For the entire text of the Narrative, click this link
A. Written Word as an Influential Force, Reconfiguring Social and Thought Structures and Systems
If the recounting of the deplorable treatment and living conditions of Negro slaves of the 18th-19th centuries, the cruelties and atrocities inflicted on Africans treated as no more than animals, and the glaring incompatibility of the existence of this ‘dehumanization of both the oppressor and oppressed’ (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970) with the Christian Religion held by the majority, would serve as consciousness-raising literary images and arguments so as to rouse public opinion of the apathetic and incite outrage towards slavery, the ‘Narrative’ most likely might have been successful, provided it had enjoyed a wide circulation among the sectors that were integral to the power structures at the time. Net research had yielded information on the bestseller status of the Narrative, how it made Equiano wealthy, and apparently had been one the notable literary factors and references for the Abolitionist cause; http://www.brycchancarey.com/equiano/
Add to that, the author’s command of the lingua franca, the skill in detail, the increasing prestige of the author as he imbibed more and more of his master’s culture, practices, norms, and religion, and the interspersing among sane experiences instances of insanity and barbarity in the Narrative, and we now have Equiano as the voice of Westernized, Christianized, Black African freedmen and the oppressed, admonishing non-enslaved Westerners to give the gradually integrating slaves better working conditions and just wages, and protection under the law. Equiano might as well have been the Black Karl Marx and Billy Graham rolled into one in his “Interesting Narrative”, though in a more pleading and deferring demeanor or tone. The Narrative could be an Occidental Afro-European Althuserrian Ideological State Apparatus of Black Europeans seeking an Identity and acceptance in the continent and a Socialist Manifesto in one package.
Equiano brought an otherwise acceptable face, as far as the ethno-cultural tribute to the dominant culture was concerned, to 18th-19th century Negro slavery, putting to the forefront his appeal to the recognition of the humanity of his brethren and that of his own seemingly made evident by his capacity for assimilation. This might have been brought itself to bear on the oppressors’ view of the integrating Africans. This might have debunked the prejudice of some who think Negroes as no more than brutes. Equiano in the text had the capacity for Western Style courtesy, restraint, English language fluency, and subtle sophistication. His deference, honesty, and affection for his adopted people (Mr. King, Mr. Baker, Mr. Pascal, Ms. Guerin, etc.) could even have scored points with his readership, The magnanimous personalities he mentioned were also examples of people, for the undecided or the bigoted, who at least recognized the humanity of the Negroes, and dared to empathize with them, at the time when racism and economics were so intertwined and fiercely fleeced, as to dwarf Nazism/anti-Semitism in 20th Germany in terms of global scope.
Certain pertinent questions can be formulated that delve into the author’s intentions, or in the non-existence of which, into the literary dialectic situated within that moment/era of geopolitical/socioeconomic relationships and structures far detached from the spheres of morality.
(a) Is Equiano trying to overcome ethnocentrism by taking advantage/putting on the cultural color of his oppressors and patrons?
(b) Would hybridism and adaptation be necessary for integration, resulting in humanization and self-actualization of the author or others like him, to an entirely culturally different society?
(c) Would the prejudiced reader be sympathetic and conscientious of the human rights of the author had he stayed within his own nativist cultural milieu, distancing himself from Western cultural identity?
B. The Text as the Counterproductive Voice of the Author to the Evident Message of the Narrative
On the other hand, the consequence of the reading of the Narrative might had had other, more varied, interesting, Freudian nuances and implications that probably reinforced, rather than repudiate, the notions on the rationalizations for enslaving other peoples. Such that that could be one of the theories or real factors by which Abolitionism had not gained ground and claimed swift overwhelming victory over Slavery and the Slave Trade, because literature in itself is only part-creature of the existing discursive formations and other causes and circumstances made it difficult for the awakening population of slave traders, businessmen, politicians, and citizens alike to abolish slavery or to welcome with open arms foreigners kidnapped or bought to work for them.
Equiano’s Narrative may prove not as heart-wrenching and pathos-engendering as the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, published in 1845, thus, was not as effectual as a crusading literature, or worse, it was no more than an adventure story for some. His light treatment of Africans-enslaving-Africans in his earlier years might had come across to some as the precedent for the global practice of slavery, although human trafficking had been in existence since ancient times.
Another interpretation could be formulated or conjectured as the text might be the aggrandizement of Western Culture, with its counterproductive consequences. The text shows a former African tribesman as a practitioner of native, pure culture who acquires and acknowledges the ‘superiority’ of the said culture. If the reinforcement of the cultural superiority of the West in this text affirmed the ethnocentric and culture identity smugness in some readers, and if that chauvinism gave the conceptualization on treating other non-Western cultures as primitive and inferior, and also if this latter condition is the thought that justified the domination and denial of equality with those denizens of “primitive, inferior cultures and ‘uncivilized-ness’ of those non-Western civilizations” and their subsequent enslavement and maltreatment, then, the text was unconsciously or inadvertently defeating its own evident purpose of convincing all those coming into its sphere of influence of a singular vision, in the absence of any explicit advocacy on the part of the author. The Narrative might as well be account of his transformation from an Eboe, rural, animistic farming apprentice, having experienced a cruel rite of passage, to an avid Anglophile Christian seeking integration into 18th century Caucasian social circles.
A more dramatic and thought provoking text would have as its recurring theme the independence and inherent aesthetics of native African culture and whose adherent questions the underlying flaw of an aspect of Western thinking in its relentless pragmatism, and the violence with which the native culture was rendered worthless, trod underfoot, and pushed to extinction, by that flaw, as a modern reading would postulate but that which also understands the limitation of the discourses available to the author at that time when discourses and movements such as Nativism, Post-colonialism, and cultural relativity might be scoffed as pure sophistry of intellectuals.
If then Negro slavery, and its conceptualization would have been abetted or inextricably tied with feelings of cultural superiority, and its illegitimate offspring, racial superiority, then practicing, and being ‘awestruck’ by Western culture and civilization, and the crying out of its being superior, a single sentence spoken by the speaker in the text, would be tantamount to the contradiction between the author and whatever crusading quality his text might have been possessing, whose probable consequence would be that the slavery advocate/Western man would be dismissing or mentally shrugging whatever latent urging there was in the text.
The text is in sharp contrast with the Narrative of Frederick Douglass, who attacked American Negro Slavery ‘from within’ a White Dominated society, being a Negro born in the United States (Talbot County, Maryland) and bearing an Afro-American Cultural Identity, such that the voice in his Narrative would be an American, with a variant of American culture, speaking to a Fellow American, not as a transplanted African acknowledging the ascendancy of his acquired culture. Thus, in effect, Douglass’ inherent American identity cancels any consideration of stark cultural difference, of a greatness or degradation of any culture, but homes in on ethics, humanity in Race, and the questioning of the necessity of dehumanization of disadvantaged workers of different race. With Equiano’s, his acknowledgement came with repackaged entreaties, not blunt accusations from a citizen of equal cultural footing, as with Douglass. It can be surmised that the success of the Equiano’s Narrative could not be separated from the novelty of him being an African European author in the United Kingdom and Europe, and that his fame could have stemmed from his publication as a form of entertainment for a culturally proud citizenry, than a seriously taken moral pulpit.
C. SYNTHESIS
Taking into account the opposing viewpoints of the text and its structuralism (though not absolutely, mutually excluding each other), and its place in the discursive formation for the then nascent Negro-White integration in Europe and the discourse it represents within the superstructural geopolitical socioeconomic relationships, whose existence was not derived from culture and race conjectural oppositions but more on the appropriation of resources and the power that one gains from it, the text speaks of an author operating within the structure and seeking a few concessions in exchange for integration, which, altogether, is not bad in any moral sense of the word. He is what he wrote he was, as far as the modern reader is concerned, and he was where his being was, as far as the economics of slavery and power was concerned. Race comes a close second in the list of factors for societal events, and could have had influenced some of the social upheavals or unheralded moments.
The author,and his brainchild, the text, was more of a “conservative Tory”, than a Gandhi literary shaker of structures of ingrained social thought. However, Equiano was the proof that men from “primitive” or agricultural societies could hold their own and satisfy then standards of competence and productivity, so much so, that any notion of “primitive cultures” producing only “primitive men” is exposed as a fallacy upon knowing Equiano (Why else his masters were reluctant to sell him to prospective buyers?), or coming into contact with any African of acute intelligence.
Today’s reading of texts similar to Equiano underscores the general direction of the power relations and cultural/racial contrasting that enrich human thought systems: progression toward the Transparency of Diversity within the Structures, a part of the ongoing process of human enlightenment.
Here, as a part of the conclusion of this critical discourse are a couple of questions that could be raised as points of further discussion of the Narrative, whether in the classroom, conference hall, or cyberspace entry. There are two variants of one point in each question, and there is no assurance that each query in the pair would generate identical answers. In each pair there is a question designed for graduate students (G), and one for undergraduate students (UG).
(a) G – What makes a powerful, discursive, thought-system varying text on slavery and its abolition, or any perceived modern social evil?
UG – Do you see the Narrative as one of the effective literary pieces in its potential to awaken/rouse public opinion against slavery and racial discrimination?
(b) G – Describe the author in terms of his cultural background and acquired culture.
UG-Explain the various aspects of Equiano as a person based on the text.
(c) G-What would be the unifying theme of the text?
UG-What is your initial and persistent reaction to the text?
(d) G, UG-If you would be an author (blog, journalistic piece, short story, book/novel, poetry, visual art, screenplay, stage script, etc) what would you advocate for in today’s society?
(e) G, UG-What kind of speaker or writer are you? Would you be a calm pleader of principles, or an outspoken, no-holds barred, direct advocate of an important issue?
Filed under: Behavior, Book Review, Deconstructionist, Literary Criticism, Psychology, Social Commentary, Writing, thoughts , African, literary papers, Negro slavery, Olaudah Equiano, racism
December 20, 2009 • 2:51 pm 0
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: An Analysis
The Text offers proof of the potential of Literature of forming minds, educating people, and supplementing Democratic Representation with Representation of Competing and Competent Ideas. Benjamin Franklin had stated on numerous occasions in his Autobiography how he attributed to Literature its quality of helping the reader order one’s thinking, making sound decisions, and modifying one’s behavior, not to mention the information it could provide. He had engineered three very essential factors in the intellectual, democratic discursive formation of and for his countrymen: the public library, the newspaper and pamphlet, and the men’s clubs, venues for intellectual discussions of pressing social issues of the time. These had been duplicated all over the country and further spread American Literature, the issues of public interests in print, and the involvement of the population with intellectualizing participation in public affairs so much so that the discourse, in assemblies and in print, provided the thought, behavioral, and cultural structures for the formation of American style democracy. We could say that no other situation would put a large democracy on its feet. No such expanded political system, later copied and modified in other countries, would evolve and persevere without a socio-behaviorally modified population cooperating and competing in the print public sphere and face-to-face dialogue, in terms of intellectual prowess and ingenuity in solving social/community problems or, the reconciliation of private and public interest. And that socio-behavioral modification was only made possible by this: Benjamin Franklin was a crucial human factor in making the print public sphere, representation of ideas, ethics, sound judgment through print, and the representation of the people’s interests and the common good through constituent assembly, highly successful in America in the beginning stages of modern Democracy. Benjamin Franklin was in the position to create the print public sphere in his area of influence and facilitate its actualization during his time. It could also be theorized that he made a great contribution in making representation of the people’s sentiments and public interests a practicable aspect of representational legitimacy in that historic experiment of democracy.
The Autobiography itself is a very inspiring narrative for the modern reader. The Author had communicated a very affable and admirable profile of a multi-talented, conscientious, highly perceptive, sensitive, witty, patriotic, civic, and Republican leader and entrepreneur that the youth of today could emulate. The text is highly recommendable reading for students and scholars alike
The Text is a Window looking into one of the roots and factors of American Democratic Culture. It could be supposed that a certain type of culture produces a certain type of government. Although such an assertion needs a highly extensive discourse to explain the connection, the American Case in Study as a Historical Narration in the Autobiography makes the job easier.
The Common Man made Uncommon by Print. The generative output and products of the three discursive elements increased the intellectual opportunities for civic mental exercise and the intellectual empowerment of the masses such that aside from their professions and everyday concerns, their intelligence were enriched by other pursuits, interests, ethical and philosophical questions, American literature, and printed public concerns, that enabled them to participate actively in their social and political affairs. This also became the fertile ground for the growth of a distinct American English Western culture shared by all of the citizens.
Intellectual and Cultural “Proximity” Between Classes is Tantamount to Solidarity and Democratic Cooperation. The discursive elements also fostered cultural oneness between rich and poor, proprietor and worker, farmer and townsmen, so that that might have facilitated solidarity and cooperation between social classes, a prime ingredient in a democracy where there is no class dictatorship, in sharp contrast to the separation of the society into the genteel and the common. The culture of equality is presupposed by the culture of being equally informed, read, and knowledgeable as to ease social intercourse, and eventually be amenable to social cooperation. Thus, consensus and resolution of differences in that fledgling democracy was possible without resorting to force.
Contrast with the behavior of the proprietaries and the governors (who view themselves as exempt from taxation, hence above that of the common people, including their culture) towards the Assembly, recounted in the Autobiography, underscores this essentiality of culture in that crucial stage of democratic history, although somewhat negligible, or downplayed, in modern times. Benjamin Franklin was truly deserving of the distinction of being, the Man who Built a Country, for having been the actual Human Progenitor in the American Democratic Cultural Discursive Formation, in the history of Pennsylvania in particular, and that of America in general.
Filed under: Essay, Literary Criticism, Personal Notes, Psychology, Social Commentary, Writing, thoughts , American History, Benjamin Franklin, culture, democracy, influential people, Literary Criticism, political discussion, print public sphere, reaction