Post-Colonial Thought and Thinking Beyond Archival Silences

With a general understanding of classical reception, a historical understanding of classicism in the colonial and early United States, and an overview of some of the intersections of race and classics in the colonial United States, it is necessary to consider archival silences. While it is easier to pull sources on classical reception and its position in early American culture, it is much harder to find examples of non-white people in early America interacting with the classics or understanding if classics even mattered to non-rich and white persons at all. 

With that in mind, it is necessary to think about archival silences and ways we can begin to think about the experiences and histories of people who are so often left out of traditional archival source bases. If we agree with Winterer or Shalev and believe classics permeated most corners of American society, we must find ways to include a variety of historical figures in the conversation.

This is where postcolonialism comes in, that is the study of the cultural, political, and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism. How can we take different approaches to tell the stories of persons whose lives are so often wiped away because of their positions within a colonial society? The following recommendations come from authors who take postcolonial and black feminist scholarly approaches to attempt to tell the stories of enslaved women in the Americas. Their approaches ought to be studied and perhaps even modeled in our own work as we attempt to discern the intersections between race and reception.

Jan 13, 1789 RUNAWAY: A short black skin negro woman named JANE, speaks broken English, has her country marks in [sic] her forehead and a fire brand on one of her breasts, likewise a large mark of her country behind her shoulder almost to the small of her back, and a [stab] of a knife in her neck. Whoever will bring the said negro to the subscriber in Bridge Town shall receive 20 shillings . . . JOHN WRIGHT — Barbados Mercury

Fuentes, Marisa J. Dispossessed Lives : Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive / Marisa J. Fuentes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.

Dispossessed Lives constructs historical accounts of urban Caribbean slavery from the perspective of enslaved women within the ‘traditional’ archive. It engages archival sources with black feminist thought, takes (what a lot of people consider) to be a daring study of archival power and form, and takes on historiographical debates in the study of slavery. The most compelling chapter of the book to me is “Jane : fugitivity, space, and structures of control in Bridgetown.”  In this chapter, Fuentes starts with the one piece of information we have about Jane, an enslaved black woman in Barbados: a runaway slave ad. From there, Fuentes considered what Jane’s life could have looked like, where she likely ran to, the connections she may have formed, descriptions of the conditions she would have likely lived in, around, etc. By vividly recounting enslaved life through the experiences of individual women like Jane,  Fuentes challenges the way we write histories of vulnerable and often invisible subjects.

Miles, Tiya. All That She Carried : The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake / Tiya Miles. New York: Random House, 2021.

Miles’ All That She Carried constructs historical accounts of the lives of enslaved women in 19th century America whose lives are not as easily accessible through traditional archival sources. Miles begins her book with the story of Rose, who, in crisis at the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley, packs a cotton bag with a few precious items to ensure Ashley’s survival. Ashley is sold and decades later her granddaughter Ruth receives this sack embroidered with her family history and a message from Rose, “It be filled with my Love always.” Miles constructs the lives of these women from this singular sack and traces the paths of their lives, and so many women like them, to write a history of the experience of slavery and the uncertain freedom afterward. Miles works to use art as an important source to tell this story while also critiquing the scant archives that have overlooked so many women like Rose, Ruth, and Ashley.