What is "grotesque," I would suggest, is accepting at face value the slaveowners conception of the slave -- that she is naught but a commodity -- and constructing social theory on that basis. In fact, the contradiction between the "official" conception of the slave as 'willless' commodity and the reality of enslaved peoples as human beings with wills and the capacity to act regardless of their legal status as 'commodities' was a central problem and dilemma for the slaveowning regime. The classic works of Leon Higginbotham on race/slavery and the law, _In The Matter of Color_, _Race, Values and the American Legal Process_ and _Shades of Freedom_, address this question with considerable skill.
Since enslaved African-Americans were human beings with the power to act, the slave system did need to win their accommodation in certain crucial areas to be able to rule them. This is, of course, not a freely given "consent" in the classical liberal legal framework, but it is a political reality that needs to be studied and understood.
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --