Last Words of the Condemned: Christian-Humanist Rhetoric in the American Abolition Debate

Abstract

Through the interrogation of recent analyses of the last words of people executed in the USA, this article critiques the popular abolitionist rhetoric that interprets last words in terms of evidence of sin and redemption. In reading the execution event in this way, the article suggests, these texts inadvertently celebrate and affirm the act of execution. Drawing on Gil Anidjar’s Blood (2014), the article suggests that this duality is in consonance with the history of modern Christianity as epitomised in the bonding of two events: the Eucharist and the Inquisition.