Slave and Master: Hegel and Kindred

Through Hegel's lens, once humans figure out what's around them, they start to assert themselves in the world. 2 year olds, typically called "the terrible two's" go through this series of events in their mind: I used to not know stuff. Now I know stuff. I know that glass shatters. Now I am going to shatter glass because I know how to manipulate glass in my world. Dana goes through this series of events in their mind: I used to know stuff--I used to know that I am free. Now, after weird time travel, I know that I am not. (She is thrust into an unknown world and has to start to learn about her environment just as a two year old has to learn about theirs.) Through time and observation, Dana now knows the ins and outs of slavery, and thus, knows how to assert herself through the obstacles she faces: she can manipulate her world (how to escape, how to trick, how to perservere) and can use her power of observation to get, or try to get, the result she wants.

In terms of power, Hegel has an interesting theory: that a master isn't a master without a slave. The master is dependent on the slave to guarantee his power--but really, his power is manifested in his appearance: he bustles around looking tough, playing the expected role of the master, but is really not doing anything--his power is just a show, because he already has power. He doesn't need to do anything to get it. The slave however, due to her forced observation (to get out of an unfavorable situation) has to do something to escape and get power. A perfect example in Kindred that shows this weird power difference is when Dana teaches the slave children how to read. The slave children genuinely want to learn how to read because it will help them escape their terrible lives. Rufus and the rest of the Weylan's don't read well because their safety doesn't depend on it--they are already free, white, slave owners. What good would reading do them? The slaves have an unhappiness that actually leads somewhere, while the masters have an unhappiness that leads nowhere because their unhappiness stems from their feigned power. The real power is in the slaves themselves.

In the novel, Dana is from the 1970's where she lives life without slavery, sees real progress from the slave era, and experiences the dreams that the slaves worked so hard to achieve but never got to really see the result of. In the slave era, the slaves had a sense of what ends their means would yield, but were never able to truly realize their results. Dana has the unique experience of living in the time where the results come to fruition, and goes back in time to see the changes and tiny progressions that led to the effect manifested in the 1970's. This is typical Hegel: his formula is that, when thinking of yourself, the self is split in two: the self that is thinking, and the self that is being thought about. Once the thinking self realizes that, then the self that is being thought about becomes the thinking self. Then the thinking self splits again into the thinking self and the self that is being thought. It goes on like that infinitely, like how you cannot attain the results of the dreams an era has--that the time has to realize itself and move on. But the slave era cannot realize itself as the slave era because they don't think that there is anything wrong with their time or the practices being done in it.