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© 2010 Wairimu R. Njoya ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DIGNITY AMIDST DEVASTATION: POLITICS, AESTHETICS AND THE SLAVE SUBLIME by WAIRIMU R. NJOYA A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Political Science written under the direction of Drucilla Cornell and Cynthia R. Daniels and approved by ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May, 2010 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Dignity amidst Devastation: Politics, Aesthetics and the Slave Sublime By WAIRIMU R. NJOYA Dissertation Directors: Drucilla Cornell and Cynthia R. Daniels Burke, Kant, and Schiller used aesthetic categories to connect politics with ethical ideals of sympathy, dignity, and freedom. Although they extended these ideals to all human beings regardless of sex, color, or nation, this dissertation argues that representations of human difference in the realm of the aesthetic undermined the universal intent of their political philosophies. A new approach to aesthetics is needed in order to re-imagine difference from an ethical standpoint. This project identifies one such approach in selected works of art and literature by women from different parts of the African diaspora. In representing the dignity of women who were enslaved or colonized, these creative works revise our conceptions of political community, humanity, and the meaning of freedom. ii Acknowledgements and Dedication I am very thankful to my dissertation directors, Prof. Drucilla Cornell and Prof. Cynthia Daniels, for their theoretical insight, guidance, and support. I would also like to thank Prof. Abena Busia and Prof. Nikol Alexander-Floyd for their guidance as I completed this project and graduate school. I deeply appreciate the commitment that all my committee members have shown to my advancement as a scholar and my well-being as a person. Their inspiring vision and innovations as feminist theorists are reflected in what this dissertation sets out to achieve and, I hope, what it accomplishes. My interest in political theory goes back to my undergraduate days, and for this I would like to thank Prof. Bruce Baum. His encouragement and continuing support have been invaluable. Prof. Peter Rachleff and Prof. Beth Cleary are much-loved friends and mentors who have kept my passion for scholarship alive in the most difficult times. I would also like to thank Rutgers Professors Andrew Murphy and Dennis Bathory for providing feedback on my project at the earliest stages. A special thanks to Prof. Stephen Bronner who has been a wonderful teacher and who challenged me to refine my thinking on some of the most difficult questions, particularly the meaning of the Enlightenment. The program in Women and Politics at Rutgers has created an environment for feminist scholarship that is truly exceptional. Professors Susan Carroll, Kira Sanbonmatsu and Barbara Callaway have all supported my work and given me the advice I needed to navigate my way through graduate school and into the profession. I would like, also, to acknowledge the love and friendship that sustained me through the last five years. Chimi Chweya and Wangari Wambugu have dotted every i that I have become. Susan Billmaier has kept me on track and created many beautiful, iii relaxed, barbecue-in-the-backyard moments in the midst of a difficult process. Without her, most of this would still be unwritten. Ishaani Sen surrounded me with so much warmth and light and gave me a place to rest my head whenever I needed it; Johanna Dobrich, Tayo Jolaosho, Christina Doonan, Adryan Wallace, Janna Ferguson, Anna Mitchell, June Lee, Marika Dunn, Nadia Brown, Ben Pauli and Wendy Wright have been absolutely fantastic friends and colleagues. Thanks to Stacie McCormick for allowing me to light my candle in her knowledge. Dr. Christine Adkins-Hutchison and the Graduate Women of Color group kept me going from day to day and week to week with their care, laughter, and encouragement—all of you have truly been a blessing! For my parents, my most sincere and unending appreciation. My brother and my sisters have done so much to help me through this project and keep a smile on my face— there really are no words that could express my gratitude to them. I acknowledge with thanks the assistance of Dr. Wandia Njoya in correcting my translations from the French Senate records in Chapter Four. This work is dedicated to my wonderful family and especially my grandmothers, who valued education and sought it against all odds. And with deepest gratitude for the Grace that sustains from one generation to the next. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract of the Dissertation……………………………………………………………….ii Acknowledgments and Dedication……………………………………………………….iii List of Illustrations………………………………………………….……………………vii CHAPTER ONE: Introduction: Black Female Embodiment and the Idea of the Sublime 1 I. The idea of the sublime in eighteenth-century philosophy ......................................... 5 II. Making contemporary political sense of the sublime ............................................... 11 III. Feminists rethink Enlightenment aesthetics .............................................................. 18 IV. In search of a feminist sublime ................................................................................. 34 V. The importance of intersectional analysis................................................................. 38 CHAPTER TWO: Edmund Burke and Colonial Technologies of the Sublime ............... 45 I. Terror, sympathy, and blackness in Burke‘s sublime ............................................... 50 II. Technologies of the sublime and the colonization of Jamaica ................................. 75 III. Nanny‘s Return ......................................................................................................... 93 IV. Rethinking the colonial sublime in Burke .............................................................. 102 CHAPTER THREE: Dignity, Death and the Kantian Sublime ...................................... 104 I. Aesthetic judgment in the context of Kant‘s transcendental philosophy ................ 109 II. The body politics of Kant‘s aesthetics .................................................................... 120 III. The Garner Case ..................................................................................................... 139 IV. Beloved and the Slave Sublime............................................................................... 150 V. Revisions and Reflections ....................................................................................... 172 CHAPTER FOUR: Tragedy, Historical Consciousness, and Schiller‘s Sublime of Redemption ..................................................................................................................... 174 v I. Schiller and the Historical Sublime ........................................................................ 179 II. The Tragedy of Sarah Bartmann ............................................................................. 211 III. Revisions and Reflections………………………………………....………………234 CHAPTER FIVE: The Future of the Slave Sublime ...................................................... 241 I. The Slave Sublime and Enlightenment thought...................................................... 245 II. Feminist futures ...................................................................................................... 255 APPENDICES Bibliography ………………………...….………………………………………...…..264 Curriculum Vitae…………………………………………………………………...…..276 vi List of Illustrations Figure 1. Renee Cox. Red Coat, 2004……….…………………………………….…….97 Figure 2. Renee Cox. Nanny Warrior, 2004………..……………………………….…...98 Figure 3. Renee Cox. Ambush, 2004…………………..…………………………………99 Figure 4. Renee Cox. River Queen, 2004………………………………………………102 vii 1 Chapter One Introduction: Black Female Embodiment and the Idea of the Sublime Sublimity is the echo of a great soul Longinus1 I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest.” Martin Luther King, Jr.2 Courageous responses to violence and injustice raise several questions about the capacity of human beings to remain dignified in the most devastating circumstances. It is not only courage, but also the tragedy of human suffering, the pain of broken bodies, and the fragility of battered spirits that prompt reflection on the meaning of human dignity in the context of violence. In what exactly does dignity inhere, and how do images of dignified responses to violence become politically significant? This dissertation considers the political implications of representing pain, suffering, courage and endurance in art and literature that