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Zong!'S “Should We?”: Questioning the Ethical Representation of Trauma

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Zong!'S “Should We?”: Questioning the Ethical Representation of Trauma Zong!’s “Should we?”: Questioning the Ethical Representation of Trauma Veronica J. Austen St Jerome’s University he 2008 publication of Zong! marks M. NourbeSe Philip’s first col- Tlection of poetry since the groundbreaking and award-winning She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks in 1988.1 In taking as its subject the 1781 massacre of slaves from the slave ship Zong, Philip’s text participates in a recent upsurge of interest in the massacre. Ian Baucom’s 2005 Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History, in its discussion of the rise of speculative finance, provides a detailed account of the Zong massacre and the court cases resulting from it. Furthermore, in 2006, City University (United Kingdom) hosted a small conference to discuss new archival material discovered by Martin Dockray. Work from this conference resulted in a 2007 issue of The Journal of Legal His- tory which offered not only a broadened view of maritime insurance laws pertaining to slavery but also an expanded view of the massacre based on Dockray’s discovery of written testimony by James Kelsall, the ship’s first mate.2 Beyond this collection of articles suggesting the exciting possibility 1 1991’s Looking for Livingstone: A Odyssey of Silence is a narrative mostly in prose, although it does include poetry as well. 2 More specifically, this newly discovered testimony was Kelsall’s sworn answer given as part of a parallel court hearing held in the equity side of the court of the ESC 37.3–4 (September/December 2011): 61–81 of future scholarly archival work, one might even note a growing public interest in and awareness of the Zong massacre. The year 2007’s bicente- nary commemoration of the end of the British slave trade, for example, Veronica Austen is featured a replica of the Zong sailing down the Thames to the Tower of an Assistant Professor, London (Rupprecht 266). specializing in As the various written representations of the Zong massacre elaborate, Commonwealth and this event is notable not just for its dehumanization of slaves on board the Canadian literatures, at ship but also for the court system’s perpetuation of the injustice. The Zong St Jerome’s University in set sail from its last port of call, Sao Tomé off the West Coast of Africa, Waterloo. Her current for Jamaica on 6 September 1781, holding approximately 440 slaves.3 Cap- research focuses on tained by Luke Collingwood, a first-time captain and former ship’s surgeon, intersections between the the ship’s intended voyage to Jamaica was an arduous one where sickness visual arts and literature ravaged both those enslaved and the crew. On 27 November, Jamaica and demonstrates a was at last sighted, but Collingwood being an inexperienced captain (and particular interest in potentially incompetent due to illness), mistook it for Hispaniola and visually experimental turned to sail further west. Just two days later, claiming to be running short poetry by Caribbean and of water, Collingwood decided a jettison of cargo would be required to save Canadian writers. the majority of the ship’s passengers. The cargo? Live slaves. Approximately 132 in total, but the number of those thrown overboard is notably “slippery” (Philip, “Notanda” 208).4 With reportedly some, but obviously not enough, objection by the crew, this mass murder took place over three days. Not surprisingly, the perpetrators of this murder were never charged, although Granville Sharpe, noted British abolitionist, did try to motivate Exchequer. As noted by Andrew Lewis, not uncommonly this parallel hearing would have been launched by the insurers to seek a stay of the other proceed- ings in which they were being sued. Failing this specific goal, the hearing in the equity court, at the very least, would have allowed for the early discovery of evidence to be used against them in the other case (Lewis 365). 3 The number of slaves according to the writers inThe Journal of Legal History is 442 (see Webster 289 and Lewis 368); Baucom refers to 440 (11); Philip uses the number 470 (“Notanda” 189), basing her numbers, it seems, off of Walvin’s account in Black Ivory: Slavery in the British Empire (14). 4 The reported number of those thrown overboard ranges from 130 to 150. A report in the Jamaican Cornwall Chronicle on 5 January 1782 announces the jettison of 130 slaves (while also advertising the sale of the survivors) (Lewis 364). The 1783 court case, however, suggests that there were 150 victims. M. NourbeSe Philip uses this number from the court case in her representation of the massacre. Other accounts suggest 131 victims, 122 having been thrown overboard, one having survived, and ten, anticipating their fates, choosing to jump (Walvin 15). Still others discount the existence of a survivor and/or suggest that the number of murdered slaves was 132 with ten additional slaves then choosing to jump (see Baucom 129, Lewis 364). 62 | Austen such a case, having been asked for help by Olaudah Equiano (Shyllon 187–89). Nevertheless, in 1783, this event was addressed in the courts when Gregson and Company, the owners of the Zong, sued the insurance company, Thomas Gilbert, for the insured valued of the jettisoned “cargo,” a value of £30 per lost slave. Under insurance law, the only pertinent fact was whether or not the jettison was deemed “necessary”; natural deaths due to illness would not be covered by insurance, but a necessary jettison of cargo, even if that cargo were living beings, would require compensa- tion. Initially, on 5 March 1783, a jury did rule in favour of the ship owners, ordering Gilbert to honour the insurance claim. Regardless, Gilbert still refused to pay, arguing, of course, that one cannot bring about a loss pur- posely and expect to recover for that loss. The case returned to the courts in May, and on 22 May 1783, at the conclusion of a two-day hearing, Chief Justice Lord Mansfield, along with Justice Willes and Buller, ruled in favour of a new trial, citing a current insufficiency of proof that the jettison was necessary. Whether or not that new trial ever occurred and whether or not any compensation was ever paid to Gregson and his partners remains to this day unknown. One explanation assumes that because the second trial likely offered “no point of law” and was instead “decided on the facts” (Mackenzie-Grieve quoted in Shyllon 192), it was left unrecorded, if, of course, the trial even took place. M. NourbeSe Philip locates her poetic project at the site of this silence and mystery regarding the Zong massacre. The insufficiency of the histori- cal record, both because of the paucity of archival information and even more because of the absence of the victims’ perspectives, offers a specific challenge to those wanting to acknowledge and honour the massacre through contemporary representations. Critics may suggest that literary accounts of historical events can “provid[e] insight […] by giving at least a plausible ‘feel’ for experience and emotion which may be difficult to arrive at through restricted documentary methods” (LaCapra 13). One may even argue that a “highly fictionalized form of history” may offer a previously denied opportunity “to claim authority over the narrative construction of the past” (Spaulding 2). Nevertheless, the ethical ramifications of assuming the right to imaginatively reconstruct a historical event should not easily be dismissed, not by those constructing historiographic accounts, nor by those creating literary depictions. As Philip questions, “What did, in fact, happen on the Zong? Can we, some two hundred years later, ever really know? Should we?” (“Notanda” 196). It is this “Should we?” that most emphatically informs Philip’s creative vision for Zong! and my discussion here. How can Philip, or anyone, ethi- Zong’s “Should we?” | 63 cally represent the experience of the massacre’s victims when to construct a representation means to hold power over those victims and their legacy? Philip’s “Should we?” could, after all, be answered with a statement like that from Spiegelman’s Maus II: “ ‘Anyway, the victims who died can never tell their side of the story, so maybe it’s better not to have any more stories’ ” (quoted in Miller and Tougaw 8). Recognizing that she must negotiate an ethically fraught territory when choosing to speak of/for others who have not been able to speak for themselves, Philip sets up her project as an exercise in telling a story through “not-tell[ing]” it (“Notanda” 196). In fact, in naming the Zong massacre the “story that cannot and must be told” (“Notanda” 196), Philip grounds her project at the site of paradox, acknowl- edging both the necessity and impossibility of her task. Although Myriam Moïse positions Zong! as Philip’s attempt to “transcend her traumatic past and overcome silence to (re)map new horizons” (24), Philip’s Zong!, in fact, questions whether or not silence can, or even should, be overcome. Moïse may link Zong! with Philip’s earlier stated desire “to make the black hole (w)hole (Philip 1997, 101)” (24), but attention must be paid to Philip’s persistent questioning of wholeness. She desires to make the “black hole (w)hole” not “whole.” Hence, while yes, Philip’s poetry, which often tries to recover previously lost or maligned perspectives, is rooted in “mak[ing] silence speak” (Moïse 24), it too respects silence by acknowledging that someone with the power of voice cannot speak of or for the silenced without the ethics of such an endeavour remaining in question. Can Philip ethically assume the right to tell the story of the Zong? And by extension, how can readers be positioned to become secondary witnesses to the event, and thereby experience a heightening of their social conscience, yet all the while be positioned to respect the ultimate unknowability of the event? These are the questions Zong! asks.
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