Impossible Witnesses: Truth, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony

by Dwight McBride

Overview

Even the most cursory review of black literary production during the nineteenth century indicates that its primary concerns were the issues of slavery, racial subjugation, abolitionist politics and liberation. How did the writers of these narratives "bear witness" to the experiences they describe? At a time when a hegemonic discourse on these subjects already existed, what did it mean to "tell the truth" about slavery?
Impossible Witnesses explores these questions through a study of fiction, poetry, essays, and slave narratives from the abolitionist era. Linking the racialized discourses of slavery and Romanticism, it boldly calls for a reconfiguration of U.S. and British Romanticism that places slavery at its center.
Impossible Witnesses addresses some of the major literary figures and representations of slavery in light of discourses on natural rights and law, offers an account of Foucauldian discourse analysis as it applies to the problem of "bearing witness," and analyzes specific narratives such as "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," and "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano."
A work of great depth and originality, Impossible Witnesses renders traditional interpretations of Romanticism impossible and places Dwight A. McBride at the forefront of studies in race and literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814756041
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	02/01/2002
Pages:	207
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

Dwight A. McBride is President of The New School in New York City. Prior to his appointment at The New School, Dr. McBride was Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Emory University, where he also held the position of Asa Griggs Candler Professor of African American Studies, Distinguished Affiliated Professor of English, and Associated Faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. A leading scholar of race and literary studies, Dr. McBride's books include James Baldwin Now, Impossible Witnesses: Truth Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony, Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual African American Fiction, and A Melvin Dixon Critical Reader. His book Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Studies and was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xi
1	Introduction: Bearing Witness: Memory, Theatricality, the Body, and Slave Testimony	1
2	Abolitionist Discourse: A Transatlantic Context	16
	Abolitionist Discourse and Romanticism	21
	Reflections on Abolitionist Discourse in England	25
	African Humanity and the Possibility of Rage in Edgeworth, Cowper, and Opie	42
	On Whiteness and Humanity: The Example of Blake's "The Little Black Boy"	59
	Reflections on Abolitionist Discourse in the U.S.	62
	Emerson and the Fugitive Slave Law: Toward a Theory of Whiteness	67
	Troping the Slave: Margaret Fuller's Review of Douglass's Narrative	75
	The Body as Evidence: Garrison's Defense of David Walker's Appeal	78
3	"I Know What a Slave Knows": Mary Prince as Witness, or the Rhetorical Uses of Experience	85
4	Appropriating the Word: Phillis Wheatley, Religious Rhetoric, and the Poetics of Liberation	103
5	Speaking as "the African": Olaudah Equiano's Moral Argument against Slavery	120
6	Consider the Audience: Witnessing to the Discursive Reader in Douglass's Narrative	151
	Afterword	173
	Notes	177
	Bibliography	191
	Index	201
	About the Author	207

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"His rich volume takes up the complex and strategic discourses that circulated around the truth of slave testimony....actively engaging."

-American Literature,

"In this ambitious and thought-provoking study, Dwight A. McBride places representative black-authored texts spanning the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries "in conversation with canonical Romantic authors and their tropes" to answer the fundamental intellectual question the work poses, "What does it mean for a slave to bear witness to, or tell the 'truth' about slavery?'"

-The Journal of American History,

"The globalization of culture makes increasingly apparent that the slave trade and its resulting exfoliation of cultural forms, both in the Americas and in Europe, were constitutive elements for the postcolonial and diasporic literatures of later days. In this respect and others, Impossible Witnesses describes a fascinating interplay between the Anglo-American history of slavery, British Romanticism, and African American literature, and constitutes an important addition to recent scholarship on the black Atlantic."

-Eric J. Sundquist,Dean of Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences, Northwestern University

"Dwight McBride's Impossible Witnesses is the most sophisticated treatment I have read of the slaves bearing witness to the truth of their condition. He teases out complexity and depth heretofore overlooked. Don't miss this important text."

-Cornel West,

"A necessary and compelling work which will expand and sharpen abolitionist scholarship."

-Toni Morrison

Editorial Reviews

"A necessary and compelling work which will expand and sharpen abolitionist scholarship."

Toni Morrison

"A necessary and compelling work which will expand and sharpen abolitionist scholarship."

-Toni Morrison

"Dwight McBride's Impossible Witnesses is the most sophisticated treatment I have read of the slaves bearing witness to the truth of their condition. He teases out complexity and depth heretofore overlooked. Don't miss this important text."

-Cornel West

"His rich volume takes up the complex and strategic discourses that circulated around the truth of slave testimony....actively engaging."

-American Literature

"In this ambitious and thought-provoking study, Dwight A. McBride places representative black-authored texts spanning the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries "in conversation with canonical Romantic authors and their tropes" to answer the fundamental intellectual question the work poses, "What does it mean for a slave to bear witness to, or tell the 'truth' about slavery?’”

-The Journal of American History

"The globalization of culture makes increasingly apparent that the slave trade and its resulting exfoliation of cultural forms, both in the Americas and in Europe, were constitutive elements for the postcolonial and diasporic literatures of later days. In this respect and others, Impossible Witnesses describes a fascinating interplay between the Anglo-American history of slavery, British Romanticism, and African American literature, and constitutes an important addition to recent scholarship on the black Atlantic."

-Eric J. Sundquist,Dean of Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences, Northwestern University

From the Publisher

"In this ambitious and thought-provoking study, Dwight A. McBride places representative black-authored texts spanning the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries "in conversation with canonical Romantic authors and their tropes" to answer the fundamental intellectual question the work poses, "What does it mean for a slave to bear witness to, or tell the 'truth' about slavery?’"

The Journal of American History

"The globalization of culture makes increasingly apparent that the slave trade and its resulting exfoliation of cultural forms, both in the Americas and in Europe, were constitutive elements for the postcolonial and diasporic literatures of later days. In this respect and others, Impossible Witnesses describes a fascinating interplay between the Anglo-American history of slavery, British Romanticism, and African American literature, and constitutes an important addition to recent scholarship on the black Atlantic."

Eric J. Sundquist

"Dwight McBride's Impossible Witnesses is the most sophisticated treatment I have read of the slaves bearing witness to the truth of their condition. He teases out complexity and depth heretofore overlooked. Don't miss this important text."

Cornel West

"His rich volume takes up the complex and strategic discourses that circulated around the truth of slave testimony....actively engaging."

American Literature