The Black Atlantic as Dystopia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8909761 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Judie Newman (University of Nottingham, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 283-297 |
| Publication date | 2012-05-08 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Literature Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0010-4132 • E-ISSN: 1528-4212 |
| Publisher | The Pennsylvania State University Press (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.5325/complitstudies.49.2.0283 |
| OpenAlex | W1873496178 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 9 |
In an interview Paul Gilroy acknowledged the utopian nature of his thinking, not (as might be thought) as the utopianism of a tradition, Marxist or otherwise, but in relation to utopian thinkers in the philosophical sense: “I have been very influenced by Ernst Bloch, his conceptions of utopia, and particularly his understanding of the relationship between music and utopia and also his sense of the place of the fragments—the shards of utopian thinking in everyday life.”1 Bloch expanded the concept of utopia from the narrower image of a description of an alternative society designed to evoke or facilitate a better way of life to a broader understanding that included such phenomena as daydreams, religious visions, myths of a golden age, circuses, fairy tales, glossy magazines, and travel literature. For Bloch, the capacity for hope is a prime source of human creativity, dynamism, and progress and is part of our capacity for imagination.2 Similarly for Gilroy, utopias are thought experiments that restore to people the ability to imagine a better or a different world to the one that they inhabit. He poses the question, “How do we cultivate the ability to do what Bloch called dreaming forward and what value does it have to be compelled to imagine a different world?”3 Music is a key element of the analysis, as Gilroy, following Bloch, emphasizes utopias as involving the politics of transfiguration, the emergence of qualitatively new desires, social relations, and modes of association, both within the racial community and between that group and white oppressors. The issue of how utopias are conceived is complex, not least because they strive continually to move beyond the grasp of the merely linguistic, textual, and discursive.4 Such utopias may embody an imaginary antimodern past and a postmodern future.Gilroy argues that the vernacular arts of the descendants of slaves suggest a role for art that is strikingly similar to that described by Adorno in relation to European artistic expression after the Holocaust: “Art's utopia, the counterfactual yet-to-come, is draped in black. It goes on being a recollection of the possible with a critical edge against the real; it is a kind of imaginary restitution of that catastrophe which is world history.”5 A major problem in critical response to the black Atlantic concept is the lack of awareness of its utopian nature, the tendency to regard it as a hard-edged theoretical definition instead of as a catalyst to thought and action. The term has been rapidly canonized and institutionalized in the U.S. academy and concretized as a formal space.6 As Brent Hayes Edwards notes, “It is sometimes overlooked that Gilroy himself is careful to propose black Atlantic as a provisional or heuristic term of analysis, more in order to open up a certain theoretical space that would radically dislodge any inquiry grounded in singular frames—whether “race,” “ethnicity,” or “nation”—than in order to formalize that space.”7Although the term was never meant to be comprehensive, the areas missing from the analysis remain striking. As the editors of a recent volume of essays note, Gilroy's case studies focus on middle class male intellectuals in America (Alexander Crummell, Martin Delany, W. E. B. Du Bois), make little of class and gender, largely ignore Latin America, and appear somewhat oblivious to potential collusion between black nationalism and patriarchy. Crossing the sea tends to be the province of men, obscuring the importance of women, land, and agency. In addition, the book's Americocentrism appears paradoxical given the agenda of debunking the notion of African American provincialism by taking the African American experience as paradigmatic of the black diaspora.8 More generally, the rapid adoption of the term as a shorthand for the cultural richness of the black diaspora tends to obscure the fact that these riches came at the cost of pain and suffering; slavery may be too high a price for the global dissemination of rap music.How better to challenge Gilroy's thinking, therefore, than with a dystopian novel? In Blonde Roots, Bernardine Evaristo constructs a deeply felt and trenchant critique of the utopian qualities of Gilroy's model, in a revision that is also an act of homage and a creative extension to his work. In her African, British, and Afro-Brazilian family history Evaristo herself encapsulates the diasporic reach of the black Atlantic. Born in 1959 in South London, she is the daughter of a white mother and a black Nigerian father, born in Cameroun in 1927, whose own father “returned” from Brazil to Lagos in 1888, when slavery was abolished. The epigraph to the novel evokes the long history of Portuguese chattel slavery: “Remembering the 10 to 12 million Africans taken to Europe and the Americas as slaves ... and their descendants, 1444–1888.”9 In 1444 Lançarote de Freitas landed 235 enslaved Africans in Lagos, Portugal, the first large group of slaves to be brought to Europe. In her semiautobiographical verse novel, Lara, Evaristo travels back 150 years and seven generations and across three continents to tell the tale of Yorubas who were enslaved in Brazil, became “emancipados” in colonial Nigeria, and finally emigrated to Britain.10 The novel includes multiple narratives describing other immigrant forebears, impoverished Irish Catholics and Germans (her mother's family), including one white ancestor who makes his way in London by boiling West Indian sugar night and day. It includes a rich Yoruba-Brazilian glossary and a powerful evocation of the Brazilian Quarter in central Lagos. As the epigraph indicates, this is a family that has known transnational roots and routes, that has crossed several seas and is deeply imbricated in the flows and currents of the triangular trade. Lara is the short form of the Yoruba proverb “Omilara,” meaning (as the novel's epigraph states) “The family is like water.” Evaristo's verse novel The Emperor's Babe, set in multicultural Roman Londinium in 211 AD, also uses a very broad canvas to emphasize the antiquity of the black diaspora that is still largely absent from the history books in 2001, as well as to stress the black presence in Britain. As its epigraph reads, quoting Oscar Wilde, “The only duty we have to history is to rewrite it.”11 The novel takes its cue from Peter Fryer's account of the presence of blacks in Britain long before the English came, and significantly it also introduces the topic of white slavery.12 The heroine, Zuleika, a Sudanese Roman citizen who has an affair with the Libyan-born African emperor Septimus Severus, is not a slave but an affluent cosmopolitan and a member of the ruling class. As Evaristo comments, “Zuleika's husband Felix buys her two Scottish women as slaves and I was interested in the way Zuleika reacts to them. What struck me is how rarely we read about slavery as something that occurred outside of the black/white axis.”13The Emperor's Babe clearly anticipates Evaristo's 2008 novel. Blonde Roots is a classic reversal narrative, like Lord of the Flies (children as savage adults) or Planet of the Apes (animals rule men), essentially a “what if?” novel, in this case, “what if blacks had enslaved whites?” In interview Evaristo said that her intention was to make readers focus on what, if the tables had been turned historically and Africans had enslaved Europeans, that would mean for the way we view history.14 In her account, The slave trade is a subject that elicits strong responses including anger, defensiveness, resentment, self-righteousness, guilt, sadness. So I decided to ask the question What if? What if the history as we know it is turned on its head and Africans enslaved Europeans for four centuries? What if Africans assume the moral and intellectual high ground and notions of savagery and civilisation are inverted?15 This does not mean that the history of slavery is casually erased, however. Nor are its horrors scanted. As Evaristo points out, “It's a ‘what if?’ book but it's also a ‘This is what was’ book.”16 The novel incorporates almost all the familiar elements of the slave narrative genre: capture, failed escape, Middle Passage (with slave insurrection, multiple deaths, rape, torture, and mutilations), branding (18), slave auctions (33), family separation (23), renaming, whippings, the acquisition of literacy (20), and a final escape to freedom to a long-established community of maroons. Along the way the heroine, Doris Scagglethorpe, kidnapped from the “Cabbage Coast” of northern England (a replacement for the Gold Coast of Africa) is enslaved in “Londolo,” a mixture of London and Mombasa, which has recognizable landmarks such as “Paddingto” and “Mayfah” but also a tropical climate and crocodiles in the “Temz.” Doris works as a house slave and then a field slave, as a white mammy to her master's son Nonso, in a sugar mill on a Caribbean plantation, and as a Topsy-like companion to Little Miracle, a thinly disguised caricature of Harriet Beecher Stowe's saintly Eva (though when Little Miracle threatens to send a disobedient Doris to the port brothel, Doris shoves her into the river, where her tight dress and heavy neck-rings ensure instant drowning). Spirituals are sung, notably “Gahd save we grashus chief” (176) and “Should ole akwaintaunce be forgot” (215), and there are minstrels in “whyteface,” whose black faces are smeared with chalk and who attempt the hop, skip, and jump of Morris dancing, in clogs and bells.While the reversals certainly offer a counterfactual image of historical it is a the as in the the of a in which black white and does the of the of as in the it also blacks by of the of Nor does the blacks became than they are described as their own people to the as slaves and as the the of to the with a Evaristo herself that it was to that Africans a million Europeans from the to the that in with the slave its of and of the of African Evaristo's reversals the the awareness of the of slavery a between and which black into white and Gilroy's The way in which by is brought to life in the novel. It is for the to that is that is a that life on a as or that was taken from a in in a with the element in the novel, is the of and Evaristo makes the Middle Passage a for both and by in an and and by the of the that and the of on the to the of from where slaves are kidnapped by to be across the Atlantic to on the of the Evaristo the black Atlantic from the northern to the Gilroy's and to the as the concept of the black Atlantic the and focus of cultural studies by it to a space between Evaristo the of African American in the African the nature of cultural and the notion of a of As the of the novel indicates, the in several The for her for and as one of might for the the to roots black the of black and In a sense Evaristo takes Gilroy at his and a different world in which blacks are not but the are dystopian for both blacks and The rich of by Gilroy is little for who the horrors of in the of Nonso, a Evaristo the of slavery on the the novel notions of are In The Atlantic Gilroy his readers to a experience of by the of the Middle an experience that to a of and a in the of This African American focus has been on the that it other African of and for have of from a in has concept of the historical of as involving a and that is not but with As as Gilroy's understanding of slavery as the into is Evaristo's world any such escape on the London takes place in the is also with and and a with hop, and space with is more in the short that was the of the novel, in the in which slavery to the In the short Doris has a account, on a set up by the and by that in may their and into their but she also uses the to from her master's account at the (her has a from before on the that has been in of on the novel are with of a such as and London, they also slave like in London and which on its the is for its and for the The of and evoke the that were by slavery The in is as a recent but slaves that evoke black and from the to the and his and the a one the the of all given that the novel was in the of the of the slave in the of and the to which the of slavery still up the separation of past and In The Emperor's Babe, the and Roman are a case in the is more generally, the affair with and the in and and utopian shards in that evoke a past which never with its horrors Evaristo makes it that Doris was never but a to Lord of the who is in with the slave In other Britain was never a of and there is about its we the African which includes Africans who also The family history of the with The of the and several a who and was up in an a who in on a and an As Doris comments, the our by association, by offer a utopian not glossy or fairy In its therefore, the novel to a utopian like of African a history that awareness of As a it also the importance of class. For the history may be the or The are and the given her Brazilian there may be a certain to Evaristo's description of the and of the and of and their family This is history with a as as with Evaristo the as the one in Doris that of the slave in the are who came to with their and at for only to their in the of slavery was somewhat more is certain that the never up The in the novel that have been with from slavery slave for and that still of the of the of the of and the novel, radically different of history are that is in a of only as a of the of Gilroy never read the As a Evaristo is to the black Atlantic as a social imaginary than as a set of the cultural are not on from the of and the novel with three more of Gilroy's major The novel is into three the first capture, and her first escape the an in this escape attempt by the of a intellectual a on the nature of the slave in a of and the and to the sugar on the other of the Atlantic. The first particularly on cultural the on the collusion of with and the on the world that the slaves strong women In book set in is a but The the in and of their and their cultural are the that Evaristo a on the cultural of the by of cultural including and and of For all its the novel makes a on the and of in as a A she has is by the and to that she is a four with long a and of by the of the In of the is Doris before her “I may be and I may have and I may have and a I may in the and have I may be I and I a house she is that she has to when she the to and appear with her in The a for her her as a slave all to the which her In the it is of the in the of the the blacks in the and of the central Evaristo in with of in and and with the of as a of In the it is possible to and and or and of The also the cultural of from on who in at the from the of by or an a racial of are in of to the at they taking our The has to black into white and to the historical this case South African in the and American In the there are also for and what Gilroy as the For Gilroy diasporic music is the of black and (as has has a tendency to music as for black music also be an to black than a utopian of It has a in the novel the way in which of the of the community is that the ... his and their of like or In their the role of that they are on utopian as to and his mother on the head with a to problem with the is that it tends to emphasize than or and in different there are at the the who escape and the of the middle class is also in her For Doris is one more like her the with which she her or her to a The in the where Evaristo the to the thought and of a The is that of “The on the nature of the slave by are into her also known as The a of slavery against a of and its with a of the the the long reach of of it the high ground from the first “I a and a with and describing its as to as well as and the analysis of In an Evaristo argues that Africans as than human or as as a for and in with the of the slave Evaristo has acknowledged the of Peter Fryer's that in the as a for the class as a way to not merely to the of society but in their own of a with to and is the first slavery on the that Africans were In Fryer's is not a in slavery but in its tends to be and is by the and to are and than and as is the case with The the of slavery in of in which blacks from their own also an image of as The what the have thought when they in Britain to be with and and the on the between and of the In on his first the reacts to the climate of the with its and of the of African He is by the of being and and the of on a to European history has little to of In the of the of with of The are as deeply is a of of his of and with to the who have from and The the of the other it as is the of are from the of savagery which we in short on that the of from to to the in which the is too the and the and The is a to pain as the the as beyond their like that of a or It was in the and for to be as an of human the father of the term to white these to called and then the notion of the to which the the the between and the the and the the of and The image was of a in which the Europeans were by and In a the head of the with on the of the the of racial As has out, if the of had been as the of Africans would have by Europeans, and The Europeans of the white at the and the black at the was not by the of his and in moral to his and himself in a the of the slave with its heavy and that it to that a meant to be for the of the as a for its this of the novel to Gilroy's that of of more intellectual and its into cultural that stress than may a of what the narratives of up Gilroy only in a the has a The is for its Gilroy argues that racial is not with but with Evaristo the between the at the of book when she is about to be by and the when the does and she a The is is the takes up in book her and of her the experience of the at the still the moral high “The would have been to her I was not and never be a the final book of the novel, Evaristo the male and a world in which women Gilroy's tends to focus on the obscuring the role of women, land, and but Evaristo women back on across the Atlantic to the sugar plantation, Doris herself in a community of The is described as world on a with and and and The is on the and of the slave community and on their to the of their the of a they a their own and In the slave as Doris more or two years Doris has to an in the world the slaves have evokes a of and a of “It was almost as if our were As if we were there is an on strong women and on and the in a of of the of Doris is with her her and her husband a is only to be It is to in the a to Gilroy's male model, particularly in the of the slave and her religious and moral and against the to their from the of Gilroy's In the final analysis, class is The for Doris is when they her as an house and her are heavy in the (176) of sugar boiling and past is she for a that her as a an Doris does a but in the of the part of slave in and heavy are slave and Doris to but it is who the the escape is she is and her all the a on slavery as a with a evocation of the the of sugar slaves and field slaves are part of one Doris is to be careful what she slaves are and for The utopian image of a community with a of its own new social to cultural is In the it is that offer the only of In Doris had been as a and when that his father is to the her back from the mill to the of the that she save his by the This Doris the to from the the of the slaves to and to she not because of any cultural or utopian but by the of back on is the element in it into the the of the novel we are that the descendants still own the sugar and are the and in where they Evaristo the that a of as transnational may be what with a space for a of therefore, and dystopian are more than utopianism because they the to the of and
Art · Dystopia · Literature · History · Music History and Culture · Race, History, and American Society · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction
| Citations per year | 0.44 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2017 - 2025 (9) |
| Highly cited | No |