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Visible-Izing Praxis Through Mimicry in Phillis Wheatley's "On Being Brought from Africa to America"

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Visible-Izing Praxis Through Mimicry in Phillis Wheatley's University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses November 2015 Sweat the Technique: Visible-izing Praxis Through Mimicry in Phillis Wheatley's "On Being Brought from Africa to America" Karla V. Zelaya University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the African American Studies Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Zelaya, Karla V., "Sweat the Technique: Visible-izing Praxis Through Mimicry in Phillis Wheatley's "On Being Brought from Africa to America"" (2015). Doctoral Dissertations. 484. https://doi.org/10.7275/7491886.0 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/484 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SWEAT THE TECHNIQUE: VISIBLE-IZING PRAXIS THROUGH MIMICRY IN PHILLIS WHEATLEY’S “ON BEING BROUGHT FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA” A Dissertation Presented by KARLA ZELAYA Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY September 2015 W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies @ Copyright by Karla Zelaya 2015 All Rights Reserved SWEAT THE TECHNIQUE: VISIBLE-IZING PRAXIS THROUGH MIMICRY IN PHILLIS WHEATLEY’S “ON BEING BROUGHT FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA” A Dissertation Presented by KARLA ZELAYA Approved as to style and content by: ____________________________________________ Steven C. Tracy, Chair ____________________________________________ Randall Knoper, Member ____________________________________________ Manisha Sinha, Member ____________________________________________ James Smethurst, Member ____________________________________ John H. Bracey, Department Chair W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies DEDICATION For My Mother, Rose Mary Watson ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my parents, Rose Mary Watson and Carlos Zelaya, for their unconditional love and support. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for your kindness, your respect, and your trust in me. Thank you for all of the time and effort you invested into cultivating and guiding me. Mom, thank you for giving me a dictionary for Christmas and teaching me the value of looking up words. Thank you for teaching me that all work is honorable as long as it is done honorably. Thank you for letting me cry and making me laugh. Thank you for giving me a life full of love. Most important of all, thank you for leaving everything behind so I could have something to look forward to. I love you. Always. To my Dissertation Chair, Dr. Steven C. Tracy – Thank you for not giving up on me. You believed in me more than I believed in myself. For that, I will forever be grateful to you. Thank you, most of all, for teaching me how to teach with passion, joy, integrity, and rigor. If I am any good as a teacher, it is because I modeled myself after you. I intend to make you proud. I would like to thank Dr. James Smethurst, Dr. Manisha Sinha, and Dr. Randall Knoper for agreeing to be my committee members. It was humbling and an honor to have you read my work. Thank you for seeing me through this. To my Departmental Chair, John H. Bracey – Thank you. You shifted the world around so I could find my place in it again. I could never thank you enough for all that you have done for me. It has been the honor of a lifetime to be your student. To Tricia Loveland – Thank you for holding up our world. We would not know left from right without you. You are loved. v To Sharon Coney – Thank you for your warmth and your joy. Your smile made things so much better on so many days. I am forever indebted to Dr. Sadie Bragg and Dr. Segundo Pantoja at the Borough of Manhattan Community College for hiring me. My years at B.M.C.C. prepared me for anything and everything that could possibly come my way. As Dr. Pantoja would say, “Pa’lante!” To Ana Daniels – Thank you for listening to me and guiding me. The Center for Ethnic Studies at B.M.C.C. would be nothing without you. To Cristina Casado Tondeur – You saved me in so many ways. Thank you for being a true sistagirl. I love you. To Dr. Esther Terry and Dr. Robert Wolff – Thank you for saying yes all those years ago. You changed my life for the better. To the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst – Thank you for it all. vi ABSTRACT SWEAT THE TECHNIQUE: VISIBLE-IZING PRAXIS THROUGH MIMICRY IN PHILLIS WHEATLEY’S “ON BEING BROUGHT FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA” SEPTEMBER 2015 KARLA ZELAYA, B.A., STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, CORTLAND M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Steven C. Tracy “On Being Brought from Africa to America” was written in 1768, seven years after a seven or eight-year-old Phillis Wheatley arrived to British North America. Phillis Wheatley was about fifteen-years-old when she wrote the most reviled poem in Black literature. Charged with thinking white and writing white, “On Being Brought from Africa to America” would condemn Phillis Wheatley as an imitator of the white gaze. Although accused of straightening her tongue, Phillis Wheatley did not imitate the white gaze in “On Being Brought from Africa to America.” She mimicked it. To imitate means to do something the same way. To mimic means to resemble. Resemblance lives in the liminal space between sameness and difference. This study sought to investigate what that in-between space of resemblance afforded Wheatley in terms of movement and self- actualization as an enslaved Black poet. As an inaugural text in dissemblance, “On Being Brought from Africa to America” showcased how mimicry, not imitation, could be used to undo the very Anglo-European literary practices and discourses that sought to keep Black writers at bay. This dissertation seeks to investigate how Phillis Wheatley used vii mimicry in “On Being Brought from Africa to America” as a subversive vehicle to say without saying. Using resemblance to hide difference, Wheatley, through mimicry, turned a sign of conquest and domination (English as representative of European imperialism) into a sign of resistance. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………...v ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………..vii INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1 CHAPTER I. “IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD”: A PRELUDE AND POSTLUDE TO PHILLIS WHEATLEY……………………………………………………...19 II. “IT AIN’T WHAT YOU COP, IT’S ABOUT WHAT YOU KEEP”: MIMICRY AS A TREACHEROUS ACT, OR, THE IMPORTANCE OF TITLES………...53 III. “MORE POWERFUL THAN GAMMA RAYS”: A CLOSE READING OF “ON BEING BROUGHT FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA”…………………...83 IV. “NO WEAPON BUT POETRY”: “ON BEING BROUGHT FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA,” THE MAKING OF A “NEW WORLD” BLACK EPIC……124 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………157 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………180 ix INTRODUCTION In 1992, hip-hop duo Eric B. and Rakim released the now classic song “Don’t Sweat the Technique” in which Rakim not only boasted of his unmatched lyrical prowess but advised his opponents of the futility of preoccupying themselves with figuring out and imitating his “technique”: They wanna know how many rhymes have I ripped and wrecked But researchers never found all the pieces yet Scientists try to solve the context Philosophers are wondering when, what's next Pieces are took to last who observe them They couldn't absorb them, they didn't deserve them My ideas are only for the audience's ears For my opponents, it might take years… The titular use of the word “technique” did not simply allude to Rakim’s skill as a wordsmith, but to the “structure” that situated his poetry. That structure was Eric B.’s Technics 1200 SL direct-drive turntable. Eric B. and Rakim’s ode to technique, to the way they used language and structure to make meaning, allows entrance into seeing Black-authored poems as important sites of praxis. “Technique” is defined as “The formal or practical aspect of any art, occupation or field; manner of execution or performance as regard to this. Also more generally: way of doing something” (“Technique”). The word “technique” became associated with art and not just industry by the turn of the nineteenth century, long after eighteenth-century Black poets such as Phillis Wheatley, Jupiter Hammon, and Lucy Terry assembled texts that clearly evinced a preoccupation with “the way of doing something.” Concern with praxis or “the performance or application of skill” is nothing new to Black poets (“Praxis”). A quick survey of poems authored by Black poets of the diaspora 1 reveals the attention paid to the making of poems. Lucille Clifton, in “the making of poems,” explained and demystified the labor involved in the making of her poems: “the reason why i do it / though i fail and fail / in the giving of true names / is i am adam and his mother / and these failures are my job” (1-5). As the creator of meaning in “Negus,” Edward Kamau Brathwaite likewise called attention to the making of his poem: “I / must be given words to shape my name / to the syllables of trees / I / must be given words to refashion futures / like a healer’s hand / I/ must be given words so that the bees / in my blood’s buzzing brain of memory / will make flowers, will make flocks of birds, / will make sky, will make heaven…” (61-71). e.e. cummings observed that “If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little – somebody who is obsessed by Making” (“Three Statements” 255).
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