery fold ... readily into 'commercial prosperity'," proving that the travel writing industry and the imperialist project are mutually constitutive — each serving to silence its opponents and victims. (35)

The interimplication of mobility and secrecy structures Simpson's survey of the Civil War period, a time during which "crises of motion [became] crises of knowledge." (59) As the US government attempted "to secure social relations within the nation's imagined community by requiring its subjects to aid in policing illicit mobility," an individual's movements became as much a threat as they were a political statement. (59) He rereads the Fugitive Slave Law, stories of the Underground Railroad, and Sarah Edmond's Nurse and Spy in the Union Army, revealing how each jeopardized the ability of the federal government to enforce its laws and advance its military campaign. As escaping slaves and female spies used costumes in order to resist the restrictions that race and gender placed on their mobility, they blurred lines of identity and claimed the freedom of movement previously denied to them.

Finally, Simpson considers "disciplinary pace," a term he employs to describe the modern effort "to make bodies in motion the objects, not agents of their velocity." (93) This is his strongest claim and most significant contribution, as he analyses the ways in which industrial capitalism seeks to isolate the individual and regulate his/her time and movement in order to maximize profit and undermine collectivism. These efforts not only govern the formation of an individual's identity but also shape social relations among the population at large. He includes an interesting discussion of the necessary—but dangerous — figure of the migrant worker and the ways in which it contributed to the political, economic, and social projects of capitalism. Created by the economy, owners and politicians manipulated the image of the "tramp" and his freedom of movement (vagabondage) in order to assure his marginalization from society. Thus, those workers who fell victim to the excess of disciplinary pace were excluded from the very social system it had created.

Trafficking Subjects is a fine contribution to the literature detailing the 19th-century market and transportation revolutions. Simpson's readings of the texts were insightful and persuasive. Yet, as a historian, I wished that he contrasted —or at least contextualized—his analyses a bit more with other first-hand accounts. Several recent studies have given new voice to the slaves, women, and workers Simpson accesses through his material; this work would provide even richer historical detail to his arguments. As Simpson ably explains, the United States, as a capitalist nation, needs at once to expand and to stand still. It needs to grow to capture more resources and markets; yet this movement destabilizes government by undermining its ability to police the mobility of its subjects. His epilogue, "Movement Time," reminds us that this interplay between movement and restriction has grown only more complex in this age of globalization and the rejuvenated American empire. Thus, while Simpson successfully demonstrated "the obsessive will [of the United States] to proscribe the mobility of some and compel the mobility of others," he nevertheless ends his book with a call to mobilize. (130) For only through a collective movement can we undermine disciplinary pace and utilize the politics of mobility to our advantage.


Sarah Crabtree University of Minnesota

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