Session 13

This piece, more than any other, rendered me speechless (no pun intended). For it is difficult to analyze and deconstruct a narrative such as this- difficult to even fully move past the impact it has on you. Distance, though present in time and space, is hard to replicate. So I will focus not on the grief, or the impossible choices of the actual narrative, because for those I have no words. In this particular case, it is just easier to discuss "broader questions" than to go into the specifics of her experience.

One question I kept asking throughout this text was: who is the subaltern? Who is the subaltern when there are layers and layers of subalternity? The author who's writing this narrative- but also in cases, the other slaves who have been rendered voiceless, the other women whose experience, as she states, is similar or far worse than hers. Is the subaltern one who can speak? At the point when these experiences can be voiced- when these narratives shared, does the subaltern cease to be that? How? In the technical sense of the word- perhaps. But those experiences, those memories that don't ever escape- what of them? For some things Linda Brent admits, can never be put into words. Some cannot be represented, no matter the attempt. How do we think of those?

What struck me was the solidarity, forgiveness, and understanding in her tone. Her address, she makes clear, is primarily to women. It is them, she states, who receive the worst of it. It is them who she relates her experience to- for strength, for hope, for fighting the demon she terms is slavery. Even for the white woman, who oppresses and subjugates her, who makes her life difficult, she extends an understanding. She blames not her primarily, but the institution of slavery. She acknowledges how that woman, too, is in some ways bound by circumstance, by the way she was raised and what she has seen.

Yet, despite this divide between the white woman and the black, there are those who break the binaries. The friends she brings up, Betty and the woman who gave her shelter, the Aunt Fanny (?) who helped her grandmother, the grandmother herself- her story is laced with women who support each other at enormous personal risk to their own lives. In fact, more than just women, her story is laced with people who do the kind thing, who do the right thing. That, to me, was such a a courtesy: such an unexpected understanding and humane rendering of the human, who is not just dismissed at purely evil.

This reading also prompted a closer look at resistance and agency. We discussed in one of our classes, that individual acts of resistance must not be so elevated that collectives become impossible, yet we also critiqued the grand, homogenizing tendencies of narratives of collective resistance. Here, in this account, are so many strong, powerful acts of resistance. From Linda's refusal to give in to one master over a different white man (where choice was limited, but at least there was the ability to think she exercised it), to the grandmother who walked dignified to the auction (knowing how it would be received), to the woman taking Linda in at the possible expense of her name and reputation, to Linda's escape... These are perhaps small in the grander scale for change, perhaps not collective in the way we are used to thinking about them- but are they not shared? I found the element of solidarity in them.

Isn't it through these that one can even get to a place where they can fight for bigger change- whatever it may be? Why are we so quick to dismiss those?

We have discussed metanarratives and grand structures, and how they stand in opposition to the individual, to a more "post structuralist" approach as Gyan Prakash argued for (in his opposition to O Hanlon and Washbrook). We have discussed the oppression of these. It is interesting how so many of these link up and how they fall on certain groups. In this, I kept thinking of slavery, the Church, and of (this had to come up) capitalist logic. Slaves are tools, used on plantations to increase the capital of the slave owner- they are no longer human, they cannot be accepted as such. As Linda repeats over and over again- they are "property". The Church, so often, was used to reinforce the slaves' oppression- to make them work harder, to submit to their masters, to refrain from entertaining any ill thoughts. These structures that impose, that are used to legitimize and subjugate- are living, breathing entities.

Yet, within these structures, are stories of resistance- of challenges, of spirits that refuse to be snuffed out. It is these that give us hope. It is these that, despite all of the oppression, of the cruelty and hatred exuded by humans, of the meanness of their actions- makes you think that perhaps not all is lost- that this is not all we are. It can't possibly be all that we are.