Perception by incomgruity

Abstract

This study examines the paradoxical and at the same time interesting relationship between Christian religion and the system of slavery in the American historical context. Through the use of Kenneth Burke’s concept and theory of Perception by Incongruity as a theoretical and conceptual framework, this study examines Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Frederick Douglass’ The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. In the view of this study, Perception by Incongruity, as a theoretical and conceptual tool has the literary and the rhetorical resources to unmask the ironies and paradoxes involved in slave holding religion and religion holding slaves. The principal research question of the present study seeks to probe the usability of the Christian faith by slave owners to dominate and pacify the slaves, and the instrumentalisation by the slaves of the Christian faith as a liberatory and emancipatory belief. Perception by Incongruity enriches the present study in so far as it unmasks the incongruity and paradox of masters and slaves sharing the same definition of God and faith and still remaining in their conflictual positions of masters and slaves. Since this study is a study in literature, the methods of literature study and textual analysis are deployed in examining the primary texts, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. A multiplicity of secondary texts; in form of critical and empirical literature; are used throughout this study to support observations, arguments and conclusions that are advanced by the study. Summatively, this study observes and concludes that religion, in this case Christianity occupies a perceptively incongruous position where it is suable by people in conflicting situations. Further, where domination, power and capitalism as an economic system meet, religion belongs in the mind and the eye of the beholders who seeks to use it to justify and defend their particular interests and positions.