This chapter argues that neo-abolitionism uses sentimentalism to dehistoricize contemporary atrocities, viewing them as revivals of a superseded Atlantic past. Modern slave narratives, explicitly written to abolish modern slavery across the globe (ranging across Sudan, Haiti, and Sierra Leone, promoted by various neo-abolitionist organizations), enshrine the language of sentimentalism as the most effective weapon in the human rights arsenal, defining a global relation between us and them solely as a matter of sentiment. Survivors outline an idyllic childhood, abduction and captivity, a life of servitude, until the moment of humanitarian rescue and a new life in America. Reading Francis Bok’s memoir Escape from Slavery (2003) alongside Dave Eggers’s neoliberal novel What Is the What (2006), I trace how the formal exchanges among subject, author, and amanuensis generate a seemingly new way for Americans to imagine themselves as global citizens, constituting themselves as global via their humanitarian empathy for the African victim of atrocity.
Access to human rights for persons using prosthetic and orthotic assistive devices in Sierra Leone
