Author: rburns6

One issue Brooks touches on is the issue of authenticity in “In Dahomey” and how it relates to the mixed audience of the play. While Walker claims that the play served as a space for the “natural” black performer, the play was also created for a racially mixed audience that had different notions of what was “naturally” black. White attendees wished to see an “authentic” portrayal of African Americans, i.e. performers in blackface singing and dancing in ridiculous fashion; this audience was fascinated by the “spectacle” of seeing a production created by a company consisting of only African Americans. But the black audience was watching for a performance that portrayed a more realistic interpretation of the African American condition. “In Dahomey,” however, fails to be authentic in the white and black sense due to its nature as a transitional work.

Because “In Dahomey’ functions as a transitional piece, it cannot be fully “authentic” in either the black or white sense of the word. The play caters to a white audience by building the story around an absurd plot: the hunt of two detectives for a silver casket containing a cat’s eye. But it also caters to the black audience in the ways that it mocks the whiteness of “high society” in many of its musical numbers. The effect that this play has on its target audience is confusing because its target audience is the entirety of American society. Williams blacking up can be viewed as either satire of white playgoers or adoption of white performing traditions. The songs can either be seen as expressing satire of white America’s necessity to be the highest members of society or expressing genuine hopes that blacks will one day become members of that high society. The racist treatment of Me Sing can be interpreted as blacks pointing out their ability to be on equal footing as whites or as genuine racist treatment of the Asian American community. Depending which audience one is a part of, this play can either have great meaning or meaninglessness, which is why all the critics hated the play. It is a genuinely confusing production being that it is a transitional piece catering to an extremely wide audience. One cannot search for true authenticity in this play (whatever that may mean) because it is an experiment in theater that aims not for “true authenticity” but to bring black performers to the forefront of theatrical production, which the play ultimately succeeds in.

The Octoroon, in it’s original form, is an attempt to give agency to Zoe, a character that is in-between different races and treated as an other by both of those races. The original ending, which shows her poison herself, serves as a final act of agency where she chooses not to identify as either white or black, but as her own person. She chooses not to marry another man, and thus avoids conforming to a full “white transformation.” But in the English version where she is married, she fully becomes a member of the white family, and thus rejects her eighth-black heritage. This ending is problematic because it turns a story about enforcing one’s agency when one does not fit into a certain category into a story that teaches the audience that conformity to whiteness is the solution to Zoe’s issue of racial identity.

While the English applauded the edited ending because it was “happier,” I believe that this ending is far darker due to the pure ignorance of the viewership. The English audience that watched this version of the Octoroon looked at themselves as supporters of the anti-slavery movement, claiming that the institution of slavery itself was purely American and thus “anti-British.” This happy ending of the Octoroon gives the English an opportunity to exclude themselves from the history of slavery, acting as viewers rather than agents of that system. In actuality, the English were the creators of the system of slavery, and deserve a good majority of the blame for all the atrocities that happened as a result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. What makes the English audience’s sentiments of the play even more troublesome, however, is the appall they expressed with the original ending. They complained because it was too dark, but there are plenty of Shakespeare plays with endings where the main character or prospective lover of the play dies. Romeo and Juliet specifically has a death that involves Juliet poisoning herself, just like the Octoroon. So, the English most likely did not believe that this ending was too dark, but that giving the black main character agency through her death was a problem that could only be solved by an alternate ending where she embraces her whiteness, and thus better fits in with a higher sense of English culture.

Douglass’s barbells in Transatlantic are clearly a representation of the emotional weight of slavery that he takes with him wherever he travels. But, I think the secrecy of the barbells to the outside world is representative of McCann’s belief that Douglass is prejudiced against the Irish and unwilling to fully unify behind their cause. Douglass is known for stressing self-reliance above many other virtues, so it is not surprising that McCann portrays him as hesitant when Webb and the driver offer to help carry his luggage containing the barbells. This shows that the history of slavery is something Douglass is unwilling to share with any other people, and furthers his sentiment that there is no analogy between the Irish and black systems of oppression.  But McCann’s depiction not only claims Douglass’s inability to connect with the Irish is due to a difference in political systems, but also Douglass’s own prejudices towards the Irish.

When the driver offers to load Douglass’s luggage onto the carriage, Douglass describes him as a “small man, sparely built, with the emaciated face of a serious drinker.” While Douglass’s statement does contain a touch of sympathy for the plight of Irish hunger, it also clearly contains prejudice for the Irish stereotype of drunkenness. I believe that Douglass thought the lack of connection between the Irish and black populations was mainly due to a difference in the social and political systems of their respective countries, but one cannot ignore that Douglass was an advocate for temperance and clearly looked down upon people who drink exorbitant amounts. The way McCann portrays Douglass implies that he believes Douglass thinks the sharing of the barbells with the Irish would taint their symbolism of slavery due to his skewed image of the Irish as a drunken people who brought themselves down to an oppressed state.

One thing I noticed while reading Gulliver’s Travels is the focus on the body, specifically the focus on using the body for labor. In both Lilliput and the country of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver is made an other by the natives and forced to live in a separate space. In Lilliput specifically, Gulliver is exploited for his human capital as he is made an instrument of war. In the country of the Houyhnhnms his body is not used for labor, but he is compared to a Yahoo on multiple occasions and is eventually banished from the Island due to the Houyhnhnms’ fear that he will lead a Yahoo uprising. When looking at the treatment of Gulliver in both of these lands, one cannot help but think of slavery in the United States. The Lilliputians’ disgust of Gulliver’s body, especially his defecation, reflects the attitude of disgust slave owners had for their own human capital. The Lilliputians use Gulliver’s body as a weapon and promote him to a Nardac, yet he is still banned from participating in the courts due to the “meanness of his condition.” The Articles created to punish Gulliver are a result of the fear that he would attempt to have sex with the Lilliputian Queen, thus invading the space of the priviliged. The fear of Gulliver’s invasion of the privileged space and his physical strength is a parallel to the fear slave owners expressed towards their slaves, who were typically stronger than the slave owner and designated to their own separate space. 

This fear of brute strength and the invasion of the privileged space is expressed by the Houyhnhnms as well, but to a lesser extent. They are only able to tolerate Gulliver, a Yahoo in their minds, when he is wearing clothes. Otherwise, they are disgusted by the image of his brutish body. They allow him in their homes, but also deny him the right of participating in the local councils due to his similarity in appearance to the Yahoos. The reason for his banishment is the fear that he will start a Yahoo rebellion, similar to how white landowners feared that slaves would start rebellions on their plantations. I am aware that this novel is mainly an Irish text, but the similarities between the relationships Gulliver has with the natives of the lands he travels to and the relationships slaves had with their owners are evident throughout the book, especially during the passages that focus on Gulliver’s body.

After reading Lloyd’s piece, the similarities between the treatment of the Irish and Africans and African Americans by the English during the period of colonialism become much more clear. The arguments for Irish colonization used in many of the citations in Lloyd’s writing reflect staple claims of the British civilizing mission, the argument for colonization based on the “improvement” of “less evolved” societies through English teaching. The attitudes of the British writers cited by Lloyd are almost exactly the same to those promoting the African civilizing mission, which shows that the English viewed the black world and the Irish world as two very similar entities. 

The language used to describe the Irish by the English is similarly racist to the language used to describe blacks and makes very similar arguments to those describing the colonization of the African continent. Lloyd’s citation of Thomas Carlyle reads, “The time has come when the Irish population must either be improved a little, or else exterminated… In a state of perennial ultra-savage famine, in the midst of civilization, they cannot continue,” (9). This statement is a disturbing, yet accurate depiction of what the civilizing mission philosophy entails; one either conforms to the English way of life or must be eliminated by that way of life. Civilizations that are not in line with English ideas of modernity are all viewed as inferior under this philosophy, and the African and Irish civilizations are viewed as similar under this philosophy due to their similar apparent lack of modernity. Another quote from Carlyle says, “Crowds of miserable Irish darken all our towns… In his rags and laughing savagery, he is there to undertake all the work that can be done by mere strength of hand and back,” (9). Carlyle describes the Irish as savages in a manner similar to the racist descriptions of black individuals. But he also says the Irish will physically “darken” the towns of the British, implying that the Irish are viewed as “black” individuals. Carlyle goes on further to describe the Irish as “white negroes” and claims that the emancipation of the West Indies would turn the nation into a “Black Ireland, ‘free’ indeed, but an Ireland, and Black!” (10). This racist dialogue implies that the English believed there was an inherent similarity between blacks and the Irish due to the two groups’ lack of modernity, and it is this very lack of modernity that caused the English to see these two peoples as a plague to cultured society.

Gilroy’s theory that there is no individual race due to the great levels of cultural mixing that occurred during the period of Circum-Atlantic trade emphasizes the necessity to look at individuals as beings of multiple influences, but fails to look at those influences as singular entities in and of themselves. I think Gilroy highlights this idea well when he describes Delany’s tour of Africa, saying that the tour “confirmed the dissimilarities between African-American ideologues and the Africans with whom they treated,” (24). The idea that race is an objectively improper descriptor of a human being is justified by this emotional distance from one’s “homeland” and the lack of emotional response that occurs upon “homecoming” after exile. But I believe Gilroy’s argument that all human beings in the Circum-Atlantic area maintain some form of cultural unity with one another is flawed due to the strength of an origin point’s influence over an individual. 

Gilroy describes a difficulty with thinking in black and white terms as “the overintegrated conceptions of pure and homogeneous culture which mean that black political struggles are construed as somehow automatically expressive of the national or ethnic differences with which they are associated,” (31). Essentially, he is saying that black political concerns will always be construed with racial implications if homogeneous thinking continues in society. But, I do not believe that the racial implications of political arguments regarding any race of people can be ignored. I agree that the rationality to think in terms of race is utterly flawed when describing human beings, but I do not believe we realistically have the ability to live in a post-racial world. As much as one can argue that the characters of people are a result of a heterogeneous cultural mixing, it cannot be ignored that there are origin points that led to the mixing in the first place. Origin points are the beginnings of the cultural mixing that Gilroy describes, so this mixing could not exist without them. I think his plea to focus on the heterogeneous rather than homogeneous is a noble one, but to dispel with the notion of origins would completely eliminate the presence of a heterogeneous culture. Without origins, people would be left without cultural definers.