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Copyright by John Watford DeStafney 2016 The Dissertation Committee for John Watford DeStafney Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Repressions of the Open Sea: Contesting Modernity in Nineteenth Century Maritime Literature of Brazil, Britain, and the United States Committee: Sonia Roncador, Supervisor David Kornhaber Allen MacDuffie Jennifer Wilks Omoniyi Afolabi Repressions of the Open Sea: Contesting Modernity in Nineteenth Century Maritime Literature of Brazil, Britain, and the United States by John Watford DeStafney, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2016 Dedication To My Parents, Martin and Elizabeth, for all their love and support Acknowledgements This project was developed and refined through countless conversations with faculty and friends from the UT Austin community. I was fortunate to work with many wonderful professors along the way and to be supported by the Program in Comparative Literature—particularly the program’s chair Dr. Elizabeth Richmond-Garza and graduate coordinator Billy Fatzinger, both of whom worked diligently to ensure my employment and progress in doctoral studies. Serving as my masters and dissertation supervisor, Professor Sonia Roncador was a tremendous and consistent force of encouragement who gave much of her time and insight so that I could progress through the writing and editing of the dissertation. Her experience and energy were invaluable, orienting and enlightening a project and author prone to going off course. Sonia greatly shaped my understanding of Brazilian literature and fostered my commitment to making it my primary focus in graduate studies. Professor David Kornhaber was a terrific source of advice both in forming the dissertation and navigating graduate school and the sometimes murky endeavor of an academic career. David also pushed me to be a better thinker and has provided a model of a well-rounded professional and personal life as a scholar. Professor Niyi Afolabi proved many times to be an excellent writing instructor and cultivated my interest in Afro-Brazilian studies that constituted the seed of this project. My focus on slavery and the Atlantic was strengthened and expanded through working with Professor Jennifer Wilks, especially during her stimulating graduate seminar on Haiti in the American and Atlantic imaginations. Professor Allen MacDuffie also impressed upon me the value of academic writing quality and exposed me to the rich v field of science and literature in his excellent course on the Victorian period. Both inspiring academics, my brilliant friends Marina Flider and Chris Taylor were instrumental in my writing and helped me to develop ideas in engaging conversations. More than this, they protected my mental health against the rough seas of graduate school, which I may not have otherwise finished. Thank you to my brother Joe and the other friends and colleagues that enriched my life along the way. vi Repressions of the Open Sea: Contesting Modernity in Nineteenth Century Maritime Literature of Brazil, Britain, and the United States John Watford DeStafney, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2016 Supervisor: Sonia Roncador Comprising a cold war that endured from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century, the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade held the promise of a new phase of modernity in which the principles of the Enlightenment and the Age of Revolution would be realized so that human liberty, rights, cosmopolitanism, and social justice would flourish at the center of an increasingly international politics. However, nineteenth century maritime literature from the imperial Atlantic nations of Brazil, Britain, and the United States—all of which were deeply and distinctly involved in the controversy over the traffic—decried the frustration of these ideals both before and after official acts of abolition and emancipation. As the sea offered unique perspectives on the transnational coloniality underlying the growth of western nations, maritime writers succeeded in disclosing the clandestine colonialist exploitation that sustained the progress of these empires during slavery and after abolition. This comparative dissertation explores literary interrogations of the ideals of western modernity through a synthesis of authors of different race, nationality, and literary status in order to sketch a generic field of western maritime literature. Each of the dissertation’s three chapters focuses on four authors— Adolfo Caminha, Joseph Conrad, and Herman Melville receive repeated concentration— vii and Brazil, Britain, and the United States are represented in every chapter. Race and the identity of the subject constitutes the central dialogue of the fictions explored in chapter one, which attempt to reconstruct fluid ontologies that evade the strictures of colonialist thinking. Personhood confronts the fluidity of the law in chapter two as maritime texts chart contests and circumventions of law in the extra-sovereign space of international waters. Chapter three examines the intersection of ontology and law through the moral concepts of natural law and crimes against nature, incorporating maritime texts that dramatize the employment of these rhetorical tools of meta-jurisprudence in pursuits of justice that ultimately liberate and oppress. Throughout, the mobile maritime environment and the slave trade foster the imaginative setting through which late- nineteenth century authors reveal the fluctuations of coloniality in western modernity. viii Table of Contents Introduction: “In Landlessness Alone Resides the Highest Truth”……………….1 New Spaces, New Perspectives ....................................................................18 Slavery and Enlightenment ...........................................................................24 Chapter Descriptions.....................................................................................33 In Relation to Literary Criticism ...................................................................38 Chapter 1: Re-imagining Race and Subjectivity through Maritime Encounters and Colonialist Seductions ..................................................................................44 White Savagery and Chiasmic Sight in Equiano's Interesting Narrative .....53 Melville's Revision of Color in Benito Cereno and Moby Dick ...................68 "Narcissus" and the Birth of Conrad's Homo Duplex Technique.................83 The Danger of Blackness in Caminha's Bom-Crioulo ................................105 Chapter 2: Navigating the Fluid Force of Law in the Maritime World ..............126 "Laws for the English to See" in Brazilian Literature ................................137 Heterogeneity of Law and Maritime Fraud in Delany's Blake, or the Huts of America ..............................................................................................161 The Law and the Lie: Two Faces of Imperialism in Conrad's Typhoon ....177 Chapter 3: Crime and Nature: The Liberations and Judgments of Natural Law in the Maritime Space ...........................................................................................207 Deadly Encounters of Natural and Naval Law in Melville's Billy Budd ....216 Natural Law Meets Natural Science Part I: Lord Jim and the Indifference Between Us and the Criminal ............................................................242 Natural Law Meets Natural Science Part II: Bom-Crioulo's Dissemination of Nature.................................................................................................261 ix Conclusion: The Continuing Curse of Lawlessness ............................................285 Bibliography.........................................................................................................303 x Introduction: “In Landlessness Alone Resides the Highest Truth” Two pivotal moments in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) that lead Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) toward freedom arrive in his brutal fight with the slave-breaker Covey in which he refuses to submit1 and the following inspirational vision of liberty that arises as he watches the ships glide freely on the Chesapeake Bay: You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom’s swift winged angels, that fly around the world; I am confined in the bands of iron! O that I were free! O, that if I were on one of your gallant decks, under your protecting wing! Alas! Betwixt me and you, the turbid waters roll. Go on, go on. O, that I could also go! Could I but swim! If I could fly! O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute! The glad ship is gone; she hides in the dim distance. I am left in the hottest hell of unending slavery. O God, save me! God, deliver me! Let me be free! Is there any God! Why am I a slave? I will run away. I will not stand. Get caught, or clear, I'll try it. I had as well die with ague as the fever. I have only one life to lose. I had as well be killed running as die standing. Only think of it; 100 miles straight north, and I am free! Try it? Yes! God is helping me, I will. It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave. I will 1Douglass’ mental and physical struggle against Covey remains one of the