1. WLT2
World Literature Today 2:
A Student Publication
Volume 3
Autumn 2001
Editors: Nathan Brown and Diana Pardo
Executive Director. Robert Con Davis-Undiano
Editorial Board: Erin Blue, Amber Clingenpeel, Sharon Guthrie,
Lindsay R. Hall, Sean M. Lynch, Ashley McCallum, Andria
Parker, Erh K. Perng, Michelle L. Powell, Terrell J. Swanson,
Jennifer Connelly Tharp, Tracy J. Waterman
Cover Photography: Channing Ross
2. Frederick Douglass: A Reinscriptive Discourse underscored the idea of oppositionality between various binary
divisions: black- white, primitive-civilized , silent-articulate,
Nyla All Khan
irrational ruled and rational ruler. The enslaved population that
was imported from the African coast across the Atlantic "Middle
Passage" to the Americas, enabled the construction of American
The motivation to create empire brought major parts of the
culture as diametrically opposite to the "native cannibal"
earth under the dominion of a few powers. These powers used
(Ashcroft et al 213). The discourse formulated in the narrative of
violent, ideological, and cultural practices as the impetus for
Douglass invents a social space that is not reductive, but a
disseminating the values that molded the racial and cultural "contact zone," where asymmetrical cultures and ideologies
identity of the colonizer as well as the colonized. Western
grapple with each other to conceptualize a space of identity:
Imperialism and colonialism were violent acts of acquisition that
were supported by ideological notions of the superiority of the
Contact zones are social spaces where disparate
dominant culture and the imbecility of the non-European culture,
cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other,
which beseeched domination (Said 8). This strategy created an
often in highly asymmetrical relations of
unbridgeable gulf between the "center" and the "margin," which
dominance and subordination -like colonialism,
signified the alienation of the outsider.
slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An
across the globe today (Pratt 4).
American Slave Written by Himself destabilizes such dominant
assumptions that are the foundation of binary structuration,
I want to argue that although the narrator subverts binaries on
which is the basis of the pattern of post-Enlightenment conquest
which the dominant discourse and practices of American
and domination in human history. The narrator employs a
slaveholders rely to validate its power, he does not create an
counter-discourse to effect a displacement of oppositional terms.
inverse valorization of colonized over colonizer. As a "Black"
In order to achieve this, Frederick Douglass "negotiates" with
slave Douglass does not reductively internalize the tenets of
European cultural institutions, texts, values, and theoretical
"White" American culture but endeavors to give U.S. slaves a
practices (Spivak 184). Although Douglass has no control over
voice which is affiliated with American culture but is not
the historical context that positions and objectifies him, the
imagined from within the interests of the American slaveholding
narrator forges his subjectivity as created by the strategic use of community.
subject positions that reconfigure the classification of discordant
I would contend that Frederick Douglass breaks the shackles
entities.' The pigeonholing of the African diaspora as atavistic
of a traditional discourse that was used and disseminated by the
colonizer, and thereby articulates a submerged voice. The
' Henry Louis Gates, Jr. observes that "... we must now insist upon the
narrator's assertion of identity is motivated by the development of
recognition and identification of the black autobiographical tradition as
a collective and individual subjectivity. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
the positing of fictive black selves in language, in a mode of discourse
traditionally defined by rather larger claims for the self. The self, in this discusses the usage of "Written by Himself" or "Herself' as slave
sense does not exist as an entity but as a coded system of signs, arbitrary narratives' subtitles as representing a condemnation of the
institution of slavery by foregrounding the subjectivity of the
in reference" ( 123). Douglass' s self is not an ossified entity, but on the
contrary, is a tabula rasa on which he reconfigures multiple subject- slave narrator (23). As a condemnation of the practice of slavery,
3. the narrator voices a scathing critique of institutionalized institutionalization of commercial slavery, which provided a
European "savagery" by expressing his personal as well as lucrative source of trade for European and U.S. empires. This
community histories through writing: form of commercial exploitation and oppression was abolished in
America after the outbreak of the American Civil War. The
I did not, when a slave, understand the deep North issued a proclamation to free slaves in 1861, but this
meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent proclamation was officially ratified only in 1865 (Ashcroft et al
songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I 214). As an example of the political agency that Douglass
neither saw nor heard as those without might see exercises as an individual and as a member of the "Black"
and hear. They told a tale of woe which was then community, his condemnatory narrative is used as a vehicle to
altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they expose the bestial atrocities that were inflicted on subjugated
were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed peoples by the dominant order. This dispels the self-aggrandizing
the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over assumptions of social and moral rectitude by the plantation
with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a owners:
testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God
for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those I have said my master found religious sanction
wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled for his cruelty. As an example, I will state one of
me with ineffable sadness (29). many facts going to prove the charge. I have seen
him tie up a lame young woman, and whip her
This explicit expression of Douglass's sense of community with a heavy cowskin upon her naked shoulders,
enables him to render individual assertion as well as cultural causing the warm red blood to drip; and, in
resilience as acts of resistance to the dehumanizing aspects of justification of the bloody deed, he would quote
slavery, through which he achieves self-definition in an imperial this passage of Scripture-`He that knoweth his
world order. The narrator's strategic employment of the collective master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten
resilience of the "Black" voice is an attempt to buttress his with many stripes' (66).
"negotiation" with entrenched ideological structures.
Although the narrator is aware of and carefully deploys the The ideology that was propounded by the American slaveholders
history of the repression of U.S. slaves in order to foreground his reflected and produced its interests. The slaveholder couched the
attempts to renegotiate social structures, he distinguishes himself debased language of exploitation in the language of culture and
from the rest of the slave community. Douglass adopts this religion, which led to a relegation of the perspective, historical
strategy in order to proclaim himself as the representative of the sense, and traditions of the subjugated populace.
Black community, which doesn't nurture nostalgia for an Edenic As Edward Said notes, "All human activity depends on
Africa, but on the contrary, seeks to forge a space for itself within controlling a radically unstable reality to which words
the available infrastructure. For instance, Douglass is given a voice approximate only by will or convention" (29). The
not at clandestine slave rallies but at fora organized by White representatives of Christianity in the Americas did not negate the
abolitionists. Americans were clearly divided between the exploitative methods of the colonial power. The narrator realizes
abolitionists and the slaveholders. The slaveholders espoused the that the representatives of the privileged center of the discourse of
4. power silenced the voices that were on the fringes of society. The rendered defunct. Slavery was a perversion of humanity, "I look
device that was deployed to achieve this outcome was the creation upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds,
of illusory structures, which catered to the dominant order. This and the grossest of all libels" (118). This insightfulness enables
imaginary ideal rationalized the theoretical and philosophical the narrator to wield political and religious discourse to evoke the
tenets underlying the exploitation of Africans as objects of sympathy of the abolitionists, the predominantly "White" reading
public, and religious authority. An unequivocal indictment of the
European and American exchange (Spivak 240).
In order to undermine the falsified representation of the slaveholder would ostracize him in a society that claimed an
"unblemished" moral and social ethos. The potency of this
world, which the colonizer concocted to dominate the
imaginations and lives of the colonized, the narrator shakes the artifice becomes apparent when slaveowners endeavor to discount
moral fabric of "White" society by attributing "uncivilized" and the claims of slaves by employing a similar discourse: "... the
"unchristian" behaviors to the representatives of the regime. As a slaveholders not only like to see the slave drink of his own accord,
powerful instance of "negotiation" with European structures, but will adopt various plans to make him drunk.... Thus, when
which Douglass cannot annul, the narrator dwells on certain the slave asks for virtuous freedom, the cunning slaveholder,
knowing his ignorance, cheats him with a dose of vicious
abusive situations that abolitionist rhetoric would categorize as
reprehensible. For example, the narrator categorically points out dissipation, artfully labeled with the name of liberty" (Douglass
83). Here, the plantocracy attempts to constrain reality by
that his condemnation of organized religion applies
imposing its fabricated schema on it, which underpins its
to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with authority. Its ability to portray images and conjure boundaries
no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, renders the plantocracy a force to reckon with.
between the Christianity of this land, and the But the narrative of Douglass re-etches the boundaries of
Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest representation created by the regime. For instance, the narrator's
possible difference-so wide, that to receive the realization that the leeway provided by slaveholders to their slaves
one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to on "holidays" was a method of recontainmg the legitimized
reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked structure of society enables him to interrogate the quasi-liberty
granted to the "Black" subject by the master (83-4). By
(I I8).
incriminating the plantocracy, Douglass's assertion undercuts the
The narrator's delineation of corrupt and culpable practices positional superiority of the dominant power, which was
concealed by the veneer of religiosity asserts his identity as a validated by a political structure that affirmed the difference
politically and morally discerning, self-constructed individual. I between the familiar American slaveholder "Us" and the strange
would observe that, here, the narrator appropriates the discourse enslaved "Them." The narrator negates the subjectivity of the
of the imperial power as a strategic move to subvert the plantocracy by essentializing it as opposed to the perspicacious
stance of the abolitionists. He tactically separates the dogmatic
constructed barbarity of slaves.
Douglass's ability to wield the tools of the master enables officialese in the Americas, which is used to assert its supremacy
him to initiate shrewd negotiations with the dominant order. His among other verbal and ideological points of view from that of
the Anti-Slavery Society:
evocation of the "Christianity of Christ" is an attempt to
reinscribe chattel slavery, in which human rights and values were
5. I had not long been a reader of the "Liberator," where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would
before I got a pretty correct idea of the whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush; and
principles, measures, and spirit of the anti-slavery not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-
reform. I took right hold of the cause. I could do clotted cowskin" (23). These depictions of the atrocious
but little; but what I could, I did with a joyful treatment that was meted out to enslaved peoples portrayed the
heart, and never felt happier than when in an victims as passive recipients of violent and degrading forms of
anti-slavery meeting. . .. I spoke but a few punishment and sought to "commission" them to serve particular
minutes, when I felt a degree of freedom, and interests and social constituencies. Such examples of inhumane
said what I desired with considerable ease. From treatment, which were not declarations of insurrection, were
that time until now, I have been engaged in rendered to stimulate the abolitionists to erode the operative
pleading the cause of my brethren ... (116-7). assumptions that fortified the strength of American slaveholders.
Anti-Slavery rhetoric could make an even greater impact, if it
This adoption of validated social authority, regardless of its could convince its readers that the institution of slavery vitiated
constituents, created an opportunity for Douglass to be heard. In the dispositions of slaveholders. The metropolis labors under the
the U.S. abolitionism began in the 1830s. The movement was illusion that the "civilizing" mission undertaken by it determines
launched and authenticated by anti-slavery Americans. At that the periphery, but it negates the influence of the periphery on the
point, abolitionism was not hegemonic, but did enjoy the support center. The discourse of the dominant power created the enslaved
of the representatives of those segments of "White" society that population as a non-individualized and unperspicacious collective
abhorred slavery and opposed it tooth and nail. Such support had that should be exterminated, if it refused to cooperate with the
the potential to strengthen the resolve of U.S. slaves who coveted European mission to bring "enlightenment" to the dark parts of
freedom from bondage. the world. The narrative of Douglass depicts this process of
The narrative portrays the narrator's political affiliations as domination and control as sullying "White" culture. For instance,
sagacious choices that he made to expedite his negotiations with Douglass's mistress in Baltimore, who is described as kind and
structures of authority. These political fora provided Frederick generous, is unable to resist the imbrutation caused by the "fatal
Douglass with a podium and a credible persona to condemn the poison of irresponsible power," that soon commences "its
brutality of slavery in order to seek its -eradication. His appeal to infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery,
the anti-slavery organizations and to his enslaved brethren is the soon became red with rage ... (46). As Peter Hulme notes:
narrator's maneuver to evoke a "magnanimous" response from the
abolitionists as well as the predominantly "White" readership. The boundaries of civility proved extraordinarily
The narrator essays to discard his marginalized status by enabling permeable in the other direction. Just as Othello
himself to acquire a position in the social and political hierarchy was a single, fictional counterexample to the
in the "civilized" world. He strives for an acknowledgement of thousands of Christians who "turned Turk" in
the gruesome barbarity of the coercive tactics employed by the ports of Southern Europe and North Africa
slaveholders to subjugate the "Black" population. Douglass in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so
recounts an incident in which his aunt was whipped by her Pocahontas was a unique convert, uniquely
master, "The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and remembered (26).
6. Works Cited
The unbridled power of slaveholders reinforces their dominance,
but it corrupts them as well. The only weapon that slaveholders Ashcroft, Bill, et al. Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies.
are capable of wielding in order to assert their power is impotent London: Routledge, 1998.
rage and violence. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass:
This realization renders the evolution of Douglass's An American Slave Written by Himself. New York: Signet
subjectivity as historically and concretely valid (22). The narrative Classic, 1997.
presents Douglass as a subject whose subjectivity has been shaped Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the
by the construction of himself that he presented to the "Racial" Self. New York: Oxford UP, 1987.
abolitionists in the North (Sundquist 89). This construction Gramsci, Antonio. A Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916
invalidates the values, which I alluded to in the introduction to I935. Ed. David Forgacs. London: Lawrence and Wishart ,
this paper, disseminated by imperial powers to mold the racial 1988.
and cultural identity of enslaved peoples. This renegotiation of Hulme, Peter. Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native
boundaries and structures that enables Douglass's self- Caribbean, 1492-1797. London: Methuen, 1986.
construction undercuts the Eurocentricity of Antonio Gramsci's Pratt, M.L. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation.
notion of hegemony (4). The narrator's social and political London: Roudedge, 1992.
insights emasculate the class of American slaveholders and render Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto
it incapable of convincing the enslaved population that its andWindus, 1993.
interests are the interests of all. The internalization of dominant Spivak, Gayatri. Interview. "Criticism, Feminism, and the
beliefs and resistance is eroded by the frequent incidents of Institution." By Elizabeth Gross. Thesis Eleven I0/I I
violence on plantations. In such cases violence and coercion (I984-5): I75-87.
superseded ideological indoctrination. The narrator chooses to Sundquist, Eric J. To -Wake the Nations: Race in the Makin of
focus on creating a discourse of rehabilitation that is couched in American Literature. Massachusetts: Belknap P of Harvard
the utilitarian discourse of the greater good: "Sincerely and UP, 1993.
earnestly hoping that this book may do something toward
throwing light on the American slave system ... faithfully relying
upon the power of truth, love, and justice, for success in my
humble efforts . . ." (Douglass 124). The existence of the slave
songs on the plantation testifies to the spirit of resilience that
motivates Douglass to launch political and cultural actions that
by being both "Black" and American would underpin the creation
of the "contact zone."