Saidiya Hartman

To understand Saidiya Hartman, you first have to understand absence — and how the economy is shaped not only by what is recorded, but by what is missing from the record.

Conventional economic and historical analysis relies on archives: documents, data, official accounts. These sources form the basis for how systems are understood and modeled. But archives are not neutral. They reflect the priorities and power structures of the institutions that produced them.

Hartman interrogates that foundation.

At the center of her worldview is a methodological claim:

In Scenes of Subjection, Hartman examines how slavery was not only a system of labor extraction, but a system that shaped perception, representation, and the boundaries of what could be known. The archive preserves elements of this system, but often through the lens of those in power.

In Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, she turns to the early 20th century, reconstructing the lives of Black women navigating urban environments under constraint. These lives are not fully documented; they must be inferred, pieced together, and, in some cases, imaginatively reconstructed.

Her method is critical fabulation.

Hartman combines historical research with narrative reconstruction to address gaps in the archive. This is not fiction in the conventional sense; it is an attempt to recover lives that were systematically excluded from formal records. The goal is not to invent, but to approximate what could not be fully documented.

From this perspective, economic history is partial.

If the archive reflects power, then analyses built solely on that archive may reproduce its limitations. Entire dimensions of economic life—informal economies, constrained choices, unrecorded labor—remain underrepresented.

Her work reframes evidence itself.

What counts as data? Who is visible in the record? What forms of labor and value are recognized? Hartman’s approach suggests that answering these questions is necessary for a more complete understanding of economic systems.

Supporters see Hartman as expanding the methodological boundaries of economic and historical analysis.

They argue that her work reveals the limitations of traditional archives and offers tools for addressing those gaps. By incorporating narrative reconstruction, she brings visibility to lives and forms of labor that are otherwise marginalized or omitted.

From this perspective, Hartman’s contribution is epistemological. She challenges how knowledge about the economy is produced and validated, opening space for more inclusive forms of analysis.

Critics, however, question the methodological implications of her approach.

They argue that reconstructing lives beyond the available archive introduces interpretive uncertainty. The boundary between documented history and narrative inference can be difficult to define, raising questions about verification and reliability.

Others raise concerns about scalability. While critical fabulation provides depth, it may be difficult to apply broadly in ways that inform large-scale economic models or policy frameworks.

A deeper critique examines the role of interpretation. If the archive is incomplete, how should gaps be addressed without introducing new forms of subjectivity that may shape conclusions?