What would it mean to “get over slavery”? Is such a thing possible? Is it even desirable? To explore these questions, The Psychic Hold of Slavery assembles a diverse collection of literary and film critics, philosophers, and cultural theorists. With a painful awareness that our understanding of the past informs our understanding of the present—and vice versa—the contributors place slavery’s historical legacies in conversation with twenty-first-century manifestations of antiblack violence, dehumanization, and social death.