UC Irvine FlashPoints Title Immaterial Archives: An African Diaspora Poetics of Loss Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2ks5v4hh ISBN 978-0-8101-457-5 Author Sharpe, Jenny Publication Date 2020-02-10 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Immaterial Archives The FlashPoints series is devoted to books that consider literature beyond strictly national and disciplinary frameworks, and that are distinguished both by their historical grounding and by their theoretical and conceptual strength. Our books engage theory without losing touch with history and work historically without falling into uncritical positivism. FlashPoints aims for a broad audience within the humanities and the social sciences concerned with moments of cultural emergence and transformation. In a Benjaminian mode, FlashPoints is interested in how liter- ature contributes to forming new constellations of culture and history and in how such formations function critically and politically in the present. Series titles are available online at http://escholarship.org/uc/flashpoints. series editors: Ali Behdad (Comparative Literature and English, UCLA), Edi- tor Emeritus; Judith Butler (Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley), Editor Emerita; Michelle Clayton (Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature, Brown University); Edward Dimendberg (Film and Media Studies, Visual Studies, and European Languages and Studies, UC Irvine), Founding Editor; Catherine Gallagher (English, UC Berkeley), Editor Emerita; Nouri Gana (Comparative Lit- erature and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA); Susan Gillman (Lit- erature, UC Santa Cruz), Coordinator; Jody Greene (Literature, UC Santa Cruz); Richard Terdiman (Literature, UC Santa Cruz), Founding Editor A complete list of titles begins on p. 201. Immaterial Archives An African Diaspora Poetics of Loss Jenny Sharpe northwestern university press | evanston, illinois Northwestern University Press www.nupress.northwestern.edu Copyright © 2020 by Northwestern University Press. Published 2020. All rights reserved. Edouard Duval-Carrié’s La vraie histoire des Ambaglos (The True History of the Under- water Spirits), 2003, acrylic, sequins, collage, and resin on wood, 96 x 84 in. Collection of William D. and Norma Canelas Roth. Copyright © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Edouard Duval-Carrié, The Indigo Room or Is Memory Water Soluble? 2004, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale; acquired by exchange through the Dorothy A. Smith Bequest. Copyright © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Frantz Zéphirin, The Slave Ship Brooks, 2007, Collection of Marcus Rediker. Kamau Brathwaite, The Zea Mexican Diary. Copyright © 1993 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Reprinted by permission of The University of Wisconsin Press. Kamau Brathwaite, “Baptism Poem” from the lazarus po- ems. Copyright © 2017 by Kamau Brathwaite. Published by Wesleyan University Press and reprinted with permission. M. NourbeSe Philip, “Zong! #1,” “Zong! #14,” “Zong! #26,” and “Zong! #” from Zong! Copyright © 2008 by M. NourbeSe Philip. Published by Wesleyan University Press and reprinted with permission. Sections of chapter 1 ap- peared as “The Archive and Affective Memory in M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!” Interven- tions 16, no. 4 (2013): 465–82. Sections of chapter 3 appeared as “When Spirits Talk: Reading Erna Brodber’s Louisiana for Affect.” Small Axe 16, no. 3 (2012): 90–102. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Sharpe, Jenny, author. Title: Immaterial archives : an African diaspora poetics of loss / Jenny Sharpe. Other titles: FlashPoints (Evanston, Ill.) Description: Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2020. | Series: Flashpoints Identifiers: LCCN 2019018290 | ISBN 9780810141575 (paper text : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780810141582 (cloth text : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780810141599 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Caribbean literature (English)—Black authors—History and criticism. | Arts, Caribbean. | African diaspora in literature. | African diaspora in art. Classification: LCC PR9210.5 .S473 2020 | DDC 810.99729—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019018290 For Russel, in memoriam Those who i hold most dear are nvr dead they become more than fixed in song or stone or album mixed with my sand and mortar they walk in me with the world —Kamau Brathwaite, mesongs Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: The Shape of Immateriality 3 Chapter 1. Silence: The Archive and Affective Memory 19 Chapter 2. The Invisible: Haitian Art and a Vodou Archive of Slavery 57 Chapter 3. Word Holes: Spirit Voices in the Recording Machine 97 Chapter 4. DreamStories: The Virtuality of Archival Recovery 125 Notes 163 Bibliography 173 Index 191 Acknowledgments The writing of a book is always a journey, and I have met so many re- markable people and been the recipient of several generous fellowships along the way that this book would have been a different one without them. NourbeSe Philip, thank you for such a moving performance of your Zong! poems on that autumn day following the once-in-a-lifetime alignment of earth, moon, and sun. Edouard Duval-Carrié, merci for talking to me in your Little Haiti studio about the centrality of Carib- bean history and Haitian Vodou to your métier. Erna Brodber, after I expressed how much I loved your novel Louisiana, you said I had to visit the Jamaican Louisiana, and I did. Wandering through the lush tropical gardens of your Woodside home, visiting the nearby site of the Taíno petroglyph of Atabey, and engaging in long conversations over your home-cooked meals and ginger tea caused me to see your work in new light. During my travels across the Caribbean, I was planning on stopping off at Barbados to interview Kamau Brathwaite at his Cow- Pastor home but decided against it after hearing that his health was fail- ing. Perhaps not so surprisingly, a tall, gregarious, and charismatic man I recognized to be the poet visited me in a dream, speaking at length in words that only made sense inside dreamspace. I hurried over to my laptop to find the questions I wished to ask, but by the time I returned, he was gone. His words may have been lost, but the sensation of the dream remained. ix x ❘  Acknowledgments My understanding of Vodou would have been greatly diminished with- out the assistance of those whose expertise far exceeds what is accessible in books. Oungans Ti Edner in Port-au-Prince and Jean-Daniel Lafontant in Los Angeles patiently responded to my questions as I sought to under- stand the complexities of the religion, especially the sea lwa, Agwe and Lasirèn, and the geography of Ginen. Thanks also to Judith Bettelheim, Robin Derby, Lisa Paravisini-Gebert, Patrick Polk, and Kate Ramsey for pointing me in the right direction when I sought out their help to learn more about the sacred world of Vodou and Haitian art. Michel DeGraff and Kathy Smith translated the Kreyòl for me—mèsi! I’m also grateful to Kathy for relaying questions on my behalf to Frantz Zéphirin. Mèsi, mèsi! Marcus Rediker, Norma Canelas, and Bill Roth provided access to paintings in their private collections, and my conversations with them made their passion for Haitian art spill over into my world. A second group of scholars helped me unravel archival sources on the Zong massacre. Michelle Faubert, Andrew Lyall, James Oldham, and James Walvin shared their working knowledge of the Zong archives with me as I attempted to pinpoint evidence concerning the lone African who climbed back onto the slaver after being thrown overboard. Velma Pollard was an invaluable resource for my understanding of Doris Brathwaite. Betty Wilson and Elaine Savory also shared stories of Doris with me, and these several female voices came together in a chorus to make the woman I had not met and did not know come to life. The generous financial support of an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, a University of California President’s Research Fel- lowship in the Humanities, and a Stuart Hall Foundation Fellowship afforded me the release time from teaching and service to hunker down and finish the book. UCLA Academic Senate grants provided funding for research assistance. The year I spent in residence at the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center of Harvard University has left its indelible mark on my writing and being in the world. The scholarly space created by Henry Louis (Skip) Gates Jr., Krishna Lewis, and Abby Wolf went far in allowing me to test my ideas while providing community during these uneven and unpredictable times. A shout-out to my cohort of fellows, especially Zelalem Kibret Beza, David Bind- man, Kurt Campbell, Myisha Cherry, Christa Clarke, JC Cloutier, Mar- tha Diaz, Matheus Gato, Myles Osborne, Shenaz Patel, and Tef Poe. What a time we had! My book has also benefited from an early testing of its ideas in my graduate seminars “Reading beyond Literary Narrative,” “The Postco- Acknowledgments ❘ xi lonial Archive,” and “The Archival Turn in Literature and Theory.” The diverse and varied perspectives students brought to the classes allowed me to unpack the multifaceted aspects of the archive. Jen MacGregor and Arielle Stambler, my research assistants extraordinaire, tracked down books and obscure references, in addition to assisting me in pre- paring the manuscript for publication. My dissertation students have been involved in this project in one way or another, even as they have gone on to establish careers and scholarly reputations of their own. Dana Linda accompanied me to Orlando to view Duval-Carrié’s La vraie histoire des Ambaglos when it was still in storage. The painting is now on display at the Orlando Museum of Art. Deb Doing was in- strumental in bringing NourbeSe Philip to the UCLA campus and also translated sections of Freud’s “Notiz über den Wunderblock” from German for me. Neetu Khanna’s dissertation on revolutionary feelings (now a book) inspired my own exploration of affect.