Representation and Transposition in Bernardine Evaristo's Blonde Roots
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“Beyond the Colour Line”: Representation and Transposition in Bernardine Evaristo’s Blonde Roots Corneeltje van Bleijswijk Memòria d’investigació Programa de doctorat de Història de la Literatura i Literatura comparada. Universitat de les Illes Balears 19 de setembre 2013 “We” are in this together Rosi Braidotti 2 Contents 1. Introduction: Representation beyond the “colour line”........................................5 2. Challenging the “colour line”: Theories of Representation and Transposition...16 2.1. Representation and the “Oppositional Gaze”...............................................19 2.2. Diaspora, the Black Atlantic and Transposition...........................................34 3. Transposing Race: the arbitrariness of racial constructions................................56 4. Transposing Space and Time...............................................................................75 4.1. Re-presenting diasporic sites and cultural practices: “Londolo”.............78 4.2. Re-presenting diasporic histories and memories: “England”..................89 5. Transposing alterity: toxic difference, female solidarity...................................102 5.1. Resisting toxic difference: “Thus will you know the difference”..............104 5.2. Enacting female solidarity: “Even in hell there was such love”.................111 6. Conclusion: Transposing the “colour line”........................................................126 7. Annexes: 7.1. Interview with Bernardine Evaristo............................................................132 7.2. Images from Blonde Roots.........................................................................147 7.3. List of works by Yinka Shonibare..............................................................151 8. Bibliography......................................................................................................152 3 1. YINKA SHONIBARE, NELSON'S SHIP IN A BOTTLE (2010) 4 1. Introduction: Representation beyond the “colour line” Is it possible to imagine Blacks enslaving Whites? What happens when an author turns racial categories upon their heads? Blonde Roots, the fourth novel by British-Nigerian author Bernardine Evaristo published in 2008, answers these questions: a reversed world in which Africans enslave Europeans. Neither compromising the cruel historical realities of slavery nor her own poetic voice, Evaristo presents “Ambossans” or “blaks” as the ruling race of a global economy based upon the transatlantic slave trade settled between the reimagined geography of the “United Kingdom of Great Ambossa”, “England” and the “West Japanese Islands of Amarika” (Annex 7.2). We discover through the voice of Doris —the enslaved English protagonist— that this time “Europanes” or “whytes” have to endure the atrocities of slavery which constitute the economic and political cornerstones of the colonial activities of the metropolis, here reimagined as “Great Ambossa”. However, despite the protagonist’s enslavement, Doris is not represented as a victim; she strives for freedom and voices bold opposition to the Ambossans’ racialist regime of representation. Her feistiness and irony invokes a disturbing world that not only inverts the classical regime of representation of black and white but also questions those stereotypes that are still operating in our society. But does Evaristo actually write beyond what Du Bois defined as the “problem of the color-line” (1994: v)? As a matter of fact, Paul Gilroy contends that despite the apparent change and withdrawal of former patterns of conflict and ideas of race, racial divisions are still haunting our society (2004: 1). In the twenty-first century, the establishment of political communities in racialized form are due to the “consolidation of culture lines rather than color lines” (2004: 1) and if we want to reorient the discussion on racial difference towards the 5 future, we have to place a “higher value upon the cosmopolitan histories and transcultural experiences” (2004: 7). This dissertation seeks to engage with this perspective focusing on Evaristo’s challenging representation of racial and gender stereotypes and, what I consider, her transposition of race, diasporic sites and alterity. The concept of transposition, a term I have borrowed to inform my reading of the novel, well known in literary theory, has been recently used by feminist philosopher Rosi Braidotti to explain her theory of “nomadic ethics” (2008). Central to Braidotti’s transposition is the search for and the creation of interconnections between different communities implying “a variety of possible political strategies and the non-dogmatic acceptance of potentially contradictory positions” (2008: 7). At the same time, the term reflects the search for new modes of representation adequate to the complexities of the contemporary world. As I will explain in the following pages, Evaristo’s provoking reversal and her audacious synchronization of particular space and time dynamics — described as “chronotopias” (McLeod 2011:172)— additionally reveal a feminist dimension which concurs with Braidotti’s understanding of transposition. Looking at her previous novels in verse, Evaristo can be considered representative of those new transcultural experiences that try to challenge and trespass conventions. She has often stated her clear commitment to new expressions of anti- essentialism, difference and hybridity: “My project as a writer is to always push the boundaries, to venture into new, sometimes precarious territory. It’s risky but I can’t help myself” (Collins 2008: 1201-1202). This is most evident in her previous verse novels Lara (1997) and The Emperor’s Babe (2001), as well as in her “novel-with- verse” Soul Tourists (2005) in which Evaristo re-negotiates the sense of belonging of 6 black subjects in contemporary British society as well as their traditional representation in history. In contrast, Blonde Roots occupies a distinct place within Evaristo’s writing trajectory as her first novel in prose. As its title and cover image suggest (Annex 7.2.), the novel’s theme is clearly related to traditional slave narratives. Recalling the American slave novel Roots (1976) by Alex Hayley and its homonymous televised mini-series (1977), Evaristo disturbingly entitles her novel Blonde Roots and explicitly presents her enslaved protagonist as a white blonde woman. The novel revolves primarily around the interweaving lives of Doris Scagglethorpe and her black master Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I, Bwana for short, and is organized into three books. “Book One” starts, in the style of a proper slave narrative, with Doris’s attempt to escape from her fate as Bwana’s domestic slave in his household in tropical Londolo. Fleeing through the city’s forgotten underground system with the help of the Resistance, a movement in charge of releasing slaves, she begins a journey which is both physical and mental. During her flight, Doris recalls her happy childhood with her three sisters in England, despite her status as a serf in an England Evaristo reimagines as Medieval. The reader also learns about her traumatic capture at the age of ten and the horrific conditions of the Middle Passage on a slave ship where many other Europane slaves died after unspeakable sufferings. Once in New Londolo, the main settlement in the West Japanese Islands, Doris is sold to her first masters and is ironically renamed “Omorenomwara”, meaning “This child will not suffer” (Evaristo 2009: 37). 1 Intended as playmate for her master’s spoiled daughter, whom she nicknames “Little Miracle”, Doris has to cope with the irreversibility of her new fate. But showing the first signs of 1 From now on references to Blonde Roots will appear as BR. 7 her future resilience, she will defeat her merciless first enslaver and return to Londolo to become Bwana’s personal secretary. Once she seems to be on her way to Europa, Doris’s narration is suddenly interrupted at the end of “Book One”. Subverting the reader’s expectations of a triumphant slave narrative, “Book Two” introduces Doris’s enslaver Bwana as narrator. Bwana addresses a “Dear Reader” (BR: 112) through his autobiographical pamphlet “The Flame”. In this sardonic pro-slavery treatise, he not only proclaims his pseudo- scientific justifications of racial discrimination but also describes his miraculous career, moving from his “inauspicious origins” (BR: 109) to his position as a successful slave trader and capitalist businessman. His account reinforces Evaristo’s analysis of the arbitrariness of the exertion of power and mockingly debunks ideas on racial purity, as we shall see later. But despite Doris’s stamina and apparent success, she has no chance to escape the rage and vengeance of her master. In “Book Three” Doris recalls in the first person the brutal punishment she receives after her seizure and a new trip to the West Japanese Islands. In Bwana’s plantation “Home Sweet Home”, she becomes a sugar cane cutter, the most savage form of enslavement. But in spite of all her sufferings, Doris and the other slaves she meets are never victimised. While they are doomed to accept their fate as slaves, they show their own means of resistance. Difference becomes the means by which active cultural syncretism and diverse forms of solidarity are enacted transforming the slaves’ daily survival in subtle contestation. In the plantation, she finds companionship and solidarity through her best friend Ye Memé, finds her sister Sharon —who has now become Bwana’s sexual slave— and experiences love,