Finally got around to reading Monique Allewaert's essay "Swamp Sublime: Ecologies of Resistance in the American Plantation Zone" which is incredibly suggestive in terms of thinking about Stowe's positioning of Dred, and through him Vesey and Turner, as heirs to the white American revolutionaries. Contact with the swamp produces subjects capable of resistance through interaction with "non-human forces" (Allewaert 341). The swamp zone in opposition with the plantation zone becomes not simply a place a refuge but a way of creating resistance.
Earlier I pointed to the swamp as Dred's swamp community as "a brief failed attempt at revolution." Reading the Allewaert essay I'm wondering if part of Stowe's dilemna lies in the way she attempts to "domesticate" the swamp. Granted, she is working from knowledge of the way these maroon communities operated but she also represents the ultimate demise of Dred's little utopia as white destruction on a fledgling black republic. In this reading Dred seems less a revolutionary and more of a colonist of a terrain viewed as un-colonizable by white settlers (343). This begs the question: does Dred's failure in part lie in the semi-permanence of the community? Stowe depicts of the population of the Great Dismal Swamp as seeming to have fewer revolutionaries than refugees, Tiff, Henry's wife, the wounded Clayton. In depicting the swamp she seems unable to imagine it as something other than an outdoor domestic space.
This reading also really emblematizes Stowe's transition from being pro-emigration to pro-assimilation. On the one hand she needs to recognize slaves as potential revolutionary subjects. On the other she also needs to recognize the ways in which the fit into recognizable societal norms. This is an extension of what she did in Uncle Tom's Cabin in depicting slavery as bound up in the fabric of white domestic space. In Dred she demolishes the plantation house and displaces the population to the swamp to show the possibilities of a free community of blacks interacting if not fully assimilating with whites. This makes the swamp an even more interesting metaphor of interstiality. Not only in terms of the state of slavery in the 1850s being bound up in the history of the transatlantic slave trade, but also in terms of the changing face of abolition in the years leading up to the Civil War.
I'm returning to Dred because I need start laying down the groundwork for the real writing (as opposed to the "fake" writing I'm doing here) and while I've been thinking of the shape of the chapter I really need to start thinking of how the article is going to be. Dred still seems like a good place to start and going back over some of these idea I've only glossed over before.
Showing posts with label Revolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Revolution. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
Looking Ahead
I promised myself I wouldn't start writing until August but I'm thinking about revising that since I'm feeling antsy about all the stuff I have swirling around in my head. I'm probably going to spend another week reading and taking notes and then start outlining and generating some close readings of the texts I've read. I also need to organize my notes and figure out what I have the jettison and what needs more research. I think sticking to looking at Dred as my main text is still the right way to go but I also really need to figure out a better way to incorporate Douglass and Delany into that analysis. Here is a loose sense of how I'm going to organize the chapter.
The 1850s
I'm going to need to narrate the history following the Compromise of 1850 i.e. John Brown and bleeding Kansas, the abolitionist debates over black assimilation versus emigration, and pro-slaver supporters arguments in favor of the annexation of Cuba. More than that I need to the way these debates are echoes and continuations of the earlier abolitionist debates in Great Britain. Specifically, how desire for access to the Caribbean sugar market and fear of a black Cuba reenact issues surrounding the rise of the sugar plantation, the expansion of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and eventually the Haitian revolution. In the case of abolitionist debates over emigration, I need to tease out how emigration acts as a reversal of the trauma of the Middle Passage, the desire for return not merely about being a homecoming and the establishment of a black republic, but also a desire for a founding narrative, in which equality with white Americans established through an origin story similar say to the founding of Plymouth Rock.
Stowe
The journey she takes from Uncle Tom's Cabin to Dred is an interesting one involving both the influence of Douglass, critiques from Delany and others regarding the representation of slaves, and her trip to England prior to writing Dred. This last one is a bit flimsy but I think Clarkson and the British fight is on her mind during the gestational period of this novel. The character of Dred and the setting of the swamp allow her to negotiate both the present and the past in presenting abolition as the outcome of a longer history.
Revolution, Insurrection, Mutiny and the Slave Ship
The slave ship is a fraught image in this moment. On the one hand the Transatlantic slave trade has technically been abolished. But as Blake shows us, and as the Amistad, Tryal, and Creole cases also demonstrate, the slave ship won't go away. The slave ship mutinies and the slave insurrections provide rhetorical moments for abolitionists to invoke both the Haitian and American revolutions.
The Literary Representation of the Slave
Not sure where this is leading exactly but it seems to me that some of the problems I introduced in the first chapter on Grainger and Equiano become even more fraught, especially in the wake of the Compromise of 1850 and the Dred Scott decision. Douglass and Delany in particular use these texts about insurrection as a way of making opposite points in a way. Douglass ties Madison Washington to the history of the American Revolution as a way of creating an American identity for his character. Delany's Blake is more of a Moses figure leading people away from the States to some never-seen promised land. Stowe is a bit trickier. While Dred at once seem to be merely a representation of other insurrectionists from history she seems less concerned with creating an accurate black revolutionary figure than she is in using him to discuss abolitionists need to recognize themselves as fellow insurrectionists as well as highlighting the role of pro-slavery violence in creating these insurrectionist figures.
The Maritime Imaginary
Hopefully by the time I work these other things out, I'll have a clearer sense of how they play into the role of the maritime in abolitionist texts. For the moment though I'm stuck on this quote from "The Heroic Slave" (1853)
A vexed statement if there ever was one. On the one hand he's correct. The opportunity for mutiny while at sea demonstrates the illusion of authority aboard a ship. On the other hand it seems to me that the kind of freedom attained through mutiny epitomizes the problem of negative freedom, a freedom from tyranny but not necessarily enfranchisement.
I'm going to need to narrate the history following the Compromise of 1850 i.e. John Brown and bleeding Kansas, the abolitionist debates over black assimilation versus emigration, and pro-slaver supporters arguments in favor of the annexation of Cuba. More than that I need to the way these debates are echoes and continuations of the earlier abolitionist debates in Great Britain. Specifically, how desire for access to the Caribbean sugar market and fear of a black Cuba reenact issues surrounding the rise of the sugar plantation, the expansion of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and eventually the Haitian revolution. In the case of abolitionist debates over emigration, I need to tease out how emigration acts as a reversal of the trauma of the Middle Passage, the desire for return not merely about being a homecoming and the establishment of a black republic, but also a desire for a founding narrative, in which equality with white Americans established through an origin story similar say to the founding of Plymouth Rock.
Stowe
The journey she takes from Uncle Tom's Cabin to Dred is an interesting one involving both the influence of Douglass, critiques from Delany and others regarding the representation of slaves, and her trip to England prior to writing Dred. This last one is a bit flimsy but I think Clarkson and the British fight is on her mind during the gestational period of this novel. The character of Dred and the setting of the swamp allow her to negotiate both the present and the past in presenting abolition as the outcome of a longer history.
Revolution, Insurrection, Mutiny and the Slave Ship
The slave ship is a fraught image in this moment. On the one hand the Transatlantic slave trade has technically been abolished. But as Blake shows us, and as the Amistad, Tryal, and Creole cases also demonstrate, the slave ship won't go away. The slave ship mutinies and the slave insurrections provide rhetorical moments for abolitionists to invoke both the Haitian and American revolutions.
The Literary Representation of the Slave
Not sure where this is leading exactly but it seems to me that some of the problems I introduced in the first chapter on Grainger and Equiano become even more fraught, especially in the wake of the Compromise of 1850 and the Dred Scott decision. Douglass and Delany in particular use these texts about insurrection as a way of making opposite points in a way. Douglass ties Madison Washington to the history of the American Revolution as a way of creating an American identity for his character. Delany's Blake is more of a Moses figure leading people away from the States to some never-seen promised land. Stowe is a bit trickier. While Dred at once seem to be merely a representation of other insurrectionists from history she seems less concerned with creating an accurate black revolutionary figure than she is in using him to discuss abolitionists need to recognize themselves as fellow insurrectionists as well as highlighting the role of pro-slavery violence in creating these insurrectionist figures.
The Maritime Imaginary
Hopefully by the time I work these other things out, I'll have a clearer sense of how they play into the role of the maritime in abolitionist texts. For the moment though I'm stuck on this quote from "The Heroic Slave" (1853)
During all the storm, Madison stood firmly at the helm,— his keen eye fixed upon the binnacle. He was not indifferent to the dreadful hurricane; yet he met it with the equanimity of an old sailor. He was silent but not agitated. The first words he uttered after the storm had slightly subsided, were characteristic of the man. 'Mr. Mate, you cannot write the bloody laws of slavery on those restless billows. The ocean, if not the land, is free.'(Douglass 237)
A vexed statement if there ever was one. On the one hand he's correct. The opportunity for mutiny while at sea demonstrates the illusion of authority aboard a ship. On the other hand it seems to me that the kind of freedom attained through mutiny epitomizes the problem of negative freedom, a freedom from tyranny but not necessarily enfranchisement.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Blake Post Mortem
Finally finished Blake which is kind of an excruciating re-read. The kind of primary texts I'm working on in this chapter make me long for my Melville chapter.
Not sure at this moment how much of my chapter is going to discuss Blake. I've set up this chapter as exploring the problem of the literary representation of free and enslaved blacks, and Douglass, Delany, and Stowe have written three texts that attack this problem head-on, and have done it in a way that invokes the Middle Passage, the history of sugar production, British abolition, and the Haitian and American Revolutions. The difference between Douglass's and Delany's visions for blacks in a post-slavery world seems to turn on the lessons learned from this history. Delany seems to yearn for full autonomy for blacks away from the United States, and in setting his revolution in Cuba tries to recreate the Haitian experience, albeit with a "full-blooded" black elite. Yet this vision keeps failing. One of the frustrating things about reading this text is how much planning goes into these slave revolts and how little payoff there is.
Of course the reason for this "failure" of vision is in part that this novel was suppose to help raise funds for an African expedition. This raises the question of why abolitionist texts were written. Delany seems to have been taking advantage of Stowe's success in publishing anti-slavery novels. He even sets up the beginning as almost a mirror of the opening of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Is the novel's failure to capture a wide audience due to the timing of publication, or is there something lacking in terms of compelling and sympathetic characters?
By the time the "complete" Blake appeared in weekly installments in The Weekly Anglo-African, it was May of 1862. While the Civil War didn't absolutely put the question of Black emigration to rest--as Bob Levine writes, in 1862 "Lincoln was exploring the possibility of colonizing blacks to the tropics of Central and South America"-- it definitely changed the focus of abolitionists (Levine, Douglass and Delany, 217). Delany in fact turned his efforts to the war upon hearing news of the secession of South Carolina while in Great Britain (220). Identity politics become wrapped up joining forces with Douglass in making a case for the Civil War as a war of emancipation.
In terms of sympathetic characters, it would seem in trying to write something so completely counter to Stowe's work, he also failed to capture that element of sentiment that made her work so successful. This may be a reaction to Stowe's feminized male slaves Tom and Tiff, and preference for a more polemical revolutionary rhetoric.
Moving on to "The Heroic Slave" and possibly Life and Times.
Not sure at this moment how much of my chapter is going to discuss Blake. I've set up this chapter as exploring the problem of the literary representation of free and enslaved blacks, and Douglass, Delany, and Stowe have written three texts that attack this problem head-on, and have done it in a way that invokes the Middle Passage, the history of sugar production, British abolition, and the Haitian and American Revolutions. The difference between Douglass's and Delany's visions for blacks in a post-slavery world seems to turn on the lessons learned from this history. Delany seems to yearn for full autonomy for blacks away from the United States, and in setting his revolution in Cuba tries to recreate the Haitian experience, albeit with a "full-blooded" black elite. Yet this vision keeps failing. One of the frustrating things about reading this text is how much planning goes into these slave revolts and how little payoff there is.
Of course the reason for this "failure" of vision is in part that this novel was suppose to help raise funds for an African expedition. This raises the question of why abolitionist texts were written. Delany seems to have been taking advantage of Stowe's success in publishing anti-slavery novels. He even sets up the beginning as almost a mirror of the opening of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Is the novel's failure to capture a wide audience due to the timing of publication, or is there something lacking in terms of compelling and sympathetic characters?
By the time the "complete" Blake appeared in weekly installments in The Weekly Anglo-African, it was May of 1862. While the Civil War didn't absolutely put the question of Black emigration to rest--as Bob Levine writes, in 1862 "Lincoln was exploring the possibility of colonizing blacks to the tropics of Central and South America"-- it definitely changed the focus of abolitionists (Levine, Douglass and Delany, 217). Delany in fact turned his efforts to the war upon hearing news of the secession of South Carolina while in Great Britain (220). Identity politics become wrapped up joining forces with Douglass in making a case for the Civil War as a war of emancipation.
In terms of sympathetic characters, it would seem in trying to write something so completely counter to Stowe's work, he also failed to capture that element of sentiment that made her work so successful. This may be a reaction to Stowe's feminized male slaves Tom and Tiff, and preference for a more polemical revolutionary rhetoric.
Moving on to "The Heroic Slave" and possibly Life and Times.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)