In the excerpt of Saltwater Slavery by Stephanie Smallwood, Smallwood examines the transition of making a human being become only valued as an exchangeable possession, with their physical attributes embodying their worth. Some of the key moments in this transition are: the littoral, physical confinement, and social death (the displacement of being ripped away from your home and culture).
The transition begins at the littoral, where once freed African-Americans see their first glimpse of the slave market. Here things that were once valued, perhaps their names or their culture become meaningless as their bodies are “calculated investment in [only] their physical capacities.” This is the first moment when freed people are showed the new reality