Critical Fabulation is a Method introduced by Saidya Hartman to work with the History of black people in the Americas. Confronted with historical archives, that document enslaved black lives only as commodities and bearers of violence, Hartman seeks for a narrative style, that does not repeat the violence of the archive, but allows an imagination of a black subjectivity and personhood, without filling out the gaps in the archives with inventions. She does so, by using questions that stem from the archived materials on black lives, inducing imaginations as well as by using contextualisations with other, better documented events and voices of the same time and region. Thereby, she is rather contouring the gaps and silences constituting black American history, than painting over them by fleshing out a narrative that really can only be told in the subjunctive form. Please read more on the method: Compiled into a structured List, or in the Words of the Author.