1254041 Global Narratives of Slavery 1
1254041 Global
Narratives of Slavery 1
Organizer(s):
Gretchen Head, Yale-NUS College (gretchen.head@yale-nus.edu.sg)
In this, the first of our two connected panels, presenters will focus on the Arab World, and North and West Africa. In “Adapting Abolitionist Discourse to Local Frameworks in North Africa,” Gretchen Head will consider A?mad al-Nā?irī’s 19th century Kitāb al-Istiq?ā li-akhbār duwal al-Maghrib al-Aq?ā, a grounding breaking Moroccan historiographical text, focusing on the author’s textual manipulation of the category of ummah (universal Muslim community) in relation to standing traditions of slavery in North Africa. Most striking in al-Nā?irī’s work when considering its handling of slavery – legal in Morocco until 1922 – is what it reveals about the potential of local adaptation when ideas circulate globally. The abolitionist discourses that spread throughout al-Na??iri?’s home country in the 19th century surely influenced his thinking; the first British intervention pressuring Morocco to abolish slavery is recorded in a letter written by the Consul General Drummond Hay to the sultan Mawlay ‘Abd al-Ra?ma?n (r. 1822-1859) dated 1842, the period of the author’s youth. And while al-Na??iri? would not go on to adopt these discourses against slavery literatim, we nevertheless find that he shifts his mode of writing to adapt to them, much like models of literary evolution that see literary forms retain their shape when exported to new contexts even as their linguistic registers become localized. In a kind of translated equivalence, al-Na??iri? begins to interpret Islamic discourse through a crucial new lens.
Sanna Dhahir will then present on “Slavery and Racial Discrimination in Saudi Women’s Fiction,” observing that slavery, not abolished in Saudi Arabia until 1962, and its current legacies of racial discrimination, marginalization, and alienation, is one of the most serious issues women writers have recently tackled. Here, she will examine this subject in the works of two women writers, Badriya Albeshr and Laila Aljohani, investigating how they destabilize society’s consciousness of race and color. She will also show that these novels go beyond being records of slavery and racial discrimination by analyzing how they attempt to restore legitimacy and dignity to a social group long sidelined and objectified. Both writers ground their work in history, sociology, psychology, and various other important fields, which together lend further authority to their work. By examining slavery and racial discrimination in Saudi fiction, a subject which has hardly been considered by critics, especially in English, Dhahir contributes to scholarship in world literature and the theme of slavery in global writings, all in the context of Saudi women’s writing as a tool of resistance and a part of the transnational feminist movement. It is writing that contests and challenges inequality, political violence, and socio-economic oppression affecting not only women but other identities in multiple aspects of life.
Returning to Morocco, Mbarek Sryfi’s paper, “Slavery, a Silenced Topic in Morocco: My Seddik Rabbaj’s Le Lutteur (The Warrior, 2015),” will examine the controversial novel Le Lutteur (The Warrior, 2015), by My Seddik Rabbaj, a work of fiction shaped by Rabbaj’s confrontation with slavery’s legacies in North Africa. The subject of slavery, Sryfi argues, enables the narrator to express his own personal awareness as well as explore difficult historical realities that date back to 1592, when the Sa‘dī Sultan, Ahmad al-Mansūr ad-Dahbī, invaded the sub-Saharan Songhay Empire. The event had major consequences that arguably continue into the present day; as a result, it is generally sanitized or hushed up in Morocco. Based on historical events, Rabbaj’s novel recounts the journey of the Nbarch family, descendants of the Songhay. The story maps the racial ruptures existing among Moroccans, and exposes racial practices that continue to plague modern Moroccan society, most significantly relating to the slavery. Le Lutteur is an important novel that sheds light on a suppressed history, putting it on trial, and criticizing the society that endorsed it.
Moving south from Morocco, our final presenter for part 1 of this panel, Philomina Odi Mintah, will turn to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in her paper, “Silence, Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Ghanaian novel,” exploring the culture of slavery and its effect on the African psyche. While the Trans-Atlantic trade was abolished over two hundred years ago, its legacies persist, something we see in how frequently it comprises a main theme in literature of the African diaspora. Yet its role is far less evident in African literature from the African continent itself. There have been attempts by critics of African literature to explain why the Trans-Atlantic trade is one of the least treated subjects in African literature, particularly when compared to diasporic literature. It is an absence that is especially conspicuous when we consider how integral slavery is to the continent’s history. These critics conclude that despite highly visible legacies of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, such as slave castles and forts, situated at the coast of African shores, (which should serve as constant reminders of the trade) Africans suffer from collective amnesia, rendering them silent on the subject. While not disputing the claim of collective amnesia, Odi Mintah observes that these sentiments are, in fact, only partially true, something she considers by looking at the general treatment of slavery in selected novels by Ghanaian authors. Through these texts she proposes alternative reasons for why Africans seem silent on the subject of slavery.