The slave condition dissolves personhood into property, making a life a thing possessed.

Evidence

Morss has suggested, the slave condition produces a contradiction between freedom of property and freedom of person. An unequal relationship is established along with the inequality of the power over life. This power over the life of another takes the form of commerce: a person’s humanity is dissolved to the point where it becomes possible to say that the slave’s life is possessed by the master. — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 65

Categorization

• QUESTION: This ‘power over life’ as commerce is a direct precursor to the biopolitics/necropolitics tools the reader is assembling.
• DEEPTHINKING: The move from unequal power over life to commerce — humanity dissolved to where a life is ‘possessed’ — is dense with implication for how Mbembe builds state-of-exception theory.
• XREF: connects to: Even under total possession the enslaved refashion objects and bodies into self-making performance. — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 67; Enslaved people were human beings despite slavery’s alterations of their being; Slavery’s meaning was psychological subjugation beyond mere economic exploitation (+4 more)

Related

• The slave ship’s overcrowding systematically stripped captives of personhood. (similarity 0.81)
• Slavery altered slaves’ conditions but could not negate their being (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Even under total possession the enslaved refashion objects and bodies into self-making performance. #complicates (0.85) — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 67
• Enslaved people were human beings despite slavery’s alterations of their being #complicates (0.80)
• Slavery’s meaning was psychological subjugation beyond mere economic exploitation #expands (0.80)
• Total domination begins by stripping people of legal personhood, not by killing them #qualifies (0.75)