Document Type
Thesis
Degree
Master of Arts (MA)
Major/Program
English
First Advisor's Name
Ana Luszczynska
First Advisor's Committee Title
Committee chair
Second Advisor's Name
Heather Russell
Second Advisor's Committee Title
Committee chair
Third Advisor's Name
Nandini Dhar
Third Advisor's Committee Title
Committee member
Fourth Advisor's Name
Martha Schoolman
Fourth Advisor's Committee Title
Committee member
Keywords
English language and literature, Middle Passage, Zong massacre, Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, M. NourbeSe Philip, Fred D'Aguiar, Toni Morrison, Jean-Luc Nancy, slavery, archive, ethics, voice, sound studies, postcolonial, deconstruction, deconstructive ethics
Date of Defense
3-27-2017
Abstract
This thesis grapples with questions surrounding representation, mourning, and responsibility in relation to two literary representations of the ZONG massacre of 1781. These texts are M. NourbeSe Philip’s ZONG! and Fred D’Aguiar’s FEEDING THE GHOSTS. The only extant archival document—a record of the insurance dispute which ensued as a consequence of the massacre—does not represent the drowned as victims, nor can it represent the magnitude of the atrocity. As such, this thesis posits that the archival gaps or silences from which the captives’ voices are missing become spaces of possibility for additive representation. This thesis also examines the role voice and sound play in these literary texts and the deconstructive-ethical philosophies of Jean-Luc Nancy and Jacques Derrida. This thesis argues that these texts invoke the sonic materiality of voice in the service of responding to the disremembered dead through mourning and acknowledgment.
Identifier
FIDC001787
Recommended Citation
Cartaya, Jorge E., "Listening/Reading for Disremembered Voices: Additive Archival Representation and the Zong Massacre of 1781" (2017). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3187.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3187
Included in
Caribbean Languages and Societies Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Continental Philosophy Commons, Cultural History Commons, French and Francophone Literature Commons, Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons
Rights Statement
In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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