Frederick Douglass’ experiences in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and My Bondage and Freedom described his great effort of producing a historical consciousness for himself, by employing himself to acts of writing.  Outside of the United States, in England, he experienced his first taste of freeness: placing Douglass beyond the reach of the ideologies that perpetuated the slave system in America.  His painful upbringing describes the structurally repressive forces that defined his “blackness”, along with his sense of “freeness”.  By lineating Christian religious beliefs with the justified actions of his subjectors, Douglass accounted for various examples of metaphoric language, in the Christian bible, and found their counterparts in the role-play amongst members of American society in the mid-nineteenth century.  This brings to mind the concept of ideological state apparatuses by late 20th century philosopher Louis Althusser, who claimed that the institutions of church, family and cultural traditions are constructs which directly contribute to the social role-play of public life.  Through this lens, a person can be conditioned to become either a slave or a master from birth.  If one is conditioned to be a slave and the other is educated in owning and managing slaves, upon interaction both will fulfill the social roles prescribed at birth: both will be slaves to tradition.  Both will be fated to the lives set out for each, in line with the social expectations of their families and churches.  To be imbued with “blackness”, during Douglass’ time, was to fulfill the scripted role of the slave to “whiteness” in America at the time: according to Christianity.  Douglass was well aware of the employment of this technological device when, he later, on wrote about his life:

“I took my stand on the high ground of human brotherhood, and spoke to Englishmen as men, in behalf of men.  Slavery is a crime, not against Englishmen, but against God, and all the members of the human family; and it belongs to the whole human family to seek its suppression. (My Bondage and Freedom, XXIV, pg.22)”

Writing produces a historical consciousness in the writer, meaning mythic thinking becomes logical thinking the moment a thought is embedded into a medium.  This could mean putting pen-to-pad, inputting keystrokes into a text-field, or even reading pages to stimulate, and influence, the mind.  Flusser’s essay Does Writing Have a Future describes writing as an action that used to involve digging into.  Mesopotamian clay tablets metaphorically related to the creation myth found in the book of Genesis, involving clay being used as a medium to create man.  Man is, or was, an inscription of conscious thought imbued into the clay to form a version of history, according to Flusser:  “One who writes by digging can only hope that the subject one has engraved doesn’t decay too quickly (even if the digging writer was God). (pg.13)”  To have one’s ideas projected into the world to be received, is to become the idea itself.  When writing, a person becomes an extension of his/her self.  In writing, the person becomes the authority of his/her life and gradually begins to understand the “freeness” found in its practice .  By constantly reading Douglass was able to view the inscriptions of other writers.  As their ideas reflected off of the pages and into his mind, he grew aware of his dire condition and dedicated his life to gaining more “freeness”.