Slavery and the Anti-Slavery

[Flaxe]

Hello LiteratureJunction,

I've read a few memoirs regarding african slavery (18th and 19th cent) and am interested in creating discussion about this topic, reference material - primary and secondary texts. This is purely for my own interests. Not for school although I did study it a few years ago. Looking back at my books, I think I would like to start reading and building up on this again, in a critical not leisurely way.

An example of texts I've read so far include Mary Prince, Olaudah Equiano, The Ethiopian...etc. Any more that you would add? Periodicals and academic critics or other critics I should be aware of? Any interesting or informative websites?

What are your thoughts on authorship of memoirs during this time when anti-slavery groups encouraged such publications?

[margaine]

Unfortunately that's a bit earlier than my area of expertise. I read Equiano in a course years ago, and I don't remember it that well.

The issue of authorship of memoirs is an interesting one. How much of the narratives are really the work of the ex-slaves themselves? I guess one stance is that if it weren't for the support of those abolitionist groups, the stories wouldn't have gotten told at all. So perhaps it's better than nothing.

One can raise the same questions with regard to the beginning of the Negritude movement because of its support from French intellectuals - Sartre most notably.

An interesting book you might want to look at is Ourika by Claire de Duras. It's a short story (or maybe novella?) - fiction loosely based on historical fact about a young Senegalese woman supposedly rescued from slavery and raised by a well-to-do French family. It was written in 1823 but set during the French Revolution and is directly concerned with criticizing the institution of slavery. Here's the wikipedia on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ourika

The story also brings up similar issues of authorship and representation because even though the story is that of the girl Ourika, it is narrated by the white French doctor who visits her. Why can the story not be Ourika's own? It is always mediated by this French man.

[Flaxe]

Sartre and Franz Fanon... more into postcolonial? Thanks for the Ourika suggestion. I will check it out. It sounds similar to the debated authorship on "Equiano", criticized to have been written by a white man and more infamously, for its discrepancies in the protagonist's origins.

[margaine]

Sartre and Franz Fanon... more into postcolonial? Thanks for the Ourika suggestion. I will check it out. It sounds similar to the debated authorship on "Equiano", criticized to have been written by a white man and more infamously, for its discrepancies in the protagonist's origins.

Well . . . I'd just say contemporary or 20th century literature, culture, history, etc related to Africa.

There's tons of fascinating stuff from earlier periods, though, and one of my eventual goals is to look at some earlier literature from Senegal. That's very long-term though. One thing at a time. ;)

Do you know about the signares? I don't know if there are many narratives or novels that address them - although I think there's some. They are initially from the era when the Portuguese were the big slave traders - signares were mixed-race women in Senegal who were partially Portuguese - they wielded a lot of economic power and were big players in the society of slave trading Senegal. Absolutely fascinating.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/Signare_abbe_boilat_1853.jpg/400px-Signare_abbe_boilat_1853.jpg

[Rubeskies]

"Oroonoko" by Aphra Behn is a fantastic short story/novella. It examines the difference between the slavery native Africans practice and the slavery practiced by Europeans. Also, the main character is a slave but a noble African prince and none of the slave masters can get up the courage to make him do any work but he still isn't allowed to leave. It is a fascinating inversion of power relationships.

[Ae5t]

"Oroonoko" by Aphra Behn is a fantastic short story/novella. It examines the difference between the slavery native Africans practice and the slavery practiced by Europeans. Also, the main character is a slave but a noble African prince and none of the slave masters can get up the courage to make him do any work but he still isn't allowed to leave. It is a fascinating inversion of power relationships.

In addition to this I know Hearth of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. It is a modern one...Maybe it is difficult to read, or a bit boring, but anyhow, it is about colonialism..:p