From Slave Ship to Citizenship: Re-Imagined Communities and the Counterculture of Modernity in the Historical Novel of Slavery

FROM SLAVE SHIP TO CITIZENSHIP: RE-IMAGINED COMMUNITIES AND THE COUNTERCULTURE OF MODERNITY IN THE HISTORICAL NOVEL OF SLAVERY By AGNEL BARRON A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2013 1 © 2013 Agnel Barron 2 To my mother 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Leah Rosenberg, my committee chair, for her unwavering support and guidance throughout this entire process and for her excellent feedback and commentary. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee, Malini Johar Schueller, Debra Walker King, and Paul Ortiz for their comments and support. I thank my brother, Audwin, and my cousin, Terry, for looking after practical matters while I was away on my long sojourn in the United States. Finally, I wish to thank my friends Zoanne Evans, Rachel Browne, Janet Layne, Elizabeth West and Patricia Coloma Penate who offered their support from afar. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... 7 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 8 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 10 2 SLAVERY, EMPIRE, AND DIASPORA IN TONI MORRISON’S A MERCY AND LAWRENCE HILL’S SOMEONE KNOWS MY NAME ............................................ 29 Empire, Domesticity, and Race in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy ................................... 31 Nationhood and the Counterculture of Diaspora in Lawrence Hill’s Someone Knows My Name ................................................................................................. 48 3 TIME, SPACE, SLAVERY: COMMUNITY FORMATION AND THE COUNTERNARRATIVE OF THE NATION IN EDWARD P. JONES’ THE KNOWN WORLD AND JAMES MCBRIDE’S SONG YET SUNG ........................... 67 Conformity and Resistance: Community-Formation in the Plantation South........... 73 Maps, Alternative Worlds, and a Counter-Discourse of Nationhood. ...................... 85 Song Yet Sung: Mobility, Modernity, and African American Citizenship ................. 92 4 THE PLANTATION MATRIX: MAROONAGE, AND THE IMPERIAL CRITIQUE IN DIONNE BRAND’S AT THE FULL AND CHANGE OF THE MOON AND MICHELLE CLIFF’S FREE ENTERPRISE ........................................................... 111 Maroon Theory, Migrancy, and Citizenship in the Diaspora.................................. 111 Free Enterprise, Exile, and the Resistance to Racial Capitalism .......................... 121 Maroon Communities and the Counter-culture of Modernity ................................. 138 5 GENDERING THE COUNTER-CULTURE OF MODERNITY:THE FEMALE SLAVE EXPERIENCE IN THE SALT ROADS AND THE BOOK OF NIGHT WOMEN ................................................................................................................ 156 Slavery, Modernity, and Gender ........................................................................... 156 The Transoceanic Imaginary and Feminine Modernity in Nalo Hopkinson’s The Salt Roads ......................................................................................................... 162 The Cult of True Womanness: Rebellion and the Sexual Politics of Slavery in The Book of Night Women ................................................................................. 178 6 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................... 203 5 WORKS CITED ........................................................................................................... 207 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................... 214 6 LIST OF FIGURES Figure page 5-1 Eduoard Manet’s portrait of Berthe Moriset entitled Repose. 1870. ................ 198 5-2 Charles Baudelaire’s sketch of Jeanne Duval. 1865. ....................................... 199 5-3 A section of Gustave Courbert’s painting entitled The Artist’s Studio showing Baudelaire in the foreground and Duval’s “erased” presence in the background. 1855. ............................................................................................ 200 5-4 Eduoard Manet’s Baudelaire’s Mistress Reclining. ........................................... 201 5-5 Eduoard Manet’s Baudelaire’s Mistress Reclining. ........................................... 202 7 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy FROM SLAVE SHIP TO CITIZENSHIP: RE-IMAGINED COMMUNITIES AND THE COUNTERCULTURE OF MODERNITY IN THE HISTORICAL NOVEL OF SLAVERY By Agnel Barron August 2013 Chair: Leah Rosenberg Major: English This study makes the claim that novels of slavery written in the 1990s and 2000s have significantly refashioned the foundational generation of neoslave narratives published in the 1960s and 1970s by emphasizing community formation among the enslaved. Initially produced by African Americans who examined the Southern slave experience, these novels are now being produced by writers located in Canada, the Caribbean, London, and other regions of the African diaspora. Unlike traditional slave and neoslave narratives that place emphasis on the individual struggle for freedom, these newer additions to the genre contextualize the slave experience in relation to processes of nationhood, exile, migration, and diaspora. Texts such as Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, Edward P. Jones The Known World, James McBride’s Song Yet Sung, and Lawrence Hill’s Someone Knows My Name situate their localized portrayals of community formation within a broader discourse of American nationhood to demonstrate the problematic nature of early African American entry into processes of the nation that was characterized both by resistance to and accommodation of the hegemonic discourses of the larger society. 8 The Caribbean novels explore the way slavery shaped the phenonema of exile, migration, and diaspora. Michelle Cliff’s Free Enterprise and Dionne Brand’s At the Full and Change of the Moon demonstrate the continuity between the contemporary migration experiences of Caribbean peoples and the historical experience of maroonage to position slavery squarely within the contexts of Empire and neo- imperialism. Nalo Hopkinson’s The Salt Roads and Marlon James’ The Book of Night Women explore individual and collective acts of rebellion among female slaves to demonstrate that women played an integral role in the counterculture of modernity articulated by slaves on the plantations of the New World. These texts connect the slave resistance that occurred on the plantations of the colonial Caribbean to metropolitan discourses of European modernity, demonstrate the way black female sexuality was denigrated in colonial constructions of femininity and re-constructed by black women to articulate a subjectivity of resistance to both slavery and male domination; and articulate a distinctly Caribbean aesthetic of modernity. In so doing, these novels gender the counterculture of modernity. 9 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION From Slave Ship to Citizenship: Re-Imagined Communities and the Counterculture of Modernity in the Historical Novel of Slavery Their progress from the status of slaves to the status of citizens led them [diasporic blacks] to enquire into what the best possible forms of social and political existence might be. The memory of slavery, actively preserved as a living intellectual resource in their expressive political culture, helped them to generate a new set of answers to this enquiry (39). -Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic In this study, I argue that novels of slavery produced in the 1990s and 2000s revise the neoslave genre by emphasizing processes of community formation among the enslaved. Initially produced by African Americans who examined the Southern slave experience, these novels are now being produced by writers located in Canada, the Caribbean, London, and other regions of the African diaspora. Unlike traditional slave and neoslave narratives that often rewrite history to emphasize the worldview of those written out of official narratives of history, oftentimes from an individualist perspective that stresses the subjectivity of the enslaved, newer additions to the genre expand this focus to include the community experience of slavery which they configure in relation to discourses of nationhood, Empire, diaspora, and citizenship. This expansion of the genre – both in terms of subject matter and authorship – constitutes a significant critical development in the neoslave narrative that is worthy of investigation. Accordingly, I engage in a comparative analysis of contemporary historical novels of slavery written by African American and Caribbean writers in order to highlight the shared yet distinct nature of this diasporic genre; demonstrate the concern with community, nation formation, and citizenship that features prominently in the newer additions to the neoslave narrative tradition; and elaborate and extend recent work on 10 the black Atlantic and the use of postcolonial theory in American studies. It is my contention that the narratives written by African American writers use the discourse of slavery

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