Academic literature on the topic 'Enslaved persons, fiction'

Abstract: This article examines how Évelyne Trouillot’s 2003 novel Rosalie l’infâme rewrites the narratives of two historical figures, the prerevolutionary hero Makandal and an Arada midwife who committed infanticide to spare children from a life of enslavement. Close readings contrast Rosalie ’s representation of the legal trials against these figures with the accounts given in colonial source texts and prior postcolonial rewritings. This comparison reveals how Trouillot reimagines these narratives to restore their emotional weight, and uses the celebrated Makandal legend to frame the midwife’s more taboo acts of resistance. Trouillot dismantles the colonial archives’ transformation of legitimate acts of resistance into crimes, but she also undermines triumphant postcolonial narratives of the fight against enslavement. Ultimately, this article argues that while, historically, rewriting has been used to distort enslaved persons’ affective realities, Rosalie seeks to restore the original emotions to these archival narratives and, by extension, to restore the complexity of the motivations behind these violent acts of resistance—if only through fiction. Résumé: Cet article étudie la réécriture des récits des figures historiques de Makandal et de la sage-femme Arada qui aurait tué des enfants pour les sauver d’une vie esclavagée dans le roman Rosalie l’infâme (2003) d’Évelyne Trouillot. Rosalie nous livre une représentation des procès à contre de ces personnages, qui contraste avec celles qu’en ont fait les archives coloniales et les réécritures postcoloniales antérieures. Ces différences révèlent la manière dont Trouillot réimagine ces récits pour restituer leur poids affectif ainsi que les stratégies employées par l’auteure qui exploite la légende célèbre de Makandal afin de mettre en lumière les actes de résistance plus tabous de la sage-femme. Trouillot remet en question la transformation, par les archives coloniales, d’actes de résistance en actes criminels, tout en interrogeant également des récits postcoloniaux triomphants sur la lutte contre l’esclavage. L’objet de cet article est de démontrer que malgré le fait que la réécriture a souvent été utilisée pour déformer les réalités affectives de personnes esclavagées, Rosalie cherche, au contraire, à restituer les émotions originelles des personnes esclavagées, pour compléter les récits des archives et, par conséquent, rétablir la complexité des motivations derrière ces actes violents de résistance, même si ce n’est possible qu’à travers la fiction.

The article is an attempt to define a very special role of women in society, inherent in only Ukrainian historical realities. In particular, a somewhat non-trivial approach to the formation of a source base for the study allowed referring to works of fiction. Most attention is paid to the issue of women entering society medium in the times of the Cossacks. Among the conclusions – contrary to national, gender and social oppression for several centuries – Ukrainian women have maintained their commitment to universal human and Christian ideals and virtues. The role and place that women take in the social structure is an extremely significant criterion for assessing the level of civilizing development of one or other society. It was the words “Equal among equals” that one could quite accurately define the positions of Ukrainian women in the glorious and tragic times of the national history – during the emergence and heyday of the Cossacks. It was a time when Ukrainian women, not only a gentry, but also a simple Cossack women, invariably felt not imaginary but sincere self-respect both in the family and in the society. However, not only in Cossack times, but throughout the turbulent history of our country, Ukrainian women did not just “walk alongside of” their men, they often stepped forward, and their actions were decisive for the further course of events for many years to come. Unfortunately, there are reasons to consider the current (as of 2019) stage of research in the format of scientific inquiry, which directly relates to Ukrainian women in the historical and cultural context, only as an initial one. With this in mind, the aim of the proposed work is to begin filling in quite substantial gaps in the civilizing history of Ukraine. It was they, Ukrainian women – even from renowned Princess Olha – who became the worthy examples to follow for their compatriots. There are countless names of women, by whom Ukraine is proud of and who are respected all over the world – from the poetess Lesia Ukrainka, folk paintress Yekateryna Bilokour, opera vocalist Solomiia Krushelnytska up to bright personalities already from the contemporary generation of Ukrainian women. They did never and under no circumstances bow to a slavish worldview. In this regard the observation of a well-known European writer, made by him as far back as in the last century, is very accurate: “The Ukrainian woman is the Spanish woman of the East ... At every opportunity, her irrepressible Cossack nature flares up in her soul that does not know any repressor ...”. And further: “They are always ready to change ploughshares for spears, they live in small republican communities, as equals among equals ...”. We discover all this for ourselves in the “Female Images from Galicia” by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Paul of Aleppo, known also as Paul Zaim, an Arab traveller, who visited Ukraine twice in the middle of the XVII century, testified: “... Throughout the Cossack land we saw a strange thing – they all are, with few exceptions, literate; even most of their women and daughters can read and know the procedure of church service ... Ukrainian women are well dressed, busy with their own affairs, and no one casts sassy glances at them.” Numerous documents have survived, indicating that the wives of the Cossack Starshyna not only knew writing and reading well but were also able, when the need arose, to help their husbands in solving the most important political problems. The material, which is no less important in its cognitive weight from documentary evidence, also provides imaginative literature, where the realities of bygone times are reflected through the author’s creative imagination. These are the dramatic poem “Boyaryna” by Lesia Ukrainka, and “Hanna Montovt”, the story written by a famous Ukrainian historian and writer Orest Levytskyi, as well as “Aeneid”, a burlesque and tranny poem written by Ivan Kotliarevskyi; the latter literary work can be considered as a kind of encyclopaedia of Olde Ukrainian life. In “Boyarina”, the comparison of the “civil society” (using the modern definition) of the Ukrainian Cossack State with the conditions prevailing in neighbouring Muscovy is especially striking. A young girl of Ukrainian noble descent, who left her motherland for the sake to be with her beloved man, met in a foreign land very different ideas about human truths, class-specific and inherent female virtues, which are significantly different from those truly Christian and deeply democratic principles of life that she was used to since childhood in her native Ukraine. And, becoming a Boyarina, although she obeyed fate, however, she was no longer able to get used to her new life. The fate of poor Princess Hannа from the story by Orest Levytskyi was formed in a different manner. However, not at all because of the imperfection of the then social system, but solely because of her own frivolity and inability to execise her (tremendous) rights. But in “Aeneid” by Ivan Kotliarevskyi, where antique plots were whimsically intertwined with the signs of Cossack life, the remark: “Like a lady of certain sotnyk ...” became virtually the highest mark for one of the goddesses. As the expression goes, it speaks for itself, and the irony about the mention of the sotnyk will be completely inappropriate, given the trace that Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, the former Chygyryn sotnyk and subsequently a Hetman of Ukraine, left in the history of Ukrainian nationality! In the times of Cossacks, men have the opportunity to spend more or less long time with their families too rarely. But they went to a military campaign with peace of mind because from this moment their faithful wives took active roles in all matters – and not only household, but the domesticities too. And, say, not the eldest of their sons, but she herself took part, when necessary, in resolving property or other disputes, defended the interests of their families before the society, and even in court. Moreover, their wives could often ride horses with arms in hands to defend their native homes. Unfortunately, then-Muscovy have introduced serfdom in its most despotic form on intaken Ukrainian lands, combined with her absolutist system of government and public relations which immediately changed the state of Ukrainian women for the worst. And this applied not only to the impoverished and enslaved people, but also to the wealthy and influential sections of the then population. And subsequently Taras Shevchenko became the most sincere voice of a deeply tragic female fate ... Conclusions. Even when then Ukrainians were slowly forgetting about the previous rights and privileges of their women, undeniable documentary and literary evidence remained the mention of them, which in one way or another were connected with the times of Cossacks. So, Ukrainian women of those, already far from us times was not only faithful wives, caring mothers and teachers for their children, real Bereginias of the families, but also a self-sufficient persons, conscious in their place in the society.

Narratives of invasion have been stock in trade for science fiction in film and on TV for many years now. It's not hard to see how this began; at least at the conceptual level, visual SF tends not to be greatly innovative, drawing much of its iconography and subject matter from written SF produced in the 30s and 40s -- and in that time period, invasion and imperialism was something of a hot topic. But invasion narratives in visual SF are still extremely popular and prevalent even today (witness the X-Files' overarching storyline), which suggests the reasons may be not so much a matter of any lack of innovation and more an issue of some wider cultural value. To address some of the implications of this I want to turn to the British TV series, Doctor Who, which, in its twenty-five year run, explored practically every possible variation of the invasion narrative. One of the aspects of the show that both its native viewers and its "colonial" (I use the term here very loosely, and to describe fans and viewers in Australia, the US and NZ) fans seem to find especially valuable and interesting is what they invariably term its "Britishness". This Britishness manifests itself particularly in the persona of the lead character, the Doctor, an alien time-traveller who nevertheless is typically garbed in Edwardian jackets and is fond of cricket, tea, and jellybabies (though not all at the same time). Time and time again, the Doctor must save the Earth (and occasionally other planets, and sometimes the Universe) from hordes of monstrous foes. Well, when I say "Earth", I mostly mean England. In the greater London area. This is clearly demonstrated in an early story from 1964, featuring the Doctor's oldest foes, the Daleks, who have come to Earth in the 21st century to enslave humanity and mine the planet's core. The Daleks are depicted gliding unstoppably through an eerily deserted London, exterminating any stray humans they encounter. Nothing is shown of any other city or country on the planet -- we are therefore encouraged to view London as the paradigmatic representation of Earth. The image recurs through the course of the series: on every planet the Doctor visits, the inhabitants speak impeccable BBC English. The harsh budgetary restrictions and unforgiving production schedule undeniably shaped this seemingly complete insularity. And indeed the pluralistic humanism that informed the show's best episodes mitigated its insular tendencies a good deal. I think it is possible to see it as symptomatic of a wider cultural force -- the burden of Empire. It is almost inescapable that Britain's status as a fading colonial power becomes inscribed in its popular fiction texts -- and particularly SF offered avenues for the recuperation of this status through technology, for instance. Both Doctor Who and its near-contemporary, Quartermass, offered visions of Britain leading the space race with manned flights to Mars and the outer solar system. The Doctor's main foes, such as the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Sontarans, for instance, were frequently depicted in the course of the series as taking humans as slaves for labour work and experimentation. In one particular case, the slaves were all portrayed by white South African actors! Certainly a very tangled set of ideological interrelations operating out of this unease at the cost of colonialism. Ultimately, however, the vision of the Doctor, a capable British eccentric saving oppressed peoples from tyrannical governments and marauding invaders, must surely be another gesture towards the kind of cultural and moral recuperation that I've alluded to. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Nick Caldwell. "A Decolonising Doctor? British SF Invasion Narratives." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.2 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/who.php>. Chicago style: Nick Caldwell, "A Decolonising Doctor? British SF Invasion Narratives," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 2 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/who.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Nick Caldwell. (1999) A decolonising doctor? British SF invasion narratives. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(2). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/who.php> ([your date of access]).

This chapter addresses how fiction became a key genre in the struggle over slavery, despite concerns about its uncertain status as evidence, in part because its unique form of psychonarration provided a fantasy of unmediated access to the hidden interiorities of enslaved persons at a moment when questions about the slave experience had become central to debates about slavery's legitimacy. It focuses, in particular, on how formerly enslaved writers engaged fiction's increasing importance as a genre for representing the inner lives of enslaved persons. Frederick Douglass's The Heroic Slave (1853), his only work of fiction, offered perhaps the most elaborate metacriticism of fiction's role in this struggle, both cautioning against the epistemological risks of rendering slave interiority fictionally transparent and advocating for fiction's value as a means of giving white audiences an explicitly speculative knowledge of slave interiority. The chapter also considers Harriet Jacobs's Linda, or Incidents in the Life of the Slave Girl (1861). Jacobs stages her narrative's resemblance to and distinction from fiction in order to resist the kind of appropriative sympathy associated with fictionality.

Abstract Through the peculium (a fund that a slave held for use in his or her own commercial pursuits), some skilled Roman slaves were able to accumulate assets that even the law implicitly recognized as effectively their own, and were able to continue to hold these assets as they emerged after manumission as free and affluent business persons. This is an element of economic reality that Roman law, as a consequence of the existential centrality of its doctrinal commitment to the legal nullity of slaves, could not explicitly embrace. But because of the importance to the Roman economy of servile enterprise and servile wealth, a jurisprudential mechanism had to be found to accommodate this reality. Voilà: the Roman legal fiction (fictio), which reconciled legal dogma and commercial actuality by attributing to an enslaved individual practical ownership of his or her peculium while continuing to deny slaves’ capacity to “own” anything. The Roman “legal fiction” with which this chapter deals is the factual falsity of the juridical framework governing slaves’ business activity, and the casuistry through which Roman jurisprudents skillfully preserved a legal framework seemingly confirming a fictitious world in which slaves are absolute nullities, while simultaneously creating legal methodologies and rules facilitating a commercial reality utterly in conflict with the fundamental juridical precepts that should have governed servile business activity.

Abstract The writings of the once enslaved, of the captive and his or her boldly effected escape, have long enjoyed an especial readership in Western cultures. Arna Bontemps compares the genre of black slave narratives to that of the Western; he could just as appropriately have compared the genre to detective fiction. The recently published narratives of the Iranian hostages, the detailed and impassioned stories of the American citizens imprisoned in Iran, are merely generic extensions of the slave narratives, which, in tum, were fundamentally related structurally to the Indian captivity tale, so popular in the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-centuries, some of which have been collected by Richard Van der Beets in Held Captive by Indians: Selected Narratives, 1642–1836.This section of our book reprints several reviews of slave narratives to begin to recreate a sense of the critical reception these books received at the time of publication, and a sense of their role in the anti-slavery struggle. As many of these attest, the writings of the slaves were used to prove the common humanity and the intellectual capacities that persons of African descent shared with Europeans and Americans.

Abstract Charitable support of the poor, ill, enslaved, and dispossessed became central to the Sharps’ sense of self and family identity. Given the Sharps’ strong collective identity, it is not surprising to discover how intertwined their charitable activities were. While Granville’s anti-slavery was well-known then and now, beyond his actions, the siblings participated in formal, institutional philanthropy and informal, personal charity as well as social and political reforms. In some ways these endeavors became outlets for fictive parenting conforming to eighteenth-century notions of paternalism (or maternalism). They continued such work throughout their lives, though after 1790 retirement from business, age, declining health, and death narrowed the scope of their philanthropic and reform activities.