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 (ibznzn:/&%&afiinggybmvafln

I IOSEPH ROACH
I
I
1

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK

 Columbia University Press
New York Chichester, West Sussex

Copyright I996 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Catalogingin-Publication D a t a

Roach, Joseph R.
Cities of the dead : circum-Atlantic performance / Joseph Roach.
p. cm. (The social foundations of aeSthetic forms)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I S B N oz3rio460X
I S B N 0231104618(pbk.)
z. Folklore
1-CarnivalLouisianaNew O r l e a n s H i s t o r y.
LOUisianaNew OrleansPerformance. 3.Theater and SOCiety~
LOuisianaNew OrleansHistory.
4. FolkloreEnglandLondOn
d L o n d o n Histor y.
Performance. 5.Theater and societyEnglan
6-Communication and culture. 7. Memory-Soctal aspects. 8. N e w
Orleans (La.)History. 9. London (England)History. I. Title.
I I . Series: Social foundations of aesthetic forms series.
G T 4 z l I.N4R63 [996
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GD cn>

. Press books are printed on permanent

Casebound editions of Columbia University
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c10987654321
P0987654321
 The Discovery of America, and that of a paJsage to the East Indies by the
Cape of Good Hope, are the t w o greatest and m o s t important e v e n t s recorded
in the histoo o mankind.

Befbre Egisgtfii'e was not/ting.

-lunx l_l>.\\0\
 co -' TS

Preface xi
Acknowledgments XV

_/
/

I I RODUCTION: HISTORY. M E M O RY, A N D PERFORMANCE

CircumAtlantic Memory
Locations and Bearings
Materials and Methods IO

The Everlasting Club 17

Genealogies of Performance 25

gas IN THE BONE 33

The Effigy
Performing Origins 42
The Segregation of the Dead 47
viii CONTENTS

Bodies of L a w
Congo Square
The King Is DeadLong Live the King!

(gmnrows FUNERAL
sticks and Rags: The Celebrity as Effigy
Vortices of Behavior
The Life of Betterton: Talking with the Dead
Canonical Memory and Theatrical Nationhood
The Pinacot/zeca Bettertonaeana: Bibliography of Origin
White Skin, Black Masks

HERED PEOPLES
Reproduction, and Sacrifice
The Accursed Share: Abundance,
Condolence Councils and the G r e a t Peace
Windsor Forest Diplomacy
The Empire of the Sun
Oroonoko and the Empire of the World
The Mohawk Macet/z
Epode: Albions Golden Days
Turtle Island

(562L000
CircumAtlantic America
Life on the (Caribbean) Frontier
The Performance of Waste
Ghost Dance: Buffalo Bill and the Voodoo Queens
Slave Spectacles and Tragic Octoroons 2H

Storyville 22.4
Homer Plessy and Whiteface Minstrelsy 233
 CONTENTS ix

/ [fl R N I VA L A N D T H E L A W

( jf Once and Future Kings

The Demon Actors in Miltons Paradise Lost
Darwins Ghost: Justice \Vhite and White Justice
Sovereign Immunity
Mystic Chords of Memory; o r, Stevie \Vonder Square
Jazz Funeral

Epilogue: New Frontiers 283

References 287
Index 311
{1g
 P R F C E

(ITTEs OF THE DEAD ARE PRIMARILY FOR THE LIVING. THEY EXIST N O T O N LY AS
artifacts, such as cemeteries and commemorative landmarks, but also as
behaviors. They endure, in other words, as occasions for memory and
invention. This book shows how the memories of some particular times and
places have become embodied in and through performances. But it also sug
gests how memories torture themselves into forgetting by disguising their
collaborative interdependence across imaginary borders of race, nation,
and origin. The social processes of memory and forgetting, familiarly
known as culture, may be carried o u t by a variety of performance events,
from stage plays to sacred rites, from carnivals to the invisible rituals of
everyday life. To perform in this sense means to bring forth, to make mani
fest, and to transmit. To perform also means, though often more secretly, to
reinvent. This claim is especially relevant to the performances that flourish
within the geohistorical matrix of the circum-Atlantic world. Bounded by
Europe, Africa, and the Americas, North and South, this economic and cul
tural System entailed v a s t m o v e m e n t s of people and commodities to exper
imental destinations, the consequences of which continue to visit them
selves upon the material and human fabric of the cities inhabited by their
successors. As the m o s t visible evidence of anoceanic interculture only now
PREFACE

. - to be rec1al. m ed o n its
. o-w' n tof
erm s , Peril
the mances -r u m, .what
v-ul it
d ea _ ,- 1e
begmnmg h memory m C l u e s . Atlantic Perlormdmb d
means to live throug h dynamism of c t r c u m - h mostly limited to
.-
In recognitionkoff: e its subject m a t t e r . Althouling
{lows 1 the AtlilllllC rim
.
form of thts b0? o in only t w o cities,
. .
fixed ' ts a
Polln .
Sthe reS'leSS migrtttmns
events and tradltl:nhe
' s
materials that follow e m u late
e been contiHUOUSI) 9
the presentattono t L ndon and N e w Orleans, 1 3 V [11 centuries local cul
bywhich those c l-u'e s , Seventeenth
o and early-eight:
. en[ h e hemispheric
-a circu
created. Since the late bee" hybridized routinely- y Chapters thus plot the
rural production-s h?v:reatd forms- The {011322fand can continue to
lation ofcollectlveyf identities that have en u
. 'tion 0 .
chan gm g post
l asrelamonsjnps.
. - _ v e m e n t a c r O S S conventional
- . d15c1
~. _

endure- nroac
y h n e Cessarily. r e q u l f e s.nst
mothelr
- gram-
- My o w.n specialty the
.
-ThiscaPP
plmary e oties and somenmes. - a g a l has of course, limlted the chotces
a t g and dramatlc literature, ble,perids genres, and tradmons.
..
.
atrtcal htstozde
' S]
from an array of [:05 nderlying my chotces have been
.

that I hav6 m h waver: the pun? - ' es . l'u or PostdlSClpllnary

_ . . agenda of
Increasmgly 0 ansive intefdlsap mary h scope Of that agenda will
redefined by the exp A reader Curious about i e k that chapter I
performance :Zfltion - - a w e t as a kind of e
ies. t0 the other exposxtlxonfunction
find that, In ' 3f chapter
1 2 m u s t do, thiy :iel SOclof performance studie
and the
first seem ' n0 -
a key 155113 1'n t 6 . xtended
. . hIC
. essay on or and htst o r y. .
blbhograp . nshiP between mem Y uire historians to abando S as I See
it n o w : the ralano f mance does " 0 req - ein the streets
f er of
The purstnt 0 sPencourage them to spend m d ionr g
etlm
historic performa It the
archive: bur foe the problems of reconstl: Henry p u r e e and When
out _ as
Students aSk ahared in producmg such w o r ents and dance Styles "Ces\
tasks I have s with PeriOd I n s t r u m . d . 3Th'
T tes Dido and Aeneas have that they ever (he o u t . Is \1
NOW
35:them- ' What evidence do we 5
'oining e c o n d Line parades
. in
- New 0 . qUestion
follows logca - 1]y fromthat
I have a c o n t .m u o u s htstor
. y smce . l lthe eldeans in
recent y ears parades[ ' o n S of the A f I ' I.Can-Amerlcan
. socna hc ubs a
n t u l ' y in the celebra 1 . 150 follows logically from t e expeghteemh
ce jeties In a related sense, It.a here the dead r e m a .i n more gre ndburial
soc ' - - 1t w rienm of
d6termined pedestrian 1n31C] yan clspiritually, than ,they do anyWhere else
gariously
a t t o the living: mater]? y tion of Westminster Abbey,
presefl d with the pOSSIble exceP h t recur below~in death and
. 0
[CPO] , f
v e walke
[ h aThe m e m o r ) asPerformance t a

surrogatton
' (chapt6 rs 2 and 3)) in law and popular culture (chapters 2 and
 P R E FA C E xiii

6), in sacrificial expenditure and commodification (chapters 4 and 5), and in

myths of origin (throughout)share a common inspiration derived from
the aesthetic tangibility of live performances. I use the word aesthetic in
what I understand to be its eighteenth-century meaning: the vitality and
sensuous presence of material forms. In the name of memory, I hope that I
may be forgiven this nostalgia for presence on the plea that. asa practical
matter, the voices of the dead may speak freely n o w only through the bod
ies of the living.
 .~
A C K N O W :1" G M E N T S

THis PROIBCT WAS SUPPORTED BY A SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP FROM THE

National Endowment for the Humanities for 199293. At crucial stages of
the research, I received valuable assistance from staff members at several
libraries and archives: Fred Hoxie at the DArcy McNickle Center for the
History of the American Indian at the Newberry Library; Russell Maylone
at Northwestern University Special Collections; Jude Solomon at the His
toric N e w Orleans Collection; and the staff of the Amistad Research Cen
t e r at Tulane University, including Fred Stielow and Brenda B. Square. At
Tulanes Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Bill Meneray and Courtney
Page of Special Collections, Leon Miller, Helen Burkes, and Mary Leblanc
of Manuscripts, Sylvia Metzinger of Rare Books, Joan Caldwell and
Richard Campbell of the Louisiana Collection, and Bruce Raeburn, Alma
Williams, and Diane Rose of the William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive prO
vided many hours of expert guidance. They did so with unfailing profes
sionalism, even though the range of materials that I requested must have
seemed eccentric at the very least.
Several colleagues with a special interest in the projectMarvin Carl
son, Errol Hill, Richard Wendorf, Bruce McConachie, Thomas Postlewait,
and Richard Rambuss~agreed to read and comment on the manuscript in
xvi A C K N O \ " L E D C . E. \ ' T $

various stages and sections, while Judith Milhous, Joseph Cohen. LilWrcnce
Powell, and Joseph Logsdon offered valuable information from the per
spective of their specialties. Michael P. Smith willingly shared his Unique
knowledge of N e w Orleans with me, offering both insight and inSpiratiOn,
All these contributions proved timely and helpful, but I am responsible for
the conclusions presented here as well asany residual e r r o r s or infellcitics,
To the faculty and students at 1979 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois,
including Dwight Conquergood and Margaret Thompson Drewa], and at
721 Broadway, N e w York City, particularly Richard SChechner, Barbara
KirshenblattGimblett, Brooks M a c N a m a r a , and Peggy Phelan, my debt is
various, general, and profound. They continue to reinvent the field of per
formance studies, which is limited in scope only by what people attually do
on the cusp of the a r t s and human sciences.
Earlier versions of some of the materials in chapters 5 and 6 first
appeared in Theatre journal, Theatre Survey, and The D r a m a Review.
During the past year I have been grateful to Jennifer C r e w e at C01umb
University Press for bringing together a t e a m of readers and editors, es la
cially A n n e M c C o y and Sarah St. Onge, who w e r e able first to see this map:
uscript asa book and then to see it through the process of becoming one
O v e r the years Jonathan A r a c and Carol K a y have seen my WOrk befor
anyone else, except for Janice Carlisle, who somehow sees it before 1do e
 I N T R O D U C T I O p . H I S T O R Y,
M E M O R Y, A N D FORMANCE

Today documents include

the spoken word, the image, gestures.
~IACQLE5 LEGoFF

WHEN BENEVOLENT MANAGERS SPEAK N O W or BALANCING BUDGETS BY "NATURAL

attrition, they propose to harvest the actuarial fruits of retirement, resig
nation, and death. But more often than not, they also propose to replace the
recently departed by asking those remaining behind to enhance their per
formances. These performances then constitute rites of memory in honor of
the artificially superannuated. I n t o the professional and social places they
once occupied step the anxious survivors, who n o w feel obliged more or less
to reinvent themselves, taking into a c c o u n t the roles played by their prede
cessors. As a lifelong theater person, I take a keen interest in the imposition
of such histrionics on civilian life. They bring to mind theatrical t e r m s such
ascasting and miscasting, script and improvisation, memory and imagina
tion. In addition to the ample opportunities for overwork that such policies
often provide, they may also entail the demanding psychological obligations
of double consciousness, the self-reflexive interaction of identity and role.
The alltoo-familiar practice of downsizing by attrition, however, takes
advantage of a much more powerful underlying phenomenon. Even when
financial exigencies do n o t dictate retrenchment, a process goes on normally
that is very much like the one that administrations impose in a pinch. Here
t o o the dramaturgy of doubling in a role governs the functions of cultural
2 H I S TO RY. MEMORY. A N D P E R F O R M A K T I ;

transmission in the service 0f inStimtional memory. I have noticed. for

instance, that when death or retirement removes a colleague from a c o m m u
nity asinterdependent asan academic department, despite the conventional
panegyrics attesting to the fact that he or she can never be replaced. o n e or
more of the survivors will m o v e in to take over, overtly or covertly, the posi
tions vacated by the decedent. These positions will m o r e often prove to be
the emotional and psychological nodal points within the human dynamics of
the community, though they may encompass the intellectual ones as Well.
Consciously or unconsciously, e v e n the big shoes will g e t filled, but rarely
by the new person hired asa replacement. I am n o t the only o n e among my
acquaintances to have remarked on this phenomenon. The speed at which
roles can change hands prompted a r e c e n t retiree I know to define the S t a t u s
of professor emeritus asforgotten but n o t gone. While savoring this witty
inversion of the spurious immortality routinely granted by eulogiSts I have
also been pondering its double meaning, the real functions of Social Conti
unity and cultural preservation that it suggests. As he was. fading aWay, my
retiring colleague stumbled over the paradox of collective PerPetUation:
memory isaprocess that depends crucially onforgetting.
This book, in fact, takes up the three-Sided relationship of met-Cry, p e r
formance and substitution. In it I propose to examine h o w CUlture repro
duces and recreates itself by a process that can be best described by the
word surrogation. In the life of a community, the process of surrogation does
n o t begin or end but continues as actual or perceived v a c a n c t e s Occur in the
network of relations that constitutes the social fabric. I n t o the cavities Cre
ated by loss through death or other forms of departure, I hYPOthesize, S m
vivors attempt to fit satisfactory alternates. Because collective memoTy
works selectively, imaginatively, and often perversely, surrogation rarely if
ever succeeds. The process requires many trials and at least as many ErrorS.
The fit cannot be exact. The intended substitute either c a n n o t fulfil] eXpe
rations, creating a deficit, or actually exceeds them, creating a sul'PluS_ Thec.
t o o the surrogate-elect may prove to bea divisive choice, one around Whey:
factions polarize,or the prospective nominee may tap deep motives of p r e
udice and fear, sothat even before the fact the unspoken possibility of his 011'
her candidacy incites phobic anxiety. Finally, the very uncanniness of the
process of surrogation, which tends to disturb the complacency of a11
thoughtful incumbents, may provoke many unbidden emOfiOHS, ranging
from mildly incontinent sentimentalism to raging paranoia. As ambivalence
deepens before the specter of inexorable antiquation, even the necessary
 H H I O R L M L J O R Y. . - \ N I ) P E R F O R M A N C E

preparations of the likely successors may alienate the affections of the

officeholdersall the m o r e powerfully when social or cultural differences
exacerbate generational ones. At these times, improvised narratives of
authenticity and priority may congeal into full-blown myths of legitimacy
and origin.
In the likely e v e n t that one or more of the above calamities occurs, selec
tive memory requires public enactments of forgetting, either to blur the
obvious discontinuities, misalliances, and ruptures or, more desperately, to
exaggerate them in order to mystify a previous Golden Age, n o w lapsed. In
such dramas of sacrificial substitution, the derivation of the word personal
ity from mas/t eerily doubles that of tragedy from goat. I believe that the
process of trying o u t various candidates in different situationsthe
doomed search for originals by continuously auditioning stand-insis the
m o s t important of the many meanings that users intend when they say the
word performance.
Competing definitions do proliferate. In his etymological account,
anthropologist Victor Turner traces performance to the Old French word
parfoumir, meaning to furnish forth, to complete, or to carry o u t thor
oughly (From Ritualto Tlzeatre, r3). Ethnolinguist Richard Bauman, in his
concise entry in the InternationalEncyclopedia of Communications, locates the
meaning of performance in the actual execution of an action as opposed to its
potential (3:26266), a meaning that operates in the theatrical performance
of a script, in an automobile 5performance on the test track, or in paroles
performance of langue. Theorist and director Richard Schechner, who has
advanced the m o s t focused and at the same time the mosr widely applicable
definition of performance, calls it "restored behavior or twice-behaved
behavior, by which he actually means behavior that is always subject to
revision, behavior that m u s t be reinvented the second time or the nth
time because it cannot happen exactly the same way twice, even though in
some instances the constancy of transmission across many generations
may be astonishing (Between Theater and Anthropology, 3637; cf. Bau
man and Briggs; Hymes). These three definitions of performancethat it
carries o u t purposes thoroughly, that it actualizes a potential, or that it
restores abehaviorcommonly assume that performance offers a substi
t u t e for something else that preexists it. Performance, in other words, stands
in for an elusive entity that it is n o t but that it m u s t vainly aspire both to
embody and to replace. Hence flourish the abiding yet vexed affinities
between performance and memory, o u t of which blossom the m o s t florid
4 H I S T O R Y. M E M O R Y. A N D PERFORMANCE

.. .- u , .
nostalgias for authentiCity and o r i g i n . Where memory 15, n o t e s theorist
directOr Herbert Blau, theatre is (382)
This book, however, is n o t about surrogation ( o r performance) asa uni
versal, transhistorical structure. I w a n t to contextualize its processes within
a specific though very extensive historic and material continuum. The
research strategies I favor emphasize the comparative approach to the tlie_
atrical, musical, and ritual traditions of many cultures. To that agenda, how
ever, I would add the qualification of historical contingency: first, the inter
cultural communication that certain performances enabled at specific times
and places; and second, the internal cultural self-definition that these and
other performances produced by making Visible the play of differenCe and
identity within the larger ensemble of relations.

Circum-Atlantic M e m o r y
Both intercultural and internally self-referential occasions of Performance
mark the connected places and times that constitute what I arn calling, as the
geohistorical locale for my thesis about memory assubstitution, the cit-cum~
Atlantic world. Asit emerged from the revolutionized economies of the late
seventeenth c e n t u r y, this world resembled avortex m Whmh commodities
and cultural practices changed hamds many tilineSdThe molst revolutionary
commodity in this economy was human fles , an n o t on y because s]ave
labor produced huge quantities of the addictive substances (Sugar, Coffee,
tobacco, and-most insidiouslywsugar and chocolatein combination) that
transformed the world economy and financed the industrial revolufio
(Mintz). The concept of acircumAtlantic world (as opposed to a transatn
lantic one) insists on the centrality of the diasporic and gen0cidal historje_
of Africa and the Americas, North and South, in the creation of the culmrs
of modernity. In this sense, a N e w World was n o t discovered in th:
Caribbean, but one was truly invented there. Newness enacts a kind of S u r
rogationin the invention of a new England or a n e w France O u r of the
memories of the oldbut it also conceptually erases indigenouS Popula
tions, contributing to amentality conducive to the practical implemehtation
of the American Holocaust (Stannard). While a great deal of the unspeak_
able violence instrumental to this creation may have been officially {Orgon
ten, circum-Atlantic memory retains its consequences, one of which is that
the unspeakable cannot be rendered forever inexpressible: the m o s t persis
t e n t mode of forgetting is memory imperfectly deferred.
 H I S T O R Y. M E M O R Y. A N D P E R F O R M A N C E 5

For this regioncentered conception, which locates the peoples of the

Caribbean r i m at the heart of an oceanic interculture embodied through
performance, I am indebted to Paul Gilroys formulation of the Black
Atlantic. In three prescient books, There Aint No Black in the Union
jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation (I987), T/ze Black Atlantic:
Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993), and Small Acts: T[mug/m on the
Politics of Black Culture: (1993), Gilroy expands the cultural horizons of
modern history in a way that does n o t begin and end at national borders but
charts its course along the dark currents of a world economy that slavery
once propelled: A n e w s t r u c t u r e of cultural exchange, he writes, has
been built up across the imperial networks which once played host to the tri
angular trade of sugar, slaves and capital (Union jack, 157). The idea of
circum-Atlantic cultural exchange does n O t deny Eurocolonial initiatives
their place in this historyindeed,it m u s t newly reconsider and interrogate
thembut it regards the results of those initiatives as the insufficiently
acknowledged cocreations of an oceanic interculture. This interculture
shares in the contributions of many peoples along the Atlantic r i m f o r
example, Bambara, Iroquois, Spanish, English, Aztec, Yoruba, and French.
I argue in this book that the scope of the circum-Atlantic interculture may
be discerned m o s t vividly by means of the performances, performance t r a
ditions, and the representations of performance that it engendered. This is
true, I think, because performances so often carry within them the memory
of otherwise forgotten substitutionsthose that were rejected and, even
more invisibly, those that have succeeded.
The key to understanding how performances worked within a culture,
recognizing that a fixed and unified culture exists only asa convenient but
dangerous fiction, is to illuminate the process of surrogation asit operated
between the participating cultures. The key, in other words, is to understand
how circumAtlantic societies, confronted with revolutionary circum
stances for which few precedents existed, have invented themselves by per
forming their pasts in the presence of others. They could n o t perform them
selves, however, unless they also performed what and who they thought
they were n o t . By defining themselves in opposition to others, they prO
duced mutual representations from encomiums to caricatures, sometimes in
each anothers presence, at other times behind each others backs. In the
very form of minstrelsy, for example, as Eric L o t t suggests in Love and
leefi: Blackfizce Minstrelgy and the American Working Class (1993), there
resides the deeply seated and potentially threatening possibility of involun
6 H I S T O R Y. M E M O R Y . A N D P E R F O R M A N C E

tary surrogation through the a c t of performance. "Mimicry," writes H o m i

K. Bhabha, is at once resemblance and menace (86). This is so because,
even as parody, performances propose possible candidates for succession.
They raise the possibility of the replacement of the authors of the repre
sentations by those whom they imagined into existence as their definitive
opposites.
A number of important consequences ensue from this c u s t o m of self.
definition by staging c o n t r a s t s with other races, cultures, and ethnicities.
Identity and difference c o m e into play (and i n t o question) simultaneously
and coextensively. The process of surrogation continues, but it does so in a
climate of heightened anxiety that outsiders will somehow succeed in
replacing the original peoples, or autochthons. This process is unstoppable
because candidates for surrogation m u s t be tested at the margins of a cul
t u r e to bolster the fiction that it has a core. That is why the surrogated dou
ble so often appears as alien to the culture that reproduces it and that it
reproduces. That is why the relentless search for the purity of Origins is a
voyage n o t of discovery but of erasure.
The anxiety generated by the process of substitution justifies the C o m
plicity of memory and forgetting. In the face of this anxiety~a mOmentary
self-consciousness about surrogation that c o n s t i t u t e s What might Pass for
reflexivity-the alien double may appear inimernory only to disappear
That disappearance does n o t diminish its contribunonsto cultural definitior;
and preservation; rather, it enables them. Without failures of memory to
obscure the mixtures, blends, and provisional antitypes necessary to its Proa
duction, for example, whiteness, one of the major scenic elements of Sev
eral circumAtlantic performance traditions, could n o t exiSt even asPerjul.
n o r could there flourish more narrowly defined, subordinate deSigns Such y,
Anglo-Saxon Liberty. Even the immaculate guardian angels Who Sihas
the chorus of divine origin in James Thompsons Rule Britannia, f
example, must have recourse to a concept charged with high antithetic:
seriousness to rhyme with waves. In Playing in t/ze Dark. W/itmes; a n d
t/ze Literary Imagination (1992), Toni Morrison interprets the angelic Chorus
exactly: The concept of freedom did n o t emerge in a Vacuum. Nothing
highlighted freedomif it did n o t in fact c r e a t e 1tlike slavery (38),
On the one hand, forgetting, like miscegenation, is an opportunistic t a c
tic of whiteness. As a Yoruba proverb puts it: The white man who made the
pencil also made the eraser. On the other hand, the v a s t scale of the project
of whiteness-and the scope of the contacts among cultures it r e q u i r e d
 H I S T O R L M E M O R Y. \ N D P E R F O R M A N C E

limited the degree to which its foils could be eradicated from the memory of
those who had the deepest motivation and the s u r e s t means to forget them.
At the same time, however, it fostered complex and ingenious schemes to
displace, refashion, and transfer those persistent memories into representa
tions m o r e amenable to those who m o s t frequently wielded the pencil and
the eraser. In that sense, circum-Atlantic performance is a monumental
study in the pleasures and t o r m e n t s of incomplete forgetting. But more
obdurate questions persist: Whose forgetting? \Vhose memory? Whose
history?

Locations and Bearings

Because anything like what might be called coverage of the possible inclu
sions under the rubric of circum-Atlantic performance would bebeyond the
imaginable scope of this volume (or many), I have settled here on the explo
ration of particular historical formations at specific times at t w o sites, L o n
don and N e w Orleans. Though r e m o t e from one another in obvious
respectsantiquity, climate, and cuisine spring quickly to mindthese
places are n o t arbitrarily selected. As river-sited ports of entry linking inte
rior lines of communication to sea lanes, London and N e w Orleans have
histories joined at a pivotal m o m e n t in the colonial rivalry of francophone
and anglophone interests as they collided in the late seventeenth and eigh
teenth centuries in North America and the West Indies. Historians have
stressed the importance of the conflict between Great Britain and France on
sea and landthe whale against the elephantin the forging of mod
e r n nationstates and Great Powers (Colley, i, quoting Kennedy, 160).
These European interests, however, were intimately connected with
Amerindian and African ones. A significant body of recent historical and
ethnohistorical research has reexamined those latter interests as dynamic
and inventive (rather than inert) in the face of Eurocolonial expansion. My
selective history of circum-Atlantic performance draws heavily on this ren
0vated scholarship of e n c o u n t e r and exchange.
The great Iroquois Confederacy, for instancea creation of centuries of
Forest Diplomacynegotiated through brilliant intercultural perfor
mances the Covenant Chain 0f trade and military alliances that linked the
fur-producing hinterlands of the vast Great Lakes region to the thinly held
European enclaves of the eastern seaboard (Axtell; Dennis; Jennings, Iro
quOi Diplomacy; Richter). In Culture Theory in Contemporary Ethnohis
H I S T O R Y. M E M O R Y. A N D P E R F O R M A N C E

tory (1988), William S.Simmons describes these diplomatic and trade rela
tions as a n interaction and confrontation between a u t o n o m o u s social enti
ties, rather than asa onesided playing o u t of Eurocolonial myths of mani
fest destiny (6). Iroquois played a significant and self-promoting role in
the geometric proliferation of wealth centered in the triangular trade: c a r
ryinga different cargo along each leg of the Atlantic triangle comprising the
Americas (raw materials), Europe (manufactured goods), and Africa
(human beings), the holds of merchant ships never had to cross blue W a t e r
empty. The consequences of the ensuing material productions a r e incalcu
lable; the mother of hemispheric superstructural invention, they provide a
common matrix for the diversified performance genres to which this book
is devoted.
Even for the largest system, however, heuristic opportunity, like God or
the Devil, is in the details. O n e site of circumAtlantic memory that I p r o
pose to excavate is located in London in 1710, during the performance-rich
state visit to Queen Anne '5 c o u r t by four Iroquois Kings. AmOng other
public exhibitions and entertainments, a staging of S i r William Davenam5
operatic version of Shakespeares Mac-bet}: honored their embassy, a perfor
mance during which their hosts insisted that the Native Americans be placed
in full view onstage (Bond, 34). Such an imposition need n o t have been as
alien or asintimidating as might be supposed. Experienced in Staging C 0
dolence Councils, those great intersocietal mourning and Peace rituals th
mediated among Dutch, French, English, and diverse Algonquian ad 11- at_
quoian interests, the Mohawks referred to themselves as anckwei .th o
People. Assuch, they believed themselves descended from Deganaiigelal
a
the semidivine peacemaker who, with the aid of Hiawatha, overcame Wit h
craft and the cyclical violence of feuding clans to establish the Great Lea C ~
of Peace and Power. Thereafter the league existed to settle grievanCeS Cgue
dole losses, and negotiate alliances through gift exchange and ritual Prfom
mance of speeches, songs, and dances (Richter, 3049). The Kings eameo to r
London to promote the Anglo-Iroquois invasion of French Canada in the
interests of the fur trade, and they arrived at a decisive moment dUrig the
War of the Spanish Succession, when events were leading up to the T leaties
of Utrecht in 171314
According to lee New Cambridge Modern History, the watershed Peace
of Utrechtwhereby Great Britain acquired the coveted Asiento the
monopoly onthe slave trade in the Spanish West Indiesmarks the pass
ing of the Mediterranean asthe centre of world trade and power rivalries
 H I S T O R Y. M F M O R Y. A N D P E R F O R M A N C E

[when] attention shifted to the Atlantic (Bromley, 571). Alfred Thayer

Mahan, summarizing the Wa r of the Spanish Succession in The Influence of
Sea Power Upon Hirzogl (1890), the m o s t materially influential work of aca
demic theory written in the past century, describes its consequences:
Before that w a r England was one of the sea powers; after it she was the sea
power, without any second (225). In the festival panegyric th'na'sor-Forest
(1713), a poetical celebration of the Peace of Utrecht, Alexander Pope imag
ined the glorious deforestation of rural England in the cause of maritime
empire:
Thy Trees, fair Windsor! n o w shall leave their Woods,
And Half thy Forests rush into my Floods,
Bear Britains Thunder, and her Cross display,
To the bright Regions of the rising Day.
(Poems 1:189)

To the dancelike numbers of lVinalror-Forest, which record the embassy of

the Featherd People, I will r e t u r n in a later chapter on the representation
of performances of e n c o u n t e r at the time of the Treaties of Utrecht. The
geopolitical advantages w o n by Great Britain in this general peace and the
supremacy that the Royal Navy had attained motivated the French to
attempt to consolidate their position in North America, including strategic
development of the territory bearing the name of Louis X I V. They did this
in part by situating a fortified city in Louisiana near the mouth of the Mis
sissippi River, roughly equidistant along w a t e r r o u t e s between Canada and
their island possessions in the West Indies, demarcating a great arc of Gal
lic entitlement arrayed to contest further trans-Appalachian expansion by
the Anglo-Americans and the Real PeOple.
We n o w know that success did n o t ultimately crown the French grand
strategy. But in the meantime, contemporaneously with the apogee of the
North American Covenant Chain, the French in colonial Louisiana relo
cated significant numbers of West Africans, principally Bambara, from one
African regional interculture, Senegambia, into an area already possessing
highly developed Amerindian performance cultures. Circumstances
favored the reciprocal acculturation of Creoles of various lineages within a
unique network of African, American, and European practices. These
included mortuary rituals, carnival festivities, and a multitude of musical
and dance forms that others would eventually describe (and appropriate)
under the rubric of jazz. At the same time, the Africans brought with them
IO H I S T O R Y. M E M O R Y. A N D I E R F ( ) R M . \ N ( F

vital necessities such as skilled agriculture: The survival of French

Louisiana, writes Gwendolyn Midlo Hall in her magistcrial 4 m m , in
ColonialLouisiana: The Development of Afio- Creole Culture in II: Ely/[wan];
Century (1992), was due n o t only to African labor but also to African tech
nology (121). Under the superimpositions of slavery, as well as around its
fringes beyond the margins of the apriere (swamp), there flourished a pow
erful culture that reinvented Africaand ultimately Americawithin the
only apparently impermeable interstices of European forms. In that respect,
Louisiana participated in the formation of the complex identities of [ h e c i r
cum-Caribbean rim (Fiehrer), even asit negotiated its incremental assimi
lation into the hypothetical monoculture of Anglo North America,
The other main site that I explore, then, is located in the records of the
long Americanization (that is, Anglification and Africanization) of L a t i n
N e w Orleans, a process that begins before the Louisiana Purchase in 180;
and continues to be reenacted in the s t r e e t s of this performance.saturated
city today (Carter; Hirsch and Logsdon). A principal public instrument of
this reenactment remains Mardi Gras, nominally a French cultural residue
which long ago was appropriated by so many competing interests of eth:
nicity, nationality, class, race, religion, gender, and c a s t e that its meaning
can be assessed appropriately only in relationship to other genres of Cir
cum-Atlantic and Caribbean performance (Kinser; Mitchell; M. Smith,
Mardi Gras Indians). Through its complex hierarchy of ritualiZed m
Mardi Gras stages an annual spectacle of cultural surrogaticms in eluding
emory.
the multilayered imbrication of carnivalesque license, Symbolic
marches by descendants of Afro-Amerindian Maroons, and the disculsive
claims of Anglo-Saxon Liberty as realized in float parades and debutante
balls. The history of performance in N e w Orleans supports the wisdom of
the exhortation that opens Halls account of African Louisiana; I.NathTlal
history, m u s t be transcended, and colonial history treated Within a l .
context (xii). g Obd]

Materials and Methods

The various contributors to Question: of Evidence: Proof; Practice, and P
suasz'on Across t/ze Dirczplz'nes (1991), a compendium of essays Original?
published in CriticalInquiry, explore the interdisciplinary dimensions of th:
issues set forth in the editors introduction: the configuratio of the facr
evidence distinction in different disciplines and historical moments
 H I S T O R . M E M O R Y. A N D P E R F O R M A N C E ll

(Chandler, Davidson, and Harootunian. 2). By creating a category called

circumAtlantic performance that intentionally c u t s across disciplinary
boundaries and the conventional subcategories and periodizations within
them, I have incurred an obligation to be explicit about the materials and
methodsthe evidenceI have used to imagine what that category entails.
One important strategy of performance research today is to juxtapose
living memory asrestored behavior against a historical archive of scripted
records (Balme). In the epigraph at the head of this chapter from his History
and Memory (1992), Jacques Le Goff sets o u t the variety of mnemonic
materialsspeech, images, gesturesthat supplement or c o n t e s t the
authority of documents in the historiographic tradition of the French
annalzlrtes (xvii). Their v a s t projectsfor instance, histories of private life,
histories of death, or histories of memory itselfattend especially to those
performative practices that maintain (and invent) human continuities, leav
ing their traces in diversified media, including the living bodies of the suc
cessive generations that sustain different social and cultural identities
(Aries; Nora).
Summarizing the fruits of research into the transmission of culture in
societies distinguished by different modalities of communication, Le Goff
identifies three major interests of those without writing: (1) myth, par
ticularly myths of origin; (2) genealogies, particularly of leading families;
and (3) practical formulas of daily living and special Observances, particu
larly those deeply imbued with religious magic (58). While acknowledg
ing the preliminary usefulness of such formulations, typically organized
under the portmanteau concept of orality, performance studies goes on to
question the assumption that the interests Le Goff defines do n o t also
manifest themselves in societies with writingand, for that matter, in
those with print, electronic media, and mass communications (Conquer
good; Schechner, The Future of Ritual; Taussig). Performance studies com
plicates the familiar dichotomy between speech and writing with what
Kenyan novelist and director Ngugi wa Thiongo calls orature. Orature
comprises a range of forms, which, though they may invest themselves var
iously in gesture, song, dance, processions, storytelling, proverbs, gossip,
customs, rites, and rituals, are nevertheless produced alongside or within
mediated literacies of various kinds and degrees. In other words, o r a t u r e
goes beyond a schematized opposition of literacy and orality as t r a n s c e n
dent categories; rather, it acknowledges that these modes of communication
have produced one another interactively over time and that their historic
[2 H I S T O R Y. M E M O R Y. A N D P E R F O R M A N C E

operations may be usefully examined under the rubric of performance,

Ngugi defines the power of orarure in collective memory aphoristically:
H e is a s w e e t singer when everybody joins in. The s w e e t songs last longer,
too (61; cf. Finnegan; Okpewho; Zumthor).
The historical implications of the concept of o r a t u r e , though n o t neces
sarily under that name, have engaged the attention of scholars in a number
of disciplines. In a r e c e n t study of the role of theatricaliry in the early c u ]
tural history of the United States, for instance, Declaring Independence;jef
ferron, NaturalLanguage, andt/ze Culture of Performance (1993), jay Fliege!
man begins with the significant but long-neglected facr that the Declaration
of Independence was just t h a t a script written to be spoken aloud as o r a
t o r y. He goes on to document the elocutionary dimension of AngIO-Amer
ican self-invention, which Thomas Jefferson himself defined in comparison
to the expressive speech of Native Americans, on the one hand, and
Africans, on the other (98, 92)- Under the Cl? scrutiny 0f circum
Atlantic memory, no material event, Spoken or w r i t t e n , can remain pure,"
despite Jeffersons special pleading for the revival of Anglo~Sax0n as the
primal tongue of essential law and liberty (Frantzen, 2037).
That the chant of the Declaration of Independence calls on the spirits of
Jeffersons Anglo-Saxon ancestors to authorize his claimsto inalienable
rights, including the right to revolt against tyrannyrecalls the ritual of
freedom described by C. L. R. James in lee Blackjacobz'ns: Toussaz'nt L Ou
venture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938):

Carrying torches to light their way, the leaders of the revolt m e t in an

open space in the thick forests of the Morne Rouge, a mountain O Ve r
looking Le Cap. There Boukman gave the last instructions and, afte
Voodoo incantations and the sucking of the blood of a Stuck pig, h:
stimulated his followers by a prayer spoken in creole, which, like So
much spoken on such occasions, has remained. The god Who Gated
the sun which gives us light . . . orders us to revenge our Wmngs, H
will direct our arms and aid us. Throw away the symbol 0f the g o d 0:
the whites who has so often caused us to weep, and listen to the V0ice
of liberty, which speaks in the hearts of us all. (37)
Endowed by their Creator with liberty, whose voice spoke thmugh them,
the Haitians set about the task of altering and abolishing their gOVErnment
with spoken words, which they then took the trouble to write down.
Taking cognizance of the interdependence of o r a t u r e and literature, the
 l i l h l O R L M E M O R Y. A N D P E R F O R M A N C E '3

materials of the present study are thematized under categories of those

restored behaviors that function as vehicles of cultural transmission. Each
category pairs a form of collective memory with the e n a c t m e n t s that
embody it through performance: death and burials, violence and sacrifices,
laws and (dis)obedience, commodification and auctions, origins and segre
gation. All of these may be written about, of course, but even the laws need
n o t have been written down. They remain partially recorded in the litera
ture, but they are actually remembered and put into practice through o r a
ture, a practice that may be prolonged, supplemented, or revised by printed
and photographic representations of the performance e v e n t s .
Although these thematic materials are broadly conceived in the ampli
tude of circum-Atlantic relations, my method is to study them at narrowly
delimited sites. My observations of the street performances of Mardi Gras
in N e w Orleans, for instance, have been accumulating since 1991. That was
the last year in which the m o s t traditional of the old-line carnival krewes
paraded: the passage of a new civil rights ordinance by the N e w Orleans
City Council in December of that year gave the century-and-a-halfold
mens clubs the choice of desegregating their membership or staying home
(Flake; Vennman, Boundary Face-Off). The assertion of legal control
over carnival by the City of N e w Orleans revived memories of the carnival
krewes central role in planning and executing the armed overthrow of the
racially integrated government of William Pitt Kellogg in 1874. Known to
historians as the Battle of Liberty Place, this was in fact a bloody riot
incited by a race-baiting elite. The ordinance controversy, played o u t for
three years in the council chambers and the media as well as in the streets
and running concurrently with the sudden political rise of Klansman David
Duke, burst open a deep, suppurating sore that festers in local memory more
poisonously than history can write.
The method of observation that I employ takes its cue from Walking in
the City, an essay included in the Spatial Practices section of Michel de
Certeaus Practice of Everyday Life (1984). " To walk, de Certeau notes, is
to lack a place (103). But to walk is also to gain an experience of the
cityscape that is conducive to mapping the emphases and contradictions of
its Special memory (Boyer; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett). De Certeau looks for
key points of articulation between human behavior and the built environ
ment, noting the pedestrian speech acts" uttered by authors whose bodies
follow the thicks and thins of an urban text they write without being able
to read i t (93). Quotidian speech acts offer a rich assortment of year
I4 H I S T O R Y. M E M O R Y. A N D P E R F O R M A N F F

round performances, particularly in a polyglot entrepot and [ O u r i s t mecca

like N e w Orleans, but festivalstime o u t of time-intensify and enlarge
them to Gargantuan proportions 07313550- As the Mardi Gras revelers take
over the streets, canalized by police barricades and c o nditioncd r e fl e r s
their traditional gestures and masked excesses activate the spatial lOgic of 2;
City bunt make " 3 P W ? and Privileges n o t only seasonally visible
but perpetually
machine reproducible,
for celebrating crowded
Theorigin
the occult Spaces become a Performance
of their exclusions Walking in the
city makes this visible.
Meanwhile, around the public housing projects and under the highwa
overpasses, the Mardi Gras Indiansgangs" of African-Americans wh:
identify with Native American tribes and parade on unannolmced m u m
costumed in heart-stoppingly beautiful hand-sewn SUits~Pr0Udly I r a n 5
form their neighborhoods i n t o a u t o n o m o u s places of embodied memo s
More intensely than any of the float parades or PromiSCuous masqueradry.
of Mardi Gras, the Indians restage events of circum-Atlantic encounter es
surrogation in which European experience remains only obliquely aCknOand
edged, if at all. Their bodies document those doublings through mu .WL
speech, images, and gestures (figure 1.1). As G e o r g e Lipsitz Points 0 Steal
Time Passages: Collective M e m o r y andAmerican Popular Culture (1990) '1 1n
Mardi Gras Indians of N e w Orleans offer an important illusn.afi0n (if the
persistence of popular narratives in the modern world (234; S e e also Lt'he
sitz, Dangerous Crossroadr). Their spectacular appearances at Mardi Cras 1p,
season (which nonetheless remain aloof from i t ) are only O n e ge mme of Per.
formance in the year-round cornucopia of Afrocentric forms, a Ong their!
the Second Line parades staged by numerous social aid and Pleasure clubs
and ritual celebrations of death with music, P0pularly kn
funerals.
The three-sided relationship of memory, performance, and SubSn_tution
becomes most acutely visible in mortuary ritual. This Study ClOSe]
to those epiphanies. In any funeral, the body of the deCeased PCrfzranends
limits of the community called into being by the need to mark its ms. the
United around a corpse that is no longer inside but n o t YCt Omsidllassfmg.
boundaries, the members of a community may reflecr On its SYm: its
embodiment of loss and renewal. In ajazz funeral, the deceased isgener:]lll;
accompanied at least part of the way to the cemetery by a brass band a d
crowd of mourners who follow an elegant grand marshall ( o r Nelson; a
After the body is cut loose-sent on its way in the company of fam'l y
 H I S T O R Y. M E M O R Y. A N D P E R F O R M A N C E '5

l . l Hercules funeral, 1979.

Chief Bo Dollis, Wild Magnolias, carries the gang flag.

Photo: Michael P. Smith

membersa popular celebration commences, less like a forgetting than a

replenishment. As Willie Pajaud, longtime trumpeter for the Eureka Brass
Band, once put it: Id rather play a funeral than e a t a turkey dinner." Ani
mated by a joyful noise, supported in many instances by the testimony of
deep, spirit-world faith, the dead seem to remain more closely present to the
living in New Orleans than they doelsewhereand n o t only because they
are traditionally interred in tombs above ground. Walking in the city makes
this audible.
Read in the c o n t e x t created by the sounds and sights of these restored
behaviors, then, the documents concerning the London visit of the Iroquois
Kings take onanew and different kind of life. In addition to the various per
formances they attended while in Londona puppet show, a cockfight, a
military review, a concert, aShakespearean tragedythe Native Americans
created other events by their spectacular passages through the streets
(Altick). They swept up those walking through the city in impromptu festi
16 H I S T O R Y. M E M O R Y . A N D P E R F O R M A N F E

vals: When the four Indian Kings w e r e in this Country about :1Twelve
month ago, Joseph Addison recalled, speaking through the persona of M r .
Spectator, I often mixd with the Rabble and followed them a whole D a y
together, being wonderfully struck with the Sight of every thing that is n e w
or uncommon (1:211). Addisons ambiguous modifierwho is being
struck with n e w sights here? The Kings? The Rabble? M r. S p e c t a t o r ?
stages What might be termed the ethnographic surrealism of this circum
Atlantic e v e n t (Clifford). O n e important reason why popular performance
events entered into the records at this time in greater detail than is Usual for
such ephemera is that the Kings attended a number of them, While their
invited presence at others w a s heavily advertised to boost attendance.
The daily repertoires of the t w o official theaters, D r u r y Lane and the
Queens Theatre, Haymarket, are particularly worthy of attention in this
regard. In addition to the performance of Macbeth at which the Kings w ere
present, t w o other revivals held pointed circum-Atlantic interest: . t h n
Drydens The Indian Emperour; o r, The Conquest of Mexico by [ h e SPaniard;
(1665) and Thomas Southernes Oroonoko; o r, The Royal Slaw (16
94). At :1
time of institutional canonization of Shakespeare as the national 1)
Get, how
ever, n o t all the relevant high-culture performances took place Onstage (G
Taylor; Dobson). On the s a m e day that the Native Americgms departe .
from England, the great Shakespearean a c t o r Thomas Betterton Was buried
in Westminster Abbey. H i s passing held an epoch-marking meaning f (1
many, including Richard Steele, who published a eulogy in The Tat/er. B 01
tertons fifty-year career spanned the reigns of Charles 11 James etc
William and Mary, and Queen Anne; and Steele remarks on the edif .II,
spectacle of attending this last Office (2:422). The breadth of the adleng
of this eulogy, which begins with Men of Letters and Educaticm a ress
quickly enlarges to embrace all Free-born People (2:423), h' - the
powers Steele once attributed to Bettertons moving, speaking bOdy i
n life
but now invests in the stillness of his corpse. That is the POWer of
sum
moning an imagined community into being. The hailing of the Fr
born, in their role as enthusiasts for enactments of what is g r e a t ac:
noble in Human Nature by those who speak justly, and move gracefulln
(2:42223), is piquantly juxtaposed to the critique of social and musicyal
cacophony in the immediately preceding number of The Tatler, which ends
with anunfavorable allusion to the Stamping Dances of the West Indian:
or Hottentats (2:421).
Steeles account of Bettertons funeral demonstrates the importance of
 H I S T O R Y. M E M O R Y. A N D P E R F O R M A N C E 17

l e e Tatler and Spectator to the way in which I am trying to understand the

role of performance in circumAtlantic memory. In Imagined Communities:
Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (r983; rev. [991), Bene
dict Anderson stresses the role of printed media in the vernacular, particu
larly the newspaper, in the formation of modern national consciousness o u t
of dynastic, feudal, and sacred communities (3336). Like the obsequies
performed at tombs of the Unknown Soldier, which Anderson also high
lights (9), the burial of an actor, apractitioner of a despised profession, in
the cathedral of English dynastic memory suggests a cultural use of m a r
ginal identities to imagine a n e w kind of community. Attending such a rit
ual performance asa friend of the deceased, Steele the pioneering journal
ist graspedor createdits significance asnational news.
Steele and Addison characteristically turned local performances into
print, for circulation among an expanding audience of readers, and then
print into performances, for the edification of many more listeners who
heard the papers read aloud in public places. The innovative effects of this
form of o r a t u r e have been convincingly demonstrated on one side of the
Atlantic by Michael G. Ketcham in Transparent Desigm: Reading, Perfor
mance, and Form in the Spectator Papers (1985) and on the other by Michael
Warner in The Letters oft/1e Republic: Publication and the Public Sp/tere in
EighteenthCentury America (1990). Reports of the authorial deaths of
Addison and Steele would seem to have been exaggerated (McCrea). The
a t e r historians, however, attempting to r e c o n s t r u c t the acting of Betterton
and others from accounts in lee Tatler and The Spectator, have excerpted
and anthologized only the choice descriptive passages concerning the stage.
To a historian who views theater in the c o n t e x t of many kinds of perfor
mance, such passages take on a more robust life when they are returned to
their original place among the wonderful peripatetic observations of the
various restored behaviors of Augustan London.

The Everlasting Club

Addison and Steele report on walking in the city. By way of preliminary
demonstration of my method, I will attempt here to make a similar kind of
report on N e w Orleans. Fortunately for me, no one will ever be able to say
for sure which of o u r hallucinations, theirs or mine, does the greatest injus
tice to the fabulous object of its incitement.
In his paper for Wednesday, May 23, 1711 (No. 72), M r. Spectator con
[8 H I S T O R Y. M E M O R Y. A N D PERFORMANFI-L

tinues his a c c o u n t of clubs, ancient and modern. Clubs, with their continu
ously renegotiated boundaries of exclusion, exemplify the smaller a t o m s of
affiliation through which larger societies may be constructed. M r. Spectator
reports on the surprising constitution of o n e London club in particular,
the EVERLASTING CLUB. This venerable association n e v e r ceases to func
tion, day or night, weekdays or holidays, all the days of the year, n o Party
presumingto rise till they are relieved by those who a r e in course to succeed
them (1:3089). By this regimen no club member e v e r need be Without
company at any hour, and the fire, tended by a t r u s t y vestal, "burns from
Generation to Generation (1:310). Continuity, the genial despot, reigns:
I t is 3 Maxim in this Club that the Steward never dies; for as they succeed
one another by way of Rotation, no M a n is to quit the g r e a t ElbOW-chair
which stands at the upper End of the Table till his Successor is in a Readi
ness to fill it; insomuch that there has n o t been a Sede vacame in the Mem
o r y of M a n (1309). Individuals come and go, but the templatelike role of
steward carries forward through time the implacable integrity of the Eva-
lasting Club: only the G r e a t Fire of London caused a vacancy to 0 c m in
the Elbow-chair, when Samaritans intervened to carry the ProteSting
incumbent to safety. 0 1 nian social clubs
. r ea 0
Mardi G r a s krewes and other N e w Pelate 310
similar lines of selfperpetuating descent. Like carnival itself, they rug
sense of timelessness
. in based onon
the City apparently
theMarch in [ 9 9rePetition
seamless
G r a s day ' affOr of
ded a
spectacle of the convergence of t w o such roles: Rex, King of Carniva1,and
his nemesis o n that day, K i n g Zulu, r e i g n i n g monarch o f the ZUlu SoCial
Aid and Pleasure Club. Since 1872, interrupted only by War and Police
strikes, Rex has reigned annually over Mardi Gras as its PerPeIUa]l Ysmu
ing Lord of Misrule. Traditionally chosen from the ranks of the CitYs blmi
ness elite centered around the exclusive Boston Club, Rex shares Power 0
his day of days with a queen selected annually from amOng SOCietys lead?
ing debutantes. The symbolic mating of a nubile young girl with a midd le
aged man wearing gold lam, rouge, and a false beard, Who, asit is alWays
redundantly pointed out, is old enough to be her father, sets the tone for
the intensely endogamous fertility rites to follow (figure 1,2). These
include aneye-filling float parade with masked riders showering PlaStic
beads on rapturous crowds of subjects and an elegant private ball for the
inner circle of worthies.
Since 1909 members of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club have like
 H I S T O R L M E M O R M A N D PERFORMANCE '9

1.2 Rex, king of carnival, on his float, 1991.

Photo: Michael P. Smith

wise staged an annual float parade, featuring stereotypes of Africans." In

addition to King Zulu, high officials in the organization take on such per
sonas as The Big Shot of Africa, The Witch Doctor, Governor,
Province Prince, and Ambassador (figure 1.3). Originally known as
the The Tramps, the working-class African Americans who founded Zulu
took their inspiration from a staged minstrel number, There Never Was
and Never Will Bea King Like Me (Kinser, 233). They parade on Mardi
Gras morning, using the same r o u t e along St. Charles Avenue that Rex fol
lows an hour or so later. They wear grass skirts and blackface laid on thick
over anunderlying layer of clown white circling the eyes and mouth. In
addition to plastic beads, Zulu members throw decorated coconuts, for
many parade goers the m o s t highly prized throw of Mardi Gras. Every
year there is a n e w Rex and a new King Zulu, and every year they are sup
posed to look and a c t asthey always have.
On Mardi Gras morning in 1991, however, King Zulu got a very late
start, Rex refused to wait, and the t w o parades collided. As a few of the
20 HISTORY. MEMORY. A N D P E R F O R M A N C E

1.3 K i n g Zulu.

Photo: C o u r t e s y Amistad Research Center, Christopher West Collection

floats ran parallel to each other along either Side OfSt Charles AVenu ) l n
defiance of the carefully planned and well-policed r o u t e schedUIe,ethe
maskers I watched ignored each other, creating a gulf of silenCe hem,
t w o everlasting clubs, each the product of generations of de lute Sur een
tion. Their silence intensified the imagery whereby they perfOrmed toga
pasts in one anothers faces, a cruel hyperbolic mirror, but Polarity didthelr
constitute symmetry. Behind the gestic speech a c t s of Rex Stood n o t
ambiguous tradition of the European carnivalesque, which might at l the
appear to overthrow social authority momentarily (Bakhtin, Raezm-J eaSt
His World) but which also might just as well serve to conceal its ever mam!
powerful reassertion under the mask of festivity (Le Roy Ladurie Camlzrel
in Romans). Also behind Rex stood more than a century of white Suprem:
cist entitlement, the residue of what I will be calling a genealogy of Peffor
mance. Behind King Zulu there stood something much m o r e complicated: a
deconstruction of that white genealogy and the veiled assertion of a clan
destine countermemory in its stead.
 H I S T O R Y. M E M O R Y. A N D P E R F O R M A N C E 2]

To see how this semiotic t o u r de force works, the beholder m u s t first

understand that the members of both everlasting clubs, Rex and Zulu, rep
r e s e n t whiteness and perform whiteface minstrelsy. Rex speaks for himself:
of his 1992 parade, entitled Voyages of Discovery in honor of the quin
centennial year, the King of Carnival stated, We would have had a black
explorer, but we couldn't find any (quoted in Vennman, Boundary
Face-Of , 76). Thus did Rex in his o w n wayby performinga demean
ing comic stereotype of the white amnesiachonor the memory of the
Haitian creole explorer, Jean-Baptiste Point Du Sable, in the city from
which he m o s t probably departed to found Chicago (Bennett, 96101). B u t
the question remains asto why Zulu has walked such a thin line between
ridiculing and reinforcing the race-conscious imagery that Mardi Gras fes
tivities perpetually reinvoke. Walking between the t w o parades along the
neutral ground of St. Charles Avenue, I thought the answer seemed
plainly visible in the performance: Zulu seizes on the annual occasion of
the great festive holiday of Eurocentric tradition to make ribald fun of
white folks and the stupidity of their jury-rigged constructions of race
(figures 1.4 and 1.5).
As the parades collided, Zulus bone-wielding Witch Doctor evoked
the legends of cannibalism that permeate a c c o u n t s of circum-Atlantic
e n c o u n t e r s (Hulme, Jehlen), especially a s they relate t o the invention o f
Africa (Mudimbe). This Africa is the dystopia of racist fantasy, valuable as
an antitype to help the xenophobic European tribes exaggerate distinctions
among themselves: Africa," runs the tired old British slur on the French,
begins at Calais. Introduced in the decade after Plexsy v. Ferguson, amid
the triumph of Southern Redemption and its explosive mania about race,
King Zulu t u r n s Rex n o t so much upside down as inside o u t . The white
greasepaint under his blackface discloses an acute reflexivity in the way
that Zulu, laughing behind the mask of apparent self-deprecation, repro
duces a kind of Africa by mocking absurd Eurocentric stereotypes of
divine kingship.
As whiteface minstrelsy, however, Zulu has layers within layers, and
behind the visible mask of carnivalesque satire there is a practice of dis
ruptive humor that introduces another circum-Atlantic version of Africa.
As a N e w Orleans social aid and pleasure club, Zulu participates in the t r a
dition of Afrocentric mutual aid and burial societies dating from the colo
nial period, when people of African descent constituted the majority in
New Orleans (as they do again today) and when, as slaves and free people
22 H I S T O R Y. M E M O R Y. A N D P E R F O R M A N T l .

[.4 Rex and his c o u r t , 1971.

C o u r t e s y The Historic N e w Orleans Collection,
Museum/Research Center, acc. no. 1974.25.|9_332

of color, they had developed resilient solidarities within their Own c

and kinship networks. New Orleans, according to Gwendolyn gates
Hall in Afiicam in Colonial Louisiana, was overwhelmingly black " ldloOne
factor among 5everal that made Louisiana creole culture the most s, l g n i f .
icant source of Africanization of the entire culture of the United StateSa,
(I76, I57)- . ,, . .
In the Retentions and Surwvals chapter of their llgorOuS 81."I:
Afn'can.,4men'can Culture (1976), Sidney Mintz and Richard Price Cantio
0f
that historical research has reduced the number of convincing Cases off
exact formal retentions between Africa and the cultures of the New World
They also allow, however, that more general continuities may be discernecl
by the analysis of systems or patterns in their social contexts (52) Since
the famous debate between Melville Herskovits and E. Franklin Frazier, the
n a t u r e and extent of Africanisms in American culture have defied settled
 H I S T O R Y . M E M O R Y. A N D P E R F O R M A N C E

1.5 King Zulu and his court, 1940.

Courtesy The Historic New Orleans Collection,
Museum/ Research Center, acc. no. 190.5.;

conclusions, but the area of performance has produced some of the m o s t

compelling research. In After Africa (1983), for example, Roger Abrahams
and John Szwecl discuss the African derivation of such popular performance
genres ascheerleading, baton twirling, and brokenfield running in football,
and in Abrahamss classic Manof;Words in the West Indies: Performance and
the Emergence of Creole Culture (1983), there is a persuasive account of the
diasporic genesis of a particular kind of eloquence n o t unknown to Zulu
maskers: talking broad, talking sweet, and talking nonsense. It is
widely accepted that in New Orleans concentrated forms of African music
and dance remained in the celebrated bamboulas of Congo Square and else
where until very late, with powerful, though undocumentable, conse
quences for the development of jazz (Kmen). Comparative studies such as
John Nunley and Judith Bettelheims Caribbean Festival A m : Eac/z and
Every B i t of Diflerence (1988) locate the festive traditions of N e w Orleans in
24 H I S T O R Y. M E M O R Y. A N D PERFORMANCE.

a network of circumCaribbean forms. Scholarship along these lines tends

to support my impression that in the sardonic laughter of K i n g Zulu there
resonates a voice that c a n n o t be accounted for by the comparatively crude
inversions of the European carnivalesque.
I believe that through the sophisticated disguises of diasporic memory,
the Janus-faced Trickster figure erupts at Mardi Gras in the Zulu parade,
reinventingan African cultural pattern in its N e w Orleanian social c o n t e x t .
Embodying the deconstructive spirit of Esu (Gates, T/ze Signifying M o n
key, 3142), the Trickster t u r n s the tables on the powerful and emerges
unscathed from the ensuing contretemps, confounding his adversary by
dint of the dexterity with which he can reverse polarities: bad is good and
white is black. In Domination and the Arm of Resistance (1990), James C
Scott identifies such a hidden transcript as one of the Arts of Political
Disguise exemplified by the Jamaican slave saying Hitting a Straight lick
with a crooked stick (13682). The Trickster in his N e w Orleanian m a n i
festation did n o t exist as such in Africa, but neither did The T1amps)
..
invent their traditions solely o u t of There . . N e v e r Wa s. and NeVer W'
' h parades
a K i n g Like Me. On the scene of the colliding 2 1 m11 9 9 ] newh
I l l Be
looked to be in the k n o w seemed to think t at u u 5 a t e departure Was 0
really an accident. L i v i n g on the tips of many tongues, prformance tra .
tion, n o t scripted records, incorporates these sup-pie ironies in the dignfll
and cunning of resistant memory. A r r i v m g at direction through indir l t y
tion, talking big and smiling back, K i n g Zulu lets R e x drmk With gusto f em
the deep bowl of racist laughter, but only after the Trickster has PisSezolh
the soup. . "1
Before going on to address the theoretical bass for What I am c 1
genealogies of performance, I w a n t to reemphasize an impOFtant C0a Clu
sion drawn from walking in the city, listening to the Oratureaand readingn
the literature: Trickster-Zulu is n o t an African retentiOn bur a Cir
Atlantic reinvention. In his formation o u t of the linked SUrrogationscum
densely concentrated interculture, Zulu might very well have takenOE-a
present form without Esu per se, but hecertainly could n o t eXist in the samls
way today without Rex, nor, it must be emphaSized, could Rex eXist in th:
same way without Zulu.
The meaning of the comic effect that Addison achieves in his aCCOunt of
the Everlasting Club now comes into sharper focus. M r. SpectatOr takes his
learned epigraph from the Georgie: of Virgil; they emerge from JOhn D r y
dens translation thus:
 H I S T O R Y. M E M O R Y. A N D P E R F O R M A N C E 25

Th immortal Line in sure Succession reigns,

The Fortune of the Family remains:
And Grandsires Grandsons the long List contains.
(quoted in Spectator. 1:308 n)

Addison knowsand the white circles around the eyes and lips of King
Zulu and his merry krewe playfully confirmthat pristine descent in sure
Succession is no m o r e plausible a fiction than that of the steward who
never dies or, it might be added, that of the purportedly foolproof lineages
of European dynasties. Yet the illusion created by this fiction is so power
ful and evidently so enduringly persuasive that specialists of each intellec
tual generation since the publication of Genealogy ofMoralr have had to
reinvent Friedrich Nietzsches caustic demolition of origins in order to
make it their o w n .

Genealogies of Performance
As I hope my a c c o u n t of the impromptu concatenation of Rex and Zulu
has suggested, genealogies of performance documentand suspectthe
historical transmission and dissemination of cultural practices through col
lective representations. For this formulation, I am indebted to Jonathan
Aracs definition, applying Nietzsche and Foucault, of a critical geneal
ogy that aims to excavate the past that is necessary to a c c o u n t for how we
got here and the past that is useful for conceiving alternatives to o u r pre
sent condition (2). Genealogies of performance take from Foucaults
seminal essay in Hommage djean Hyppalite (1971) the assurance that dis
continuities rudely interrupt the succession of surrogates, who are them
selves the scions of a dubious bloodline that leads the genealogist back to
the m o m e n t of apparent origin in order to discover what is and is n o t
behind things: not a timeless and essential secret, but the secret that
they have no essence or that their essence was fabricated in a piecemeal
fashion from alien forms. . . . What is found at the historical beginning of
things is n o t the inviolable identity of their origin; it is the dissension of
other things. It is disparity (Foucault, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,
142). The practical experience of applying this principle suggests that it is
far m o r e hortatory than nihilistic.
Genealogies of performance attend n o t only to the body, as Foucault
suggests, but also to bodiesto the reciprocal reflections they make on one
anothers surfaces as they foreground their capacities for interaction.
26 H I S TO RY. M E M O R Y. A N D EERFORMANFI

Genealogies of performance also attend to counter-memories." ( ) r the di5

parities between history asit is discursively transmitted and memory asit is
publicly enacted by the bodies that bear its consequences. In the chapters
that follow I will be applying three principles that govern the practices of
memory and show how genealogies of performance may be analyzed:
kinesthetic imagination, vortices o f behavior, and displaced t r a n s m i s s i o n ,
Performance genealogies draw on the idea of expressive m o m a c m s as
mnemonic reserves, including patterned movements made and remembered
by bodies, residual movements retained implicitly in images or words ( o r in
the silences between them), and imaginary movements dreamed in minds,
n o t prior to language but constitutive of i t , a psychic rehearsal for Physical
actions drawn from a repertoire that culture provrdes. This r e p e r t o i r e has
been defined by the French historian Pierre N o r a as true memory, Which
he finds in gesrures and habits, in skills passed-down bylunspoken tradi
tions, in the bodys inherent self-knowledge, in unstudied reflexes and
ingrained memories (13). N o r a develops the idea of places of memory
(lieux dememoire), the
-
artificial sites of the
'
modern PI'Oduction of national
m e n t s of memor- .
and ethnic memory, 1n contrast to env1ron - 5 o f t r ad. y ("Illeux de
memoire), the largely oral and corporeal r e t e n t i o n l t l o n a ] C u ] tu r es.
Modernity is characterized asthe replfcemem 0f environments of m
by Places 0 f memory, t such a s archives,
o m away from them o movement of theme
n u m e n t s , and hiSIOry th .

returned; no longer (lime life, n o t Yit deathzlil-{eshells 0 [henslmre when I}:

sea of living memory has receded (l2) L i v m g mehmory r emains vari
ously resistant to this form of forgetting, however, I rough the trans is
sion of gestureS, habitS, and Skills- .
What Nora talks about here overlaps to a conSIderable degree With What
paul C o n n e r t o n , in his suggestive book How Soczetzes'ReTemer (I989)
describes asthe incorporating practice of memory, which 1s sedimented,
or amassed, in the body (72) Human agents draw on these reSoul-ces of
memory stored up (but also reinvented) 1nwhat'l Wlll call, stretching an old
t e r m to fit my purpose, the kinesthetic imagination. In this I am inspired by
the work of dance historians on the transmisswntand transformation) of
memory through movement. Taking together the Important Work of Mark
Franko in Dance as Text: Ideologies 0f 1/ Baroque 3045 ('993) and Susan
Foster in Stag/mg Bodies: TIze Choreography of Narrative and Gender in the
French Action Ballet (forthcoming), for instance, shows how ballet has dis_
seminated, transmitted, and contested social and even political attitudes
 H l fi l ' O R L M E M O R Y. A N D P E R F O R M A N C E 9
7

from the seventeenth century onward. Foster particularly demonstrates

how the dance can indeed be separated from the dancers asa transmittable
form, a kinesthetic vocabulary, one that can m o v e up and down the social
scale aswell asfrom one generation to the n e x t . She discloses the size of the
stakes in such mz'leux de memoire when she asks: D o n o t all records of
human accomplishment document the motions of bodies? The essays col
lected in jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburgs Cultural Hzlrtory of Ges
( a r e (1992) tend to answer Foster in the affirmative.

As a faculty of memory, the kinesthetic imagination exists interdepen

dently but by no means coextensively with other phenomena of social m e m
ory: written records, spoken narratives, architectural monuments, built
environments. Along with culturally specific affiliations such asfamily, reli
gion, and class, these forms constitute what Maurice Halbwachs calls the
social frameworks of memory (38). The kinesthetic imagination, however,
inhabits the realm of the virtual. Its truth is the truth of simulation, of fan
tasy, or of daydreams, but its effect on human action may have material c o n
sequences of the m o s t tangible s o r t and of the widest scope. This faculty,
which flourishes in that mental space where imagination and memory c o n
verge, i s a way o f thinking through m o v e m e n t s a t once remembered and
reinventedthe otherwise unthinkable, just asdance is often said to bea
way of expressing the unspeakable. The kinesthetic imagination exists to a
high degree of concentration in performers, and its effects will be obvious
in my a c c o u n t of the public reception of exemplary histrionics, such asthe
mourning womans leap into the grave at her grandmothers funeral in Ben
jamin Henry Latrobe 5 a c c o u n t of a creole funeral (chapter 2.), Thomas
Bettertons acting of Shakespeare (chapter 3), the Mohawk Kiotseaetons
handling of wampum strings at the Three Rivers treaty (chapter 4), Agnes
Robertsons transformative embodiment of the title role of D i o n Bouci
cault's The Octoroon (chapter 5), or the carnival tableaux of the Mistick
Krewe of Comus (chapter 6). But it also operates in the performance of
everyday life, consolidated by deeply ingrained habits and reinforced by
paradigmatic systems of behavioral memory such as law and custom.
Kinesthetic imagination is n o t only an impetus and method for the r e s t o r a
tion of behavior but also a means of its imaginative expansion through
those extensions of the range of bodily movements and puissances that
technological invention and specialized social organization can provide.
Technological invention (architectural innovation particularly) and
social organization c r e a t e what N o r a calls places or sites of memory
:8 HISTORY. MEMORY. A N D [hRFORMANt I:

ces of Per ormancc: 77'"

(1989), the urban confl

performative
"ludic space in Roland

miSSIOn .
locales_ Mco dltlons)
. h.
1n onsmutes the a Ptatlon
, of h '
ch Ore 11 "3h Popular h . IS0116 pracnces to
appens thro 3h tra 5 3w? are r '
 H U I O R Y . .\IIE.\10R\X:\.\'D PERFORMANCE .,9

reproduction of tradition. New traditions may also be invented and others

overturned. The paradox of the restoration of behavior resides in the phe
nomenon of repetition itself: no action or sequence of actions may be per
formed exactly the same way twice; they m U S t bereinvented or recreated at
each appearance. In this improvisatorial behavioral space, memory reveals
itself as imagination. The African-American tradition of signifyin(g),
for instance, asexplained by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., with reference to Jelly
Roll Mortons stomp variation on Scott Joplins rag (6388), and applied as
repetition with revision to Yoruba ritual by Margaret Thompson Drewal
(45), illuminates the theoretical and practical possibilities of restored
behavior n o t merely asthe recapitulation but asthe transformation of expe
rience through the displacement of its cultural forms.
Improvisation may even erupt into forms asostensibly conservative as
rimal- In her study of the dynamism, play, and agency of Yoruba etutu,
Drewal contests what she t e r m s the dominant notion in scholarly discourse
that ritual repetition is rigid, stereotypic, conventional, conseryative, invari
ant, uniform, redundant, predictable, and structurally static (Xiv). What
She describes in the dynamic performance practices of Yorubaland comple
ments Renato Rosaldos general assertion in Culture and Truth: T/ze Remak
ing OfSOCial Anabrsis (i989; rev. 1993) that ritual most often resembles a
busy intersection
l ' in ' unanticipated
' which ' or novel iunctures
. u' . may occur. In
.
cOntrast with the classic view, Rosaldo writes, which posns culture as a
self-contained whole made up of coherent patterns, culture can arguably be
c0Ilceived asa more porous array of intersections where distinct processes
crisscross from within and beyond its borders (20). Theicharacteristically
performative circum-Atlantic image of the busy intersection evokes what I
am calling the behavioral vortex where cultural transmission may be
detoured, deflected, or displaced. The are of memory suggested h here, les
a t r of
a
jectory launched by sustained contact and exchange among t e PeoP
the Atlantic world, is charted by accounts of improvisation rangingglf'rc/cim
StePhen Greenblatts in Renaisrance Self-Fashioning.- From More to I a e
{peare (1980) to Paul Berliners in Thin/ring z'rzjafia T/ze lnfint:Art :Jinmsir;
Vlkaio" (1994:)- The spirit of syncretism and bricolalge "1 :Zfiag ara
inVentive displacements finds an elegant summation in Franz d. pt
1316, a vivid instance of the derivation of essence from the 5:63 11:)ng
Copulation of alien forms: Leopards break intothe temPIfa irfiinallmit ca:
sacrificial chalices dry; this occurs repeatedly, again and again. yned in
be rECkOned o r i beforehand and becomes part of the ceremony (qu
3O HISTORY. M E M O R Y. A N D PERFORMANFE

cf. Kertzer). Describing the subversive paradox of memory as

States, 4 0 ;
performancethat repetition ischangePeggy Phelan, in Unmarked. T/ze
Politics ofPerformance (1993), speaks of the possibility of "representation
without reproduction (3; cf. Michie). I argue in the following Chapters that
this possibility becomes aninevitability under historic conditiOns of whole
salesurrogation: careless acolytes leave the temple gates aiar; leoPards work
up powerful thirsts; and, for good or ill, the befuddled celebrants c o m e to
embrace desperate contingencies as timeless essentials.
A genealogy Of Performance for the circum-Atlantic world is therefo
an intricate unraveling of the putative seamlessness of origins. It is at 0 re,
a map of diasporic diffusions in space and aspeculation on the S)'nthesiS c:
mutation of traditions through time (Bayarin), Behind this Doric of an
cific continuities and ruptures operates a more general conception (ifSPe
conception can be more general than a performance genealogy foragz
oceanic interculture). That generality, if I may be allowed it, goes 5O m e
thing like this: what I amcalling the. circumAtlantic . world w a s itself a va
behavioral v o r t e x , the forces of Whlch created c e r t a i n characteristic p a ttelns St
te y ,
that continue to influence values and practices still e x t a n t today. Admit dl
another body of evidence, drawn from different sites or from the Same .
at different times, would have yielded other prioritiesvery different oSites,
perhaps, but I suspect n o t wholly different. That is so, I am argUing, bee nes
the mutually interdependent performances of circum-Atlantic menjzfe 3
remain visible, audible, and kinesthetically palpable to those who Walk in he t
cities along its historic rim.
u c t performances dependS
The status of the evidence required to reconstr
on the success of t w o necessarily problematic proceduresspectatin
tattling. This is n o t a disclaimer. Often the best hedge against amnegsiand
gossip, a claim that the following juicy tidbit might serve to clarify_ In $7115
obviously a slow news day, Ad disc:
Spectator, no. So (Friday, June 1, 1711), two Rivals for the Reputation of
recountsthe tale of Phillis and Brunetta,
entions of the marriage
Beauty (1:343). Vying with o n e another for the a r t
able bachelors in London, both succeed after an intense campaign Waged
with beautiful gowns and strategic flirtations, in marrying wealthy w
Indian sugar planters, nextdoor neighbors in Barbados, whither the new?
weds sail. Once there, the jealousy of Phillis and Brunetta escalates wif};
every provincial ball. The former seems to steal a march on the latter Add'
son relates, when a ship from London arrives carrying a Brocade more
geous and costly than had ever before appeared inthat Latitude. Phillisgil;
 H I S TO RY. M E M O R Y. A N D P E R F O R M A N C E 3|

consignee, gloats and preens. Brunetta fumes and rages until a r e m n a n t of

the dreaded brocade falls into her hands: she then appears at the publick
Ball in a plain black Silk Mantua, attended by abeautiful Negro Girl in a Pet
ticoat of the same Brocade with which Phillis was attired. Phillis swoons.
She then flees the ball in chagrined despair, to depart the West Indies forever
on the n e x t ship home (1:344).
Many things could be said about Addisons misogynistic anecdote: that
its semiosis of conspicuous consumption recapitulates the triangular trade
in material goods and human flesh, for instance, or that w o m e n and their
erotic o r n a m e n t s come to symbolize and embody the astonishing super
abundance created (and then maldistributed) by such circumAtlantic
argosies. These possibilities, including the role of womens clothed and
unclothed bodies as commodified signifiers of abundance and fecundity,
will be taken up elsewhere. For the moment, however, there is one salient
point to consider: the tale 5 meaning asgossip can flourish only in a partic
ular kind of world, one in which racial surrogation operates as a potent
social threat. In their performance of everyday life, the transoceanic
micropolitics of rival pulchritudes, Phillis and Brunetta require the s t r a t e
gic availability of a beautiful Negro Girl. They need a cameo appearance
from her to tip the balance and bring their hateful little revenge comedy to
its mock-catastrophic end. To perform asprotagonists of gendered white
ness they m u s t rely on an unnamed black antagonist, who, like millions of
indispensable actors in the dramas of the circum-Atlantic world, remains
forgotten but n o t gone.
 That which weremember is, more ofien than n o t ,
that which we would like to have 62:91,- or that w/u'c/x we [rope to be.
RALPH ELLISON

THE lOlGNANCY or RALPH ELLISONS ACCOUNT OF MEMORY RESIDES IN ITS

identification of amnesia asthe inspiration to imagine the future. Like per

formance, memory operates asboth quotation and invention, an improvisa
tion on borrowed themes, with claims on the future as well as the past.
Where time is sculpted ascogently asit is through performance, a longing
for clear beginnings (cognate to origins) accompanies an even more pro
nounced desire for the telos of perfect closure. From the heritage of tragic
drama in the West, I believe, circum-Atlantic closures especially favor c a t
astrophe, a word rife with kinesthetic imagination, which carries forward
through time the memory of a movement, a downward turning, redolent
of violence and fatality but also of agency and decision. Like catastrophe,
with which it often coincides, the illusory scene of closure that Eurocentrists
call memory (whats done is done) incites emotions that t u r n toward the
future, in aspiration no less than in dread (God 5 will be done). The
choreography of catastrophic closureFortinbras arrives, Aeneas departs,
Creon remainsoffers a way of imagining what m u s t come n e x t aswell as
what has already happened. Under the seductive linearity of its influence,
memory operates asan alternation between retrospection and anticipation
that is itself, for better or worse, a work of art.
34 ECHOES IN THE B O N E

This chapter borrows its title from An Echo in the Bone (1974). a play by
the late Jamaican dramatist Dennis Scott. Scott uses the s t r u c t u r e of the
Nine-Night Ceremony, which, through the ritual magic of the jamaican
practice of obeah, welcomes the spirit of a deceased person back i n t o his or
her home on the ninth night after death has occurred. Restoring the behav
iors pertaining to spirit-world t r a n c e and possession, the playwright shows
how the voices of the dead may speak through the bodies of the living. He
enlarges on the Ninth Night r e t u r n of one recently departed soul in order to
populate the stage with spirits resurrected from the depths of c i r c u m
Atlantic memory, including m a s t e r s and their human chattel on a slave ship
off the coast of Africa in 1792, the traders and the traded in a slave aUCtion
eers office in 1820, a defiant band of Maroons, and the white and black
inhabitants of a Jamaican Sugar plantation, past and present. Errol H i l l , in
the epilogue to his path-breaking jamaican Stage, 162551900: Profile ofa
Colonial Theatre (1992), places AnEcho in the Bone in the complex hiStorical
context of Caribbean performance traditions, including amateur and p r o
fessional productions of Shakespeare in colonial Kingston and Afrocemric
spirit-world rituals such asNine Night. Like Hamlez,.a particular favorite of
Kingston audiences since the eighteenth c e n t u r y ( H i l l , peSSim), An Echo in
the Bone dramatizes the cultural politics of memory, particularly ast
hey are
realized through communications between the living and the dead.
It is precisely the politics of communicating With the dead that co nCern
megenerally in the following chapters and m o s t urgently in the PreSen
t One.
Echoes in the bone refer n o t only to ahistory of forgetting but to a Stiate
of empowering the living through the performance of memory, In
History: Social Revolution in the Novel: of George Lamming (fOrthc
Mathis;
Supriya Nair stresses the importance of obeah and vodun as IC'Sistawhine),
m prac-
tices in the Caribbean: Haiti provides the obvious but far from
example of an imagined diasporic community coalescing arOun the Sole
world memories and performances (James); similar claims have be
d Spirit-
6 made
for voodoo and hoodoo in N e w Orleans (Mulira), claims that recc,
gnize the
Ceremony of Souls n o t asnostalgia but ashidden agenda. If Fra
m2 Fanon
remained skeptical about the political edge of vodun (Wretchedof the Earth
5558), Lamming himself, in a passage illustrative of the circulatiOn of Cir:
cum-Atlantic performance genres, evokes ShakesPeare s Hamlet to desc r i be
the revolutionary potential of the spirit-world presence: I f that PreSErtce
beno more than aghost, then it is like the ghost that haunted Hamlet, order
ing memory and imagination to define and do their duty (125),
 E C H O E S I N THE B O N E 35

In c o n t r a s t to the linear narrative of catastrophe so powerfully present in

Western tragic drama, however, spirit-world ceremonies, celebrations of
the cycle of death and life, tend to place catastrophe in the past, asa grief to
be expiated, and n o t necessarily in the future, as a singular fate yet to be
endured. In this they closely resemble the great Condolence Councils of the
Iroquois, the action of which culminates in a Lifting Up of Minds, t r a n s
forming dysphoria into euphoria (Fenton, 19; Myerhoff; Radcliffe
Brown). An Eclto in tlze Bone ends n o t in the obligatory fifth-act carnage of
revenge tragedythe die is cast, the cast m u s t diebut in celebration:
Play, a devotee tells the drummer, for what [we] leave behind. Play for
the r e s t of us." The playwright brings down the curtain only W/zen tlze
stage is full oft/zeir celebration, somew/zere in the ritual (13637). This affir
mation contests the closure of investing the future with the fatality of the
past, a position more easily maintained by those whose communication with
their a n c e s t o r s was continuous, dynamic, and intimate. However strange
such relations may appear to some, in world-historical t e r m s they are a c t u
ally quite normal. To educate the reader of Things FallApart (1958) to this
fact, Chinua Achebe dramatizes the regularity of the ancestors return, n o t
as supernumeraries to the apocalypse but as an annual board of visitors
(6266). In such circumstances, memory circulates and migrates like gossip
from location to location aswell asfrom generation to generation, growing
or attenuating as it passes through the hands of those who possess it and
those whom it possesses. As Achebe expresses the commonsense negotia
tion of propinquity and difference: Spirits always addressed humans as
bodies (64).
In the v o r t e x of the circum-Atlantic world since the late seventeenth cen
tury, the peculiarity of the development of European memory with regard
to ancestral spirits is conspicuous. Later on in this chapter, I examine the
n a t u r e of that peculiarity by reconstructing memorial performances of dif
ferent kinds at several apparently unconnected sites: the mythic evocation of
Englands Mediterranean origins in Henry Purcells opera Dido and Aeneas
(1689), the segregation of the dead from the living aspromulgated by urban
planners in London (171]) and New Orleans (1721), the interactive adapta
tion of African burial practices under the French Code noir in Louisiana
(after 1724), the slave dances of Congo Square (ca. 1820), and, briefly, the
emergent secular sainthood of a gifted but derivative rhythm-andblues
singer (ca. 1954). Before those performances can be addressed asif they do
somehow in fact belong to the same world, however,I need to define agen
36 ECHOES IN THE B O N E

eral phenomenon of collective memory that functions in all of them: the

effigy. The effigy is a contrivance that enables the processes regulating per
formancekinesthetic imagination, vortices of behavior, and displaced
transmissionto produce memory through surrogation. Moreover, the
effigy operates in all the cultural constructions of e v e n t s and institutions
that I define ascentral to circum-Atlantic memory: death and burials, v i o
lence and sacrifices, commodification and auctions, laws and (dis)obedi
ence, origins and segregation.

The Effigy
Normal usage employs the word efl'zgy asa n o u n meaning asculpted or pic
tured likeness. More particularly it can suggest acrudely fabricated image of
a person, commonly one that is destroyed in his or her stead, asin hanging
or burning in effigy. When effigy appears asa verb, though that usage is
rare, it means to evoke an absence, to body something fOrth, especially
something from a distant past (OED)- 51973.7. c o g n a t e t0 efi'zcienqy3 efli
cacy, eflrvescence, and eflmiflag through t h e " mutual comKiCtion to i deas
of producing, bringing forth, bringing out, and making. Efligys Simil
arity
to performance should be clear enough. If fills by means 0f SUrrOgation a
vacancy created by the absence of anoriginal. Beyond ostensibly inanimat
effigies fashioned from wood or cloth, there are more elusive bUt "10 e
powerful effigies fashioned from flesh. Such effigtes are made by Pei-f re
mances. They consist of a s e t of actions that hold open a Place in The o r
into which many different people may step according to cichmStancemorY
occasions. I argue that performed effigiesthose fabricated from h Sand
bodies and the associations they evoke~provide commuDities Wfn}:an
method of perpetuating themselves through specially nominated medlt a
or surrogates: among them, actors, dancers, prieSIS, street maskers stiums
men, celebrities, freaks, children, and especially, by virtue of an inten 3:8
unsurprising paradox, corpses. No doubt that is why effigies figllre sef ut_
quently in the performance of death through mortuary rimalsfianzowfy
the ambivalence assodated with the dead m u s t enter into any discussion of
the relationship between memory, performance, and substitution,
From the work of Emile Durkheim and Sir James Frazer on, the anthro
pological classics have given great weight to the revelatory meanings of
funerary ceremonies and practices among diverse cultures. In his retrospec
tive preface to the 192.2 edition of TheGolden Bong/z, Frazer summarized the
 E C H O E S I N THE B O N E 37

importance of this subject to his entire project: the fear of the human
dead, he w r o t e , n o t vegetation worship, was the m o s t powerful force in
the making of primitive religion (vii). In Arnold van Genneps seminal
formulation of death asa rite of passage, the binary distinction that creates
t w o categories, dead and alive, simultaneously creates in its interstices a
threefold process of living, dying, and being dead. The middle state (dying,
or m o r e expressively, passing) is the less stable stage of transition
between m o r e clearly defined conditions: it is called the liminal (literally,
threshold) stage, and it tends to generate the m o s t intense experiences of
ritual expectancy, activity, and meaning. As further developed by Victor
Turner, the concept of liminalirya state of berwixt-and-betweenness, a
subjunctive mood in the grammar of communal activitycharacterizes
as social dramas those behaviors in which normative categories are trans
gressed or suspended only to be reaffirmed by ritual processes of reincor
poration (Forest of Symbols, 94).
Turner and others have hypothesized that celebrations of death function
asrites of social renewal, especially when the decedents occupy positions to
which intense collective attention is due, such asthose of leaders or kings.
Digressing on the power of royal corpses in their survey of the anthropol
ogy of death, Richard Huntington and Peter Metcalf (to whom I am much
indebted for the materials relating to mortuary ritual in this section) explain:
I t seems that the m o s t powerful natural symbol for the continuity of any
community, large or small, simple or complex, is, by a strange and dynamic
paradox, to be found in the death of its leader, and in the representation of
that striking event (182). It is also in connection with the death of its leader
or another similarly august luminary that a community is likely to construct
an effigy, animate or inanimate. As the Mande proverb elegantly sums up:
I t takes m o r e than death to make anancestor.
The rich anthropological literature on this subject includes such classics
as Frazers account, revised by E. E. Evans-Pritchard, of ritual regicide
among the Shilluk people of the Upper Nile (the Shilluks replaced the fail
ing body of their king with a wooden effigy until a successor could be
named). It likewise includes parallel studies of the Dinkas of southern
Sudan, who buried their Chieftain alive during what they took to be his final
illness (Deng). These practices, which define asintolerable the decay of the
body of the leader, resemble in certain respects the tribal customs of the
French and the English, including the British policy of early recall of colo
nial civil servants (before they reached the age of fifty-five) so that the
38 ECHOES IN THE B O N E

locals would never see their European governors falling i n t o illness or

decrepitude (Said, 42). Such practices derive from the venerable principle of
divine kingship. They answer the need to symbolize the inviolate continuity
of the body politic (Huntington and Metcalf, 12183). They do so by dra
matizing aduality, acore of preternatural durability invested within a shell
of human vulnerability (Soyinka). This paradox of immortality amid phys
ical decay symbolically asserts the divinely authorized continuity of human
institutions while recognizing their inherent fragility. It also discovers the
profoundly ambivalent emotions human beings harbor for the dead, who
once belonged among the living but who n o w inhabit some alien c o u n t r y
whose citizens putrefy yet somehow endure.
In English and French history particularly, this paradox finds expression
in the strange doctrine of the king's t w o bodies. As documented and
explicated by Ernst Kantorowicz, the legal fiction that the king had n o , o n e
but t w o bodiesthe body natural and the body PaliiCdGVeloped o u t of
medieval Christology (the corporeal duality of M a n and God) and into an
increasingly pragmatic and secular principle of sovereign succesSiOn and
legal continuity (Giesey; Kantorowicz). Tudor lawyers found it a Particu
larly useful way of holding Queen Elizabeth, for instance, to the grants of
property made by Edward VI during his minority. They a r g u e d that whil
the boy-kings body natural may have been sublect to the infirmities e
even imbecilities of age, his body politic w a s aIWays both adult :2:
immortal.
By means of explicit enactments through the disposition
remains, the doctrine of the kings t w o bodies materialized into a of royal
SPectaCu
lar stagecraft: beginning with the funeral of Edward II in 1327,
the dead king was representedby a wooden effigy; with interruPthns Occa
sioned by the turbulence of the Wars of Roses, this practicc, lUXtaPOSi
image of the indestructibility of the kings sovereign body With the dinglan
of his rotting human corpse, lasted until Charles II in England and the :13. ay
of Louis X I V in France. In the protocols of royal funerals, this Vener:lbgln
contradiction added to the ritualized public announcement, The kin i:
dead, an only apparently inapposite salutation addressed to the deceagsed
incumbent: Long live the king. The supposed legacy of SUCh S y m b o l i c
immutabilityits livingeffigyis the concept of a constitutional diffusion
and continuity of governmental power, an enduring body politic under
the rule of law.
The principle of surrogation clearly operates here, as a m y s t e r i o u s but
 ECllOlIb IN THE BONE 39

powerful sense of affiliation pervades the community on the occasion of its

m o s t consequential single loss. That sense of affiliation holds open a place
into which tradition injects the rituals of ultimate reincorporation, the
crowning of a successor. But in the place that is being held open there also
exists an invisible network of allegiances, interests, and resistances that con
stitutes the imagined community. In that place also is a breeding ground of
anxieties and uncertainties about what that community should becontra
dictory emotions that focus a range of potentially phobic responses on the
body of the deceased. Such contradictory responses do n o t unfold all at
once. Death, as it is culturally constructed by surrogacy, c a n n o t be under
stood asa m o m e n t , a point in time: it is aprocess.
One crucial aspect of death asa process resides in the conception of mar
ginality itself. In the creative scope of liminal categories, periphery and cen
t e r may seem to change places. Peter Stallybrass and Allen White, in their
excursus beyond Hegels master-slave dyad, accurately describe this rever
sal n o t only of dependency but of contested and appropriated location:
The result is a mobile, conflictual fusion of power, fear and desire in the
construction of subjectivity: a psychological dependence upon precisely
those Others which are being rigorously opposed and excluded at the social
level. It is for this reason that what is socially peripheral issofrequently sym
bolically central (5). This phenomenon operates in many different ways,
but o n e pattern tends to recur: a contradictory push and pull develops as
communities c o n s t r u c t themselves by both expanding their boundaries and
working back in from them. They pull back by excluding or subordinating
the peoples those larger boundaries ostensibly embrace. Such contradictory
intentions remain tolerable because the myth of coherence at the c e n t e r
requires aconstantly visible yet constantly receding perimeter of difference.
Sometimes this perimeter is a horizon; more often it is a mirage. Its mythic
and potentially bloody frontiers m u s t becontinuously negotiated and rein
vented, even as its m o s t alarmist defenders panic before the specter of its
permeability.
That is why performances in general and funerals in particular are so
rich in revealing contradictions: because they make publicly visible
through symbolic action both the tangible existence of social boundaries
and, at the same time, the contingency of those boundaries on fictions of
identity, their shoddy construction o u t of inchoate otherness, and, conse
quently, their anxiety-inducing instability. From this perspective, the
funerals of performers provide particularly promising sites for investiga
4o ECHOES IN THE B O N E

tion because they involve figures whose very profession, itself alternately
ostracized and overvalued, entails frequent transitions between s t a t e s and
categories. Performers are routinely pressed into service as e ffigies, their
bodies alternately adored and despised but always offered up on the altar
of surrogacy.
The history of what happens at troubled borders needs no reiteration,
but the theory of the effigy can clarify the n a t u r e of the violence they both
provoke and exculpate. In Violence and the Sacred ([972), Rene Girard
explores the propensity for violence in human societies through an exami
nation of what he calls the monstrous double in rituals of sacrifice. The
double displaces violent desire to an agenda of disguises. Girard delineates
the contradictory impulses that create the monstrous double": the sacrifi
cial victim m u s t be neither divisive n o r trivial, neither fully p a r t of the c o m
munity n o r fully outside of i t ; rather, he or she m u s t be distanced by a spe
cial identity that specifies isolation while simultaneously allowing plausible
surrogation for a member of the community- This OCCurs in a tWO-staged
process: the community finds a surrogate victim for itself from Within itsel{
then it finds an alien substitute, like an effigy, for the surrOgate_ This is the
monstrous double (16064). . '
Behind Girards formulation of the deflection of ritual Vi1nce fr 0m the
heart of the community to the sacrificeable double and its critique (B10ch;
Burkert; Detienne and Vernaht) lies the tradition defined by MaICel
Mallsss
a c c o u n t of potlatch in The Giff. Forms and Functions of Exchange in
Societies (1924), redefined by Georges Bataille in The ACCursed 8/; AFC/mic
Essay onGeneral Economy (I967), and reopened in a different Ie .Gre; An
Jacques Derrida in Given Time (1992). Although he Cites Batailleglster by
passing (222), Girards idea that sacrificial violence OPCrates as a :nly In
expenditure through which society prolongs its sense of cohelenCe an: of
of a threat of divisive substitutions owes its understanding of eXCess t1n hace
In an economy where products accumulate more rapidly than the :3 irhn.
consumed, Bataille observed, people take an interest in relieving th: c2 e
quent pressure by excess or unproductive expenditure. In agift ec nse
O n o m y,
however, unproductive expenditure is hardly purposeless. Where cultural
values such asprestige are exchanged as well as goodS, as Ariun Appadurai
explains his introduction to The Social Life of Things: CornmoditieJ 1-,, Cu[_
turalPenpectz'i/e (1986), reciprocity ensures that ones desire for an object
is fulfilled by the sacrificeof some other object, which is the focus of desire
of another (3). Lewis Hyde, in The 61' t: Imagination and the Erotic Life of
 ECIlOES IN THE B O N E 4r

Property (1979), reiterates the venerable comparison of the economy of sac

rifice to the circulation of blood, which, like a gift, is neither bought nor
sold and it comes back forever (138). This chapter and those that follow
explore the ways in which the restored behavior of sacrificial expenditure
functions in an expanding circum-Atlantic marketplace filled with com
modities of all kinds. These include the sale of human flesh at public auc
tion and the concomitant commerce in images and representations of such
exchanges that complicate the meaning of efl'zw' with that of ftir/z.
For my purposes here, however, a stark definition emerges from
Bataille s meditations on catastrophic expenditure: violence is the perfor
mance of waste. To that definition 1 offer three corollaries: first, that vio
lence is never senseless but always meaningful, because violence in human
culture always serves, one way or the other, to make a point; second, that all
violence is excessive, because to be fully demonstrative, to make its point, it
m u s t spend thingsmaterial objects, blood, environments--in acts of
Bataillian unproductive expenditure (or Veblenian conspicuous con
sumption); and third, that all violence is performative, for the simple rea
son that it m u s t have anaudienceeven if that audience is only the victim,
even if that audience is only God.
In the circum-Atlantic economy of superabundance, violence occupies a
portion of the cultural category that includes the aesthetic. Both represent a
form of excess production and expenditure of social energy; that is, outside
the relatively rare instances of spontaneous self-defense, violence and the
preparations for violence, like the aesthetic, exist as a form of cultural
expression that goes beyond the utilitarian practices necessary to physical
survival. Whether this excess expenditure is itself an absolute necessity in
the establishment of what we call culture is another question, but it incor
porates the production of any o r n a m e n t of culturefrom Iroquois face
and body painting to a coupler by Alexander Popeinto a symbolic econ
omy of performance that mobilizes the beautiful in the cause of the only
apparently disinterested. Here the common usage of efl'zgy asthe surrogate
for violence perpetrated on an absent victim brings together Girards
notions of sacrifice with the idea of the functional similarity of violence and
the aesthetic: burning in effigy is aperformance of waste, the elimination
of a monstrous double, but one fashioned by artifice as a stand-in, an
unproductive expenditure that both sustains the community with the
comforting fiction that real borders exiSt and troubles it with the spectacle
of their immolation.
42 ECHOES IN THE BONE

Performing Origins
Wistfully portrayed by musicologists as sui generis, Henry Purcells Dido
andAeneas descends asthe masterpiece without progeny in the abortive his
tory of English national opera. Whatever its s t a t u s as an atypical work in
the theatrical and musical history of England, I interpret i t , like the Zulu
parade in New Orleans, asa representative e v e n t in the genealogy of cir
cum-Atlantic performance. This enactment of encounter, r u p t u re. and
dynastic establishment premiered in an a m a t e u r production By Yo u n g
Gentlewomen at Josias Priests school in Chelsea in 1689 ( P u r c e l l and
Tate, 3). With the education of girls then something of a luxury expendi
t u r e in any case, the production of an opera for their improvement and exhi
bition evokes Veblen if n o t Bataille. B u t the performance of Wa s t e is never
senseless. In aneconomy of slaveproduced abundance, expensive young
women may come to signify the importance 0f excess itself, the symbolic
crossing point of material production/ consumption and reproductive
fecundity. Dido and Aeneas opened the same year that James II involuntar
ily turned his interest in the Royal Africa Company, fOl-mded by his brother
Charles in i672, over to its ambitious i n v e s t o r s and sailed aWay (Calder,
347). There has been informed speculation about the local Plitica1alle O
of Dido and Aeneas relating to the royal successron and Williamite grry
(Buttrey; Price, introduction to Purcell
. . Tate,, 612), but
and _m Po i c y
cal reading resituates the opera, like K i n g Zulu s processmn
mance of cultural memory amid conflicting performances of Origin
By performance of origin I mean the reenactment 0f fOUndat
along t w o general axes of possibility: the diasporic, Which feBtu [ o n myths
tion, and the autochthonous, which claims indigenOus roots dee res migra
memory itself. These myths may coexist or compete Within the Sarge!- than
tion; indeed, they often do. In RacialMyt/z in Englggfi History,- Tro _ae tradi_
tons, and Anglo-Saxon: (1982), Hugh A. MacDOuga explains} has, Tea
contradictory theories of national origin shaped the ethnic fiction 2; t w o
lishness. The first, which attributed the founding of Britain (and indefatig
name) to the Trojan prince Brute (or Brutus), dominated medieval historl'if
ographies of origin. The Trojan myth began with Brute s OdYSSey by a c i r
cuitous circum-Atlantic r o u t e to Albion. It then ascended through the
Arthurian legends of Celtic Britain to support the historic claims of British
monarchs to anepic-born legitimacy rivaling that of Rome. Though it had
lost ground to modernizing historical research in the sixteenth and seven
teenth centuries, the Trojan-Arthurian myth still resonated in the efforts of
 E C H O E S I N THE B O N E 43

John Dryden, Henry Purcell, Nahum Tate, and others to create an English
national opera, including the semiopera King Arthur aswell asthe through
composed Dido and Aeneas.
The second narrative of national origin, to which I will r e t u r n in the n e x t
chapter, claims greater historicity and yet remains at heart no less a myth. It
traces the origins of Britain to Germanic peoples, namely the Anglo-Sax
ons, and it attributes the supposedly unique Liberty of Englishmen and
English institutions to the fierce independence and ethnic purity of the Teu
tonic races (MacDougall). Perhaps the m o s t virulent expression of this ver
sion of Anglo-Saxon revisionism came from Richard Verstegen in the Resti
tution ofDecayed Intelligence in Antiquities Concerning the Most Noble and
RenownedEnglish Nation (1605), the very title of which asserts the reclama
tion of anindigenous heritage.
As evocations of the past, both myths of originthe diasporic and the
autochthonousalso suggest alternatives for the future. These alternatives
inevitably raise the question of surrogation: diaspora tends to put pressure
onautochthony, threatening its imputed purity, both antecedent and succes
sive, because it appears to make available a human superabundance for
mutual assimilation. At this promising yet dangerous juncture, catastrophe
may reemerge from memory in the shape of a wish.
The libretto of Dido is by Nahum Tate, better remembered for his neo
classical improvements to King Lear and his consummately tactless revival
of Richard 11in 1681 at aparticularly tense m o m e n t of the Exclusion Crisis.
In fact, several of Tate 5 works for the stage derive directly or indirectly
from the materials in Geoffrey of Monmouths Hiringof the Kings of Britain
(ca. 3 6 ) , a narrative from which he grafted some details o n t o the fourth
book of Virgils Aeneid to produce the Dido libretto. In the 1670s Tate had
begun a play based on the Dido and Aeneas story, but hedecided instead to
adapt the plot to fit the epic voyages of the legendary Brute, Aeneass
grandson (or greatgrandson in some versions). In this play, called Brutus of
Aliza; or, The EnchantedLovers (1678), the hero loves and leaves the queen
of Syracuse in the same way that Aeneas abandons the queen of Carthage:
the grandfather sails away to found Rome; the grandson, according to
Tate s dramatization of Geoffrey of Monmouths a c c o u n t of the oral tradi
tion, sails away to found Britain. Tate then returned to the Aeneas-version
when heprovided Purcell with a libretto a decade later, but the t w o stories
echo one another as hauntingly as the echo-chorus in the witches scene,
which itself doubles the actions of the Carthaginian c o u r t (Savage, 26366),
44 ECHOES IN THE B O N E

culminated by an Eccho Dance of Furies. As each end phrase repeats in

the dematerialized voices of an off-stage chorus, lithe spirits choreograph
the fated catastrophe:
In our deep-vaulted cell the charm we l l prepare,
To o dreadful a practice for this open air.
(Purcell and Tate, 7 o )

Operas of the time, in addition functioning as allegories of national or

dynastic origin, typically employed witches: Davenants musical version of
Shakespeares Macetlz, for instance, qualified to contemporaries as being
in the nature of an Opera by this reckoning (Downes, 7 1 ; see Plank). As in
the West Indian deployment of obeah and vodun, works of the political
occult like Dido andAeneas and Macbeth thus appropriated the echoing Spirit
world to the secular allegory of imagined community. WitCheS, like the spir
its of the dead, allowed those among the living to speak of (and Yet dis
avow) the hidden transcript of succession: in 1689 the Exclusion Crisis to
which Tate had contributed nine years befOre, w a s finally resolved ,by
means of revolution.A crisis of royal succeSSiO" is perforce a crisis of cul
tural surrogation, necessarily rich in performative occasions and allegories
of origin and segregation.
The epic account of the Trojan Brute, with i t s echoes of Virgil narrates
the transoceanic movement of empire o u t of the Mediterraneanan
dinto the
Atlantic. F r o m Geoffrey of Monmouths version, it may be inferre
d that this
story lived in anoral memory, asan epic of diasporic origin. In St
asHomer
and the tragic dramatists recorded and celebrated what they Saw a
5 the e n o r
mans, epochal shift of cultural and political gravity aWay from
the Asiatic
world to the Mycenaean, and just asVirgil immortalized the Simjl
m e n t o u t from the Aegean into the larger world Of mare Ostruri: move
poets, dramatists, and storytellers of the early modern Period Co idSo the
again poetically witness a transfer of the imperial vortex from itsuh- once
locus. Old King Brute of the chronicles made himself useful to h'lStoru:
gory of Atlantic destiny. t ls alle
One vision of the role of Great Britain in the diasporic Scheme of hemi
spheric memory took the form of an Augustan ascendancy to the Roman
imperium, which would, in the fullness of time, itself be replaced by n e w
and vital cultures. As Horace Walpole w r o t e : The n e x t Augustan age will
dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will perhaps be a Thucydides
at Boston, aXenophon at N e w York, and in time, a Virgil in Mexico, and
 E C H O E S I N THE B O N E 45

a Newton at Peru. At last some curious traveller from Lima will visit Eng
land and give adescription of the ruins of St. Paul's (Walpole, 24:6162).
The conception of history asa v a s t performance of diaspora and surroga
tion haunts intercultural musings such as Walpole s, which transform
invented pasts into gloriously catastrophic futures. Such a conception
looks ahead to those who will someday prove worthy to become an audi
ence for the spectacle of o u r ruin, as we have proven ourselves worthy
spectators of the ruins of Troy, Rome, or Carthage. Just as Brute stands in
for Aeneas at Britains founding, so the transatlantic colonists stand in for
Brute. The imperial measurement of human time by millennia in evidence
here requires a m o m e n t of contemplation: Charles II chartered the Royal
Africa Company, which operated the slave-taking forts on the Guinea
Coast, for one thousand years, its patent to expire in A . D . 2672. The impe
rial m e a s u r e m e n t o f identity i n evidence here requires another m o m e n t :
even more ethnocentric than the desire to replace others or the fear of
being replaced by them is the assumption that their desire is to become
what we are.
Although Africa in fact plays a hinge role in turning the Mediterranean
centered consciousness of European memory into anAtlantic-centered one,
the scope of that role largely disappears. Yet it leaves its historic traces amid
the incomplete erasures, beneath the superscriptions, and within the layered
palimpsests of m o r e or less systematic cultural misrecognition. This epic
Dido, no less than King Zulu, performs, though in a different way. Moving
from the Mediterranean world to the Atlantic in its doubled narrative of
Trojan heroes, Tate s mythic reiteration of origins, an evocation of collec
tive memory, hinges on the narrative of abandonment, a public perfor
mance of forgetting.
In the score 5 m o s t stunning m o m e n t of musical declamation, which pre
pares for the death of the forsaken Afro-Phoenician queen and the obser
vances performed over her body, Tate gave Purcell adeceptively simple line
to set. As Aeneas sets sail for Rome and empire, Didos last words seem to
speak for the victims of transoceanic ambitions: Remember me, but ah!
forget my fate (Purcell and Tate, 75). Dido pleads that she may be remem
bered asa w o m a n even asthe m o s t pertinent events of her story are erased,
a sentiment that m o r e appositely expresses the agenda of the departing Tr o
jans. Drydens translation of Virgil catches the drama of this m o m e n t of
decision and catastrophe, an evocation of memory with designs onan apoc
alyptic future:
46 scnocs IN THE BONE

they saW
T111 nelther fires nor shlnmg shores
Now seas and shes their prospect only bound;
Anempty space above, afloating field around

AsAeneas casts apartinglook back to the r (Dryden, Vzrgtl I16)

lence fuses
memory and for ising Pillarof smokea h. , m
, bivil'
enacts the historic tendency getting into
emotions of dee

to drama ' ' . m the laws ofitual expectancy'

hospttallty
, . [hat
fatted calf, the gif
 [ ( l l t l i fi I N THE O N E 47

cm ~. . Iwed/dings.
Wlmetdd:psepc;:lilsylil\Vifii _ The only agreement about the origin of

itthewasnt Euro
Indians ofpPan an:1]:
e' C3 C econa
t 1a}: and
it drove the Italians datum, however, is that
women crazy. Spaniards attributed it to
mythical iSIand em or per aps the West indies, where it gave its name to a
BCaucham (11;: utopia also called Cucana (or, in English. Cockaigne).
Africa (Wine, renc1dancmg master, confidently traced the chaconne to
7303; McClary, 87).
Whatever the precise history of the chaconne across four continents, the
ngzpziifunsglsaigt its pCoinltfbof origin suggest its-emergence o u t of the
a finishing schoorl for dd:1qu0:32. Itialssmilaltion i n t o the musrcal life of
domeSticatiOn and c g . f }111g 15i merc tants suggests the 1nv151ble
duce, which like suonsurinption o t effitlantic triangle svast cultural pro
SYFUP into :hite 0:22;: tfiturelsfl aced, metamorphoszd frlom brown
final lament State? 1 , dn 11on y t i e sweetness remaine . T tat Dido s
from a for g y tireno y tiiat it is , derives ltS cadences and musncal style
meaning {Ed} en Native American or African form lends aneerily doubled
6 queen s invocation of memory as her lover sails boldly away
{mm the coast of Africa bound for amnesia.

The Segregation of the Dead

digit: 1303.! With the living and the dead," Dryden explains in the intro
further to his translation of The Aeneid (lxiv). The argument to book six
returni prplmises the reader that the sibyl will prophesy the heros future by
keeps 2g Im.to the past via adetour to the afterlife. This promise the poem
man - fttending Aeneas on a journey into hell, the sibyl introduces him to
Anclzi 0 the shades who dwell there, including the ghost Of his father,
World 565, Who I n s t r u c t s him i n those sublime mysteries 0 f the 50] 0 f the
aand the transmigration; and shews him that glorious race of heroes
Whit: . .
h Was 0 descend from him, and his posterity (Aeneid, I57). Butintro
lty conscience into
th
duecexalted PI'OSpect of this dynastic scene, fate or gui
Fiel:S anunbidden mem0ry- As Aeneas and his guide pass by the Mournful
D. 8Where the shades of tragic lovers dwell but find no test, the specter of
apdo of Carthage, fresh from her wound, her bosom bathd in blood,
pears. Aeneas doubts his eyes but readily credits local gossiP=
(Doubtful ashe who sees, thro dusky night
tain light,)
Or thinks he sees, the moons Unce' shade;
With tears he first approachd the sullen
48 ECHOES IN T H E B O N E

And, ashis love inspird him, thus he said:

Unhappy queen! then is the common breath
Of rumor true, in your reported death,
And I, alas, the cause?
(Dryden, Aeneid, 173)
Dido replies with stony silence, which no entreaties c a n induce her to break,
until at last, still speechless, she fades away, Hid in the forest and the shades
o f night (174). Aeneas seems t o find this silence troubling but c o n v e n i e n t ;
heis quickly on his way again, while Dido, like the repressed, r e e n t e r s the
Stygian realms from which she staged her silent and brief r e t u r n .
Citing Virgils account of hell in a Tatler number devoted to the Empire
of Death, Joseph Addison shOWS how the boundaries that separate life
from the afterlife provide amelancholy but n o t unpleasing occasion to con
template the idea of boundaries themselves. Addison calls these carefully
defined perimeters the Confines of the Dead (2:363). As the myths and
beliefs of Mediterranean memory Play tl'lenls<flves o u t in the circum
Atlantic world, these obscure, symbolic boundaries, living memOries in the
minds of Addison and his readers, could besilently reinvented and impOSed
through the literal construction of the m o s t tangible fOrms of material cul
ture. 1am thinking particularly of that characteristic inventiOn of modern
architecture, the behavioral vortices of death: cemeteries.
In a consequential but as yet only partially understood Srpation of
popular custom, Europeans attempted to impose on themselves (and on the
peoples they colonized) arevolutionary spatial paradigm: the segregati n of
the dead from the living. Although precedents may be Cited in the Great
thanatological projects of antiquity, from Egypt to Etruria, the ambitign of
the modern displacement of medieval tradition should be carefully consid
ered (figure 2.1). In this light, modernity itself might be understood asa
new way of handling (and thinking about) the dead.
At one time in European tradition, as in many other traditions World
wide, the dead were omnipresent: first, in the mysterious sense that their
spirits continued to occupy places among the (iniCk; seCODd, in the material
sense that medieval burial custom crowded decomposing corpses into hope
lessly overfilled churchyards and crypts; whence they literally OVerflowed
into the space o f the living. Though lUmbled remains from g e n e r a t i o n s o f
reburialsin the same graves saturated the earth, the burial ground often pro
vided the m o s t convenient public spaces available to merchants, m o u n t e
banks, jugglers, and their mixed audiences, who shared in this popular inter
 E C H O ? ) I N THE O N E 4 9

r - f a1:
.
m. ..
1 ,
L
A.r ,
_ ,
,2
_ . _
.
, I, f .
-..o _ .- _ . .I
1 U " !7 o A KIM/n1!- fmwnhm.

2.1 St. Louis Cemetery, No. 1.Harper: Wee/4y, March 9, 1867.

Louisiana Collection, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library. Tulane University

mingling of life and death, carnival and Lent (Burke). Hamlets hands-on
eulogy of Yorick takes place in just such an overbooked boneyard, and his
torians of social c u s t o m have noted the uncanny effects produced by the
continuous intersection of intimacy and dispossession.
In Montaz'llou: The Promised Land of Error (1979), for example, Le Roy
Ladurie speaks of the obtrusive familiarity of the dead: They had no
houses of their o w n . . . . They might go every Saturday and visit the ostal
where their widow or widower still lived with their children. They might
temporarily occupy their old bedroom (34849). As in many traditional
African societies, the spaces of the living and the dead in the medieval comt
de Foix were n o t discrete: Before the harvest, Glis joined in veritable
drinking bouts with the dead, in parties of over a hundred (347). Indeed,
50 ECHOES IN T H E B O N E

one of the important elements that gave meaning to a particular placethat

made it aparticular placewas the gregarious presence of the dead.
The rationalizing projects of the European Enlightenment, however,
attempted to reform this scandalous propinquity. Under a regime of newly
segregationist taxonomies of behavior in several related fields of manners
and bodily administration, the dead were compelled to withdraw from the
spaces of the living: their ghosts were exorcised e v e n from the stage; their
bodies were removed to newly dedicated and isolated cemeteries, which in
New Orleans came to be called Cities of the Dead. As c u s t o m increas
ingly defined human remains as unhygienic, n e w practices of interment
evolved, eventually including cremation, to ensure the perpetual separation
of the dead and to reduce or more strictly circumscribe the spaces they o c c u
pied. As the place of burial was removed from local churchyard to distant
park, the dead were more likely to be remembered (and forgotten) by m o n
uments than by continued Observances in which their spirits were invoked.
Like the ghost of Dido, the enlightened dead were more likely n o w to
observe the strict silence of the tomb.
Asa vast anthropological topic, which I c a n only begin to outline here,
the segregation of the dead has some precise historical dates. When Adrien
DePauger laid o u t the tidy grid 0f streets and PUblic spaces for the French
colonial city of N e w Orleans in 1721, for instance, a bounded Square marked
cimen're appeared, n o t in the churchyard at the c e n t e r of the Plan bu t o u t
side the walls of the fortifications at its perimeter (Huber, 3; figure 2.2) B
1819, when the architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe ViSited St. Louis (Seine):
tery N o . 1,a somewhat enlarged but n o t far distant version of DePau s
detached City of the Dead, it had been further segregated into nei hie;
hoodsCatholic and Protestantand subdivided into apartmentgbuild
ings and single-family residences: [The tombs] are 0f briCkS, mueh lar er
than necessary to enclose a coffin, and plaistered over, so asto have a v:
solid and permanent appearance (Latrobe, 241). y
Asmetropolitan theory responded to colonial practice, the philosoPhes
had launched attacks o n the church and its monuments t o s u p e r s t i t i o n b y
attacking the ubiquity of the dead. In 1764 Voltaire denounced the
unhealthy conditions of the churches and charnel houses of Paris, where
dogs rooted among the cadavers, and in 1776 LOUiS X V I forbade further
burials within churches except for high officials, dignitaries, and donors
(Ragon, 199200). First by royal decree and then by acts of the Revolu
tionary Convention, the charnel house in the Church of the Innocents in
 E C H O E ) I N THE O N E 5 1

....;. ,
5......)
mm. u
pawn/p i
. . _ . . 0

2.2 Plan dela Nouvelle Orleans, 1 7 } ! (detail).

Louisiana Collection, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University

r u e St. Denis, which contained an estimated four million corpses accumu

lated over five centuries, was evacuated. The architect-engineer Latrobe,
musing on the enormity of this public works project ashestrolled through
St. Louis Cemetery No. 1in New Orleans, observed: The great operation
at Paris in removing the dead from the cemetery of St. Innocent, is an
astonishing instance of the expensive efforts that have been found neces
sary to get rid of them~an operation that none but Frenchmen could have
conceived or executed (Latrobe, 245). Latrobes New Orleanian perspec
52 E C H O E S I N THE B O N E

tive, however, did n o t do justice to the conceptual boldness of Londoners,

though at the time the architect w r o t e he was largely c o r r e c t about the
superior state of practical implementation by the French, particularly with
the establishment by Napoleon of Pre-Lachaise cemetery in 1804 (Curl,
154-67)
The emerging practice of segregating the dead received powerful sup
port in England asaconsequence of the rebuilding of London following the
Great Fire of 1666. In Windsor-Forest (1713), Alexander Pope captures the
ambition of this enormous public works project, Augustan in scale, partic
ularly the construction of fifty n e w parish churches to replace those lost in
the fire (and to supply the demands newly created by a rapidly expanding
imperial metropolis):
Behold! Augustas glittring Spires increase,
And Temples rise, the beauteous Works of Peace.
(Poem, 1:187)

In his Proposals of 1711 for constructing the churches, Sir John V a n

brugh, architect, dramatist, and comptroller Of works under Queen Anne,
laid o u t the Enlightenments case for r e o r g a n l z m g urban space to ghettoize
the dead:
That [the new churches] be freed from that Inhuman CUStoi-ne of
being made Burial Places for the Dead, 3 Custome in Which there is
something so very barbarous in itself besides the many ill Conse
quences that attend it; that one cannot enough wonder how it E Ve r
prevaild amongst the civilizd part of mankind. But there is now a
s o r t of happy necessity on this Occasion of breaking through it; Since
there can be no thought of purchasing ground for Church Yards
where the Churches will probably be placd. And since there mus;
therefore be Cemitarys provided in the Skirts of TOWne, if they a r e
ordered with that decency they ought to be, there can be no doubt but
the Rich as well as the Poor, will be content to ly there. (25,)
In Vanbrughs proposal the scheme of separating the living from the dead
offers the city planner an occasion to discriminate between the rich and the
poor aswell asbetween the civilized and barbarous. Unlike his senior col
league Sir Christopher Wren, whose pr0posals envisioned the c o m m o n
interment of rich and poor in the new necropolis, Vanbrugh refined the spa
tial differentiation to reflect differences among the dead themselves. In so
 E C H O E S I N THE O N E 53

doing he provided one of the earliest descriptions of what would become a

commonplace of the well-planned modern urbanscape:
If these Cemitarys be consecrated, Handsomely and regularly walld
in, and planted with Treesin such form asto make a Solemn Distinc
tion between one Part and another; there is no doubt, but the Richer
s o r t of People, will think their Friends and Relations more decently
interd in those distinguishd Places, than they commonly are in the
Ailes and under Pews in Churches; And will think them more honor
ably rememberd by Lofty and Noble Mausoleums erected over them
in Freestone (which no doubt will soon come into practice) then by lit
tle Tawdry Monuments of Marble stuck up against Walls and Pillars.
(25')

The cemetery grows on the margins to define the social distinction of the
fictive c e n t e r : the dead will dwell in separate houses suitable to their status.
The bodies of the indigent, Vanbrugh does n o t goon to say, were stacked
like cordwood in open yards until a sufficient number of corpses accumu
lated to make digging a common grave worthwhile.
To the accompanying sketch (figure 2.3), the comptroller appends am o s t
significant explanatory n o t e . In it he credits the idea for the segregation of
the dead to the colonials in Surat, the East India Companys concession near
the c o a s t between Ahmadabad and Bombay: This manner of Interment
has been practicd by the English at Suratt and is come at last to have this
kind of effect (Vanbrugh, 251). Surat first developed asatrading port in the
reign of James I. By 1711 it hadbeen active for nearly a century, and the high
death r a t e among the British factors in residence there created a constant
demand for burial places in which the colonials could both visibly separate
themselves from and publicly compete with the magnificent entombments
of the local moguls (Calder, 158). In their enormous freestanding tombs, for
instance, the brothers Sir George and Sir Christopher Oxinden (d. 1659 and
1669, respectively) built mausolea to rival the Taj Mahal (Curl, 13645).
They planted at Surat palaces for the dead that anticipated the massy pre
tentions of Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoors baroque country houses
for the living at Blenheim and Castle Howard. (As if to insist on this con
nection, a stately and hugely expensive mausoleum graced the picturesque
landscape garden of the latter palace, a kind of grand finale to its magnifi
c e n t performance of waste.) Vanbrughs Proposals of 1711 thus appro
priate the discriminatory practices developed at the colonial margin for use
54 ECHOES IN T H E B O N E

. -- - - - ( I r r / I t r ; 111 / ( J r / fl u ?

ra/nr/k/jzar/xz};/ f/tx/z /;///A 6%

/
J " ' fl i d z l {1915/ ( I a , 4/ ( V I / 1 4f / { z / fl r / n )

mmummmmmnu mummfiifi
m u u I - t l l n l n u n - n u . - n . . 0 4 . . . .

f W475; 1.1412207 fl lyo://(////i)r7:3

l y fl l
. fiz}//&z/'q flfmh 74 I? [KL],1 / 7
2.3 Sir John Vanbrugh, sketch for an ideal cemetery, as practiid by the English
at Suratt, from Proposals for the Fifty Churches, 171x.
Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Ms. Rawl. B. 376, fol. 3521- (detail)

in rebuilding the metropolitan c e n t e r. Although the actual implementation

of his ideas for the London cemeteries awaited the founding of Kensal
Green by a c t of Parliament in 1832 (Meller, 6 - n ) , Vanbrughs scheme
serves asone instance among many in which Enlightened Cities of the Dead
offered themselves up as conceptual prototypes for the cities in which pos
terity n o w lives.
Indeed, London and N e w Orleans were n o t the only cities in which
emerged architectural spaces that effectively masked the dead (and later the
dying) from the daily experience of the living: The modern West, argues
Michel Ragon, has tended to evacuate death (14). Many consequences
have no doubt ensued from this immense project, this radical rationalization
of space, this creation of a necropolis of exiles in the [out]Skirts of
Towne. The m o s t persistently segregationist of these might easily have
been the invention of the suburb, that bourgeois simulacrum of heaven,
where decency allots to every proper person aninviolable place, detached or
semidetached, and where ownership is individually privatized for eternity
 E C H O E S I N THE O N E 55

along its silent, leafy avenues. The m o s t poignant of them m u s t have been
the slave ship, the triangular trades simulacrum of hell, where each of the
living dead occupied no more space than a coffin, and the daily wastage dis
appeared over the side to a grave unmarked except by the sea. The m o s t per
vasive of them surely m u s t be the weird silences and circumlocutions that
wall o ff death from life in modern mortuary etiquette, especially in the
United States (Mitford). Perhaps a more general consequence resonates in a
simple question at the heart of circum-Atlantic modernity: If the dead are
forever segregated, how are the living supposed to remember who they are?

Bodies of L a w
The complementary projects of Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault suggest
that civilization or the carceral society of the panopticon might best be
defined as the concentration of violence in the hands of the state (Elias, The
Civiliging Process) or its diffusion to the capillary level in the micropoli
tics of daily life (Foucault, Discipline ana Pam's/z). In my discussion of col
lective memory and countermemory, I w a n t to extend the concept of
restored behaviors, including violence, to include the law. The tradition of
retributive justice, of course, is intimately tied to violence asthe perfor
mance of waste, but 1amespecially concerned with the legal dimensions of
memory in the creation of the body politic. Imagined communities perpet
u a t e themselves through the transmission of their prohibitions and entitle
m e n t s . As a cultural system dedicated to the production of certain kinds of
behaviors and the regulation or proscription of others, law functions asa
repository of social performances, past and present. As such, it has been
called Second Nature (Kelly). It typically bases its legitimacy on prece
dents, mysteriously reconstructed performances whereby the dead, asin the
Ceremony of Souls, may pass judgment on the living: through the opera
tion of law, the state appropriates to itself n o t only violence but memory. In
such a circum-Atlantic resituation of Foucault, the law works like voodoo.
It is certainly t r u e that through the magical sway of legal fictions such as
the reasonable man, law transmits effigiesconstructed figures that pro
vide templates of sanctioned behavioracross generations. Indispensably,
performance infuses the artifacts of written law with bodily action, a mean
ing that obtains when it is said that a party to a contract performs.
Legal scholar Bernard ]. Hibbitts, in Coming to O u r Senses: Com
munication and Legal Expression in Performance Cultures (I992), speci
 8 law or evoked by I.t . These
emery Ofasociety, what C0nner
Emory (72) and Nora true mem

t Ont consequences- Id I1
ates a records of secret or displace
raof thEIaW. id;1 array of reStored behaViors
Iran3011- t 633'"?- Th nt or '0mm
.
c reentransmpts
S .
. .
_ multiply 1 th
e
- iv
P In' . PUbhc dlscourse of leg1t
at ,
".m the", create: the hidden

Black Cod e Sixy articles Of the

s0r, Collectionof Edicts
 FCHOES IN THE O N E 57

DeclarationS.and D
N ecre '
[ egro Slaves 0f the lsl escordcermng the Discipline and the C0
0 the kings c010 . It ands of French America The pre bl mmerce 0f
n1; . - 1m
more than one pl ace1atsublects
"i [h . now in the future . requires
. and " fliim
addressed
to

oftelly far from our lqnd e s m e n m e : Although they inhabit count ' 1??
hu He C0:19 w 1.
nch W1 t t we are al.ways
' near them (.CN
_ 1685). B th" 6 5 In '
ndred5 of thOusands
cmmr and Wit li s o m e refinementsinLoutsxana
c'alOPed ' 'y m fi 1774
rms
C eswere I' n c o r . . eventually
. millions of Alrtcans

from - ,
olberts asslniildfpordmd i n t o the kings bodv politic Under th divers:
misc
.ma egena tlon _ 1n. 'Camd
tonist
. do c t r t' n e o f 0 ne .B l ood.
i which
.' had encoura
e aegis ed
0
| Code Ol-rPrOVide:j :(JOllnson Colonial n o New Orleans " -13) the oi
0r the manumissmn of the slaves (CN1685 attic]:
4, 55
m
. 56) the C m e
. arrlage between :lgaence tree blaCk POPUlatiO"
Of aslaveholders.
V e s and (amide
black Orwhite 59) and
(article inter
9). These
u51ydiea _l
r t l c e 0 n mlscegenanon,
. which was forbidden between
whit55, and, revealingly, between mulattoes and Negroes (
allTicle 6). W}
a . 1611 F .
pPOImed goVemofmfe bllefly reacquired Louisiana in I803, the newly
reinstated the Code noir of 1724. sweeping away the
more
(S libEra] S a . .
Chafer 2 P msh slave COdeS, including the right of self-manumission
of the mixed
blo - s , 6_ .
en00d SubieCts W33); Article 6 never explained the presence
ugh, the intimat e .efiswnce it both forbade and recognized but clearly
. e liaisons once Iegitimated by C One 310C] and

. eil 3]
Int aves C .
(Girdle heavenly g 16:" artlcles z and 14), incorporatingking their slaves
168;, article 6g 0m of the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion
Work )' OWners were also enjoined from ma
le 6).
a
5.0111 bbath or 0n feast days (CN 1685, artic f the slave 5 body was

be
ty
e fle of aseCoanZ-inded on one shoulder with t
hewill
0 ense - - - , he shall be hamstrung and 8150 branbeput to
deat urde-1y'S
Franh (CN 16850 the other shoulder, and a third time,
rive idem.
.ce, the timejhamde 38; CN 1724, article 32). Branding with the lily of
lty) sub.
Onored emblem of her monarchial continuity and collec
lects the Slave who rejects the kings legal incorporation (by
ting With his 0 her feet) to a most rigorous reminder of the
his law. The bod
y so marked becomes a long arm 0f
so to n effigy by way of mantel-(3;;er
of
ebody Politic in the materld iaof
person the ineffaceable mslgn
noir contained a e subtle technique of mar
or
custom aswell as ."uity,0f COmmuni - ~ . king
~one hallowed in African
. law
, and
n. The legal

o e noir idea
enya andfimenya a n juridical encouragEd [he 'nt
is that any C2:
for the latter. The Salient POIin
like the Bambara arrived

1163, those that take p

lace in
rticle3ofS n t e Cederitten legal
noirs ARE;
record of of
prohibition 5' e r,I1

eforbids the public 9:3

especially enjoinS e5
r together,
eads; day night,
8Oralso forbid Prer
underslaV
{0n the Premises of the maSterstr
ment Wh' ghways 0r remOte placeS, un or

.l'lst not be leSS than [he lash

"21011 and
0ther aggravatlng
. co fl
 f t l l t F S I N l ' l l F BONE 39

ditions. tli r , .
Cle '3)- 20113;
The rootednesg
punlshed b." dEath" (CN 1685. article i6; CN
(:5 Tout-e i724. arti
behind this prohibition isafear of slave revolts,
standing on the "It Ital tear. however. derives from an informed under
to Consolidate a 2; 0 the French.aboutthe patter of public performances
The Africanilutse ()t-C()mln_un'\' InSide OrOutside of the law.
celebratiOn da 10m l L0Ulslana included the powerful forms of musical
of Europedn 1nce. storytelling. and ritual that developed in the interstices
olized the At .Ile and religious institutions. creolizing them, asthe) cre
r i c a n ones in t u r n . Adaptations of African belief systems and
SPirit_WOrlrl rac . 1 ) ~ ~ . . . .
Louisiana SiP C u to the forms of Cathohcrsm produced syncretisms in
se found elsewhere in the
Ftench and 322:; [Iniugh n e t identical to tho
the French and FI]_(?lrlbbeziti. Immigration from St. Domingue following
invented traditions,
Ough in Contra m a n revolutions reinforced these ted spirit-world reli
3'0 in LOUis' Stto Haitian practice. women domina
public perfor l a m (Hall 302). Death often provided the occasion for the
l l'Ough w} . mHnCe 0f semisecret memories. for the Catholic rites in and
Ch they Could emerge demonstrated their own adaptive capac

aSSemblieS r . '
he words of
. AEstomd
. behavior inserts
. the living memory of African mor

1mp03ed lit ~ nd mtothe unenforceable

' ' between
spaces t for livmg
hemselves
elebrations of death
lnSpired 1) uch dlsplaced
. e o
transmiSSions o
include c
y aPParently Orthodox belief. in the participa . . tion of ancestral spir
hem sai '
Death
has ms ~ I n the world of the present. '
s l p
it of 0 many 5 6 5 - After the suppressmn of the Pomte Copp:
l 795 for mStanCe,
' festivals
' o ot e

0a
- raPattiFIPation
Public ~ . itself
. silently subvert
nSC . .
es, when the
pt. When the French naturalist C. C. Robin V15
 r Latrob e r.e c rcltc
lab
.1 In
' hi5
.5
HenAyfr ouCathollc bur. . H :

e ournful
tion. While children amongfolllivllman
playedFields, [ d the
r 1
shovel
the Pallbearers [Owe
)
red the
, and the candle
on lamentattons. -bearlng Women
.
- t
- when the firs
meinstant one of the Neg
t o Wo f
en

after the identity of the d r away, hand and foo

oceasio t.
ead Person who had bro
n and inspired ught
Sueh
e,alrtsWered th t grief. HIS 1
- ' forman[a

Seat the berself

' in the grav
e Was h31'
ildrenof the urlal site were the
children,
0111118): atriarch. CurlouS
. if her
abdout
3:Latrobe persisted: 1 aSke the
nto the
and Was rave could possibly ha
r own Iif S supposed an Old W0
to be abOVe [ 0 0 Years Oldasve felt
man who before her C: be
e. She hrugged her shoulders
en Jyazlr rien, cela ath
ayitsdo est me In

ne] (302). aniere [ 0 or three t .i m es and

 ECMOES lN THE BONE 61

ASLatrobe ret' d .
began ,- ire " 0 m the scene. rowdy b0 '5
throwifa::fiscatcli with the old bones. pelting) ea;:i:ew::u51:5
struck the woods}: i}:
gave. laughing at the loud report they made asthe):
ter," Which had b i of the coffin. adding their din to the noise and laugh
they iOined the Swine general by the time the service was over, Before
Picked blades of etwe Crowd departing the burial ground, the women
me the gmgzjs from around the grave site (302).
extplanation of if;
aughters performance of grief and the informants
Without the nece t tere emerge several assumptions that link law to memory
answer Simply r THY of Writing. It is not enough to say that the informants
Useful fer brush? 915 tile questioner to custom or tradition, a ploy so often
Well haVe been "5 Off the tourisrs. though something like that could very
Speaking femalgomg 0th particularly in the answers produced byaFrench
Clai e Slave fOr the edification of animportant Anglo male. Her
m of k
. nOWin r n . ( .
guise the Obviousb competence
(mung Pertinent. of- the1graveSi
dont 'know about that.and
mance the cer
cannot dis
taint), of her 5 . ,
." The normalizing
authorit u m m fl t l o n of it, thats the w a y ' zation of the funeral
y behind her claim . manifests itself in the organi
itst31f. N earl pure White." th
at . Yall [1 .
ed with clear}1 a 16moumers are
'i n g in
wearing. .
- the semiotics .
e color assoct
d
Pean3mOrtuary ritual Tl m o u r n 0f African, but not Euro
. .
- 18candle-lit cortege processes solemnly ' Christian the
litur
into
62. ECHOES IN T H E B O N E

2.4 Hercules funeral, I979. Cutting the body loose."

Photo: Michael P. Smith
the moment of transformation is called cutting the body loose. It initiates
aburst of joyous music, dance, and humor, often ribald, in which there is no
impiety, though there may be some quite pointed irreverence (figure 2.4).
There isnoimpiety because in these sacred rites of memory, death is n o t so
clearly separated from life asit was for Eurocentric observers like Benjamin
Latrobe, the architect whose city planners eye could approve only a much
more stringent segregation of the dead. His understanding of memory
fatored monuments wherein ancestors could be safely confined rather than
norsy behaviors whereby they could be turned loose.
Latrobes puzzlement at the juxtaposition of what he called excessive
distress and the revelries that he apparently thought of as merely exces
Sive r Eflects the pronounced tendency of the literate observer to misrecog
3::22::rp0rated memory asspontaneous emotion. It is important to n o t e
Code naijretakers of memory in the scene he r e c o u n t s are the women. The
memo bgave recognition and Impetus to womens respon51b1l1ty for
the math y predicatmg the legal status of I t s subjects on the condition of
equal] oer-1A3 1f. 1n symbohc observance of this burdcn, WhICh may
nessit '1' ahternauvely honor the princ1ple of dadenya or mother-child
is th; wols t e women who carry the candles to the edge of the grave, as it
Either thmen who gather the blades o f grass and bear the m e m e n t o e s away.
as the lae French Code nozr or West African badenya, then, could be Clted
actiOn mw that depunzes the granddaughter to leap I n t o the grave. H e r
ay signify n o t only a Willingness to accompany or e v e n change
 ECHOES IN THE B O N E

places with the deceased but also a bid to succeed her in the reborn c o m
munity of the living.
The great age of the matriarch intensifies (not diminishes, as Latrobe
supposed) what w a s at stake in her burial: the unscriptable performance of
memory under the gaze of Other peoples at a time of acute cultural dis
placement. H e r funeral took place at the e x t r e m e limits of what might be
called epochal memory and under the localized pressure of larger circum
Atlantic dislocations. The United States suspended the importation of
slaves from Africa and the Caribbean soon after the Louisiana Purchase,
although the trade was continued illicitly through smuggling. By 1819 the
last of the elders from the French era who still possessed firsthand memo
ries of Africa and could transmit those memories to their progeny were
passing away. As N e w Orleans filled with English-speaking Americans,
black and white, the francophone Creolesblack, white, and many tints in
betweencontinued to assert their interdependent traditions through var
ious media of public performance. According to popular memory and
r e c e n t historical research, they persisted even after it was clear to everyone
that their inevitable replacements had arrived. As the Anglo-Americans set
about the task of dismantling what they saw asdangerous leniencies in cre
ole law and custom, beginning with harsh amendments to the Code not'r as
early as 1806 (Schafer, 69), the imagined community still organized by
spirit-world memories discreetly differentiated itself through its hallowed
rites of death and surrogation. One of those resistant performances, asmall
but piquant demonstration, took place when the black woman in the pure
white robes shrugged and countered Benjamin Latrobe s bemused interro
gation with an authority only partially masked by her apparently deferential
reply. Kinesthetically punctuated with appropriate gestures, her speech was
in its way asobdurate as Didos stony silence: Thats the way its done.

Congo Square
The m o s t intense and productive life of culture, w r o t e Mikhail Bakhtin,
takes place on the boundaries (Speed: Genres, 2). For any genealogy of
N e w Orleanian performance, Bakhtins argument contains a literal aswell
asa figurative truth. Outside the original city walls and adjacent to the
cz'metire laid o u t by DePauger, was an unofficial public marketplace, once a
site for the c o r n feasts of the Poucha-IIoumma Indians (Kendall, sztog,
2:679). Here African slaves, free persons of color, and Native Americans
64 ECHOES IN THE BONE

could mingle with relative freedom and sell their goods. The provlfi
the Code noir that made the Sabbath ' .ion in
-
(or Ignored) to allow the slaves to work . for
free from
a daypart-time work , '~" t e.r pwreled
themselves
was hich
.

o . an corn feast, Place des Neicus

i ['65:
becaune Jackse,Congo I)lai g , COngo CrCUS, La Place Publlquea C
, me
ced Armes (When the original of that na
its 1 . the nea b
Squar6,111:e21 gPark. As the
theCity hm
. ch" 0, rmstrond Park (after 'Confededed
expa"rate .
Units, b 11 li r y cemetery, was incorPOFated W h

met 0f the 01 market remained- Althoug

e 0
are during the early yearSers,
an it Upm the
. . mpresan animal acts and rope dam? 116
11d 0 ntes were Pra ' Orleans SCongo squareg. figure 2-5). F
eW 3 a Y cOIne to know 35 a n Or
n erground. Liliane Cr Cticed the I
r . rthelr
In New Orleans 8 d .e untll
eCOnStmCtlon EVQ they Were driven fu
5 the scene
Dressed un ava s d
In t 61 fl Ely of re] 5
. Congonest
Sli'cammes m P athey thered by HXatlon slaVe
th , evzn fsl' theder the
t C e no r un
ey danced
ments to the rhythm, o
The dances andtomtoms t l mightfall
from earl afternoon eu nS'1
"my Pl uettes. Thwe"1er and f and "18 stringed 5
re Were sen laSt paced

Sua e - quick steps 33d

, With
) Ven blaltallltly erotic dances, 1n
 lkllkFN IN THE BONE 65

2.; Dancin r antebellum period.

Reconfiiflibamboma. Congo Square. New Orleans.
ge Washington Cables
C Crgllltififjrd hi.liemble for Geor April 1886.
Center.
Ouncsy The l l 'm- o m
_ New
ongs. Museum/ Research
Ceruupullagagme.
Orleans Collection.
acc. no. I974.25.s;

>and indUlgence. The African rhythms

f the Americans i( n o one but
f savagery tha .
66 ECHOES IN THE BONE

arefully constructed performance AHg

of l Amer
enacted bythe onlookers, most particularly by the shocked< whiten
' ess
. n I 0
icans among them.

ery in the rear of the C'ly

_ 3)0nCSun
oted
d a most extr nary norse. Latrobe [he only
- hundred Hacks (hrs. emphasrshe
l '

. "'r n

51
n

had divided itself into many smaller grOUPS

0 f
cal ensembles COIN .
.' S " n g of

Preseiently devoted a much

r)"
and Inovemmts that almOSt 6" e
ia22.

. of CO
. Wn 0n the srte , nlg 0:
'What P1 New Orleans sucdnctnl,
lloWEVer) faCeS
Oet Torn
t Dent calls the Ar
hehuge Municipal Audl
68 ECHOES IN THE BONE

cals cannOt pas

5 his Statue m
)
withoutremembefl-n his
. . int
. ' of his
POSmon ' remams. D
The King IsDead\ ong Live the King!
I Circum~Atl ntict r f
the spiritu

American PeoPleS-ratnce
. hat
u ted doubles stand in for of
e t reshold erformance, Theonly
rget (180). the perSevene
see in
Echoin t/z
uncing to the nee,
ourners, sentI originals.
beginsTonight
with Rachel,b the widow, making
Denms 8.6021362!h
. t,SAn
ceof the minelong to the 'deadn (.76)

, 22749). On the :5 in
ul)
sessed flow' possess the of memory, S u c c e e
Imagesof the past, hidden
ereaved, by widen.
and
one an
Into
 HHOFS l.\' THE BOXE 69

At each mOment of '

magical
In I}
thin3,. a_n _P">SC>Slon. the sudden
a n i m a t e effiwv .
Penetrm"d bdy beco es 3
1e S)nc . 1. o dra
retism ' ' ' '
Inaturgy Prepa ~0t Atlantic spirit-world memorv. Scotts SUblle
. . trcs it " ' i i '
dimmutively k m ) )r as tho.
SO LllmaCth
by possessron
s oi revelation
earlier the dead ofmans son,
. wn ' nson.
" Rachel ' i i his given
"ame: Isa
ac. A g- } l l-s d x .. .
asthe son whoSL tad Millers v n c e speaks through him. heis identified
blood does n o t have to be5lied. in this case because his
fat}lex
has already , emt CKd the sacrifice .~ f~o r hin1. Thus. as the sacrificeable
double is re 05of catastrophe can be
reimaginedciiiem'ed by his filther's gift. the linear tel
ante need m: dbcycle. Today such intimate strategies of memorial perfor
moVing accou e cCllmscribed. They animate. for instance the deeply
t e funeral of in by Kwamt Anthony Appiah of the public dimensions of
Stand, are man 3 ChiInaian father. in whose house, weara
are made to under
as my fathers T l-nanSiOnS: Only something so particul sa single l i f e
Sonal relatitm 119 encaPSlllated in the complex pattern of social and per
iVeS Saround his coffincould capture the multiplicity of our
In the Postc
PrinClple
' ' Worldn (not). Around the Atlantic
o lOmal ' 1'!
the Of memor a d - . .
Pesse . . Y n Identitysttll provo
- - .~ eStruggles take

between

PlaCEmentS by which they are shaped, in the Si remam

dead .
the1ivr. eepened .
l . 0r COnttadlcted. By such means, the trave1Son the tips 0
ardcipate.
ECHOES !N THE BONE

hOWeVer, requlres
' Ingmm
x ' . i es
ll'
x; . _ I
itY' hen the Umtcd Sm

Maes
. - the EIVIS
cataIOg {Gaturmg q p res,
. l
"g Set of exchanges. a prd. cnca

. it
Yof, the
Ha"ulton
manuscProjects required me to 5ubm
. s
aDIVIsiorl f [13.0raPPr0val
tf by the lice"

lSS VOICE, On that day Slng

I, ' ' ing

y mar1:ISCrIP
Clng aSSUranc afcommodating agr'eedr:uro
and dellve
. Her Promptly

00kg d0 fallunder 3: l
yright OWner may beVP
1yPr LTUS- C0nstitution,'hl) in
n Prelects
.OVed Impracfical t0 obtam' 11y
r quired that I persona
 lllltF) IN THE BONE 71

Obtain a .. .,
force {Orctzlmdtdm f I n s u r a n c c for one million dollars to be maintained in
Vice from any? mdemnifying and holding harmless the US. Postal Set
the Publicm, Pl fr damages. including attorneys fees. arising out of
of copVright :10 l e s s image in this space. These stringent refinements
cirCUm'~Atl-i .W ' C r e of course generally unavailable to Elvis Presleys
ntlc I'C 4 1- ~ . . . . .
Protect not inte lle
P - d>>0rs.
They were applied in this case. Iofbelieve,
5 power to
. selection
.
0ver what is re 1 ! ). Ptr
( [ u l ] Pr 0 P U , ) but the ethgy
, fit \

The Kim; 1? .6
,nfbcrfd i""e'>' and bywhom.
first revoluti(,,:-,Lh on. the United States Postal Service concludes, having
prESIeys role i e d Amelican music" (U.S. Postal Service 2829). Elvis
defIned. I . _ n [he PCFtormance of circum-Atlantic memory is thus well
. ' "8 'ur ,
national eff"1 ershed face on a postage ~
Stamp. the circulating pantheon
asures 0f
requrred
_
b . gieSa silend , . .
y the "We" ) L0mmemorates the staggering er e bone.
On 0f \\,luteness.
- . his vorce
while . still
_ echoes in. th
 , \
W;
\ V ' x/
{ l I/
BETTERTO _,.EWNERAL
LL::::;~;\
, 71 j \)

K ////I
\\ (4/.

The/Im kings m m ! lzavc lzeen dead kmgr.

\ \1 U V \Rl'

ace 0 . . -
{EnglSh
'ndred . _ kmgs,ofawamng
Signlficance the corpse o
t w o kinds of performance: first,
e

Power 0 Sequles ~ aCcorded to the venerated dead,- 56con . .. he

concluand d'ldactlc
. gravity of the stage. There 15
_ noH"man
des, u
Of a Thea so aptly CalCUIated for the formmg[0f] aFreelanguage o

in Them _ . facrises
ellldi Dry 0f Whlch I speak accretes m P 353 Europe8
ngthe great Human Invention o dby the bourgeo
 extoratzon
'
(.979), I argue
or at 1e35,: .the
, Betterton. Cfei
.. ng, a Vlsxble effigy sngnd
1' 18mm between animmortal an
01c diffus
 i i r r r r m o x s FUNERAL 75

also dIa .
Plicity iSEZZttd: P03"??? Oif performance to disclose their unavowed com
histories were COtop i i c histories ofthe circumAtlantic rim. By 1710 these
SUmption, al'umutliriomed by intenSitied networks of production and con
In Which the pa er:ePiltomized by the London chocolate and coffee houses
PaUOns Who ref: 1 0 Steele and Addison were read and discussed by
from the labor oft/1w themselves Wlll] stimulating beverages extracted
coffee and chocolat 615 Indian slaves. Sales of slaves were conducted in the
In this light the 3 1011-565. advertisements for which Tlie Tat/er carried.
orous and high] nghces of memory that I will discuss also entail a rig
Which ShOuld n Y Speciallzed process of forgetting, the general terms of
i
nferred n 0 t On] 0W fro be familiar. The .consequences
. of its success may be
..
Y m numberless omiSSions but also from the posmve asser
tio
ve recently contributed many welcome
renlbsVzgzilslo'ars e V e n those who ha les dramaturgical
vision of Entitile Ileatrical history of the period. Stee . atement
with Which E 1511 leerty still lives,.for instance, in the framing stctacular
Points: 11728;?1 a 1" Backscheider introduces her stimulating Spe
a l l Power and Mass Culture in Early Modern England(1993),
When he
S Says,apPal 'e nt y] w'I t10"
Created and then takes on a life
] t i 'rony..A t i 's snefor me'slowl'teratureis
ii i
- and meaning ' 0 '
At life and mean
lsSue f .
ing Of . or me 5 hOW freedom is created and then takes ona At issue like
iterature.
Wise is? Own as one Of the truth effects of English I
artifice OWthe very cOncept of English Liberty rested onan
d by edifice (and an
representations of
human) of hUman. difference, a difference propagate nslaved. At issue
bodles marked by race as either Free-born or e
ambitalliz tzis Constructed alterity prove . subsumed,
fuklamem ; at at Crucial symbolic points It I distinction between
and the Cleaad (and yet still ambivalent) cultura
C _'
111:1:nlclfftflng with, complicating,
bonda etenCe in the performance 0
ge, are SexLlality and gender, the imagin

hrou
gh a p r .i o r alterity that death peffo
76 BETTERTON 'S F U N E R A L

through the process of surrogation. My a c c o u n t allows for the fact that the
players were despised, as the study of the instability of gender roles so
amply demonstrates (Straub), but it also shows why they w e r e simultane
ously revered. Performances tend to reveal, whether the performers intend
to or not, the intricately processual n a t u r e of relationships of difference. To
use the keyword in Steele scontradictory phrase, performances provide the
ways and means whereby a Free-born people c a n be formed. They are
formed by viewing representations of actions that might or might n o t at any
m o m e n t be substituted for their o w n through the restoration of behavior.
Indeed,peoples can beformed in this way by an Invention like the theater
even asthe threat of surrogation raises questions about the fictional s t a t u s of
their identity and their community.
At a m o m e n t of intense promulgation of the Anglo-Saxon myth of ori
gin, with its exceptionalist arguments for the racial entitlement of the F ree
born to guarantees of constitutionally limited monarchial powers and lib
en'Ya Betterton was ending a fifty-year career, which some have called a
reign over the Mimic State (Gildon, to) of the London stage. The image
of transcendence he projected was the paradoxically fragile o n e of the sur
rogated double, and, like the Shilluk or Dinka king in Nilotic Africa, Bet
terton underwent, even while he still lived, a rite of passage into memory
through the ClaSSiC Stages of separation, liminality, and reincorporation.
Steeles account elaborates what the symbolic import of the actors burial in
Westminster Atbbey suggests: in death, asin life, he performed n o t only fit
1115 public but mstead of it. What follows here will demonstrate h o w Better
tons contemporaries consolidated this vision by attempting to record the
actions of his body in the traces left by his phySical m o v e m e n t and vocal
intonations. These inscriptionsderiving from and leading back to incor
porationsprovide anexemplary instance of how celebrity, performing its
constitutional office even in death, holds open a space in collective memory
while the process of surrogation nominates and eventually c r o w n s succes
sors. The a c t o r Betterton epitomizes the fact that in the magical extensions
of imagined community, the moribund but indestructible effigies of the
dead, abstracted asthe body politic, continue to haunt the spaces occupied
by the living.
Most of the sources on which I base my claims in this chapter have long
been known to theater historians, though they have n o t previously been
read asI am reading them here. To the idea of the memorial constitution of
the body politic I will return, guided by the local knowledge of George Fa r
 R F I I F RTO N S F U N E R A L 77

quhars Discourse (m (omcqv in Reference to (/1: English Stage (1702) and

especially by the prescient ethnography in Voltaires Letter: Concerning the
English Nation (:733), which appreciates the cultural significance of the
burial of a c t o r s in the cathedral of national memory. In recasting the signif
icance of aperformers life and death asa rite of passage, 1will also consider
a less familiar s o u rce. the Pinacot/zeca Bettertonaeana. a sale catalog of Be!
tertons books issued in August I 7 1 0 that inventories the c o n t e n t s of his
extensive library at the time of his death. Pinacot/zeca is an ancient word
meaning a place of memory, as in a small picture gallery or museum. I am
using this pinacotheca, much as the original cataloger did, better to remem
ber Betterton, that Celebrated Comedian. lately Deceasd (PB, title
page). While I recognize that there is no certainty that what the a c t o r had on
his bookshelf at the time of his demise will prove what he mus: have had on
his mind while he lived, the example of julie Stone Peterss reading of Con
greves library shows what c a n be done with such an elaborate artifact of
material culture asa well-inventoried collection (Peters, 6374). The Pina
cotlzeca Bettertonaena contains what I think are some very suggestive corre
lations between the collection of books Betterton amassed and the central
icon he became in the history of Shakespearean acting and hence in English
cultural memory. While m o s t of the details of his life. like all but a few of
his performances, w e n t unrecorded, the easily documented interests of his
quite meticulous collecting have been overlooked. They disclose, I argue, a
life lived on the cusp of literature and o r a t u r e , poised between the arts of
public memory and the s e c r e t science of forgetting.
I believe that Bettertons funeral, anticipated in the valedictory pro
logues and epilogues of farewell performances and in the prefatory pages to
Nicholas Rowes landmark edition of Shakespeare5 Work: (1709), consti
tutes an epitomizing e v e n t in the early development of a particular kind of
secular devotion. In a culture where memory has become saturated with
written communication distributed and recorded by print, canon formation
serves the function that ancestor worship once did. Like voodoo and
hoodoo, the English classics help control the dead to serve the interests of
the living. The public performance of canonical works ritualizes these
devotions under the guise of the aesthetic, reconfiguring the spirit world
into a secular mystery consistent with the physical and mental segregation
of the dead. In this reinvention of ritual, performers become the caretakers
of memory through many kinds of public action, including the decorous
refinement of protocols of grief. A fiction like Betterton defines a cul
78 BETTERTON 'S FUNERAL

tural trend i n which the body o f a na c t o r serves a sa m e d i u m a n efligy, a s

I have defined the w o r d i n the secular rituals through which a moderniz
ing society communicates with its past.

Sticks and Rags: The Celebrity asEffigy

In the nervous, often demented humor of the theatrical greenroom, deaths
and other final exits provide much material for levity among a c t o r s . Reports
delivered backstage from a performance in progress, whether encouraging
Were knocking em d e a d or defeatistWe re dying o u t theresug
gest that Only one set of participants, cast or audience, c a n leave the theater
alive. Actors know whereof they speak. The passage between life and art,
identity and role, enacted by their bodies asa condition of their employment,
heightens their liminality in the rituals that mark their passing between life
and death. Even in death actors roles tend to stay with them. They gather in
the memory of audiences, like ghosts, aseach n e w interpretation of a role
sustains or upsets expectations derived from the previous ones. This is the
sense in which audiences may come to regard the performer as an eccentric
but meticulous curator of cultural memory, a medium for speaking with the
dead. The state of suspense created by these frequent passages and transfor
mations maintains actors in acontinuously uncertain position. This instabil
ity finds its m o s t characteristic expression in the historic requirement for suc
cessful actors to project clearly t w o qualities above all others: strength and
vulnerability (Barr, 29899). That these predominant qualities contradict one
other follows the logic of simultaneous push and pull at the margins of col
lective identity. In order for performers to e n a c t the strength and stability of
the center, they m u s t boldly march to the boundaries to reconnoiter. There
they suffer scarifying marks of contamination at the point of contact, and
these Stigmata render them Vulnerable. By means of such risky alarums and
excursions at the outer gates, brushes with death and difference, communities
imagine themselves into illusory fullness of being by acting o u t what they
think they are n o t .
It was the much-traveled actor Anthony Aston who recounted the
revealing anecdote about Thomas Betterton taking his c o u n t r y tenant,
Roger, to Crawleys puppet show at Bartholomew Fair. The bumpkin could
n o t accept that Punch was n o t alive but only a Puppet, made up of Sticks
and Rags, and insisted on drinking his health, much to Bettertons annoy
ance, particularly after the puppet master had offered the great a c t o r free
 BFTTERTOX'S F l ' N E R A L '79

admission as a professional courtesy. B u t while attending a production of

Otways Orp/zan at the Theatre Royal that night. Roger inverted his error by
remarking of Bettertons performance: [ 1 3 well enoughfor Sticks and Rags"
(30I-2). Roger's misrecognition e n a c t s a general ambivalence. The laugh
t e r that Astons anecdote seeks to tap has its source deep in the surrogated
double 5 uncanny suspension between life and death. Strength and vulnera
bility, body politic and body natural. The figure of this ambiguous effigy, a
monstrous amalgam of regal decorum and low fair-booth lumpishness,
recurs in Astons oft-quoted description of Bettertonian deportment:

M r. Betterton (although a superlative good Actor) labord under ill

Figure, being clumsily made. having a g r e a t Head. a short thick Neck,
stoopd in the Shoulders. and had fat short Arms. which he rarely
lifted higher than his StomaclLHis Left Hand frequently lodg'd in
his Breast, between his C o a t and his Waist-coat, while. with his Right,
heprepared his SpeechHis Actions were few. but iust.He had
little Eyes, and a Broad Face, a little Pock-fretten, a corpulent Body,
and thick Legs, with large F e e t . H e was better t o m e e t , than t o fol
low; for his Aspect was serious. venerable. and majestic; in his latter
Time a little paralyticHis voice was low and grumbling; yet he
could Tune it by an artful Climax, which enforcd universal Attention,
even from the Pops and Orange-Girls. (299300)

Ashepeers forth imposingly from Alexander Popes copy of Sir Godfrey

Knellers portrait of around 1695, Bettertons physiognomy, countenance,
and posture do little to contradict Astons description of either their majes
tic or their corpulent aspect (figure 3.1). His left hand disappears
approximately where Aston said it usually did. His right hand waits nearby.
The collaborative stagecraft of painter and theatrical subject, as Richard
Wendorf has shown, developed apace in the later eighteenth century, but
here Kneller records the postural signature of a m o s t distinctive exercise of
memory and the kinesthetic imagination: the teapot school of oratorical
delivery, which, on ancient authority, discouraged unsupported gestures of
the left hand.
Like Aston, George Farquhar also noted Bettertons double identity
onstage, his strength and his vulnerability, in the role of Alexander the
Great in Nathaniel Lee 3 Rival Queem. Farquhar struggles wittily with the
fact that the stage player divides himself in t w o to represent a hero from
beyond the grave:
BETTERTON'S F U N E R A L

Wem u s t suppose that wesee the very Alexander, the S o n of Philip, in

all these unhappy Circumstances, else we are n o t touch'd by the
Moral, which represents to us the uneasiness of H u m a n e Life in the
greatest State, and the Instability of Fortune in respect of worldly
Pomp. Yet the whole Audience at the same time knows that this is M r .
Betterton, who is strutting upon the Stage, and tearing his L u n g s for
aLivelihood. And that the same Person shoud be M r . Betterton, and
Alexander the Great, at the same Time, is somewhat like an Impossi
bility, in my Mind. Yet y O u m u s t grant this Impossibility in spight of
your Teeth, if you hant Power to raise the old H e r o e from the G r a v e
to act his own Part. (2:384)

That Bettertons vulnerable body becomes the medium for raising the dead
Strikes Farquhar, tongue in check, asa cruel but inescapable necessity. What
necessitates it is the process of surrogation, the e n a c t m e n t of cultural mem
ory by substitution. The royal effigy fabricated by Betterton derived from
the memory of earlier actors aswell asthat of ancient kings: a chronicler of
rehearsal practices recalled that during preparations for a revival of The
Ram! Queens, Betterton was at a loss to recover a particular emphasis of
[Charles] Hart, which gave force to some interesting situation of the part;
When aminor a c t o r with along memory repeated the line exactly in Harts
key, Betterton rewarded him with hearty thanks and a c o i n f o r so accept
able a service (Davies, 3:27172). In t e r m s of the genealogy of a perfor
mance, the successors deference to the earlier interpreter of the role was
well considered. Of Harts Alexander, the long-time prompter John
DO'WfleS wrote: he Acting [the role] with such Grandeur and Agreeable
Malesw, That one of the Court was pleasd to H o n o u r him with this C o m
mendation; that Hart might Teach any King on Earth how to Comport him
self (41). To a c t well is to impart the gestures of the dead to the living, to
incorporate, through kinesthetic imagination, the deportment of o n c e and
future kings.
. Indeed, contemporaries believed that Thomas Betterton stood in a direct
hne of transmission of theatrical tradition going back to William Shake
speares original stagecraft. John Downes reverently traced this genealogy
of performance from the a c t o r Joseph Taylor across the Interregnum
through Sir William Davenant, who also did n o t discourage the notion that
he was Shakespeares illegitimate son: Hamlet being PerfOrmd by M r . B e t
terton, Sir William (having seen M r. Taylor of the BlackFoam Company
Act, who being Instructed by the Author M r. Shakespeare) taught M r . B e t
 3.1 Thomas Betterton (1635?|7Io).
Copy by Alexander Pope (1713) of Sir Godfrey Knellers portrait (ca. 1695).
Courtesy the earl of Mansfield
82 BETTERTON'S F U N E R A L

terton in every particle of i t (5152). H o w e v e r dubious the details of

Downess anecdote may have proved (Bentley, 2:597), the kinesthetic nos
talgia that it expresses, in which movements and gestures descend like heir
looms through theatrical families, demonstrates the instrumentality of the
theater in the fabrication of what Pierre N o r a calls true memory (15) and
Paul Connerton incorporating practice (72). The secular sanctity of
hake3pearean stage businessarguably the exemplary form of all English
mCOI'POTating practicesseems to connect also to the legitimating reci
Procity between the sovereign state and the Mimic State (Gildon, l0).
Downes records another genealogy of bits for Bettertons interpretation of
the title role in Henry VIII: he learned the business from Davenant, who got
u from John Lowin,who had been instructed by Shakespeare in propria per
sona (5556).
_1} PUblic memory Bettertons acting became synonymous with kingly
dignity. Summary accounts of his career, which ignore the fact that he por
tranfl atleast 183 parts of all kinds (Milhous), emphasize the decorum of his
tragic roles and generally slight his many successful comic parts. T h e a c t o r
zirzcglbfzfor instanceiin his-oft-quoteld eulogy, memorialized Better
bered the actor acommanding Mien of: Majesty (1:117). D o w n e s remem
sions 0n whichtoa v1v1dly for ennoblmg particulars such asthe t w o occa
King Charles 1 1( 6appeared onstage i n the borrowed c o r o n a t i o n robes o f
men: counted for: 0- Azthenticatmgdetails of costume and lcornport
imperfect of sticks 933': ea] in the ritualized consecration,.1nev1tably
What ' a n tags a sa symbol o f s o v e r e i g nc o n t i n u i t y.
bOdy of 233:33:51caEI-present to spectators in the theater is the natural
and far. This diChom;W1 i t s Temento mom of pockmarks, strained lungs,
actor to role, from vulzengllobe:a constant alternation of: attention from
moment one or the otherrOu eh 0 )IJtof enduring memory, in whlch at any
the effigya monstrosity As aignfoto e orcgotten but cannot-be. This makes
aries of Cultural idem); and its nstrous ouble, 1treconnorters the bound

nation and the loathing that and 10:y It: th'e mar'gms' acuvates the { 3 5 6 "
ditions of doubleness under whicjliilz'es' ee fgr l'ts llmmahty. 1 fan, the con
fluctuating measure of the distance.1bmg e gfes mUSt work, the constantly
Impossibility a: which Far h . erween identity and role, the mental
. qu ar lests, resemble nothing so much as the
ClrcumrAtlamic Phenomenon of racial double consciousness.
Beginning in the eighteenth century, European theorists of the stage
dCVdOped the idea of double consciousness as a psychological explanation
 liFITERlONS F U N E R A L 83

for the paradox of acting. Hence Diderot: O n e is oneself by nature; one is

another by imitation; the heart you imagine for yourself is n o t the heart you
have" (I40). As defined by \(2 E. B. Du Bois in The Soul: qu/ack Fol/c
(1903), double consciousness expresses the bifurcating pressures exerted by
racism on descendants of the African diaspora: I t is a peculiar sensation,
this double-consciousness. this sense of always looking at one 5 self
through the eyes of others, of measuring o n e 5 soul by the tape of a world
that looks o n i n amused c o n t e m p t and pity. O n e ever feels his t w o - n e s s ,
an American, a Negro; t w o souls. t w o thoughts. t w o unreconciled strivings;
t w o warring ideals in o n e dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it
from being t o r n asunder" (89).
This is n o t to equate the condition of stage performers, who make
appearances m o r e or less by their o w n volition, with that of the con
stituency defined by Du Bois, who did n o t choose to be defined asa prob
lem (7), though a historical understanding of the antitheatrical prejudice
does illuminate other phobic responses to the performance of difference
(Barish). It is rather to suggest that the performative effects of slavery and
race hatred that produced such contradictions as double consciousness did
n o t confine themselves to the plantations of the \Vest Indies: it is precisely
the ubiquity and importance of blackface roles on the eighteenth-century
stage that summon into remembrance the tangled relations that imposed the
burden of double consciousness variously on the far-flung subjects of its
representations. In this troubled crucible of reciprocal definition, impro
vised but potent binaries (such asblack and white, free and slave) struggled
to dominate the t e r m s of representation in the works of public culture, only
to find their ontological s t a t u s subverted there by the obligatory contribu
tions of liminality to the maintenance of memory.
Liminality helps to explain why transvestism, for instance, seems histori
cally constitutive of performance, a prior urgency to which the theater pro
vides anepiphenomenal elaboration or publicity. Marjorie Garbers insight
ful a c c o u n t in Vested Interest: (1992) of the funeral of Laurence Olivier (a
transvestite Olivier) as the surrogated burial of Shakespeare in Westminster
Abbey (only this time, much more satisfyingly, wit]: abody) focuses onthe
uses of liminal antitypes in the creation of national memory: That impossi
ble e v e n t in literary history, a state funeral for the poet-playwright who
defines Western culture, doing him appropriate homagean event long
thwarted by the galling absence of certainty about his identity and where
aboutshad n o w at last taken place" (33). While I warmly embrace this
BETTERTON'S F U N E R A L

analysis of the meaning of the event, I argue that it w a s hardly the first of
such rituals but rather one repetition among many in a genealogy of perfor
mance that dates at least from the passing of theatrical patentee Sir William
Davenant, who in 1668 was Buryd in Westminster-Abby, n e a r M r . Chaucers
Monument, Our whole Company attending his Funeral (Downes, 66).
Unlike the anxious atmosphere of homophobia and misogyny that produced
the transvestite liminality necessary to Oliviers apotheosis as a surrogated
double, however, the sacred m o n s t e r s of earlier times w e r e produced by
Playing off the circum-Atlantic worlds preoccupation with human differ
ence asit was predicated along the frontier of life and death.
JUSt such apreoccupation, I think, visited Richard Steele at Westminster
Abbey in 1710. Pondering the arrival of the torch-lit procession bearing an
aCtOrs corpse, hewas moved to a gloomy but irresistibly radical reflection
on the constructedness of all human difference, even that marked by the
POmP of sovereign majesty:

While I walked in the Cloysters, I thought of [Betterton] With the

same Concern asif I waited for the Remains of a Person who had in
real Life done all that I had seen him represent. The Gloom of the
Place, and faint Lights before the Ceremony appeared, contributed to
the melancholy Disposition I was in; and I began to be extremely
afflicted. . . . Nay, this Occasion in me, who look upon the Distinc
tions amongst Men to bemeerly Scenical, raised Reflections upon the
EmptineSS Of all Human Perfection and Greatness in general; and I
could n o t but regret, that the Sacred Heads which lie buried in the
Neighbol'hood of this little Portion of Earth in which my poor old
Friend is deposited, are returned to D u s t as well as he, and that there
is no Difference in the Grave between the Imaginary and the Real
Monarch. (Taller, 2:424)
As he walks in the Cloisters adjoining the very place where English kings go
to be crowned and commemorated, Steeles liberal belief that differences
among Men are meerly Scenical fills him with a feeling of emptiness at
the negated prospects for Perfection and Greatness. H i s response dra
matizes the extraordinary occasion for his Tatler paper: the b0nes of
Thomas BettertOn the stage player, son of anUnder-Cook to K i n g Charles
the First (Gildon, 5), doyen of a despised profession, are being laid to rest
near those of English kings, some of whom, like Richard II and Henry V,
remained stageworthy in the scene of collective memory that w a s the L o n
 RFTTERTON'S F U N E R A L 85

don theater. \Vhat a r e the implications of the fact that Steele and presum
ably others among his contemporaries were willing to ratify a public cere
mony that p u t at apparent risk the difference between the Imaginary and
the Real Monarch? The a n s w e r lies nor only in the way the effigy functions
in the theater but also in the way its memory e n t e r s into the vortices of
behavior that swirl around public nodes in the circum-Atlantic cityscape,
continuously reproducing and transforming the performance of daily life in
such public places as coffeehouses, marketplaces, places of assignation, and
places of burial.

Vortices of Behavior
In Augustan London, asthat historic metropolis emerges from the papers of
Steele and Addison, the coffee or chocolate house served asan important
locus for the judicious discussion and demonstration of propriety of behav
ior. There the n e w issues of The Tat/er and The Spectator were read aloud
and debatedprecisely the kind of secular ritual that animates Hegel's
observation that in the Enlightenment morning papers replaced morning
prayers. As sites of performance themselves, the coffee and chocolate
houses made the theater o n e of their m o s t urgent topics. If differences
between m e n are meerly Scenical," good behavior is available to anyone
who can measure up to well-informed scrutiny. As the legitimacy of the
actor exists in validating gestures of performance, so individual behavior
legitimates itself through speech and action on the stages of the public
sphere. As performance by definition offers a substitute for a fugitive orig
inal, any social performance under this regime entails a certain element of
risk (Ketcham; cf. MacAloon, 9).
A demonstration of the high stakes involved in such social dramas as
these appears in the expositional confrontation in the first scene of William
Congreves 77? Wa) Off/13 World (1700), which takes place at the locus of
conspicuous consumption of a luxury commodity, A Chocolate-House.
At the plays premiere, the duel for supremacy between Fainall and
Mirabell, carried on over chocolate at the gaming table, began with Better
ton, adventuresomely miscast asthe villain, alluding to interactive protocols
of legitimating performance in his opening lines: I d no more play with a
Man that slighted his i l l Fortune, than Id make Love to a Woman who
undervalued the Loss of her Reputation (Works, 3:15). The juxtaposition
of t e r m s in Congreves balanced antithesesreputation, value, fortune,
86 BETTERTON'S FUNERAL

and play~defi
ne the possibilities and limits of se
the calculated
gambleof social perfonnancg. ' through
lf-actuulization

ilt environment and per'fi) r m[0a Cir

tive
d OPPOftumty, the ' Creproduction but also, accord'gg

of the nGaming
attemm 3death, Steele sets aSIdC
~ Gentlemen, (who
. CO1v:mkefl
' 6v8
h;n laccre'
hedeath of Dryden)on the P0Wer
' on the threshold between the
onty _[.1ue
nag"
HOV/ever the - ASThe Tat! n0tes In
. I,t s in. gu ral lSS
er an

erton; and s]1salterd,

Gamingall have of this dg
Part shewn .Houo56
r63t

l a Sence of the Uncertaintytirl

.a.terW1tht emSelves every Moment) Illa of
113d Mark Anthony of Rome, Hamlett r)

gland I t Ontus, Theodosius of Greece, and 1.10

. . 5.1%:Sif known, hehas been in the CondIEer
hlmSElf ereOnages for several Hours roget

.
anons, In all the chang
eS
of

0
f Chance in gambling do.65"or
{0"
out the a c t o r standlrlg 111

egi
S more 1
- ewagers
. s
n negOtiationS, makinguctio
or sale5 at aegula
eles reckoning, the r 6
hStO e Th . d me
1'Ough the prmte
 lil HlRlON'. H'NERM. 87

Of a Sr(II/g,- pa .
PLr. hist l) u l) 1'I C ' H11;l g ;, Js Lingl). emg}
. . . ' , .
reaches beyond the play
house audie
' .
ncc and Word of ln o u t l1to the extreme range ofAthe circulation
of th .
e10m"al-In BenL-r t o n as a. r t . audiences
. and readers alike saw mirrored
and
. magn'led
" .
1mac . 1m a s t e r y O f A ~ _ .
n Y m the Pilr'irk ) . - . , the restored behaworthat dehnes cultural legu
I.
t heel-minty of u . \ l a doubled body. necessarily vulnerable to the
. ...- but nevertheless endurin
mam. .\lldlr> .
e .
Change-S ()f Sc L, n e . n g through all
idea tlli . .. meerly Scenical"
expanded Wl '1 d'lltrences among, men are
e n 11x . . .
cultural tranSmi . of the traditional forms of
L*llwd 111 a citv where some
5810 r . '. . d. In that regard, the more
ncl y n ere bemgr \lSlblV displace
lbrmance incircum
Cl mo rt . L\[)dnSl\'C
1. . - v o r 't e x oi social per
1don '5W[he R0),.al Exchange 11Addison in
~_ asdescnbed . by josep
of the worlds m
s I . ' \ O n
aterial
n l .

SPECtat Hi g l1-Clmn 6activ

t b reI tn l l e t.y n n c. Circulation. of their commodities
. ' for
tl1e g 0r asa Cere . I '6 t t m e ot the most mtens
l3 of representatives of
try, struck Mr.
. r e at 1 0 11 ] ;1Performance
~ betore
. the eyes
lned nations of. \ . , .
Indiahimself in t11 tht World 1 ,.
Hem. asa Citizen of the World, hem g
, the
n e rok "1 Muscovite. Armenian. Dutchmam rling through
Japanese,
ES ]\V_ : ' ~ . _
chad of t11311d- 1 '1. hL grand Scene at Busmess ' swn
V rolling down his _
eeks 1e F(cl . . f 't all, namely
then (1.29-1). M EC quadrangle sends tears of 10.
Its aturaldistribut'
~ r. SPGCtator weeps for the d
10
IOCUS
o
:ldenti211 r e tUrI t ) of . abundance to the diSIa
.
the 13rod 11through
mulathn: Tl J
centnpetal Interdepen
_ f Qual'
Uc
1esmgle Dress of a Woman 0
In tof a
effigi the SWirlinn hundred Climates (1:295).
in fainter of the commercial vortex. 1
man COn e ' Statlies representin
CUe .
heme father d 1 St, carved by Caitts '
en ge The Comm
 .. o 5
f the
ithin them) 00"grout:
. ' inal pOSEIOZCIaves
_hag-London.
1 erues Squahe

6authorlt . forms literalic exec

ofticbaifings
the growpOCket's is. Fab on ta,
Like Cong),
. s,

e c0mmu . s!(3]).
mty W no
as
t8l
thus understoodi if amblgrd
ldomain,a
ntru e (57). so go! f
Iitera wont,
AsLonIdbelieve,
1 oundarles,
a Came
e o transgresslon on g. reto [h rne
rict of D
. ui d over 1n e
he an
d Covent Garden (51:
 lHTTFRlON'S Fl'XERM. 89

y cfl ONIJOU) - [ l 1 0[ C i t t\ r '

Lonipldlnt:
ell Ld . 21b UI illCIeaSiHElV
'3 0 flaa'rant
a I ) ) S
titutIOn 1n and
. mund the pht) lmuses 0t Restoration and Augustan Lon
e .

don, which n o
the inCOr ' "Pcrated under the authoritv of roval patents dramatize
Cent n. P0rat' t o n of I | re 7x. , .
Tlpeml Vomcm of PLTIPliLldl luchc economy of the Liberties into the
le Public Sale f the "mdemizing London tirbanscape mote the
e () . i '
of other Commodililmdn ttt cs and
fleshor the displav' of flesh to pro
Cum - ber\'lCCSllas
~ - become somuch apart of cir
Atlantlc Culture that ' . .
perv851v fines It has rendered itself invisible through its very
ate! 5. Its genca 10g}, crosses at many points the history of the the
and .
acfin Particul.dr] .
gand PVOStitul'iVon t t o 0*
L0ndo m the tilt"
thet -itheater district. The perceive
m e of~the introductionof actresses onthe
n
likeBetter ' l 660 oi lers
stage 1 -a . in
. case . and even a widely admired actor
- pomt.
{On brawny Tom by
COuld n o t LScttpe
3 ., . by association: called
guilt
(
Satyr on the Plavers (Ca 1684). Betterton stands accused
. eu
e. which the satirist indicts asa
re )s Rende2V DldbS of the plavhous
O
ictionag, hereafter 3 0 ,
2:8
4) But the in O u ze (quoted m ' BiographicalD
"
Sents V izardMasks repre
on rid a S s ' -
Sex i "duly one o f the m0i o c l a t l o n o f theater and the
re Sensationally- ~
publicized features of theZacharias
London
V0 Str ,
_ n Uffen y A foreign theatergoer tn ' London in t
titutes and beggars,

feeDun 11 I]1e t uropean dress.

t "dWith tlhagers. The females wear E
(
saw them (33)
. err 121ck bosoms uncovered,asweoften

e 0nl
0f y erOti .
urbanizationCdflotsam 1n. the mix (Burfo
.
1 unskilled labor from t c 0 describe
Uph
l. r emisC
PhraSe n l l
ecruited t ewy come upon I
o '
Prostitute
themselves came into' gene
alr - tEe]e _
at
110 mg a 1n the PCr . .
use and n enCOUm ei- ' S o n a of Mr- Spectator, dilates on this.

'Ihe0th t eTheaI r e Royal,

In theDrury
marketLwe
square near
0 th er Eve
e 1311)0was1
o11thJa m gturn d , along near Coven
Passing
e i n t o the Piazza, on
90 BETTERTON'S F U N E R A L

itely beautiful. She affected to allure me with a forced Wantonness in

her Look and Air; but I saw it checked with Hunger and C o l d : H e r
Eyes were wan and eager, her Dress thin and tawdry, her M e i n gen
teel and childish. This strange Figure gave me much Anguish of
Heart, and to avoid being seen with her I w e n t away, b u t could n o t
forbear giving her a C r o w n . The poor thing sighed, curtisied, and
with a Blessing, expressed with the u t m o s t Vehemence, turned from
me- (13534-35)

This episode constructs an urban scene parallel to both Steeles evening

walk in the Cloisters of Westminster Abbey and Addisons visit to the Royal
Exchange. Through the eyes of M r . Spectator, the pedestrians behold as
spectacle the performance of everyday life in a behavioral v o r t e x , the stag
ing of ceremonial practices within the architectural setting of a place
marked by c u s t o m for those purposes. In C o v e n t Garden, as at the Royal
Exchange, the restoration of certain behaviors designates a L i b e r t y, the
point of intersection of business and pleasure for many private Men.
Here the concept of an effigy may be demonstrated n o t only in the actions
of a particular celebrity or king but in those of a stock character or t y p e . As
in the commedia dellarte, stock characters s e r v e asconduits of m e m o r y for
social-performances, providing a zone of play within which improvisatory
variations may be staged. In the scene of assignation in C o v e n t Garden,
both M r. Spectator and the girl newly c o m e upon the To w n play familiar
roles, i""PI'OVisil'lg and negotiating their identities within a scenario pro
vided by the behavioral v o r t e x of the setting itself and their apparently r a n
dom meeting within i t .
The prostitutes body has t w o aspects: her a i r of Wantonness sug
gests a standard repertoire of flesh marketing that possesses a k i n d 0f
immortality in Circum~Atlantic performance. T h e fact that this perfor
mance is checked with Hunger and Cold, however, by a desperate child
thinly wrapped against the London January, interpolates a m e m e n t o mOI'i
into the erotic semiosis (Bataille, Erotism, 12939). Although she appar
ently stops M r . Spectator cold, the improvisation that the prostitute a c t u
ally brings offcharity a sp e r f o r m a n c e w a r m s the heart w i t h a g e s t u r e
of sacrificial expenditure. Such a tribute between negotiating parties M a r
cel Mauss calls the prestatz'orz, a G i f t for which reciprocity is implicitly
expected. Reciprocity comes in this instance by w a y of the girls vehement
performance of gratitude, punctuated with her delectable c u r t s y. She deliv
 n r t r s t t r o x s FUNERAL 9|

ers value for value received. affording M r. Spectator a joy t o o exquisite for
Ejaculation.
The supposed meritocracy and social gambles of the coffeehouse,aswell
as the transactions performed at the Royal Exchange and in Covent Garden,
take on an added layer of meaning when they are juxtaposed to another
behavioral v o r t e x only then emerging in London and other circumAtlantic
Cities: the cemetery. Like a city wall. death marks a boundary on either side
of which subordinate perimeters may be delineated. The Liberties of
London included a graveyard located outside the city walls. called No
Mans Land, which c u s t o m reserved for noncitizens (Mullaney, 39). The
designation of a burial ground within the confines of aludic space seems
Counterintuitive, but such a perception of incongruity s t e m s from a disrinc
tive cultural attitude towards death. Like the prohimity of DePauge"s
Cimen're to the Place du Cirque (Congo Square) on the outskirts of colonial
New Orleans, the location of N o Mans Land" in a Liberty of London
marks death, like other circumAtlantic performances asanexploration of
corporate identity at the o u t e r limits of imagined community.
At the same time Sir john Vanbrugh was proposingto end burials in Lon
dOn churches by segregating the dead in the Skins of Towne," Addison
PrOduced his famous Spectator number on funerary monuments in West
minster Abbey (March 3 0 , 171 1). Happeningon grave diggers atwork under
the s t o n e s of the nave floor. M r. Spectator noted how every shovelful threw
UPthe Fragment of a Bone or Skull from the remains of the confusd
multitudesMen and W o m e n , Friends and Enemies, Priests and Soldiers,
Monks and Prebendarieswhose bodies were crumbled amongst one
anOther, and blended together in the same common Mass (1:110). In the
tax0nomic priorities of a newly imagined Community, this clearly will not
do for M r. Spectator. His meditation on the anonymity of such burials is
deflected by his inspiration about the extreme importance of proper inscrip
tions and memorials to s e t apart those among the dead Who have proven
truly worthy of enshrinement in a place of national memory: As a For.
eigner is very a p t to conceive an Idea 0f the Ignorance or Politeness 0f a
Nation from the Turn of their publick Monuments and Inscnptions, they
should be submitted to the Perusal of Men of Learning and Genius before
they are put in Execution (1:1I0)- 1" the renovated commonweallth 0f
memory, Learning and Genius, n o t lineage and title, must approve the
Credentials of embassies from beyond the grave.
Like the Statuary at the Royal Exchange, the Effigies of the notable dead
 92. BETTERTON'S F U N E R A L

l at Westminster Abbey m u s t perform for the edification of the Citizens of

the World: if this behavioral v o r t e x works asit should, memory and imag
i ination fill the Mind with a kind of Melancholy, or rather Thoughtfulness,
i that is n o t disagreeable (1:109). M r. Spectator reorganizcs the medieval
untidiness of a common grave, where the unsegregated community repre
sents itself anonymously, into a proper pantheon, where Monuments and
InscriptiOns of selected worthies represent the best that the nation has
engendered. Death, the supposed leveler of all distinctions, becomes the
very agent of their enunciation. The question that m u s t be addressed n o w is
this: on what basis did an a c t o r qualify for early inclusion as an ambassador
to posterity?

The Life of Betterton: Talking with the Dead

The familiar sources on Thomas Bettertons life read like eyewitnesses
accounts of his mummification, the sacred purification of a secular relic, a
venerated effigy fit for a king. In the eighteenth-century critical and bio
graphical commentaries of Charles Gildon, Colley Cibber, j o h n Downes,
Richard Steele, and Anthony Aston, the imperishable character of Better
ton is constructed o u t of the materials of Thomas Bettertons failing bOdY
Each of the memorialists w r o t e mainly after the actors death (Cibber and
Aston n o t until 1740), and in each case (except for Downes) he s a w the a c t o r
perform only late in his career, when age and failing health limited at least
some of his former powers. Although Charles G i l d o n made Thomas B e t
terton the subject of what appears to be a booklength theatrical biography,
Tfie Lifi of M r . Tllamas Betterton, t/ze L a t e Eminent T ragedz'an ( I 710), puta
tively the first of that genre in English, the facts about the actors life c o n
tained therein are few, and m o s t of those contested ( 8 D , 2:7396; L o w e ;
MilhouS). A single narrative thread, however, links almost every o n e of
Gildons biOgraphical assertions with many of the occasional remarks about
the aCtor-manager in other sources: Bettertons s t a t u s as a living incarnation
of Shakespearean tradition, asa worthy representative of the English stage
under the Stuart monarchy, and the implicit parallel between the M i m i c
State or the Government of the patent theaters and the nationstate itself
(Gildon, 510).
The m e a s u r e m e n t o f historical time involved i n Bettertons career, like
that of the Congoslave belonging to Madam Fitzgerald, belongs to what
I have termed epochal memory, a chronotrope that historians might or
 BETTERTON'S FUNERAL 93

might n o t readily periodize but that contemporaries can recognize ashaving

been specially marked by the limits of generational recollection (Postle
Wait). An exemplary meditation on popular performance asa measure of
epochal memory occurs in james \Vrights Hirrona Hiltm'onica (1699), the
first history as such of the English stage. in which an Old Cavalier, one
of a dwindling tribe. reflects on the a c t o r s and playwrights of the last
Age, meaning the end of Charles 1's reign and the beginning of Charles
11s, and those who can remember them: We are almost all of us, now, gone
and forgotten (Ii). Wrights method of weaving together memories of
actors and kings to define an Age" attests to the power of effigies like Bet
terton to imbue time with narrative. reconstructing a genealogy of perfor
mance o u t of the remains of dead or dying celebrities.
Bettertons powers of endurance. compelled by financial necessity as
well as public demand, stood o u t asremarkable even at a time When actors
customarily tried to hold on to their roles as lifelong investments. Steele, in

i
a significant move, exempted Betterton from the ordinary decay of time,
Even when he was forced to a c t , toward the end, in a slipper that eased his
gout-stricken foot. In the persona of M r. Greenhat, lee Tat/er noted of the
actors interpretation of Hamlet (which Pepys had first remarked on fifty
years before): Your admird M r. Bellman behavd himself so well, that,
tho n o w about Seventy, he acted Youth; and by the prevalent Power of
PrOper Manner, Gesture, and Voice. appeard through the whole Drama a
young M a n of g r e a t Expectation, Vivacity, and Enterprize" (t:493)- A more
Skeptical Anthony Aston, in his BriefSupplement to Colley Cibber, allowed as
how the gouty septuagenarian appeard a little t o o grave for a young Stu
dent, particularly in the play scene when hethrew himself down atOphe
lias feet. Ye t Aston, like Steele, finally had to marvel that even in parts
impersonating younger m e n n o one else could have pleasd the To w n , he
was so rooted in their Opinion (Aston, goo301). It was that rootedness in
Public opinion that drew attention from Bettertons physical infirmity 0 his
Other body, the one that existed outside itself in the fact of his performance
0f it. Transcending the body of flesh and blood, this other body 55i5ted
of actions, gestures, intonations, vocal colors, mannerisms, expressions,
cllstoms, PTOtOCOIS, inherited routines, authenticated traditions'bits'
Like the kings body politic, the actions Of this theatrical body could not be
i"Validated by age or decrepitude.
Despite the PaUCity of its details regarding the Bettertonian curriculum
Vitae, Gildons Life, the bulk of which is a Pastiche of seventeenth-3enmry
 . h
r two
the memory of Char] s and reasons aFlrst7
concludes anarrafl"e
few pages lat :Ntecountmg
y
burial Wit great Decen i ' . begin5 w
er r
e

hat new Wounears asAlbion shed,

- the body of the dead kin d5,
tInvestmg and
With hallowed old have
how herpowers bled.
that aCtD0V;a
r cl
(Poems, '2180) d 5.
33:5 Offpace and
crimieclallavie dre dacorps
andtime, haththeS olklonc
p P6tr eson tradition that
een dismembered, ck t
dIStrurbe
Oper y aid t o rest (R, . e r t o fl S e
lmk the life of thet eater to thlslc ar , 7) me sze ofBett
ace his re arks o e natlo al
Wi d

. own Compflat{e noI

ated hIS ior10
00k tries to write:
. licolPol,
m t headln- tOffers ananthology
P ySlcal gesture a0 d V0511
' . n .
pS model-11'
 l i l l l t h N ' x HNERM. 9i
ti
ACTon and .,fl . .
tel-[0n in 3130;;va l'-l(-\N(il-: of the Stage. Bar. and Pulpit. Referring to Bet
thttthis Desi ruffle I C l ' m s as the lust of our Tragedr'anr. Gildon claims
:hthis D isciur 1: 1 Perpetuute the actor's memory. conveying his Name
rQZdY (r). The b:;il[,lczlSt to alittle longer Date. than Nature has given his
PrJtZZet-l behaviOrs $131193 then proceeds to provide a copious archive of
e1 310113 and for I)0.sterityc. and Vocal. for
to ponder contemporaries
as the monumental to utilize
record of inwhat
the
enCe meant
[0 1'

Lthuf
StreEloluenc3 reSid). ~ forebears. vulnerability and
5 1n. the credible embodiment
ngth, and the maSIC . . of -
r} Of those qualities enhances the longevrty of the
.ame. EmPlOyin . . ~ . '
Strength 1nter 311d them-ig gs} taxonomy of the .PaSSIOHS derived from the

re him
of Bett and an
Vuherabilit
analysis ) ffm [he
Rules 1? Brun. Gildon examines the play of
P21551011 ot Griet. He puts in the mouth

compos: lt delineates t} 0 EU, Lamentation by jordaens of Antwerp (fig

Ion as the b dle refined S t a t e s of grief in the various figures of the
The P358. 0 y of ChriSI is taken down from the cross:
0f the V' 0 0 f - -. .
O n 13exPreSSd with a wonderful Variety; [he Gnef
llgin M
1th Life O tlrer ISin
' . all the Extremity of Agony, that ,5
n comma
1nv Signs of remaining
1 er; tl xtreme Grie a
if): W'th 1.05:2;St. Mary Magdelan is an e

. SiOn for 0n :enlerness, which she alwa

Friet 5Strong b r legged LOrd; then [he Grief of St. 101' {h
ars and
L0 "d5 ll); and ur manly, and mixt with the Tenderness of
ve [0 ~ that of JOSeph of Arimathea suitable to his Yeand
d in himself,

Stance
Its r elationship
' . to the dea
Irit
Sp~
. 1'1 C0
World ex ntroctSt to the mortuary rituals
_ o s . l'

IStS in 3 abstract and disembo

' 1
' d relations HP
 Photo; ElkeI ca 1650- Hamburger Kuns
' tha lle

3 reading of l e e Lafiseuredg,
Mafia,
ors open their limp, White arms
in gesture to
n at
and time the
aCradle
eXPression, that 1:316b0d:"y of
mun
andeven-fated
d god.
protOCols

Was called 0monstrated When Tho

0 I1
mas Bettert
iBUre 3.3).mmmm (l1ae
' oftoth?
Most ecdota
arIIqamlet,
time m that
' playIs101,
ters on his performance 1n
 and emory cruelly inflict the uncertaintics of Plrjgn
er
' rwhelming but imperfect grief' Severn let to
esdocument the famous response of Bettertons Ha[Trista
' rs oft~cited description, :1favorite of theater- e for
eareans, needs to be reexamined in light 0f its Prms
- O ' [ OS
' t h emotton of grief. b reports that CJtorsi"
Cibber
[5 leon that the excessive vociferanon of other a ePl'
er reglflation of bereavement and Outrag en
. e143 Into which Betterton threw this Scene WhiCh he OP'
With a Pause o e But
.
7

ea ti may begeneralized, decency and1:IO|)-

(Cibber, reverence inci
nd
gull)clli
If the to
the
regulate th ~ g eved toamore Stoxc. relationship with the dead, a

. master their rage (cf. RosaldQlatiofs

1 20'
3 s 11:, {Ittom
we3 Primordial murdered
whenand dema rebloody
~
seem, .
even nd
eliving, past,

. a Stag!
oset scene w1th ertons
' e55
erepresentation 0f B e if

3 hraised
unbraced nt at her sonSee: he Gho :0_t Pens er ar sceptef- The de in
seate
ms and legs wi after
remarks 0n Clo
th of -
T1,e sze - me
f ls mouthnin 3hicabl
ock 6but
start. - aw 6.1":
alsoHamlet
In g
in aM y ught perfectly :Ctor hlmself:
rto t. 111' 11 lureestures Of thg
. n, lldon att
326,011 a sud en Fright Conespmld w th
b
ego ar
the {0110Winge
1

as HQ
 --NMW
5% ,
100

sto beused by only one Hand,Le [ 2II1 0ne (74).

_
be
it being indecent to make a Gesture With the mifation hat mofUS[
c on
7 eighteenth century, the wide. disSe ral aclVCe on

ns military manuals, and gene '

conduct boo
egeneral
'
resuggests
proliferationof seventeenth-.and e1g
that GildOn sflfeISthcenf
- E a r t.hlpa Iy
- [57

stute. T ig be termed the secular 'r mi r" e)

. nahza
- no
.
odtly control as a moral
. eran"' e
al to the salon asavisuble
,
ll'ldex
.
0 ImP
f soc!a [
. 13cceP

w] 't II
pears in contemporary the eve
dress f
Of anantiquated look. 0
nt of burial sites to then (Sklr
u [S o
on th

argued that he 810 eneiCl er wrote his Aldo

Written: this v 9 (..
e anecdote to flatte- poet ha
Uld perform What the drama1th ring 6
 I 0 ]

Grind
Why _ .
1 and chimng you had heard him say,
W11) tit: the Il'lllsm Lubours cast awav>
' Cit I only \\ ..fi .l e What only he Could
-' Play?

NichOlas (quoted in Gildon. xiiixiv)

Betterto ROWQ Wrote thesehas in [ 7 0 9 on the occasion of a benefit for
Star
a One Of S ) . ~ ces given by the aging
ev awho had im Cvtral tmal farewell performan and lost
e . Cs '. ' - .
rYthmg Wllen the{Cd .lllbWhie
ship savmgs in a West Indian argosy
a s Captured by French privateers (Lowe, '45,
.
'86) I n [h peares
Wor/c at Same Veal , ~ . .
With ' ' r, [ h t Publication 0t Rowes edition of Shakes
t 10 . _
edanearly milgraplncal 'ntrOdUCtlon indebted to Betterton
of 3 SC es m t3.In reinventing
. I Shakespeare-the inauguration
C
Ola ] .
lted . r y Indus . _
with the editO try
' m [ 5 .name
. (G. Taylor.
' 5- 9). Betterton collabo
.

Rm. C'7of M r m Complllng the materials for Some Account of the

1v r. \V - n ..
repro ' OWes t es imam- Shake-Spear
I that prefaced the edition I(Rowe,
rI Old
a ' Hmon'al allusxon to Hamlet. with the Ghost rtsmg to

amlet 5etc
carry around his father decorous be1
1 av
as e1Sewhere in
. the period,
. ses a new way
..m
RM.

at.
.

emlere
) I769
1'ema Hamlet re
proachesGertrude
nUnlvers From JeanFra
n01s ch
tyLibrariES
 MHERrox's H'XERAL 103

reformation of
:3;As Benedict 1:2;Im".
rsonrtgarded aspopular
pithily puts it: superstition into social mem
Wild: another 51".]c (if mm . Absurdity of salvation: nothing
ate for Chief medium"um." " t o r e necessary" (it). A front-running
of continuitv Was the canon of classics as
enshfined
~
"1 11n'at ' . agic of theatrical
pel'formanc'3 [he ""141 theater. Through the rational m
ElIE-Publlc Sphe
reflhltrtfilffldmetamorphosed into tlte cultural pantheon of
sic:l Complex of issues-1; the dramatic poets maintained pride of place.
of SOVereigntv Rid I to segregation of the dead. the symbolic diffu
. ll'Ogated bu
Su ~ the sancttfication of a secular canon through the
ria stands most revealingly defined in the
luxtapos. . {I l Performers
0 tw 0 s u l l r u u {scourse Upon Comedy
~ !
Un ,dWhtCh mm (Jeorge Farquhars D glish national theater
3 .
e lunls an early proposal for an En
on the Sec oltaire'5Letters Con
at [/13 E'zg1,;,/,:;m:m(mf the body politic. and \ ionale for theatrical
Sch01 rs ethn film? ('733) Which explains the rat
ma Ogrdplncully.
hi y read m 90f the principal documentsctrine
of Augusmn
of the kings
the
0 b0 .SOry and Cr - . ,
consti dies was up lnctsm exactly 110, the mystifieddo
I r .' . e.
~ Y Farquhars
I Dix
collr tut Ionfills P . ()Prmed [0 sun the national vision 01\Vlug patriots and
Aud: cEllls for r::\:l:tars ( ) f Steele 5Free-b0rn peop] . .
. nee) an audi "gllsh Plays {Or the specific instruction oi an English
ethnicit Cnce that represents anationality in the modern sense,
med czlar

lists of mmuh y OrganiZed by the historic fiction of ace into an imag

axon lus
' tory .and InSIItutl
' '0 n5. f tl13
t
mthe restO

00mm y SitllatitjrmS asa People n o t only

x n and Tn, but different also from
at b y Politfcllgerament of the Natural Body. .
raceml yanCient
means of (237379). Imagining the legitlm
d ainational stage, the Anglo-Irishman Far .
lion. e body uahty 0f the kings two bodies into the con]
lattertclllral)
na and nation (the body politic):
the . aConstm:
unique
lexion '.
ePends up0n the particular of the fame
SQ constitutio ' . Comp n ers of 1115
d . 1 ge. ' Farquh n m tl"SPas-1158ascendsthrough
' ' ea
y {flesh
Inlss exlon and Tar SdeSired union between
ernperament) and the body 1 , .
. Pom:
Constlwno
to4 BETTERTON ' S FUNERA
' . l.

, as does Defoe ,S0tt-qu"ted

Born Englis'[1-7mm t e c Daniel
. f the C o m [cam
P08te Pmy f Ang o- ax invaders garnson
h orttradiCtiOnand
bL[W
. ePosite
left by the illegitimate S onofroots
I union every and the actuil y. the f f " tlleSC?
SUP'
m

followers
III 0b an [oc21

From thl mphibious Ill-born Mofishrfian

Thatvam ll-natured thing, a chfOfl
c .t) (We of
nEn 1
But asAngl Saxo 13m flounshe , he mcreasrnglyhd omtScuous n state,
pureautoch hony
ed the proltfic evrdenCe of suC P1'0 ( 1 a n " a t !o authO
.

the tr sform ion f the dy asne state I n t o the ":1:

omma [ 1g! !n "arra
011 toha!life 5
SonIn
nicity ha more ham 0 offered a fable 0f legmm ervattons 0" Lvl
esubse tp r rma e oltaires trenchant obS [inoWSk' ors soc"
England a c tlcal bu thusxasttc lme L'ke ong indigen t0 172:
Stra 33,
. .
n 'ethcentury ant rop010gists ltvmg alnhMafrom _17260Uc6" H1
- the htlosophes fieldwork among the Enghs l
ettes, ral differeniliar t0
Inspired extended editatton on: e relationS of Cl} tu more fam
observant: s made t e strange practices of the ham/es
French enan , a t the same '
strange to he s
Gallic fashio In elves. His et"He, the familiar practices of
ave. thirty . bu t e o{6
comes to a nthat the- British
. Isle
nographtc . religions
prolecr, Wthh
' C Ioh
n c Fret;h
only m_h
one 52[0
.
be
11
IU(165 111 11969
actress Ann Lette ' e 23, On the Regard [
hat Ought f the
oltaire discusses t e . oCular
h burial

ate the Mnuments which

ator ISnot the Ma o
soleums 1135
Elnory of th t e Gratitude 0f the Nation ted
ciVic
:2: rs, 166). ereose illustrious bleeds
Worship Men Wnational g b
. ngs
u IOUS Men. and infuses ' ' ho contrlb'ilory
Still mol
t ememory 0 5
f celebrlt Y

. m y . . ht for h tio
or well
. easSlngnlar, and It to
of an
onurnent mtg
aCtre )c0nVerl
the58- 2355 t a
Th1 'that l

. nt eversion of letter
 to;
M HERI'LNS FlXERH

Wro te d"ll'ec | 1e
Co!rast betw I ,V to the l Trtnch
\ actress. (l'tiron
.. . \' 0l wire pointedly draws tl
een [I 0 r e v eloved
SIarlet in the m i_nnail C. C r e n c t) o f the E nglish ' t/mrb
dtlledr- l a " '15 tll e \- buried ' ed on
th3 Wre
tch
' cor t; .9 t ~ Nd the i nsul
- : ' ecou
Vreur: uItlsedtrue ll)m gl. Olclhelds
. . c lr c o
~ Frcn h his countrymen
heap
me , caum unterpart. Adne
leme m the Chu l . \ mgactressenjoysa
nd lmdusolcun,
ecouv Sand O w- n the
"I OldldL Enfllandslead'
' .
e L
r e ) of Westminster like the count
I

a T . I '
met 026 the IC'tclinave grad! hewton. It is also true. that Mad it0 to5
buried there b the then unpl a:ltrtss 0t France in her time was broueln01
to the clima, y a Street POrte Rue de Bourgogne in a cab that shi was

a CytolbOF his rt-funk, rfdnd has no mausoleum This leads Volt'lire

est . est 0w ho nors where
Ve athhed
shake - ethmc
mt
It or t][he . . ' peculiarit}
' l' of the English,
' their
'
Speare \ an allnual hold .l are properly deserved: The English
aire V0 still do in ) t |)1I .v.1
8-"- In honor of the famous actor and poet
r ef( f r \C d l I ' '
' .
setup , utthats s to David C. |1 0 1, d a} for Mohere" (SelectedLetters,
. m k a 5 Strattbrd
u larranged
ame a c t o r h-Id also jubilee.
for several a0
pieces rain-soaked
InInatio 0 memoriaze
memOry by Shakespeare.
1e 5 Z 3 .
who was in fact
mm CdIVCd by Peter Scheemakers

in for the m oets. who in

ln es 0f the dramatic
emor) 5wayp defines the le
g at zlm'
. St"Y o in eighteenth
cenmr orlty of the
f culturemem
Seculilr Ory Which
at large_ . in. it I interments gitimat
dedicated
toll ng Theatrica e for tombs
Un I :11 I be]1
' e , eafu'lCtloned asa prOIOI)P
d double of WllICll

Ofn .h erSon
on . Says
raaSsensall3 ' " exist ( n0 mOFC arresting
' emblem
ace e) Where the. They- constituted
symbOllC . of one
burial aplace 0 bod
surrogated

eff} y rati0n . 110b

speei .

8y dedic allzed and Seqmes

allot aUtllorized
Segregated of general
spaces the death.
mainTdisposal of
The: taetefii to those I
th 8a? arlcbtive kins}:1:(:):vuld Otherwise re
91- . y in Ody POliti race and nation. . .
e rites of Se]: 9f the Free-born fore requ'res unique
.n West Ellglish exZW memory. In letter
Orla] V' mlnster Abb Pt10nallsm. AShe W0.
1e0n lrtuekLib Cy: sohepondered With a
earth Who herty- The English,
ave been able to prescri e
 0V6 I . . OUS
the perp relgn SUbleCt, In such a mofl1cm st
erually performed and so, perforce, m"
ntinuously reinvented.

beloe .impressiVe librarybooks, Prints,

glng to that Celebrated Comedian,
ken Vf/ith ghosts. In the amllronflogy

neer emptled
. 0{
o u t the comer!t5 of
' aa la . Ce
m c markers rger and more dlffuse Spa
fine
8 Cu] an, the 3'
tural calPita]
akes on
h the linetitle
gran by Preparing theauction
of Hookes 53.!
community

moms bOOPOWel-fu] Point that these were "Zr

Id not be e -.Hooke clearly thought that fie

exchanget n 0 mUCh. An auction, "1185

ity ' tdoes 80b gaFCertains value publicly in 63.5 ,1
(C . y ringing t"gfirther for the occasfib
C
- As was customary: Jaing
ays befo Bettertons books by Offer ies
W Coffee fiethe Sale and by placing C099
8" Ouses Viz. 3: james, ear m,
6
ate; the Grecian at the 01
' S ' a .
914er S'1 Fuller Rents, 1
 107
M lli'RTtX'S FI'NERM.
601;m; St
I", - pall/5 [ 1 0 e r the v estend of St. Pauf's Catliedrl' WW5 in on1
S y
, near the R
o gings
. n nv-I ~ ..Htrc ;
' d. LxCh] . .
] (P13. mic page) 5T] incl at the place
\ - Ic physucal locations Saleof [Bettertons
dot the former
map of London'
t e $0ci3110 . >
of the t Cdtlon is. I th'ink. 1I m r c. ~singularSteeles
. imagined community

Caulk ) g ( ) t. .d
Mmatcly
of Bettertonsl Icollc 560 books reveals certain distinctive
) ) r t ) " - .
L u' o n . There are. of course. many Plays,

R0We 5 ne k tdit.K ) I ( ) t Shdkt.

' 5pet"e ub[1! not nearly HSmany as
e bBen
Challcer PrecliLted.
~ T} . . .
lete nondrilmmit
mP 1ca c t o r more or less systematically
\ v o rks . ~ of canonical
- English
" authors. including
geonin Spenser Milto
PublCationS o? dnq Dryden (PB. 13). He kept story. his collection
o editiom f Phi|050phy and natural hi up with the bur
e5 Experiments,
0 Hobbes. several of Locke. Bovl
Pred'let rt H Coke, Somewhat more
esture
(pg a x13ut SI!
.3 rev . 'Pplng
YePO heUCogaP/W
' owned
' ' (PR 13)
ealmgly rhetorics and books ong
gllq
3e ~) in Clud
77: of, mg J01] .
9Eng], :Hand(1644).nandBulwer-s
conductclassic C/u'ro/ogia;
manuals such asor. The Natural
Richard Lan
Brathwaits
ton Iha' enzlem ( (1631). Better
- an I( 30) ,and T/Ic Eng/1'5}: Gem/woman 5. especially
in _alned Standar (1 S
e t s 0 geographies and travel book (PB, 3),
WA, tlantic . ~ .
[rated SeSSunIeyomdtenals Including Hakluyts quages
Pris.1 w/1N ./ I/Ie Wm Indies (PB. 3). Ogilb
Ores, and Adam H wit/z Sal/[Hum ( PB
ll . y
(1111aILESPEC'allzed

n . '
. The gllsh Bib] Publlcatlon designed for Native America.

ain all rtons libralr

6005 came
ed all tey, hOWeVer,
. _ Thomas Bette
PrlnCIpal works published in the I
108 BETTERTON'S FUNERAL

a1status derived from ethmc

. Pulity.
ck

.fferepi
ey occupy a completely -dlstance
eSCendants of Ham, for In cteriZ'
5Of Africa (96) In Charathem
. on qua y I e
a twe and i d stcIuer and rule
n Sttheir
emeinferiors:
11 F:They were aP 0'
to govern
s Utt . , h'7 5d]!
erly detestlng ldleness and 510tagairlst

gethera OWn territories: fierce

 M i i i Rmx's HNERM. 109

Stege
n wroK and b
Tel'ntor
' _\' tllc Anglo-Americans
. . who took over the Louisiana
y a liundred years after [ l l l l
n a faSCi . .
En , ndtm r
real]
weillsh origin V: (l'grbmun explaining awav_ a m- ' possible impur.mes
' in
'
r51 r . .
3'Cvermuns :ftlildrgucs (hm the invading Danes and Normans
Once a utoHie peoples iL 1- (146.), M m w c r . the racial and linguistic unity
S es!) PeninSula 0f Eu ir t()Ic) e .m\ ' trstegen
fih ) m Illc
, t n genhistorical
C'i t e s iossil
e fact that Britain was
in [he K Ultlsh ' . countryside. to prove that
dry landuliZZrtlCd \idence. the bones of
tobetru become ocean and - What was once
. e l \ ICC versa (8;). This claim (which happens
'Cam I f t 10ug h n o t
' - .
tam Wa s ( In I I t~(. -. 6 trame
.
imagined) is most Signif
e
) I t. I ii island, then Verstegcn
\ _Crstegen can cont est the diasporic
. 0f Britain,3 f0 u
' . asion. the culminat.
ller .
ran , and c . (Mg
a]

by amphibious in\'
. i o n 0t
eTrojan Brute (7374).
manic h 80SuPPlam it mini-Atlantic voyage ofth
rnally inviolate Ger
Iheland form" wIth a countermvth of an ere
Ia. u
ie clb , . . ' _
) absolute ethnic . bellicosity, and
homogeneity
Tl ssessors of their
xed with foreign people,

and m~
l. r .
alltoq Turk Wherever possible in o 0110
. It i . .
Scheme of fOr OnY- Preaching the restoratl
rical fi1't t i n g . I t~ there has ever exrs
.
argument
7erstegen s
6| .ethnlcit t . .
. astic"y and 1)":I 1EL' Strange fluctuation in \ an
s 0f g it) illustrates
. the perverse
A itself by simultaneously
t affillatio nglo~saXOnism to perpetuate
, its!)o undaries in t] . and disavowing its conse
ris 1- le name of freedom
WI] n the name 0f race.

or0h].theSe h. LAa
Identities. The ghosts of t f dem
1 ' . .
St ntC
Elle 3On] a .
0 1): tees. Effgies accumulate and
with
eplaced by Others. Soit isthe Thomas . . er
definitive
actors 1' Abbeysp he
. 0r R
AS Steele :hflrd Steele, representedf WeStminSte
alted in the Cloisters O
 vital to the forming [of] aFree-born peop . any
Human can surpa
Invention [hat 35
1e 55
I have hardly aNonon that any Performer of Autlfil

the Action of M

Word added; that longer Sites. The

ech had
. 18 in Othellos Circumstan
agedy Where he tells the Ma nner f
istress, was urged With . an
him with th Energy, that while ' so m o v i n g
edin the CloysterS, I tho lit 0ug

Anglo Orature, thus transmits S [0 a

' hakeSPeare .
mg him out, but he does
50 We211"

. 0r
Rowes 1709 editon 5h
(figure 3_6)_ 13 ed hands t e Stage bUSiness in Wthh face
' a blacksd

a y scope here, blaCkface 11e

3 to this V appearan stage effect that Charles L a m d1
enetian ce f ( b use ed
.ng
a coal Mac/t M00, offeflnanswer
w e able
Lady, Of highest distinction asu
 , ( , >

.
. .,
fi r fi fi m i Q .
" " - ~ ~
~ , 1 v I

,I , Ni?! 31 m
I |
. n n . .
p
O
. /- )
\ / r a

x , __i .
.r ',
~
,r'
A, p r

lr ? 7
\ w> "" ,
{
i * I ' 7 .1
3 $- . K . .
.1 . , .
~ ,3 . \ 4 a {at y .9" \
, ' a. h '
n .\'l
g , 5.," n 1 x <

i ?
I -"
.\ . / , ~. 3V' r --
PN'
7 \

\2\~ \ .\ A v
. '- 7r ~u
\ 'J I
I {g r. a r t
_ - lvk ,
'
N

. i x ,
.

3-6 0 t/zc/[o_ ([709). vol. 5.

From Nicholas Rowes 5/;akc'spear
0 W T" . . , . 1116 I nivchiIY
3rd- llton Memorml Library. luL
HZ BETTERTON'S FUNERAL

and broken Semen v ith action

.4),and the scene theofufryjuently
butexpression .
[hello
lnCOhere"
5! h itt1
illuS

, m o s t 19( an
Desdemona. 'I'he I'mage 0' e [110ug
rs more than a cautionary Ml .

Wid] Was 03% 11g and women

branding of the
for the planter
woman andClass
deal;1:11:01: the slit"of
cnalf)
ello eng'awe:
(Mintz an 1) ce, 29)- The scenic economy of Rowe 5 O [et (Cf fi g d
makes an In truche ompa son to the closet scene from Hambed ls enter:S
34and 3'6)- eachc se omestic interior dominated by 1 ,tlsh offi ele
Violently byafigure in artial trappings: Othello wears :1Br htstan 5
coat and waistcoat Wlll h sthree-cornered hat rests on [he mg g
brandishes a pillow

created by the mampulatlon

. - ofring ms
. entity
d .
. Opean generals ueactors
art, a black mask GOV
POIgnantly e

. resen e:
eartificc of genation and "5 rep-11 collapse,
sofrequ
-. . Wn5
those bou ndarles 1 v1111 5[151
ently seals Off such 11315; retro tiflg
2afear that Surrogatio mlscegenation
na also enact a deeP f be
.
151]] In If P ays ItSEIf out s
ina0
cultural proceSS: the
'
and gracefulE e IS T t
a ! " chic fear 0
- and 65163i
pes of monstrosfiy 0" i116
5

SOfFSta .Parate the 13

e I 0. Se Steeles
Stage memory
business fromofthe -Steele
_thIS 5c Pro
aCto
11 r'5 e1,

IsImportan the scene about Whlc 1

 M lllRTON'S HNERAI. n3

dau
u
ghter ( 0 , ;161/0 I. 1 .,
Sold t 0 Slav
er ,1;
" |5 4()- 1hi Othello has been taken in battle and
to"1 } rCmmt ~
slavs 0nCe Penilining I() lblksdenmna
~ '
and the spectator of the fierce cus
ery and death- t; Prlmners at war. which honored the imbricationof
tOC . - ) s )aI re~ [llL. lite
' at a captive was to own that life; to yield
aPtlv'l ty \V.as. '
Atthe limg 1;.glvc upHes 1m. to the C'lpmr
Snar .
lCll'trd
g
. I x \ u . l~
1 M I Betterton. sperformance. however, Oth
r(luv
arealit
-
~ Whie l l ] m "l 0 5 9PLt.and ..redemption" from slaverv Cltafed against
y
- of
In Cl] '. \ f"Iczm
he
rubPic sl~ u-r
Lr} . \xastncreasmgly
~ . rationalized not undert
the fOrlllnc -
5 ()1 \ ,u . at but asaperpetual and naturally inherited con
all tem
' St to b
y. \ . Ullclcc -. .- . , .
VIM! rennin l . l 5 "lids. I n t o which whites might I
ponden
' . . heir s]i l \ 'L(t ,t .n ) ! .thc
Ceofst r)<m 'a ni of . tlmalm
sthe Ht'storv
' w .~ LIIPHVII)
. . v' v aI'(I705)
q/Ifi'rgritt'a s t ll e
t r } andhvmgdeath..-\
n ~*r\'ants ,. . i Names of Slaves for
follow-n servilnts for. .~ llk} distinguished by the erity,
hess n g the L0ndtti
. Y 71).
' In nature
their P05: hite
Ewufimd W
Thain)bow ere exism-(tn of the Mother" (Bm'erletg 2 by legerde
COHITRSIS.
elect
groupsystage tricksk It "1115; be produced bv artful
ree
dom participating ior by laws. For ll limited number of members 0f 5
eUttder;]l(::::l Peneljits 0f the circum-Atlantic economy. t
I . As {0r Ill 7 5 1llgllt bestowed by whi ainable only
11g free , the fltalit .t Others Whose freedom was ob!
c , them
at y 0 AIll-rl0'r\niet'iC'tn
asif I . l'awat.ta~snearlv.Vta
"g etw 24130le mywere the ltvmg dead. .
alienarionOrlando
' death een the unatalcat/[(1981); in slaveryset forth the cot
inherentPatterson
ati . 6 limr0 I N u
ng CuSto r f such 1Condition hnds ttsell
m y belonge
1 . . ~\

py re mediated by livmg etligless are 5

P 10' , array ot . their
tlECl an . anxreties
- ' 21130
61' - . .
ormer, In his or her vorce they may
BETTERTON'S FUNERAL

-
e Instrument, . cornbln
m ' atio of,

a
 F ll l t t h N ' fi Fl'NERAL n;

JohnperciVa]
cannot be mm
Wrntc [ ( l I. lll'
- utllwell 'in t- at): Ideclare that tli e y who
' abeth So
red at ()tltellu's gr
. ( m o m are c; i (fr-Vs 11," Worked by Shakes eare and
Verse Wilt? trampling I t a lild.l).lL ot marrying again before theirlltusbands
ance to thlSonhm ((lllo if when (lying at theirt'eet. and are lit to con
anxieties galvanize mum _[h( m 0 219091). The power of this perfor
Of the Public 1! hr} S t e m s from the depth of its penetration into the
1 brought it forth. somuch sothat the only way to
elf full (thou r}
> tandard hem (Im) relief was to see the blackened body of
s g t [ e m . . -

hmbluture . I tur collective

U \- . '
attinities. safely buried under
a] the f'Ctio
"l their deepest tomb
"8 th' acommunity, the
. dI SU
(1110,! is llte n mmon a people together into sly true of Great
kl at Its Comm {um labile. This is so conspicuou added
' Ce 0 ~ l 1011 1It. . )1 ' In the
"eg r l ( a t t i r e in i.t s ceremonial
5 " 0 1 b u n transmission of memory.
written down-hence the
a B(
Suallied
. 6t61301]age )1 I la.Cd. dnlnl'llln
t . SpeeLh
_, In h a l ld
. . Gesture a num
l ma , e . , 5 t n ) 111 tl \ . - 5
gin glne an hvtng mem 1 kllromcles hecollected. the actor aseffigy
u ( ) r ' ' . , .
coulreceded mb er of POSsibl. A"l_ 4 p u t that allowed his comemporaries to
d rep and thuse f
h nun-'5 B) I710. astheories otdiasporic ori
Anl t hemSelveS :Undcd
0 all(Ochthony advanced. these futures
librirosax
ons,SPGC'1aPl' . incteasingly
n [he
] d c e 1n .
well-upholsteredinmyth
. .
of the
Bettertons
l)roytdence. One ot the titles
cended from

) T
the F.
.Origln::n1:lglhg/z Gentleman offers a
h pled ogllsh gentlemh? gUlSeol self-fashioning- . ht
0 Show W his C0L1 dn the trameworl-t ot historical memory oug
-ythe tociviliti trey was firsr planted; how b
lshEdProwdenc
(13r 6 reduced; how by wholesome Lawes restra'
e OfGe
atloni atllWait, the1Almighty, in socalme an peaceable manner
1 eman, 2|8). In his account '. as latt, cmflg
"11aln' t .hPuted to . .
eritiC
. a
Tits that tl Iago 1h Odie/lo,
le S u ' - - Stephen Gre lt.
lshed): ere as the OPPOFIUnistic
P r 0f the moment
grasp o qua
r (227).T .
ary, {1 hehlstorical order of success1 - ntleman,shm
.
 heatergoing public (and the mfteilltrrsjlva
. Henri:
self-{35h
ons acting of English pagcflnrlfl rlish decomm'
,Richatd III, and Henry VIII (Gildon, 17476)_a"d En? n title Page)
' ceof the Stage, Bar and PUlPit (.(fllc ()ttlgrton cou

make these nati n ' it OfPublic deportment, an a c t o r I? Be

Proper containment
' oftues
grief,
.
spontaneously
seemfor instance,
, in
.
v151blc
the , ( ) ndC
and
. . dem t
ration
. S cess'b of. [he
' le:m ie

0f the passmns,
- or in the solemn but hall( ) W g r . will
.. Betteravlty '1"1
P t 5 of ancestors are now to be addressed P13)
[0,5 e

as the greatest we had ( 2 ) Fr

s < Om Betterha
i d
. song and
rom foreign , dance he'118
mPl'eSSlons of what is great and Obphers, r) n
. ]e in die
l
escnPtloris oft e l'gumems 0f the most solid' Ph lloso 22'

3 Poets I had ever read,, (Tar[Zen 2:4 is!

pope, ha
Was canonical. Alexandfished t0b
ations from Chaucer to be Pub
capaci a: lCCIO will s we
1:W 1chttertOn him well in his1:142
(Correspondence, Mora185 1183
e
) POPOS trio!

. (COIre . we ) In
grave: The sweetest part of a life

. >or instance, an artlcle byse V8r

8111f f Sc1u3as th minded FrozemOut Actors -enthu 10 arm
0 the ink in a Chain that joined the Past, s:rfor {an
in
epreSenL In this genealogy of Pessio 0 are
Ion enough to bless the sucC edby mther
0 Betterton 5 0
my of s s]acting was Witnes
ger bf {165
, K t h e poets yoofl 0 l1
f 6631; of
y after the accesflogt0 s
younger fellowactors hve
 117
nrrtrRrox's F1'.\'ER.\L

his
gram 1
g my to old 11th Who were loquacious 1' n t li e early days o f
8; u
elderly
men yet a. ,-'
t e PermaHEn
P lnLT. sent and lot tamong;\ us"( I 77). Dorans invocationof
~
Ody CC of l" -
e cm I
Pollti ""111 cm. Hm.
mun r'_,. hnkmur
- ~ l ' gn successron of th
umb] t i e co ' . " e soverei I i
lad, [mm
(lown, ha
In Tot ' . ~ . islikewuse exphcrt:
m} "t~ the Lnglishstage e' stage
' ' went
Thee

almostin :3 royal (until-:11linfitgeet. betore monarchy and [h

art which hght of the 1am g H cstmmster Abbey. after dying in harness
monarch Mad weanigh P; ~le deserved no less for hewas the king of an
But the to Probably h: l ' l s ted in Commonwealth times, and he was a
atlarhlsloria; - t never smce had. altogether. his equal (17 )

,dhlmself dodglljarn to take the bitter with the sweet. Like Alean
variety of (Delit
eformi) C:CIUded
freak SC b." reason
1) . Betterton of his his
performed Catholicism and his
role of national
rt Ur p. . t ' In h'S Hkforica/ zllemoriab questminJIerAbbey
hat he clearly regards asthe
Briod in titanic-V Utlensily records w and actressesAnne
there, an, Anne Brafeelghteentll century when actors oteavwere buried
f aplayers
cofpse w enotes \vifilrdle Spranger Barry. Samuel F0 Swere
raIsed toasthat of ]< l I a Certain relief that the last intermento
A centur the memol ) l n Henderson in 178;, though
ya y Of Sarah Siddons and John Phillip

nc
. e m pOets Corner,
21monume
1nsegregat. ton's grave
rtainl m g the dead (1:97). Better
torchy
. eSno Stame
. rnemoriahzed
' ' artistry-
lllS i l
Yet

0111-1 SUrreal
Yong rivalmthat regar t0 a eear
- 1ierthat
Parad
. eof Mohawk Kings that 11

chan
gea.QOr
, Bett ,
0 .
Ki AdClisblllty 0f acterton S burial inspires Stee e l
(8156 13s W0 ] ] refers to 1's and lungs among a born 1330]) C
:212neVerth the Il")CIIJOis diminutive y as
Cless haVe the ear of the
. admired the EnglislmeSS Of 0f the Can
" 3 ) . VOltan-e
118 BETTERTON'S FUNERAL

gular accomplishment of. limtttng

. . 3
.. POwerss While
trope of death asthe great lcvtlLr-" u 'l . 110
ms, - al
, . - lconStltutIO"

. in
. . of Betterumab0 hellodenves
of Steele sdescrlPtlon
. . . '
rimentation w1th the dtssolutton ol 11Cd's
.embere
' tion
[105

.. .0n of hi5
. .. 0 did,in
of slaves and cannibals, Winning Altefltllre
the The
real Li fe.
POSSIblllties 0f [h
. cannot be entirely
WlllCll . ,.
rCPrtssed are 1 cofl
65t
 FETHERED PEOIP'ILES

Epic /m'c.s a paradc.

|\\ll Q; [ \ 1

'E I). .
1138. . \\ U]: BI'] H _
ica In E MUN N I - R u . .\ RI,\\\RI\\BI|Zl{.\11.-\.\'SY(
' It members
gland . onthe n e x t day. May 3.1710.1ere
h and
a - . - '
- S}1e 10 d aWed at c o u r t tor an audience With,0 we
21 ; . . _
y y Uteltmned them for the next t owds
e _ , '
the talk of the t o w n . as enthusmsnc cr
u POHSOrS and
as their t1'Elnslators this embassy
htQu
I
quia Mafiglish 1105s called themactuall ' t
Q
e ach
88" A l n3JA"
Ican'. ASdocumented by Richmond
. P
. lertcall King; (I959). [he Enghs
 tirude belonging to I: e CU
kneWI
ltureS
Ihe nan:
a by which the M01112 ks W

r00t , teHonane:-tos/zo.l, 'ng

nendship. L' . mean!
'n arms repres . ac)~. ion
tradIt {ong
t 9ritualize enteda [he . 57
109quDi ereby the Gov dniargnas of Forest DPlom
enant Chain was kept POI'S I
' 116d (Janinacy

' ( . ) 0
Oia: the Vi esgnatlon ng had 11 equlva
.. _ m
' lent m efly
suing Forest Dlplomats
assachems ightmore Pr0{0|I,051
, ut their actual titleS, 1'
subtle sta e . oft .

.firsmAtlantic
elf world War. !ehethe
g "Orld ax makers
Outcome
of the m jimmy
el entaileh
hteeflt v6 1der)
can
the! 39:
58'
[a

Mud) Was the French attempt to consolidate Ca 0911115

., Rf
:meficahich
along t e Water
Was t
routes from I
 In
if \THFRFD PEOPLES

asan 31mm. .
tinent fin-e [0 ( r e ~ .

Ia .g, 3? Native =\maxi:n.1trum'tin With France onthe Eu

Sion of Caconsidmlblc sci)1 :lmbnssadors urged on Queen SP8 COH
lated, the nada_ In their \- [TL and daringthe ioint Anglo. ahunden
after t e y argqu [hut ti Pooch to the queen, Which 8; r' (:IUOIS InVa
effecting thcru 1;? .l'icduction of. Canada is of: Eulritivafd Circu
with OUr Gre ) Q Should have Free Hand/in a . e
zicnh EfelftlIEI":;:t
Inthis al ()I r t x . 0 .94 n)
Cha
Pier7 1| 5Children" (([uoted in B d con
tween propusc . . 5 in their
1CSQ . I mmgmund n o t the fateful geopolitical
n ) b ell_ d ( m s an t
'Cosc infanc bk] PLOPICSnmagined communitie
- l l ! rather some of the svmbolic representa
witht at Com . . crcultural performances. Along
he Public 81:50:? :lzlgtd [hmugh in: e Iroquois
s operatic
W 0 London 15:? Various kinds occasioned by tl1
Ere spec aghakespeurc .1( mg r"Vivals of Sir William Dave'nant
9!: 5: OfM to rs )as\Vl
b Mat/WA ('664). at which the American Kings
. 0x; LIns-Mln Dr}.den.5 TIM lnaum.
Empemur; or. The Con
mas Southernes dramatic
. Co) 1/ , ~
wh'Ch 13:11:]? APilrzil3mefiardv
d during (65) or.
thelin s Oran/10kt); ThoRava/ Slave (1694), bOd 0f
andThe

reaties of L: Lmbass}: I will treat Aiexander Popes celebra

treClll in Windsor-Forest. This ode, which pro
tra 6m.( I n . . cornered the '
e
vfeaturesCIfl ' l tf0 W e n asGreat Britain s and beneficial
lsmn 0f a "I'Ve ). ,
Americam
.
as

partner
roubled by ima
Ces like mm W' :1" Britannica. Though t ffects of transoceanic
(I! L
rl e Cove,Mn JOJFOMM projects the e
c t mm
. cas usheUm};
' In' an e
 {collective
' memory. Yet ,d ' , U ,u nturmd
. t 0f , T1 d8,
"Ce 0 f mem'
n
Be!
' nV er . lOmas
tt'ng
gel . Like Richard Steelc
. k 5 a w
earC~ ) D'ivenant.
Dry
the
I argue, these works by S} P the L o ndo
Ill n ,
, 0
minant contributors to (-5

memorial COnden ere. pressed into the serVICC '

0
. Proiect:
f a particuldr [cum
[he
Atlantic amnesia. m m o f race and n a t.fl m 1
~ 1": m . of ci
- u. races

. 80
. red, and blilCH7
n and among,xwlute. a've
ese encounters Show how u can5
Lul'OP
s,rea
e arepeated th
o

. __ I t 100
unts th nsxfiesofthe is
I enace usurpation
ritual The tf} at
expectaton
. the 5Pe
t. 13100
ear
future . ESe ntatlons
o

.
n

like
. a ven eful ghOS I
.
U 1

eeks a
 123
H' \llllRll PEOPLES

his:Onc

mm PrOVOC'anon in . _ (,eorges
r hat , Bataille calls profitless expendi
01' wh a
[ I C d l l [llt lmrlnrmunce of waste. Its ritual enactments Involve
.
the C PiCUOU
Ons t C(lnsllmptinn of nonunhtartun
.. . oblects, . ' of all
ltinds, meluding
. I] and lorms
lcutr''Ldl
.. producttons
. and other incarnations of excess. On
SP()t VlOlLllCL, am
, l the aesthettc.
. the perlormance
. ol, waste
anNicti9 9 Pr ( ) (lllucl
~.
l)_\ . a sense of h
aving too much of every
uding m i l l e r. -
gatesxuf- ml goods and human beittgsaonto specially nomi
Il-ri L..5 . as . detmed
. . l lmve ~ them
In
. the precedtng
. chap
9 fol] ( ) r.l n T _
OlinClls
5C , ' . _
and t}l e n t 0l L bLlOrc turmng specmcally
d by theto the Condolence
Mohawk embassy
the perlormnnces occasionc
Will 39! ft)
rtlltl .. , - ~ . tify them b0th ascircum
Vents 1 5PLUlIC t e r m s that tden

th arCel .
S G ,
ener.l
L Lonomy
f The Amused Share
ecae Mduss
d m
S77w Gift.
- the first
.
Georges Bataille0develops
volume atheoryby
of
S to exrends Ille
' " ex'amined
Include t 1 argument
, from t h e _
minatin Scarcity leduchnocllltures of modernity.
2m - . . . .
antic pl1 UUIHX Butatlle
. exammes dtvers
Um enomenzt of abundance and proll
0m '
t0r an Salem" C e among thee Aztecs to the
l\1arshall
.
Plan. In
C_
l t elldOm Wrld, according: to the premtseo d
ngl mam e v e n t is the development of luxury, the pro u
y burdensome torms of hfe (33) Human C
Q . . u

9eru must Co .
l3y th Fe Wltl the profuse excesses produce
. ' ' d manipulati
include 5115]1

H inw

rovide the t e r r o r
the tOuchstone.
124 FEATHERED PEOPLES

d cer

:1 who
, with a Monte/Mmil-TIP-rs
- . o m.i t "r
Sebastian, dying with a hall
. of . arrow
. smln
. .s heart,
oment at which
lie. 13n
'~ i o s t udord(Brick.fi.
' Cr,

' . ; Ctake"
of such amblleLn fromcrItlle
CI' n the5"
. . is
- The Victim - a surplus
derob,e
.
nly beWithdrawn from t in 0"

. t "15 aft/tin consumption. BUt the cursilllca

radiates inti gs; it gives him a recognizable figum h noV
[he Profundity of living beings (59).
belonging to this provocative description of the 6mg), aPPe

. 5Perlmp
reProduction. This Opulatloi- I15
{1
. 01
, - tantic world where enure P de
SuPErabund maUfacmml 130mmodmes
. . and where .
the twang 131': cel 3
{a

n d 1"
f l'llS superi , both
d raw materials
extent
_
rapidly
and maldistrlb idol
:0 d l1e
.Ta"
In
., a
mpommn Still operate in the fiercely
 125
H \TllEREl PEOPLES

lng adh .
_ eSIOn
dEmySfrthe
l
S'gnif Prolific
0 ' (ll bitch.
W i t 5 ml . u t m which
the exchange 0 human flesh
Connted
.
[lesthls t '(l ;
proc o\ ~~ ' bl"_\
s n o t at
" .
0!
' the point

all commodities.
Batailles critique
of exchange but at the point, unac
u
fOr b Sacri
y COnV c n t l.t ) - t .
sat lnal LLOIIUmISIS.
. ol ~ profitless expendimre.

(53) TCC
i w.(Tlcl that , .
which .
semle '
use has degraded. ren
' - S 'btr It lllununatcs
' . the aestheticized depiction of a
" a s~Includi
I 1g thosc ~ , where ritualized
. . Violence
. expands a
0r [110' . roles asconsumers of
5 includimegtller: " m " P'uy prominent was. These repre
. emselves i I mm Pets. chocolate. and Neg plays, and
circum~ Came more v. the l u r m 0f paintings. sculptures

essay}, antic 9Com," lClely aVilil'dble as objects of lavish expenditure :15

. ' 9 5 Selectively expanded the Wealth and leisure nec
elr Cultlv
anon 1n the resulting . semiotics 0t superabundance and
3w: sU T reg ' onll
ication was born
35s . I Ldt tllt.) l1Ld\
) ' Itest burden 0t 5'3 .
sumers and the
. t 0f 16 . .
Ulltl:hildre"~ 11: ht:u t m m e m s : women, asboth cond itstlterness
realization
and
lychross 0 time; and Elle "llguries of surrogation an~

0f ls Par . atic m a r k , _ tither3~ 85both exotic tokens of 0 .

the ac tlcular c 5 0t "5 alarming. copiousness and prolusnon.
trfigs Onczttenation of tetislies aP
dian Anne 3r
QUeen. Aaceg'rdle Playing the fabulously

11.;
e "lte
' Z5.30). SEQ Plnn
()Ck) 0 1 possibly Semer .
SEX 1mer
' .
co" in . est 1n Aphra Behns T1
Vlrgirzz'a (1(8
t 9). Like . Behn,s n
126

, , . ' f ; ' \ " 5 , . I: ,4.1f

.
__ ,7
4
, ,1 :3!-t \ . II l
.V
'
' ;
' 2 A
' 4

4-1 Anne
R. B. Parke racegirdle asan Indian
3after the '
Howard plcrure queen. Engraved by
Tilton by]. Smith and W V
incen[.
emorial Library, Tulane University

blOOd for WhiCh tll

e Ca1'
 l1 7
H \I HERE PEOPLES

Behns mdon,
not heme.
R0!e r Sctg w ) .

. .\-i l c r .Elk
survive the Officially ' . gmrdl SLCne. Although.
. ~ in factt Semernia is
a . Sa"guilt-m.
t}? Indian Warn
FAIL! I" the local deity. neither is shedisguised
. I I l u e t r i t e s of English tragicomedy; destined to
as
f 8 defeated Or she 1) C r l .~s h) - b}_ ,dLudent
. . ' .
at the hands of her white lover
OI'med in [I] rebe] V
nth;" " tt' lmum.x. . hImSelt
who kills _ t in remorse. Per
School e S a n k ) .\ .cur that
- the CXPCIISIVC _ young Women at Josias Priests
sang . of the English
hem dnd d'd ncc ,
and Indian quc (i m I ) I ( / 0 a m ] 13,16. the stage deillhs
0 1 ] m 'r/It. If .It/OH
. Renter [llllS POlnt
e' aYugjlmn
. . . moyal on
emen tot ( ) r 1 r1. . . . . . . ~

double f urrngnCd r( ) \5- i ln.L r - - and into: .theirs isQ another

a u
protitless
I
8):an
h 0F t} ' ative
t. on the ultarot race. branding in asintercultural rites: 1
ave t o 1e1nd.
Ian ,.
bright 0 Ong SufvireTlngt. Bacon PTCSidcs over the pI'OPili those two

X Ila: infl ( m" (IWCII and glurv." he concludes

pend.It[ I r e may 1) C - .[ U -V )' '2' 9 are
uenced ' set. to all etcrmt} ated asastringent
- ,n (321). Proritless 35
saCrific contraceptio n_'5 U Lrtheless prcClSClV . mom .
n. The prenuptial
n m k _servrce . . of, race and mum .
ribut [0 the, fiction of. the originary white
ness of the Vir
and thus toesthe S" t
~ . '
.
yu
country,
l er POSS" of. the Anglo-Americans
e
10re thea tnCal
. .
du - enerl 0 mt. . the0tre
(9 3r .. . _ . nin the pro
l'ld .~
er a P e m t r m a and her unborn progeny
P t b e n t a t i o n o f women and c m r e
thea t . .
S . Cd] .
2s Laur derIves 1t 1 ndmmhmd. including; its regional and 1try in Early
. a Bro n a1.
e ' l5 In part from
. their srole ascaretakers
~ 0.
gUes ' . _ ,
nofl Celtur , El g I14/:'.
1" Endx
.
of Emplre: 70mm (1urre a
Literature (1993). there occ
1t
metature EOIOgy n made m' n
in th
butenuCi
a e Augustan period,
- ou I
henee.
W0 r
F ate atemimzano
.
0 Br0 d 6 V 6 more emphatically by means 0
. ,0 ). The effigy
man and Wn, [h e nexus of the Problem exists in
producing

S t .
as possessions 15pe
for instance, suggests the conventions whereby thc LU P
r ( ) can
of Africa and Afri
. . .
.
- lnCOrP 013th' n

cans may beat once acknowltdged 15 C. n lZfigure . 0115 C 4.2)

'
SI"PUOH .
and disavowed as the Vltal -
busmess oi the.-n l'led
a t ioOn 5 The . on
" 3 Afric ae
n'

Involuntary SBWitude is domesticated, privatized, " W M mposition wlleo

. I . I 1" . r
' . . - 0 .

eSpamel
Ollared With Pearls and POSlthnecl 1n the C hiP with sprigs
WOUld Otherwise be, lovingly presents hcr lady
' - s

ndaconch shell filled with even larger pearls. Mg

.
.('3 of ' tonard a5CO
. '
mp0.

Images opulently suggesuv ofl
ta] Preflafl
BXpenditure (Bataille) that send a) - routhfu

Ck(L. Brown, Ends of Emp6,165 a 0in

and8),
' k31
man Whose captive flesh the slave b0th dOUb. AnirIla
Cess recalls Addisons beautiful Romantic
dolatrou
Embellish
I'Gem Worshlp
S;and ev
I the Sea shall be searched for She"5, a
merit f ery Part Of Natu
(Tatler, 2:195) She
0 a1_ reinure:
. . hat is ' t 31

. of Peru?
mar rises o u t of the Minestator, . 5)'
[fiber
escene in TimOWels of Tat!
Female Indostan 67, f0 r Decemthe
no. (Spec 1155 fl
rabella and ,
India Hou ., milia Watch Lady Praise'AanCkato
Placed . 1 er rY
8e, Clearing the shelves of this nick
 1151110
4-2 L OuiSe d
e Keroualle, duchess of 0
POrt ,, .
I t by Philippe Mignard, I
N; ltlonul
' Portrait Gallery
 d 50'"?
. . - ffec eeriI)
tencss of the white womi'm m 6 dia"
another social plane) by the West In
ers to the linen-skinned prostitute 'f
Ous Portrait Olympia (see figure 5.12) But Child
. 'The Presence of the slave girl, performingue
ico Onna angerltfa composition that quotes Raphaiisimid afl

"0'083 f matErials 11d, dramatizes human rCPFOdUCtl

uPel'abundanee. [aging

of Portraiture, the details of PM?! sherOiC

Econorny of abundance in Reswratlfiieorigi'

y f01' Which
Pla . ryden andere cosmme tended 0 be generalized,
RObert Howards 7718 Indian Queen
En r '
. anE Ovided a seqUCI in T/zc India/l Emflemur [differ
t eA . t Entlc . ' [Uta v
matter f mellcans- in atmg detalis to underscore the CU] tr "0131
o - '
eat-in MOM/to, APhra BWOrd, feathers. According to the mh Amen
ehn returned from a journey to Soul
suitable inClding

e . a
Sare 00 hsfor th I: S,make themselves little short Hiliose Tinm
n ble. I had aSeads, NeckS, Arms and Legs, e8
Ct I W.
of these Presented to me, and 'gf'lflltely
u 11 e D ress of the Indian
. Quec, ' [3?M
EnSthe . ty) and Wet
 131
H \ I l l E R E l ) PEOPLES

inblood. As a m
iolence: what it
co itteriul ' ..
stto Produce \\ "-i5 t ]h: bk.
file was Ii ' ' .the
() r'gmdl leather marks
\ Ve a r e r .s lite.
anwhat
. . and act of v
i t served t o drama
16 PR? 1- .
35' ' 5" C a l m
'8of waste. n l ' m.crurchtng
.
symbolic systems on the material
50 rcptc h. u n t ; ' .. ._ . . .
" m u " "mPlSllLd~ 1"mynew. was the accom
Xotic .lL,C O L "i t s~ ol .\[l.m[lC
. . - superabundzmce
, and sacrifice
.
nOr . -' . ognizant of ritual practices,
the lakiirlidiigmg regimes of whiteness. C (the object of which
tto achieve:lpllvcs in the Aztec Flower Wars Euro
ctims for sacrifice),
ePlCted Notifiuiy Pct sebut toobtain vi igzils. As such, they per
asdual Subgt' L Amcrtcans as cruel prod
ests and sacred offerings,
Odies met] {mics doubling assacred prid. No wonder that from
mdlcall." clothed and unclothe merican cus
tom3 angne t0 Art'dud, Mm '. ' ,c American . .
and especmlly Mesoa
hyperb (iplacticcs hich 1'
lc P dyed the roles of ethnographic prov
eXP mi
en - rr0r. . , .
thed (inure,an cc0 T l dmblvalence
' of Europe?! . . .
e a6 tll a t '1. Omy 01 excess at once soalien an llilfalnunts
0 LVe . . .
ftle. Ot/zer (I t 9 tan TOdWOR in 771:: Conquest of Amenca: The Q1183
~ .
martls more
) 4) the
0 6 5 throughout the documents of equality,
andconquest
01' x . , _ .
and ltss absolute chorce between I

0] at 0
formaA2tee andVera,
11 ed the CONqUistadors even as the}

Cacy onfce of
Wastoquols
a articul rirUills
e (Clendlnnen~
' also entruste
8788). u I l th
They did sobelievingtn
Qen . t 0 nl
at r i t e of symbolic kinship:
SP1]
am portion of them,
y after 21are '
 . In Amerindian tradition the Condolence CounCils r93:
f the Great Peace instituted by DeganaWidah 3:115
rrival of Europeans (Dennis). Iniiilly [he couflc
ong the five nations of the Iroquois Confcdcrflc [he
, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas also known as
eand Power. Later, as flexible yet cvocauvel)
' . struc
'11

bed

as a, . . f Ch
c6to
egalnaWid and heightened speech, the 11116 0 the
Great Law 1) evoked- Deganavtvbe fatherless boy who brought peanded the
ldah defeated witchcraft and {on
eceremonies of lasting Peacefiind b)
f which
the parties became of o n e Pre
. 5,
. 10
P atse m of Presents, Was the m o s t efflcac
' diam rved ton e . wampum, exquisite Strings 0 6000
q ickeni d asmnemonic recordso 0 01"t
n . . t
u- sneees g ceremOHIGS, which exlsted r656
Sors) the Condolence CCUHCHS r6
 1q) 3
H \TlllRfl IFOIIJZS

moi-e than
a n 0 0 . NO
s . _ . . w ' _ .
atiOn w.
I. h the"1r re . n. tor
'
m lCFftirt11;ttt\'ealtirmatton0t recnprocal oblig
_ "
effu] 'nstance ( ) f i ! ) m
n .m " M the notable
. . ' dead. they also olier a most pow
linked S 1 f o r u m , ot o r i g i n . located through a genealogy of
urrogaOust
. . - . . .
other. 1" tCtmned ascultural definition in the lace of the
In the C
cannot yCle of do;. _ . . _ .
"h and surrogatton. intense contradictions emerge that
[hour
go unaddre ._
5i 1 , . . . _
"ed loSSesto \Ld'
the
Hr"?(ll
. community
rcqmckemng ceremonies. the Iroqums
. bv assigninE the name and social role of
3dCQea Se . \
anoth
l' tribe
toawun re k' . t u r n a n_e _ . p . ' f
e -
' Amt) E r " l s m m m f ; ' v v to aca tivetalxen
__ rom
ecisi "g the lmquois. women tvpicallv made these lite-and
- st , _
ht t o r v. thev were not onlyUnder
the bear
the
Supre Sothe ma}; Circlllkcrs ul. men it strict protocols.
medirection .US l meaning withi
he01- oWfiyS. Hot [110 matriarchs. the Iroquois
She the bereaved women especially approve
SSghetl the name and place in society 0f the deceased, n It the
l)ere Out In [it _
aved e tr Ibal vestments. and welcomed torever . alter
. asL1 ' .
an YYe 0men ( u , on uclt anappointment tor
880 \s urvlvin
mystel-i0 .1 esnoned
T b the auspiciousness
of. sfor this decision deeply
us 5 0 S e r v e r s found the criteria ve name decked out m
. o r her adopn.
n P[II v e ,,a s. g i.v e n his 11
i and
' the. at the tesuvelv
- - ' tmur
' ntua )ewkm
' appomted timet .
De
Ple )3536) y Slow fire, cooked. and feasted onby
E'
ltller Way the surrogatecl double
dif Ice it t their 0 W
i"difete . 0 Sa , __ at
mn y that the PFOblem of surrogation is handled differently
0113 y fferent peoples. After early attempts
Wh- "1of offp0Pulatlon Proved unduly burdensome, the r
. Ici 1 some features of
l1 _ Cal. . :1 1y e - '
rled 0v . "COuraged miscegenatton in Canada,
P o hey
' 0 e r 1 ] ]to the CUStoms of LOUlSlana.
' _ They ca , T
Orleans 22)
and An
134 FEATHERED PEOPLES

by the many versions of Richard Steeles poignant may SZeaamr (March

. . d Yaric"
(Hulme, 225~63). Writing in the eleventh number 0. , 1 HeJ
16
the visit of the KingS. Steele elabor
. ated the Star),
.
S True and Exact H1510!)I 0] 'I[lg 1510def

Canb
glish merchant Thomas. [111(chre
nandthislandn
the _

n spend an id
. .-a
, 2): Yarico rescues Inkle from the mass loVers. O
yllic time together as away ouon
. Cast . 13)'

lctate terms to the Iroquols

' Confedefa 3[19)1,
' eXtendeda
"3 ITIoumecl in
) and as [h the E u
9 expansion ofuropean land military
the British war aga through infe0?d W
inSt more P r15i

16
- . [mbCLI:65 [0fr0dflj
er Llfii
. OfBetterton, GildOn
. a5[emmed
War OWemess Of Our ecen dechne of the arts and scnences
a
er the Pressures of 80 long an mafia
InPloys the same dYsPepnc,te:jmthe
.
a; I
[0 desc 5 0 f
eregulars at Wills Co
ffee House recelv;alplaq fulfil
c ry 0Ver the French at 1
 H \lllEREl PEOPLES 35

. at (listanl but \ -ital points

overseas emerged from Tory
cis Nicholson.one
-coloni.ll 5 ) ~ .. .
l 01 the H S ] ! ot the Kings. What the Ameri
" 5
[h xrn . ,. an. based on their expe
from l lntionderoge wasa pl ivals
arraYQd 3'01] ntainirl-i il tar-t]
' l i n g- trading
' empire amid more populous r
conven-1 , w ' Nu . that ' li t the concept 0f aperipheral strategy very
End . Lr r o t -~
rant Y- :1Strik. orders of metropolitan
elautat its m t n " ! at the heavily defended b
In ([1e realm r e \ llhumble
. .
outpost in Montreal. he performance of
01' th
3 rtpresentauon oi \lOlCflCC as t
0f .rger e0 .. o the tangible form
Pro '83 angsufnlmcal interests m a y becondensed int the hunt Popes
n1: gfltes. In its charaeteristic metaphor of editions to the
.unllrl:ll:0rlplter;tl overseas military exp unters snare:
when A ) . PLLtmg partridge mthe stealthy h

SOme tho m" sends her eager Sons [0 War.

ear~ undulihtlcsS Tmn. with Base and Plenty blest.
esinvest:
Sudden th Urc- near. the closing Lin
$61743 lll'amazd. defenceless Prize.
And l1'1Th'C). L- .
l5 1 i \ l r Brltamu'aK Standard flies

ough aged 30 $000 I k

"landed I 0 40030 soldiers but at Malplaqu 00 French (Van
10,000 allied troops. 0P

Let 1nd
The Wet 0as[ her PlantS, nor envy we
While byPIng Amber or the balmy Tree,
And Realriur Oaks the precious Loads eborn,
8commanded which those
136 FEATHERED PEOPLES

Historically, oceans have

power possessed of naval
in which the trees that Pope calls ~
I, . . . cedv
~ oCeans

el)

ct consequences for the conduCI of [he Wa r I' n i Ia

l strategy in the longer t e r m . In 771 ence 0, '
3 (1890), Alfred Thayer Malian accounts
eInfl"
osen words that co for the res '5

. heVerwhelmings ac ession] and of the half-century tha th

e Power of England was the determ''nmg . factor
- the per1od
abmad Whilek .ry flurnng . mentloned,
. . _. gw
mamtaml" 'ld
3r

and bu!

n\
uron survivors or the Lou15
vie
' iar1 .
a' . - Ve
Callmxchaspora
- . mlght ha.
t tof
e tlmehness of the LondOn V151 he as the

assy dr SeeClancy 0V
The k 1 Forest Dip] the P er the Francophiles amOmgthe
amatiZed ding on 5
OWerful consequences a t t e
events to sucless ac3'
 HATHFRFI FEOPIIS I37

Show
"1g of the f:~
pubr, deem t1 . , . . .
. Caand t} . k t ClllLl: the charge to the new chief and to the
ecouncil
e.easmgly
"Cr - lent int-at 1dcelebration
16 team .. . dance (Fenton. tSIo). Asth
Impor [0 int U'LlIlIur;
\ . . .- . a .
. tanee 0f tl 1. crew
1lkgottauon be! een hosts trans
C, and .guesrs,
ll'ln t to u t h a
. nn . - . ~
g heprominc nc , t . 3 "l gifts. includingssionwampun
to the enactment of
Cd Itd In the rite of succe
ctween the negotiating parties. Items in the negotiation
eads arranged in strings or belts
thr0 . a m C m ' . as one of mutual empowerment
ugh gift exch-inizc. purP5L i t s well
e um; o n Ihe kinesthetic pert}) r m a n c e of handling wampum
5 im l)( ) N a- n c.e,.. .
the belt was passed. ltke
down thet e panic-3 and I] ' a proposition.
Thatt wampum Signiru (lllllli' 0t their gestures intaking uporsetttng
6N . 6 French P01Cydfhtlr
of One Intentions
Blood had(M. Foster).
support from at least 5
Am
11s lclL. is
. . demonstrated bv the fir
ith New France a
(repr'lntCC ,5~) ameticu
' .
ec0rd 0f tl 1eI In Jemmgs. Iroquois Dt'p/omaQ.
. thatt1
Perlormance
ot. the Counctl
the 21m '
P omtmed a c t .t o n and eloquent Singing
. - 0* 11
iat0r K10tSetteton.
. ' '
According to this record. the PamclamS
gh gestures of con
f sacrificial
im1e .
abund.d Ilce. Costumed to portray the sptnt' O

is 6 Was .
Performan dlmmt completely cox!
. Ce _ ..
S .
3100c] pllltual unit that the wampum Stgmhe
Showtd
y or One Mind, as the Iroquors un .
' the faculty of lanes

d of a F
. 11c is .
S' .
S,and w'e, [Klotseaeton]
.
took hol d that of an
lolned hi 1th h's Other arm heclaspe d, is the
Ven if inothinmself to them, Here, hesai
th g can Pa US.' This collar W21
138 FEATHERED PEOPLES

. hat C u
of Wmon paper understandlngS t 't if
Que reason wh u eyes and hands and vmces.
. , til) Put5 1that
Epchnd tr . leplc loves a parade as David Quint wt 15
Processio P e' Polm'm and Ge ,
T nsSemble " e r' Formfrom Virgil t0 MZtofl
(fences
I 93) (36}
I)
hey favo, genealogies or Other lists of successiVe eml.
T us roll Calls PYOCeSSes of memory witho t writing (Vansm Coundln
the a 3 A .15

0 u
ey were abOut
such Performances a toOriented byParticipants
becomethe recountinginwho
Condolence een'dle
they 1131 and

e .
, ganaWIdah
t e Prestige Of Origin
epic asserts
provided itselfof forceful
a means remem lirifl
 H \llllRfl lFOPl.ES 39

3W5 and
Proto rc; ) .- . names an
Eeds of the Suece
Cols ( )f the (; Hl L a c e through arecitationof the d
0ndolen 1 :C n I ~15). The movement of the
55 E n
:e COUI]Cil from ( r) u-n i~) I ( I : ton l4
i"UStrattes :1? 3dand festivitv of ritual
W H O llarmonv andparadiam
R. [ Radcliffe-Brown's
nfro H] ( l} . sphortzt
. . In Lllphori:1. While this form dominated the

Elle a1 One e . the people at the other

the workqt t) T-dltl llk Covenant Chain
U T poets. and to one in particular
t c l '

WilldsOr Forest Diplom

acy
Al nd
hi erP
bagan Wmll""10rcst in no.4 1sa pastoral revised
anshh00dope
d expand ' Binfietd
In ( 1 x. w
ed it reminiscen
in 1713.
) Ted, as an t H " \\ Indsor).andhe publish
.
htstrealy
-
nl 1 c o h l'l l t m to the To r ; 161th
e 1' ' x I
d0 le' the
PreeminLnce ( H onlv '. the end of
Mediterranean in athe geopolitics an
dgm'ltim 1;
I'llp of entricim . m11.x.o r -Form proclaims " ' lead
theWorld
manttme
the t t. ' order. By
protoc u
enewly est b1 i
Shed, .
UnltCCl Kingdom in the new
1'11 , o ugh and among
penal 1" Of tllig ()rdcr n d- I lO n S invent
themselves thro r reasons. 1
and 0the
m-Atlantic text.
urb of the ead.
.my u SOT as
an
Pltc.it] .
derstInclinatloiml t ,r yinsinuates
cemPope
51Of What . 11SUb an SUCh aclmm
i
0n cOn
mo tend
r . le - . s, for '
tilctionsflmngly tln Wl'ldmr-Forcxt belongs in n
w-
1th m' nIt
traditi " f o r those 0 ~doe5, -
a WOrld in poetry
1n the y
0 statement
which the (Brewer)-
best chance Its
for the sur

. Goddess

lls .1)ere ces . g s and

0 3, induct-Queen Anne goes to
WindS 111g Vir 1ing
n thOSe' in the unmarke
' ' /

tuclde 0r
- ForestgaSa
'au PO! of nostalgia 3
,.(MOmS
S place of memory, in Pterre Nora athn
 ry into modern national and lmpCIldl '. pm . ~, ( Carre[:33
' )IIULS
pervasiveness of the hunting
. i m
. , a g t, r ) in _ .FoffiI
- WI (150'
eme of sacrificial violence that
, r L, t u r I15 [0 [
l 1e Poet liked1e
25 acule
reading takes into account Lari
lit-l Wasser. [er
, $1115! man
Lang ga
. the POIiIiCS of Windsor-Fares! m f ! !
BrOWns critique in Alexander POI
poems elaborate attempts to rationalue lmpcrldl , ] me
if in-. {[h
K )-of1"v10
B rowns ('i)
. . ' - , ' . v ) C l .
- . . (3
Circular and obsesswe return [0 the I l
ral scenes (40). Taking up the rcldttd
, . ) [heme of
emory, Pope reviews t

. OP
165 d
of red black, and white P6 slave

- . sitory .
, as a printed repol enres o chorlc
the traces of sever21 is t0 the agive
neglected formal indebted
.
so . _ e a panegyric (QumterO, 44 5 cl Pracflc Ceol
highly kinere lde tn the Poems inscription of incorporatea) Perf"r
rforman5'5 __- e'
c of extreme violence, the PePerform
gesmres of condolence I: e [,Vin
. ' 1e
emanimated econtem
not on] Porary RdP80f heloc ,
Y 8
y rhetorical figures but also by e5
. g511
Ocation of the . {[50

( COnSul Wander
. there to Inv1te. n theh15PGe l00
L[1]
8
t erichly allusive language of . dist iSed
eflins of th
e Place in all, he later adv
 141
H \IlllRFD PEOPLES

sent an
aqua] [POCIIIJ 3--~ \ll) . tlt;it \\ Indsor Forest will both repre
1 . ] v
geOgl-aphic'
. ) and
BPtlsll globsel'VL "I
as "CUS -' llddfi
u Prolldlh " and trees known to the l.
21' entitlcntcm itdn Slglllficr of England. Ettfilisllflt'bmceboy
5
ersight (1;. \I).
CrOVCSol 1;.ann (
. l ilirld-lliflorical
\\ mdsor l-orest presents it lan:::pe
terms: No-qt gidihlim
3101.)" and
s\
111.3%) ' ' sued
- .rcdol'c n t \\ "llll origins. ' by classical
En ~ Pan c L 10
gll HOr'
, I. t s v - . H u m -.1. ( . c r e s 1)..
. anew. of. his . w Minkvent _ allone , dbvrhe rave l
i try
. c h r. t11L. ~N[C0 Olel
* - ~l>>0C1ations
lid (1"
'-
Lstorx permeated
. "where ' bV'm
. g]to' allthmgs
.' L
g~ under
503
dtlter
)1
and
Patnot.
- (I'"50)' ( ) U rest. personal
. 1c
Hallo , the P0 I ( ) l the n] t -
nal viSlon Ct Constn
I C I S ; l tnpogruphicul
L " o n e s ot \V'ixtdsor Fomoirc to celebrate :1
lieu ae me'
' Of
globill PcIcc an (l plenttudc tollowin-
'
Rich 1
dUSI r v ~ ' . .
And pac - 5 smiling in the Pl'titts
C 1
"1d Plenty tell. aSTU-lRTreiUn . a 5

(mil)
POetiCal u m 0n ot local cultural traditions
Cdby Tory strategy and
ters of Fathe
sLn1ptV llll ' \ V I' n t o :1 the t)Ce1ns1)
[1 . - l l 'sl t {,1 t- l h e
gllSh I me Walk
a *8 th e s t u rd) . .Oaks of Windsor Forest sail ast

the . f the waters of the

C C umAlluntrc
. circulation ot they have carried
em
. 1'
ging ba
ttmatev3 t0Ward ck
the\vit ( ) f 7'mdxor-interest
eI I;] compound F0re. wha

An S ista 11behold,
Thjnthe negtvlnds o u r Glory sha eek the Old
And Ships of Orld launch forth to 5 mt 116 Tydea
And eather d:ncoutll Form shall Ste
0111- Islaked You e0Ple crowd my wealt
011 StPeech, 0 tbs and Painted Chiefs
Tin retch thy:elgn,
gob: fairand our Strange A ' e!
Peace! from shore to
I42 FEATHERED PEOPLES

Till the freed Indiumin their native GWVCS

Reap their own Fruits, and woo their' {algblt
. ) Loves.
Peru once more a Race of Kings beho Id.
And other Mexicos be roof d with Co E,9092)

Scholars general]
in this passage re ' nCl uP
Yagree that the Featherd PWP1ca. d . 'nledgC. ,1t
Chiefs

or~Foret, then, like the

uof epic
memorytoelaborat Iroquois Condolence Council, . L]5eciglly
b atlon eSP Nor
ro call of oral recitation.A
ethe occasion of its (:616 r /
highlights\,Edw Wars Of S the poem rev1ews
. dark memM- s3 d epis
rebuild,

movement from dySPhor.[a wiping

to
ea? o3.0161
3
W y
, .there is early in the poem much an V: Ce
avage
beasts u a e ohms
rigs - :10!"an
0111 a s1Xl-yllne
, Clte ' - e passage
aneestral
-
about
dead. "savag
The tyrannlzwsv
e
h 5 Pre)
is

Nerve a f llrnan Predation (A mighty Hume

Cl [13),
r, an T
t peaea trim to Stuart beneficence(1 game49 '.' 111e
6[
evastatmn
. 1'usWith we . "1 Plenty may not be take for :152
 143
H \1 Hi Rt 1 PEOPLES

atefu " and llcnn- \' .. . . y n .

Ia"tilgonisls in
"Ow [h .
. - . 1.. th Oppressor . and_themams In (l-.139),
Ooprest "In 501'
3 en- ' k \ \ J r t 5 . male their r
luxmpuse d 3.,r r a' xu. .e.
a m o n u m e n t t o a dearlv purchased peace. Near
eyo .
the rlust and LanC'y s 5 ' .; . , h_ . . .
dangEFOUS f
. r . ' _ ows. set
H m gnu L t - Ilk resting place 01 Charles I dramanzes in train
guitar Plabllfl:.:|l::.}1:;t that peace: his execution. Pope av .

t0r}: [:r\astangiblc .l u t Lfmlm. and the continuing threat of hloody

peaee e thmne (CCu )1 flrlnuce in V I ; asat any previous date in Enghshhts
Chainfnd Plemy conl x )5 an Intimp; childless queen. the last oi her line.
through Wi k 1.1m "b'ddcn but need tending ttypohshmg the
Asin
uncils. where
Free t eNativ::p0h$_ all home and abroad.
prot
Lln m e n u . imagerv of the Condolence Co
tlng a(1 rr
0c .. . n K_ - _ _ _ nance of the
lenc -Osf the ore.
E llL )" ,.1!ch
t , ..\\'1ll ensuetrom
carefulmamle
n the H
el Sylv1
n ,, . 1 L . If traitorfares: extols
_ the recupefation of v10
" n t the PM Britannica alter Utrecht:
heShad . . .
War ()) I 113)er Shall. retain no Tracc
The Trum [OWL but in [ l l c Sylvan Chacc. lown,
3 x . - . ..
A" d A '05P2 [5 SILP , . While cheartul Horns are b
LmPlKV Clon Birds and Beasts alone. ($647)

.
1'11) ta :2:the original-y site of
1 . the pt.) ddon

.rs of the Thames in the rIVe

S of
t e it]"3590WFloods
copiously ever after. The? 91
and thence
Orld .
81'1er
Itlad gated(l'169ff)- The overlay of
AInbltlon,
-.
vi
Ct'mS, however, cannot C usl llOPes
I44 FEATHERED PEOPLES

to deepest Hell ..
(139293). Unbounded Thames Ilshfrjped her,its
onceal is
nourishing source
in Lodonas tears. More urgently. P8- W the Spec! 0
a liminal creature
of mixed ancestry, which identity defelr: rnal)- C
ginary source, threatening [771 (0:111 of ci
nings, then, Windsor-Fare. ISa P

rt)"year monopoly on the slave ' 3de [0 the

its
r, the South Sea Company numbfiredlete erng
amo asure

_Like 1]

hilt Wil. '1'

. paradise
e Edemc . of peace and Plen)t til
the reconstructio
. under the
a dEVastated Mesoamel'lca pa
censure
. ' 'cs
e1ghteenth-century verbal m"
y uncharacteristic 0f the Poet.. fiber"
illbe {re

6 . (quoted in Joseph Warton objected, 521)'ng they

Afi'163 Sable S01-13
S In Its description of
l [e ac dot]?
amb' rs Pope
C0 0 .
3 use of the word 5bPOP 21 the
CC among West 1116113330 53 (2.2115

11f . 0f the Chaconne that Purcell,5 D1 alogy 0di35

s firmly
in Wtree 0 he Afroasratlc
' ' Pan, the ene to
:2:
r

i e QueenaIroquois Kings were at sea en,5

eatre revived J0h Drydegete

by the Spaniards (1665).

 H \THYRFD PEOPLES us

role as the
the title g
215). A crificiul Montezuma . (London Stage. hereafter LS 204,
1rad," saPerennial1V . ,
' PUPUI" 31Cl I0 Dryden and Sir Robert Howards
.1110
is) PCrhaPs (1664)
all Queenthe I 1}. ( r evn t s . 1nDryden's
) - .
own words astory [that]
g r e a l cb l . Inch
' . was. ever represented in a Poem of this
nature. f the New
\Vorldiftzle aCtiOn '
Works, 9:1) .mdudinll llk Discovery and Conquest o
my ,VCLIILIUIITI;Stu/[Ian Em/yc'mur reniuined in the English reper
e Restoration l t e lr mf'cmostsuccesstul representativesofagenre
play. the inspiration for which Dryden
to
ear'et' the OPem. ' .
16
53(uc e Periments "g
h '
1
lmcs
1 oi
' .
Aritrt '~0 nan
.> 0 :
' 1oFunoso
' an d Dasenants
, ~
0m C1"Lllldccl 17w (rue/{v of.the Spaniards
. .
m Peru 01
1117
. a n 1/ .
I: men['
eIndian Er:pa fork. 9:193).
dit'[on Mu ~ Dr},den vanes. hlSlOtV
. t
ehtng t1Villzunous and greedy Pizarro to the expe
hfrc
0?nCipally
. t e nob]by N i l " . - . 0 suit his dramaturgical
at (ms in thee Thd heroic Cortex. That is one of several interesting

[11 rise8 2-3:] 11Cltl(ling 1 SCene (2.2) in which the ghost of the

n e feathered t beUlldctwm-[d in a stage machine, very likely C05

Stilli , Prologue headdress
ast, aplfkjjfs) from of
The ghost Suriname that Aphra Behn
the Indian described
bloody daigger

Va CYdar- f- This Dd()rd9r 0 haunt Montezuma.t . vertorwrom

She- to rev-1 Montezumdxoesqut Situation is doubled m the.
for? insatltelvehis dead 10:,8 datrglncr who has tallen In love
c(rtfllt reSEmbliealousw 80 [IT \Vhom Shephysrcally.resem
8 .1118 her (95 "t *IC'mu? kill her or. tailing '
S 11(from plays. his .
f
Abu SuParabunda Sin
s Dryd;2;ASlde'tromthe
the sChemt of surrogation Oil-P f reprised
on
eharac Oomst}noe, mlscegenfltlon.
-, . "
and sacrthCC- . ars in
1rmummifi-{ly from the outset. While 5pm" P e
nghsh
' representation asSemle ' .
(IQ Wlth a 1.Ydens . - New Wot]
ene Curtain-raising versron 1 . 'v

adfire
rgy I}1e n a t .i v e and
fecundity. Plenitude'. netMiriam
(35 t 12
topography wuh
. .y .
of infancy
. 1a
n
h guflge that speaks in reproductive imager

late] k
, 1n . m y nown;
prlvate, hOdeStly
ad brOuwithdrew,
h |
g t forth anew.
146 FEATHERED PEOPLES

The earl of Rochester .mileo

.of mate
f mid'
made sport of Dryden,s melegant
- . '51" .
wifery, but it was apt e
nough in capturing the superimpos"
' IO
abundance on materni
ty:

c
[15a] .
8, who noted the spectaculal' [heatthe 56r1!
318 noto l Innen, 87 1)
' o
a COlor in the D1'yden made use of repaid.the SPIDidSI- eof
background of his play but
. . . performance of was!6 i
t esacr1f1c1al

o
112t
y Altec augury and MOntezuma tthe aftag
e did" Emperourinverts the r01e50 . 'ng
sta 115111
. -
angumary scene. FSt e
 147
E! \1 HI Rf D lhll.E

importan
ccof the mass life nod to the Sun. Dryden has the
Indian Hi . .
EhPriest m[ m m e captive b1

The | ., _ .
The billfuhltlx-c: 111.)? the Altar plae'd.
Five hund } ii ~:Flltcc already P115!
"10 lost rltcl' (.tlptives saw the rising SUN.
I 1 1111' ere half his race was(92;:
run.
3u[5h
rtl 3 god and offers to
malte f Ythereafiel. \1
- O n t c -w i t h. ! addresses as
"he r stenfices
. to him (k.
.

Lortez
, ped their
)-4O)- Flle Aztec people worship
ut not fully of them. and they
addressr s a Semicli ~ . ecutioner. and our
e.which Dry
6"Carefullendlnnen sotcrmying title: o u r lord our ex
Ch' aly dramatlzcs).fMunthumu's abdication of this ml
- long these dr'WCSllucluws rapidly unfolding surrogations.
antLMomemglnmfally ironic developments is the forging of
able cSin e. at Dr :1:lldlICe between the Spanish and the Native
to the rltualized 13' L" knew as Taxallans. nation to the
use u CoaneSt of 0 w Wing." Tlaxcala was militarily indispens
c_[>t tfimbiValent MIR-defile PFOViding Corts with his onl
lards e remalkab] l e g (Clendinnen. 3;). Dryden knew b
Pent efeated th y persistent myth that a few hundre
i:::Cott) 0fs::::f-S by overawing them W
X'
1,Id1, men, t to [he r e ' ] lCS (Todorov). The p '
ho d Polltlk ot conquering the empire 0
a] - '
m , we should find too few. / But Indians 10
1 8pa. Subdnet;
710 "I, as (9:31). Tl aXCdla
' shared interests
. and tdial: Empe
of The In
1 a at {h . lOllflWkS
.eafter
. u n fl1 e 1 8 0f the revival
the American Revolution. the l
I48 FEATHERED PEOPLES

culean 1197065, Euro-exotics like Cortez or Almanzor, from

WWaith)
hom extraVa
gantly h0n0rable conduct was de rigueur in any heroic play if ,1 Empmw
Like the Spanish accounts on which it is based. 77": I '0
draws on the horrors of human sacrifice to establish n o t only we,
canny
. the 11"

(Keegan, ' 0 6 l 5). The sacrifices {0110:

adornments, food captive victims enjoyed the opulent [313359r
, music, and concubines. Like the Iroquo'S o
addressed their doomed victims with kinship terms and evilion (0 the

Stjllitgeztfhfilgnvine Conquest of America, Todorov draws in? by the

.

V. l rough the memory of the victi

the nee 1W,
lime-e and tile Sacred, Ren Girard l0cates tab
. Investme-
. . 5 f Vio
nt m
. monstmus
dlfoSion of double in the social
. b rituallze actsotflre
mill
3) G' uncontrolled destruction y h' of exPe as9"
. Ir - ' . . ' 1
surrogation, and 3rd Sinslght lllummates the relatlons P - elf uP
' /lt5/i". _;_ ad 1.2:; (why/1,1432
i

'gx/imxmy'.mm: mimdnArab i
j a m $1311 WWI/Jamal,
,zzyflfikiq11/1/5711: 1215/? at
gammy MWflia 1
Xur/fil/tawdi /}m/mfl:wf 9
MMa n o ! 1in Ifik'iatafi
am it air/72351}?
12!: ("(16/55/71 I
l i d ml/1'. yaw! M/mazy'm
j: maxi/Wm zhkarzmage.
{3440541, knit/JMJJMLp/gr .

Arc] Mxico
V0 General dela Nacin,
{so FEATHERED PEOPLES

less. A , may acqutre, expenditure

' this ' ~
seems pointedl) e5
Veins break and Sinews crack ,, (9'98),
. heofengag
divine
the Christian priest in

Old prephecies foretel our fall at hand,

When bearded men in floating Castles Land)

(936

l ' r8
9:84). The miscegenlstlc Pr'oniel
t e highest level, when CorteZ Ind [115f prcaught
ove of two Indian women, Almeria an
g11cPoWlth
.
the latter. The former, n o w redundanlnpa tragic
ed)" Whe Urtesy 0f Stabbing herself to death- Even I
rePfieVe 3 a
Sentsa e ces OUSly available,
_ - e ge natio
n1ISC St 86
re "1011? gener
 151
H \HHRFI PEOPLE)

4.4 Robert DOdd

lifter William I'logarth. T/n: Indian
or Tl"3 C
Act 4. scene 4.
"71!_ 0f-A l a r m. ) . I731.
N rill.C S I L T I ) L'HIYLI'
. SII'. V Library

9nt ls l- 9reade \
er I! chilirls Ar. (-Ortez who has been C319!u
s ' c . . by a wamng
the 10:] and d he; 10v Compamed
. . woman. hes w
- . ' eel
two h teaIfu] er kissmg Almena 5 hand. She 5. _ age
a -repro'ad- The strength of her onon 155 I
oneem

ch31 3, OCUment an'l n m_c a t e enealogyo '

)
,
g d],5/1/1fl(19 7 .0
152 F E AT H E R E D PEOPLES

dark skins and white in Hogarths representation of excess. The occasion of

the Conduitt production does dramatize its conspicuous consumption and
leisure. The luxury of the furnishings and appointments, including the quite
professional job of scene painting on the wings and backcloth, enhances the
opulence of the scene. The0philus Cibber of Drury Lane was engaged to
coach the children, all of whom were about t e n years old (Paulson, 2:1). Like
the adornment of women, such anexpenditure signifies the elevation of aes
thetic forms into a realm marked asexisting above and beyond utility. In the
limits of a domestic space, the a m a t e u r theatrical production enunciates a
high bourgeois reply to the c o u r t spectacles of Europe, which allegorized
dynastic legitimacy and world-historical entitlements in canvas and gilt. A
distant mirror of the sacrifice-saturated culture it reconstructs and appropri
ates, the parlor Indian Emperour is a secular offertory, a play about golden
empires of the sun, staged at the behest of the m a s t e r of the mint.
Amid the erotic cross-purposes and genocidal preparations, order rules.
The children act formally, imitating the large gestures, s t e r n expressions,
and heroic poses illustratedby the acting manuals of the period. Like dance
notation, these rhetorics served a role askinesthetic recipe books, dissemi
nating readily restorable behaviors to a wider public. In the Lilliputian
Indian Emperour, the childrens formal gestures seem to e n a c t a struggle to
govern adult passions that surely c a n n o t be contained within their diminu
tive bodies. There is thus a surplus of passion in the scene that c a n n o t be
accounted for, n o t in the sense of being lost, but in the sense of being con
spicuously wasted. Flooding the stage with tears and copiously adorned
with plumes, the female Indians vie for the attentions of the miniature con
quistador. The genealogy of their performance, as Dryden explained,
descends from no less august an origin than the Discovery and Conquest
of the N e w World. But its fundamental signification, played o u t on the
bodies of the children, is to represent the succession of empires and the mix
ing of races ascoefficient threats in areproductive economy of excess.

Oroonoko and the Empire of the World

On April 21, 1710, three
days prior to the Mohawk Macfiez/t, the Theatre
Royal, Drury Lane, revived Thomas Southernes Oroonoko,- or, The Royal
Slave (1694). The management did n o t advertise the production as one
staged for the Entertainment of the Indian Kings (LS, 219), but for rea
sons that will become clear, Southernes adaptation of Aphra Behns
 FEATHERED PEOPLES '53

novella powerfully summarizes many of the issues raised by the circum

Atlantic e n c o u n t e r s that the Iroquois embassy both symbolized and embod
ied. Oroono/co enjoyed what John Downes liked to call the life of a Stock
Play (100), with revivals throughout the eighteenth century, during which
it provided ammunition for both sides of the slavery debate. The frequency
of its revival in the period from 1700 to 1728, for instance, made it third in
popularity among all the tragic dramas in the repertoire, surpassed only by
Hamlet and Mat-bet]: (G. W. Stone, I98).
Like ritual Observances among the Aztecs or requickening ceremonies
among the Iroquois, the English theater helped British subjects to imagine
a community for themselves by making a secular spectacle o u t of the deeply
mysterious play of ethnic identity and difference. Like the scribal t r a n
scriptions of the Condolence Councils or the meticulous ethnographic
record of Aztec ritual compiled by the Franciscan Bernadino de Sahagfin,
surviving playscripts from the London stage supply the historian of per
formance with a detailed record. It is admittedly only a partial record, and
few would deny that it is adeeply problematic one, but it contains nonethe
less a transcription of m o s t of the words spoken and a few of the gestures
delivered on significant public occasions. Related documents sometimes
disclose the affects of the performers and the response of the audience.
Reading these records today therefore ought to be like eavesdropping at a
popular rite of intense but often opaque cultural significance,something on
the order of gaining possession of ablow-by-blow account of the Balinese
cockfight attended by Clifford Geertz. Historians ought to attend to the
deep play in the stock plays. What the stock playscriptsTlae Indian
Emperour and Macbeth aswell asOroonakodisclose at the historic juncture
of April 1710, for example, is a preoccupation with the sacrificial expendi
t u r e of surrogated doubles.
In his dedicatory epistle to Oroonoko, Southerne wonders that a drama
tist of Behns command of the stage would bury her favorite hero in a
novel, and he quotes secondhand an opinion to the effect that she often told
the story o u t loud more feelingly than she w r o t e it down (Southerne, 4).
Self-serving apologia for the stage aside, Southerne rightly discerns that the
story contains material that can emerge fully only by means of perfor
mance. Narrated from the point of view of a putative eyewitness, Behns
novella tells the story of an African prince, who, betrayd into Slavery
and brought in captivity to Suriname, leads a failed revolt against the Eng
lish authorities (Oroonoko, 33). Behn predicates the narrative on the heroic
154 F E AT H E R E D P E O P L E S

romance between Oroonoko and Imoinda, the beautiful Black Venus to

o u r youngMars (9), the woman he finally kills rather than let her give birth
to a child destined for slavery.
The circum-Atlantic background for Oroonoko has long been available to
literary historians (Sypher), but its implications have recently undergone
reexamination and critique (Azim; Ferguson). Charlotte Sussman, in The
Other Problem with Women: Reproduction and Slave Culture in Aphra
Behns Oroonoko (1993), has shown how the conflicting ideologies of pop
ulation growth in the West Indieswhether to contain or encourage repro
duction among the slaves-shaped Behns narrative at key m o m e n t s , pro
viding a crucial point of intersection between the historical c o n t e x t of the
slave trade and an ahistorical heroic romance (215). Laura B r o w n has
demonstrated how Aphra Behns characterization of Oroonoko encapsu
lates the historic contradictions of slavery in a narrative that links the fate of
the martyred African prince to that of Charles I. Behn thereby incorporates,
Brown argues, a scheme of radical contemporaneity, which, in the t e r m s
defined by Johannes Fabian in Time and the Other, subverts the chronopol
itics of difference by placing Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans in
the same framework of epochal memory. B r o w n also shows how Behn jux
taposes the figure of the woman, ideological implement of a colonialist
culture, with the figure of the slave, economic implement of the same sys
tem (End! of Empire, 62). What I propose to add is a disclosure of how
these distinctively circum-Atlantic relationshipsreproduction and abun
dance, surrogation and memory, miscegenation and violenceemerge o u t
Of the performance of Behns narrative through the staging of Southerne s
dramatic adaptation.
Southerne makes three additions of great importance to the materials
provided by Behns novella. First, he adds a comic subplot involving the
attempts of the Widow Lackit and the sisters Charlotte and Lucy Welldon
to find husbands in colonial Suriname. Second, he has Oroonoko succeed in
the assassination of the corrupt governor, who lusts after Imoinda, before
killing himself. Third, and m o s t significant, he changes Imoindas color
from black to white. The overall effect of these revisions is to make the issue
of surrogation the focal point by adding miscegenation to Behns tragic plot
of doomed lovers and to intensify its threat by interpolating scenes of hus
band hunting among a dwindling field of white men. Southerne emphasizes
the slim pickings among the male gentry through the comical interjections
of Daniel, the Widow Lackit's idiot son. When the public distribution of
 F E AT H E R E D P E O P L E S 155

slaves by lots leaves the widow without a male African, she complains:
Here have 1 six slaves in my lot and n o t a m a n among em, all women and
children; what c a n I do with em, Captain?" (Southerne, 23). Teasing her
for n o t being c o n t e n t with her lot, the captain suggests that she try
Oroonoko: Have you a mind to t r y what a man he is? Youll find him no
m o r e than a common m a n at your business" (24). The widow responds Vio
lently to this insult, but like Ethereges Loveit or Congreves Lady Wish
fort, her enraged denials cannor convincingly overcome the inertial semiotic
forces exerted by her name: no citation of Fanon is required to establish
what the i t is that she lacks.
Southerne several times reiterates the comparison between the sexual
barter of marriage and the institution of slavery. When Charlotte Welldon,
disguised asa man, tries to arrange for her sister Lucys marriage, she has to
insist on removing the transaction from the market square: This is your mar
ket for slaves; my sister is a free woman and m u s t n o t be disposed of in pub
lic (27). What happens in private does little to distinguish the flesh of the
free woman from that of the enslaved. The Welldon scenes thus prepare
dramatically for the introduction of Imoinda,the white slave, into ascene that
radically condenses the circum-Atlantic crucible of sex and race into animag
ined community of the dispossessed. Imoindas appearance inspires a rape
attempt by the English governor, which is shortly followed by an Indian
attack: Indians or English! she dithers, in the ambivalent manner of a New
England captivity narrative, Whoever has me, I amstill a slave (54).
In one sense, Southerne s blanching of Imoinda merely continues apro
nounced tendency on the part of the Africans in this story to t u r n white, at
metamorphosis that is stunningly accomplished by Oroonokos homily on
slaves, including himself, asprivate property under English law, which he
believes at this point m u s t be respected. Exculpating his masters, the Royal
Slave opines:

If we are slaves, they did n o t make us slaves,

But bought usin an honest way of trade . . .
They paid o u r price for us and we are n o w
Their property, a part of their estate,
To manage as they please.
(64)

The relentless assimilation of African identity into European ideology is

forecast by Behns overdetermined characterization of Oroonoko. N o t only
156 F E AT H E R E D P E O P L E S

was heschooledby a French t u t o r in the courtly manners of Europe, but his

sensitive royal blood shudders at the tale of the barbaric execution of King
Charles I of England. Commensurate with his sovereign demeanor, he
accepts the local pseudonym of Caesar. Behn takes care to assure the
reader that Caesars physiognomy matches his sensibility: His Nose was
rising and Roman, instead of African and flat. His Mouth the finest shaped
that could beseen; far from those great turnd Lips, which are so natural to
the rest of the Negroes. Although his regal qualities, physical and mental,
rival or excell those of the m o s t civilizd of princes (Behn, Oroonolco, 8),
Behns n a r r a t o r adds a frequently overlooked but very significant amend
m e n t to her description of his physique:
I had forgot to tell you, that those who are nobly born of that Coun
try, are sodelicately c u t and raised all O v e r the Fore-part of the Trunk
of their Bodies, that it looks asif it were japand, the Works being
raised like high Point round the edges of the Flowers. Some are only
carved with alittle Flower, or Bird, at the sides of the Temples, aswas
Caesar; and those who are so carved over the Body, resemble o u r
antient Piczs that are figurd in the Chronicles, but these Carvings are
more delicate. (Behn, Oraanako, 4s)

Behns ethnographic use of the African practice of scarification marks

Oroonoltos body in several ways. First, it adds to the fact of his color,
which was perfect Ebony, or polished Jett (Behn, Oroonoko, 8), an inef
faceable insignia of origin, like the brand name on a grand piano. Second,
like feathers and other less permanent adornments, the ornamental scars
serve asaphysical incorporationof excess expenditure, a luxurious emblem
of distinction, which suggests to Behns n a r r a t o r japanning, astyle of raised
marquetry on expensive, imported furniture. Third, the narrators evoca~
tion of the scarified Picts, though qualified, works against the radical con
temporaneity of Oroonokos characterization by linking the c u s t o m s of his
people to those of the m o s t notoriously savage inhabitants of prehistoric
and Roman Britain. Southerne said of Behns decision n o t to risk Oroonoko
on the stage, She thought either no a c t o r could represent him, or she could
n o t bear him represented (4). Given the contradictions of her require
m e n t s for this prodigious effigy, her surrogated double of Charles 1
African yet European, scarified yet smooth as classical Statuary (Behn,
Oroonoko, 8), slave yet royal sovereignher reluctance to sacrifice him to
the representational machinery of the stage is understandable.
 F E AT H E R E D P E O P L E S I57

Where angels feared to tread, Southerne rushed in Jack Verbruggen.

Interpreted carefully, casting choices sometimes offer a revealing glimpse
behind the scenes into the o r a t u r e of stage production. The assignment of
roles can mediate decisively between inscription and expression, and play
wrights at this time enjoyed varying degrees of influence over the process
(Holland). Anticipating the desires of the theatergoing public, Southernes
choice for the title role was asignificant exercise of his authorial function.
One of the young a c t o r s who remained behind after Betterton and other
v e t e r a n s left the Drury Lane company in 1695, John Verbruggen emerged as
a leading m a n in Bettertons absence, a succession that made comparisons to
the departed s t a r inevitable (Cibber, mos, 157). On the advice of the duke
of Devonshire, the dedicatee of the printed version of Oroonoko, Southerne
asked that Verbruggen, despite his relative inexperience, create this m o s t
difficult of roles, which might otherwise have been designated for a more
senior a c t o r (Southerne, 4).
O u t of Verbruggens success asOroonoko, Anthony Aston constructed
for him the reputation by which theater historians have for the mOSt part
uncritically remembered his acting: anunpolishd Hero in whose sponta
neous performances Nature predominated over Art. Aston continues:
Yo u may best conceive his manly, wild Starts, by these Words in
Oroonoko,Ha./ thou hast m u : a' the Lyon [in]his Den,- lze stalks abroad, and
the wild Forest tremble: at his RoanWhich was spoke, like a Lyon, by
Oroonoko, andjack Verbruggen; for Nature was sopredominant, that his sec
ond Thoughts never alterd his prime Performance (31i ) . Astons descrip
tion exemplifies the utility of the kinesthetic imagination in creating the fic
tion of race. His collapsing of the African character into the public identity
of an English a c t o r (and of both into the king of beasts), aside from its con
ventionally racist formulation of the instinctive behavior of the noble sav
age, elides blackface and whiteface roles. Aston was n o t alone in this elision,
which evokes the characteristic duality of strength and vulnerability in a
theatrical effigy. When Verbruggen was compelled to humiliate himself by
making an obsequious public apology before one of Charles IIs bastards,
whom he had called, n o t implausibly, the son of awhore, hedid sofrom the
stage, dressed and blacked up for the part of Oroonoko (Davies, 3:447).
Vulnerability succeeds. Aston recorded the poignant affect of Ver
bmggens reading of the line in which Oroonoko first contemplates m u r
dering Imoinda to save her and their unborn child from a fate worse than
death: H e was m o s t indulgently soft, when hesays toImoinda,-Icannot,
158 FEATHERED P E O P L E S

a: I wou dfiestow thee,- and, asI ought, I dare not (312). According to all the
printed versions of the play (Southerne, 117), the words Oroonoko speaks
here are in fact dispose of thee, n o t bestow thee, asAston recalled. The
doomed hero isrespondingto Imoindas pathetic query, Which way would
you dispose of me? (116). Astons emendation, however, is n o t so wide of
the mark. Its subtle slippage shows what a close reading of the transcripts of
play texts in performance can reveal: both bestow and dispose fit within the
context of sacrificial expenditure, in that the former suggests gift giving, the
latter a final settlement. Once Imoinda has introduced the word disposed
into their West Indian lieesrod, Oroonoko seizes upon it:

Yet this I know of fate, this is m o s t certain:

I c a n n o t asI would dispose of thee;
And asI ought I dare n o t . 0 Imoinda!
(l '7)
To dispose of something generally means to liquidate a surplus, as in the
concept of disposable income. As the Royal Slave puts it, My heart runs
over (117). Southerne carefully prepares for this m o m e n t , raising the t e n
sions of ritual expectancy, by earlier expositional speeches in which Imoinda
begs to bekilled in order to terminate her pregnancy, a fountain of flow
ing miseries that swells so fast to overwhelm us all (65). Oroonokos
reply takes up her theme of disposing of a sacred but expendable excess, the
accursed share:

Shall the clear babe, the eldest of my hopes,

Whom I begot aprince be born a slave?
The treasure of this temple was designed
Tenrich akingdoms fortune. Shall it here
Beseized upon by vile unhallowed hands
To beemployed in uses m o s t profane?
(66)
Batailles a c c o u n t of the Aztec victim made holy by being t o r n from the
mundane world and expended illuminates this distinctively circum-Atlantic
m o m e n t on the London stage. The child is a treasure saved by sacrifice
from unhallowed hands and profane uses. I t s fate is sealed by a crisis of
violence and legitimacy: like a naked new-born babe, / Striding the blast,
or heavens cherubim (Macet/z 1.7.2122). Like Macbeth, whose character
in Davenants version was served up to the Iroquois Kings later that same
 F E AT H E R E D P E O P L E S 159

week, Oroonoko worries the issue of dynastic succession. From their dif
ferent vantage points, both tragic heroes ponder the paradox of surrogation:
to be replaced by others is a threat, but it is also a need.
In their climactic stichomythic exchanges, Oroonoko and Imoinda pre
pare for the consummation of their sacrifice by offering themselves to the
sun, the great god / That rises on the world (118). Oroonokos prolonged
hesitation, which Verbruggen made indulgently soft," is illustrated in the
1735 edition of the play, which shows ablacked-up hero turning away from
his pale but m o s t willing victim, whose pregnancy seems to be represented
by the generous drape of her gown (figure 4.5). Here the circum-Atlantic
emphasis of Southernes transformation of Behns Black Venus into a
sentimental white heroine declares itself in a remarkable speech that
imputes totalizing desire to miscegenation:
0! That we could incorporate,be one,
One body, aswe have been long one mind.
That blended so, we might together mix,
And losing thus o u r beings to the world,
Be only found to one anothers joys.
(no)

This is precisely the conclusion that c a n n o t beallowed, however recurrently

it may have been imagined. In a scene of violence filled with verbal and
visual echoes of Ot/zello, Oroonoko dispose: of Imoinda,their unborn child,
the villainous governor, and finally himself. In the ironic contradictions of
interracial desire and hatred, it is the English governor who has previously
spoken the epitaph of his rival Oroonoko, whose courage I n a more noble
cause would well deserve / The empire of the world (91). It is fully repre
sentative of such symbolic condensations of the circum-Atlantic perfor
mance of w a s t e that Oroonokos more noble cause" has included the vio- 1
lent extirpation of the local Carib Indians on the governors behalf (2.3). In
both Behns Oroonoko and The Widow Ranter, the potential liaison of
African and Native American peoples operates asaninvisible or only par
tially visible threat to Eurocolonial domination. This liaison appears in rep
resentation only to disappear, asit does in Southernes Oroonoko, sothat the
hero has a nonwhite adversary to r o u t . It also fades from Alexander Popes
m e m O r y of the Treaties of Utrecht. But Oroonokos plan to establish a
Maroon community on the edges of colonial Suriname, in which the rebel
lious slaves will live Free in their native innocence" (Southerne, 7i),
4.5 Frontispiece to Oroono/co, by Thomas Southerne, I735 edition.
Northwestern University Library
 F E AT H E R E D P E O P L E S 161

evokes the alliances between African and Native American cultures that
flourished at various points around the Caribbean, from Suriname to
Louisiana. It also provides a powerful reminder of the fact that the conquest
of a n e w empire of the world, asBritain was then imagining, like the con
quest of the empire of the sun, as Spain and Tlaxcala had once accom
plished, required, above all other necessities, strategic alliances with the
locals.

The Mohawk Macbeth

The way in which Queen Anne and her ministers received the four Ameri
can Kings shows British willingness to adopt the protocols of Forest Diplo
macy, which they had learned from a new generation of skilled translators,
colonials who had lived among the Iroquois and who understood their lan
guage and culture. In that regard, it is important to keep in mind t w o things.
First, every detail of the Mohawks visit, which included appearances at
c o u r t , at Woolwich Arsenal for a military review, at the Society for the Prop
agation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, at a cockfight, at an Italian opera,
and at the Board of Trade, constituted an item on a diplomatic agenda. Sec
ond, the scope of the public visibility and success of their embassy was
unprecedented, though the Kings were n o t alone among recent visitors in
attending the London theater to see and beseen. In 1702 The Emperour of the
Moon played for the entertainment of an African Prince, Nephew to the
King of Banjay. In 1703 it was repeated for the entertainment of His
Excellency Hodgha Bowhoon, Envoy to Her Majesty from the Great King
of Persia. In 1708 Othello played for the entertainment of the Ambassador
of the Emperour of Morocco (LS, 29, 34, 178). No other visitation, how
ever, seems to have created the sensation that the Four Kings did, and in no
other negotiation w a s the theatrical offering so pointedly chosen to drama
tize the significance of the event, though one would certainly like to know
more about the Moroccan ambassador's impressions of Bettertons Othello.
As befits apredominantly oral culture, the Iroquois embassy was greeted in
London by performances in which the celebrants acted o u t in song and dance
the ancestral history of the negotiating parties. The Iroquois knew, and the
sophisticated Anglo-colonial negotiators accepted, that performance can
articulate what otherwise may n o t be properly communicated. One of the
formulaic m o m e n t s of Iroquois treaty protocol was the lead-in phrase, Let
medrive it into your mind with a song, followedby amusical number (Fen
162 FEATHERED P E O P L E S

ton, 29). The orature of the London theater in I 7 I O could powerfully e m u

late this feature of Forest Diplomacy.
Davenants musical Macbeth resonated with a sense of its o w n allegori
cal role in living memory. As a suspenseful roll call of Stuart genealogy,
which, being drest in all its Finery, as n e w Cloaths, n e w Scenes,
Machines,asflyings for the Witches; with all the Singing and Dancing in it"
(Downes,71), Davenants adaptation evoked at its premiere the usurpation
and murder of Charles I and the r e c e n t restoration of his progeny (Spencer,
23). The extravaganza was again revived with n e w music and n e w scenes
following the Act of Union between England and Scotland in 1707 (LS,
159). It then served as a timely celebration of continuity and change
between the reigns of James I, the first of the Stuart monarchs, and Anne,
the last of them, on the occasion of the landmark political e v e n t of her
reign: the establishment of the United Kingdom. As if to illustrate Robert
Weimanns argument that Shakespearean drama has no fixed meanings but
many uses (6581), Davenants operatic Macbeth w a s revived again at the
Queens Theatre, Haymarket, on April 2 4 , 1710, expressly F o r the Enter
tainment of the Four INDIANK I N G S lately arrivd (LS, 220).
This performance provided a climactic scene of public welcome for the
embassy, second only to their appearance at c o u r t . Arriving to attend the
spectacle, the Kings had already become a spectacle themselves. They were
escorted to Macbet/z by a Mob of Tory sympathizers who saw in them a
vindication of their religious valuesthe Kings, as Praying Mohawks, fell
under the aegis the High Church Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
in Foreign Partsand grand strategythe AngloMohawk alliance
offered analternative to the long casualty lists at Malplaquet. What E. P.
Thompson has called the moral economy of the English crowd operated
here in the wake of the Sacheverell Riots of March 1 2 , 1710. This insur
rection took place when a popular Tory mob (Holmes), demonstratingon
behalf of a High Church clergyman and against the Whig governments
conduct of war and its policy of religious tolerance, ritually desecrated and
demolished the largest dissenting chapels in London. In a year of political
turmoil, the novelty of the Mohawk-Mahican brotherhood left other imita
tive affiliations swirling in its wake as it passed through the turbulent
crowds. Of the progress of the four Indian Kings through the London
streets, Mr. Spectator reports that it was followed everywhere by the Rab
ble (1:211). The Mob, according to an a c c o u n t in John Genests history
of the stage, took avociferous, proprietary interest in the Swarthy Mon
 F E AT H E R E D PEOPLES 163

archs (2:450. Tw o years later, after the sweeping Tory victory in the par
liamentary elections of November 17|o and the preliminary implementation
of the allied invasion of Canada, letters to Tlze Spectator would complain of
gangs of young toughs calling themselves Mohocks terrorizing the streets
of London under the leadership of an Emperour (3:18788). Jonathan
Swift was sure that they were Whiggish thugs, and John Gay w r o t e a play
about them, which remained unproduced, perhaps because the subject was
politically unpalatable for the patent theaters (Winton, 1125). The actual
existence of the Mohock Club is uncertain, but the very fact of its discur
sive life asa imaginary instrument of violence and political reprisal demon
strates that the Iroquois alliance had a symbolic impact that reached beyond
diplomatic circles into the popular imagination of the Free-born. The
boundaries of national consciousness are invented to include and exclude,
asany boundaries must, but they are also subject to complex negotiation and
adjustment in the presence of Others: they advance to meet external and
alien cultures on the cusp of empire, and they contract to define internal
affiliations of party, religion, and class.
The Rabble had a great deal to say about the staging of the Kings viSit
to the theater. Built in 1705 by the architect Sir John Vanbrugh, who would
shortly propose segregated Cities of the Dead to replace interments in Lon
don churches, the Queens Theatre, Haymarket, was in itself a behavioral
v o r t e x . Like the appointments of the other London theaters, but even more
so, the architectural design of the Queens Theatre, home of the Italian
opera in London, accommodated and implicitly reinforced the social demar
cation of the audience. Before the production of Macbeth could begin,
Robert Wilks, the actor-manager, had to mollify a curious crowd in the
cheap gallery s e a t s . They wanted a better view of the Iroquois, who,
through no fault of their own, upstaged the English actors. Genests history
of the stage offers what it takes to be an eyewitness account:

The curtain w a s drawn, but in vain did the players attempt to per
form~the Mob, who had possession of the upper gallery, declared
that they came to see the Kings, and since we have paid o u t money,
the Kings we will havewhereupon Wilks came forth, and assured i,
them the Kings w e r e in the front b o x t o this the Mob replied, they
could n o t see them, and desired they might by placed in a more con~
spicuous point of viewotherwise there shall beno playWilks
assured them he had nothing so much at heart astheir happiness, and
164 F E AT H E R E D PEOPLES

accordingly got four chairs, and placed the Kings on the stage, to the
no small satisfaction of the Mob. (Genest 2:451)
The Kings were initially honored with adesirable front box, though n o t the
royal box. It was then common practice, however, to have dignitaries and
would-be dignitaries seated onstage during the performance: it was an
honor to beinvited but an e x t r a expense for the social climber who wanted
to be seen in the act of seeing a play. Like royalty, the Stage spectators acted
the roles of an ideal or surrogate audience. The public wanted to enjoy their
enjoyment, seeking in their responses a reaffirmation or perhaps a correc
tion of their own. This is what the Mob demanded, and this is what the
Kings graciously provided.
There is persuasive evidence that the Kings outfitted themselves espe
cially for the occasion to establish in the public eye their native authenticity,
their legitimacy assovereign representatives, through symbolism the Eng
lish public could understand. They performed their roles quite theatri
callyliterally soin that they borrowed their outfits from the playhouse
wardrobeyet they also performed, it would seem, within the formal t r a
ditions of diplomatic condolence in the North American m a n n e r. As John
Oldmixon recounts in The British Empire in America (174 1): O n the Arrival
of these Kings, the Queen was advised to make the m o s t of shewing them;
and the Dressers at the Play-house were consulted about the clothing of
these Monarchs, and it was determined that part of their Dress should bea
Royal Mantle.The Court was then in Mourning, and they were clothed with
black Breeches, Waistcoat, Stockings, and Shoes, after the Englir/z Fashion,
and a Scarlet in grain Cloth Mantle, edgd with Gold, Overall. They had
Audience of the Queen with more than ordinary Solemnity (Izz47). Queen
Anne and her c o u r t were still mourning the death of the royal consort,
Prince George 0f Denmark. Narcissus Luttrell reports how the grief
stricken queen buried George with obsequies modeled on those accorded
Charles 11: his interment, like Bettertons also, was at night by torchlight in
Westminster Abbey (6:36667).
Experts in the condolence of loss on the occasion of intersocietal nego
tiation, the Iroquoian ambassadors seem to have played their parts in the
drama consummately. The results of their raid on the collection of stock
costumes are reproduced on the playbill for Powells puppet theater (figure
4.6). The Kings (labeled A, B, C, and D on the playbill) w e r e incorporated
into the puppet theaters rendition of the duke of Marlboroughs m o s t
recent victory over the French. That the Indians w e r e in fact mere puppets
 FEATHERED PEOPLES 165

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. ' 5 , - , p . . _ ..-v"u 1.
. . ; ;

2-H L k i
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4.6 The four Indian Kings. Handbill for Powell's Puppets (detail),
dated May I, I7IO.
Northwestern University Library

in eyes of some of the English c a n n o t be doubted, but their representation

here as generic royals, somewhat reminiscent of the adoring Magiwith
multiracial features, pasteboard scimitars, and school-play crownsmight
also indicate their selfpromoting integration within a symbolic economy of
intercultural effigies that accommodated their adoptive titles. Amid the
strange eclecticism of the other costumes and properties, the feathers placed
beside the Kings ears stand o u t asa distinctively Mohawk adornment, a
piece of Americana c a s t up in London o u t of the turbulence of the circum
Atlantic v o r t e x . What Oldmixon describes as the more than ordinary
Solemnity of their audience With the British empress, then, could refer
equally well to English c o u r t protocols or the venerable customs instigated
by Deganawidah at the time of the Great Peace. Most likely it refers to both,
reciprocally intertwined, asin the exchange of gifts.
An epilogue written for the occasion of the Kings visit to the Queens
Theatre, spoken by William Bowen, whose benefit night this was, thanks
them for swelling the audience to ahouse-filling crowd that even Avarice
166 FEATHERED PEOPLES

might please. In expressing Bowens gratitude, the epilogue marks the aus
picious nature of the occasion in relation to the purpose of the embassy:
May Fortune in Return, your Labours Crown,
With Honour, Safety, Riches, and Renown.
And that Success attend you Arms in Fight,
Which he has by your Means obtaind this Night.
(Danchin, 470
The epilogue also plays host by introducing the Kings to the segregated
classes of English men and women in attendance, who were seated by c a t
egory in socially marked sections of the playhouse: the ladies, occupying
the circle of boxes, shine like Stars, which would n o t have come o u t that
night without the lure of the Planets, meaning the Kings; the Beaux,
or fashionable young men about town, who will be induced to stay seated
in the side boxes only by the novelty value of their Iroquoian majesties;
finally, the Citizens and their Wives, the former bringing along the lat
ter for fear of Cuckholdom at Home (Danchin, 471). Unanticipated,or
at least unremarked, is the Mob in the cheaper gallery seats. Observant
visitors from America, whose matrilineal kinship networks produced three
cooperating, nonstratified clans-the Beats, the Wolves, and the Tur
tlescould learn a great deal about their hosts from the ambiguously
enforced but publicly reiterated hierarchythe pit, the box, and the
galleryof the English playhouse. The Queens Theatre had the Royal
Arms emblazoned on the proscenium, under which the crowd insisted the
Indiansbe seated while they heard their praises sung as proxy Kings fight
ing Queen Anne 5 war.
The theme of the epilogue spoken by Bowen anticipates the lines of
Popes Windsor-Forest that projected the rebuilt Whitehall Palace asa future
global imperial seat: There Kings shall sue, and suppliant States be seen
(1:188). Pope echoes the Prophet Isaiah (60:3): And the Gentiles shall come
to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising (1:188n). The
extended allusion 0f the epilogue to Macbeth was likewise biblical, and,
appropriately enough, it cited the first book of Kings:
As Shebas Queen with Adoration came,
To pay Her Homage to a greater Name,
And struck with Wonder at the Monarch's Sight,
Thought the Whole Globe, of Earth that Princes Right.
Since Fame had falln much short in its Report,
 F E AT H E R E D PEOPLES 167

Of so renownd a King, and so enrichd a Court.

So n o w Great Annas m o s t Auspicious Reign,
N o t only makes one Soveraign cross the Main;
One Prince from Lands r e m o t e a Visit pay,
And come, and see, and wonder, and obey:
But wingd by H e r Example urges Four,
To seek Protection on Bn'tanm'as Shore.
0 Princes who have with Amazement seen
50 Good, so Gracious and so Great a QUEEN;
Who from H e r Royal Mouth have heard your Doom,
Securd against the Threats of France and Rome;
A while some Moments on o u r Scenes bestow,
Scenes that their being to H e r Favours owe.
(Danchin, 47071)

The epilogue thus reverses the roles of the biblical text (1 Kings 10:113),in
which the queen of Sheba brings an embassy to the court of the kings Of
Israel and departs in awe at its greatness and Solomons wisdom.
In both the biblical and the modern visit, however, gift exchange facili
tated the negotiations. Responding to his royal guests gift of a camel train
of spices, gold, and precious stones, "king Solomon gave u n t o the queen of
Sheba all her desire, whatsoever she asked (1 Kings 10:13). As Marcel
Mauss points o u t in his classic essay, and as the Queens Theatre epilogue
pointedly demonstrates through its choice of biblical text, the Gift is
never disinterested. It is aperformance of generosity that affirms reciprocal
obligation by initiating a system of totalprestan'om that binds the parties
together contractually:
In the systems of the past we do n o t find simple exchange of goods,
wealth and produce through markets established among individuals.
For it is groups, and n o t individuals, which carry on exchange, make
contracts, and are bound by obligations; the persons represented in
the c o n t r a c t s are moral personsclans, tribes, and families; the
groups, or the chiefs as intermediaries for the groups, confront and
oppose each other. Further what they exchange is n o t exclusively
goods and wealth, real and personal property, and things of economic
value. They exchange rather courtesies, entertainments, ritual, mili
tary assistance, women, children, dances, and feasts; and fairs in
which the market is but one part of a wide and enduring contract. (3)
168 FEATHERED PEOPLES

Here Mauss describes a pointed cultural performance, cognate with and

sometimes expressed through potlatch, in which the parties attempt to outdo
one another in sacrificial expenditure. Like the queen of Sheba during her
visit to Solomon, the Mohawks came to Queen Anne bearing gifts: wampum
belts, porcupine-quill headbands, and a purification stick, probably a
mnemonic cane on which the succession of the Founders w a s carved. In
r e t u r n the Kings departed carrying Queen Anne 5 bounty of bolts of cloth,
mirrors, brass kettles, scissors, razors, a magic lanthorn," swords, pistols,
muskets, four hundred pounds of gunpowder, and an agreement in princi
ple to invade Canada (Bond, 1213). The performance of polishing the
Chain, however, required more than the presentation of valuable items; it
also required the exchange of what Mauss calls courtesies, entertainments,
ritual . . . dances. When the Kings appeared at court, the m o s t dramatic
moment of their Speech to Her Majesty came with the ritual presentation
of BELTS of WAMPUM to record and solemnify the council (Bond,
94). By means of such restored behaviors, which gave form to events at
which a certain amount of improvisation was necessarily required, the
interdependent dramas of surrogation and sacrificial expenditure could be
staged. Their staging featured the performance of memory, turning on the
vacancies created by death, sometimes violent death, condoled by the reju
venating imperative of legitimate succession.
Within the system of totalInfestations, Macbet/z was an apposite choice.
Congreves comedy The Old Batchelor had been advertised for the e n t e r
tainment of the Kings on April 24, and Richmond P. Bond speculates that
Bettertons final illness prompted the substitution of Macbeth, in which
Wilks had taken over the title role (3). Bonds explanation certainly fits the
facts of the occasionBetterton died four days laterbut it underesti
mates the sophistication of intersocietal calculation invested in the success
of a performance such asa Condolence Council. In the promulgation of
canonical memory, asBettertons career as an effigy attests, Shakespeare
numbered first in veneration among the spirits who spoke to the living from
the tribal pantheon of the English dead. It would be unpromising to t r y to
reconstruct the Kings possible responses to an English comedy of manners
by extrapolating from what is known about eighteenth-century Native
American humor, but there is no reason to suppose that they would find
Congreve any more accessible than American audiences generally do today.
Shakespeare, however, casts a wider net, and it is far less difficult to grasp
the symbolic and narrative immediacy for the Iroquois of the events
 F E AT H E R E D P E O P L E S 169

depicted in [Vlacbet/z. These e v e n t s represent the successful invasion of a

northern wilderness country by heroic yet benevolent English forces in
alliance with progressive local tribes. They culminate with the usurpation of
the tyrant Macbeth and the proclamation of peace founded on dynastic
legitimacy and the rule of law.
The scenes of the Davenant version unfold in what m u s t have seemed a
pointed similarity to an Iroquois Condolence Council, enacting a move
ment, as in Popes Whiter-Forest, from dysphoria to euphoria. Royall
Master Duncan, the dead chief, like Charles I, is mourned. There is a pre
occupation with the wiping away of blood and tears. The new chief, Mal
colm, like Charles 11, r e t u r n s from exile to his rightful throne and is given
his charge, to reign with One Mind, by Macduff, showing the face of the
new Chief :

So may kind Fortune Crown your Raign with Peace

As it has Crownd your Armies with Success.
(Davenant, 60)
Finally, Fleance, the fatherless child and Stuart progenitor, like DeganaW
idah, defeating witchcraft and factionalism, r e t u r n s to join the final scene 0f
general rejoicing and peace. Shakespeare did n o t provide a final entrance for
Fleance, son of Banquo and the ancestral link to the Smart clan, but evi
dently Davenant, like Pope, could n o t pass up such anopportunity to reit
erate the meaning of this dynastic triumph over the forces of darkness.
Like Dido and Aeneas in its seriocomic depiction of evil, Macez/z draws
on supernatural phenomena, an animistic magic that the flight through the
air of the Three Witches (played by cross-dressed men in a flying machine)
emphasized visually in Davenants adaptation. Here the Spirit world infil
trated the magic of the modern state. The English themselves did n o t have
settled views on such mattersQueen Anne still cured The Kings Evil
with the laying-on of hands, and the last public witch burning in England
was in 1712, and in 1722 in Scotland. With regard to Anglo-Mohawk inter
cultural understanding, death and the hereafter, asthey so often do, pro
vided an occasion for the clarification of identity and difference. Enlight
ened Joseph Addison offered a skeptical but sympathetic introductionto rel
evant Iroquoian beliefs in the second of t w o Spectator numbers he dev0ted
to the visit of the Kings:
The Americans believe that all Creatures have Souls, n o t only Men and
Women, but Brutes, VegetableS, nay even the most inanimate things,
170 FEATHERED PEOPLES

as Stocks and Stones. They believe the same of all the Works of A r t ,
asof Knives, Boats, Looking-glasses; and that asany of these things
perish, their Souls go into another World, which is inhabited by the
Ghosts of Men and Women. For this Reason they always place by the
Corpse of their dead Friend a Bow and Arrows, that he may make use
of the Souls of them in the other World, ashe did of their wooden
Bodies in this. How absurd soever such an Opinion as this may
appear, our European Philosophers have maintaind several Notions
altogether asimprobable. (23637)
The fair degree of sensitivity in this comparative ethnography mirrors
the earlier Spectator number in which Addison presents what M r . Spectator
describes asa report on the Iroquois Kings response to the wonders of Eng
lish culture. That essay is an early instance of the Citizen-ofthe-WOl'ld
device, which Pope briefly adopts in Windsor-Forest, in which the innocent
observations of alien visitors defamiliarize the values of their hosts. In Mr.
Spectators version of their touristic impressions of London, the Indians
wonder at the inexplicable blood feud between t w o ravening m o n s t e r s , one
called Whig and the other Tory. They remark on the v a s t emptiness of
St. Pauls Cathedral, which they assume to have been painstakingly carved
o u t of a single block of white s t o n e and from which they conclude that reli
gion, once very important to the English, has n o w been forsaken by most of
them. They become fascinated by sedan chairs, mens wigsInstead Of
those beautiful Feathers with which we adorn o u r Headsand womens
cosmetic patches, which they identify as symptoms of a m o s t mysterious
diseasewhen they disappear in one Part of the Face, they a r e very apt to
break o u t in another (1:21115). In comparison to such bizarre practices,
the Shakespeare-Davenant Macfietlt demonstrates the feasibility of cross
cultural communication 0n the basis of mutually intelligible beliefs about
the afterlife. The plays strange images of death dramatize the active pres
ence Of a Spirit world, interpenetrating and acting on the physical one, cre
ating a dual community o u t of the ghostly correspondence between the liv
ing and the dead.
Nicholas Rowes 1709 edition of Shakespeare illustrates the cauldron
scene of Macbeth,in the midst of which, on one side or another, the Iroquois
would have been seated (figure 4.7). The c o s t u m e is modern dress, con
temporary to the eighteenthcentury audience (not to the hoary events of
the play), further pointing the currency of the action. Malcolm and the Eng
lish captains, for example, wore the scarlet c o a t s and ivory waistcoats of
 FEATHERED PEOPLES r71

British line officers, laying siege to the forested castle of Dunsinane (Mon
treal?) and leading the confederated Anglo-native armies to decisive Vic
t o r y. The three conjuring witches show Macbeth the line of kingsa roll
call of the Foundersleading to the Smarts. Consistent with Davenants
stage direction A Shadow of eight Kings, and Banquos Ghost after them
pass by (43), the last king holds a mirror to reflect the dynastic future. Mac
beth poses the burning question of surrogation ashesees the lineage of the
Smart clan materialize before his eyes, its legitimacy reflected in the order
of its identical succession, its destiny maddeningly written in Banquos
smile:

Thy Crown offends my sight. A second t o o like the first.

A third resembles him: a fourth t o o like the former:
Ye filthy Hags will they succeed
Each other still till Dooms-day?
Another yet? a seventh? Ill see no more:
And yet the eighth appears;
Ha! the bloudy Banquo smiles upon me,
And by his smiling on me, seems to say
That they are all Successors of his Race.
(Davenant, 43-44)

Semiopeta also loves a parade. The grotto scene from Rowes She/respect
here depicted m u s t be reconstructed with the four Indian Kings asrepre
sented by Powells puppetsA, B, C, and Dseated onstage (cf. figures
4-6 and 4.7): they were playing a part in the scene, mirroring the prOCCSSion
of British kings and thus offering to the public eye a symbolic reiteration,an
intercultural doubling, of the legitimacy and the inevitability of the empire
of the world as reflected in the cultural mirror of its allied peoples.
In one sense, the future implied by these intersecting parades of effigies
is that of a world linked through surrogations and proxy kingshipsa
Covenant Chain. In another sense, however, the juxtaposition of royal
genealogies recalls a m o r e dysphoric maxim: uneasy lies the head that
wears a crown. Macbeths fears about Banquos usurpation by means of
progeny~That they are all Successors of his Racearticulates the con
tradiction of aspiration and anxiety that often tortured even the festive
occasions of circumAtlantic c o n t a c t . Based on its recurrence in Iroquois
requickening ceremonies, as well asin MndsorForest, The Indian Emper
our, Oroono/co, the Mohawk Macbeth, and many other events and represen
 :EE'Vgy
d
I; f n V m
J,.r.,:.,5I&7";. IV
Amains.
.~Id
W 1 55*?

4. 7M aceth. From NiCh01as RO V I e 7S S[10kCJPCGr (I 7O9), VOl . s .

Howard-Tilton Memor 121
1 Library, Tulan6 Un'Ivers'I t y
 F E AT H E R E D P E O P L E S [73

tations, historians m u s t reckon with the consequences of the threat posed

by this contradiction. \Vhenever the s w e e t desire to assimilate or to be
assimilated curdles into the fear of being replaced, the m o m e n t is propi
tious for the performance of w a s t e .

Epode: Albions Golden Days

For all the vivid color of Alexander Popes circum-Atlantic scene painting,
there is, ashas been noted, apowerfully suppressed presence revealed by the
ecstatic phrase in Windsor-Forest, Slav'ry beno more. Also noted are the
ways in which Popes amnesia is structural, a pattern of erasure that links
many representations across the Atlantic interculture. Feathers and children
recur as signs of this absence, the deferred memory of the American holo
caust. Depicting the luxuries of an elaborately staged domestic scene, Jus
t u s Engelhardt Kiihns Portrait of Henry D a m e ] ! 1 ! ! asa Child, painted in
Annapolis, Maryland, in I 7 1 0 , embodies the pervasiveness of the central
fact of African slavery in the circum-Atlantic world, here represented by the
silver-collared boyservant who faithfully retrieves his young masters yel
low-feathered kill (figure 4.8). In the formality of their play, these children
of different worlds within the same world juxtapose past and future aswell
as black and white. Native Americans do n o t populate the scene except
through the metonym of the bow and perhaps that of the dead bird. Con
versely, Africans have only a ghostly place in Pope 's vision of the Pax Bri
tannica, mocking his abolitionist prediction, yet pressing in on the meaning
of the poem through the very fact of their unexplained disappearance.
In N e w Yo r k City in [ 7 1 2 , a combined force of African and Native
American insurrectionaries (the dreaded red-black ligature of marronnage)
burned down a warehouse and killed t e n Christians before the combined
Manhattan and Westchester militias restored order. The rebels had bound
themselves to secrecy with a blood oath and had covered their bodies with
a magical ointment, prescribed by an African shaman, that they thought
would render them invulnerable. Most committed suicide rather than sur
render, but the remainder were captured and sentenced to die by various
methodsone was to be "burned with a slow fire that hemay continue in
torment for eight or t e n hours and continue burning in the said fire until he
be dead and consumed to ashes. On June 23, 1712, as Windsor-Forest was
beginningto take its final poetical form, Governor Robert Hunter w r o t e to
the Lords of Trade in London and described the executions of twenty-one
4-3 Justus Engelhardt Kfihn, Portrait of Henry Damall [ H a s a Child,
Annapolis, Maryland, 1710.
Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore
 F E AT H E R E D PEOPLES 175

rebels: Some were burnt, others hanged, one broken on the wheel, and one
hung alive in chains in the t o w n , so that there has been the m o s t exemplary
punishment inflicted that could be possibly thought of (quoted in Hofs
tadter and Wallace, 18789). Although Governor Hunter justified this
spectacle of the scaffold on grounds of utility, the imagination that his
administration devoted to the particulars brings it under the aegis of the
performance of w a s t e .
Performing the ineffaceable memories within circum-Atlantic amnesia,
the violence of Windsor-Forest erupts in the vivid imagery of predation asa
kind of sacrifice. Pope finds these bloody rites enacted on the lives of birds,
which c a n n o t but evoke the Featherd People who populate the expansion
of Windsor Forest, as the w a t e r s of Thames circulate through the circum
Atlantic vastness:
See! from the Brake the whirring Pheasant springs,
And m o u n t s exulting on triumphant Wings;
Short is his joy! he feels the fiery Wound,
Flutters in Blood, and panting beats the Ground.
Ah! what avail his glossie, varying Dyes,
His Purple Crest, and Scarlet-circled Eyes,
The vivid Green his shinning Plumes unfold;
His painted Wings, and Breast that flames with Gold?
(Poems, I:161)

Like the game bird in Kiihns portrait of Henry Darnall, Popes sacrificial
pheasant signifies that at least one party to the triangular relations 0f
African, Native American, and European peoples becomes marked asexcess
and violently disappears.
Such representations had to struggle to erase the fact that in the circum
Atlantic world, diaspora was a material fact, autocthony a fiction of origin.
Sir William Young describes how the Black Charaibs of St. VincentS,
whose society began by chance with the wreck of a slave ship from the Bite
of Benin in 1675, had organized a fully assimilated Maroon community by
about the year 1710:
The savage, with the name and title, thinks he inherits the qualities,
the rights, and the property, of those whom he may pretend to super
sede: hence he assimilates himself by name and manners, asit were to
make o u t his identity, and confirm the succession. Thus these
Negroes n o t only assumed the national appellation of Charaibs, but
176 F E AT H E R E D P E O P L E S

PW"? " 4 " " ( m y ccifiismfiifiaiNP-Orlntu i y g e .

,a
,.

4.9 Savages of Several Nations, by Alexandre de Batz, N e w Orleans, 1735.

From lefi: Chef, Sauvagesse esclave,n u Dansseur," Illinois, Sauvagesse,
Negre, Atakapas. From the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collection,
vol. 80, no. 5, 1928.
Courtesy The Historic New Orleans Collection, Museum/ Research Center,
acc. no. 1974.25.10.98

individually their Indian names; and they adopted many of their cus
toms: they flattened the forehead of their infant children in the Indian
manner: they buried their dead in the attitude of sitting, and accord
ing to Indian rites: and killing the m e n they took in war, they carried
off and cohabited with the women. (8)
By the terms of Youngs account, allowing for the condescension and
unconscious projection of its racism, the black Caribs of St. Vincents
demonstrate the leading practices of intercultural surrogation through per
formance: they adopt and presumably adapt the restored behaviors of the
red Caribs, displacing their transmission of burial rites, bodily adornment,
and even naming. Assisted by miscegenation, voluntary or otherwise, t w o
 F E AT H E R E D P E O P L E S 177

or many peoples mingle to become something new, but rarely without cost,
and never without ambivalence (figure 4.9).

Turtle Island
Perhaps, asKwame Anthony Appiah claims, only something asparticular as
a single life c a n capture the multiplicity of surrogated identities asthey are
(or were) continuously reinvented on the Atlantic rim (191). In the decisive
years from 1680 to 1755, o n e of the four Kings, the Praying Mohawk
Theyanoquin, or Hendrick, lived such anexemplary life. Also known asTeo
niahigarawe, Tiyanoga, Tee Yee Ho Ga Row, Deyohninhohhakarawenh,
White Head, King Hendrick, Hendrick Peters, and Emperour of the Six
Nations, Theyanoquin was born Mahican but was adopted by the Mo
hawks (Jennings, Iroquois Diplomacy, 253). A pious Anglican, Theyanoquin
served ably asa leader in the longstruggle against France, of which the Lon
don embassy of [ 7 1 0 was but o n e episode. Like the African savage in
Youngs a c c o u n t of the black Caribs of St. Vincent 5, Hendrick assimilate[d]
himself by name and manners, asit were to make o u t his identity, and confirm
the succession. H i s place onstage in the line of Kings at the Mohawk Mac
bet/z proved to be prophetic. In the loyal service of king and country,
Theyanoquin was killed in action at the outset of the Seven Years War, dur
ing which the hinge of fate forever closed the door on the French empire in
North America: Canada was surrendered to Great Britain; Louisiana was
secretly ceded to Spain, and when Napoleon reacquired it in 1803, hequickly
sold it to the United States. The anglophone ascendancy in North America
did enable, asTheyanoquin and his colleagues had predicted, great Trade
with O u r Great Queens Children, but it also brought forth much else that
could n o t have been predicted or even imagined.
I w e n t o u t into this no-mans land, said Sam Phillips, Elvis Presley's
first agent, when he booked the singer on the Louisiana Hayride in 1954,
and I knocked the shit o u t of the color line. For Phillips, reminiscing
about the year in which the United States Supreme Court handed down its
decision in Brown v. Board of Educationof Topeka and the Louisiana legisla
t u r e responded by proclaiming Massive Resistance (Rogers, 35"),
Elviss blackness was almost subversive, sneaking around through the
music (quoted in Guralnick, 134). F o r others, it was more palpable, closer
perhaps to the appropriating spirit of Youngs Caribbean savage, who
178 FEATHERED P E O P L E S

thinks heinherits the qualities, the rights, and the property, of those whom
he may pretend to supersede. In the consciousness of American identity,
this surrogation remains exemplary, as evidenced by the way in which the
United States Postal Service puffed the Elvis Presley commemorative: The
influence of the rock n roll revolution is n o w felt throughout American
culture in movies, fashion, and politics (US. Postal Service, 31). In this
sense, something more than the particularity of a single life m u s t somehow
take precedence in the performance of memory.
The way in which the United States Postal Service uses the word culture
here can perhaps best be illustrated anecdotally. Traveling with my t e n
year-old daughter on the way home from a family wedding in 1977, I hap
pened to change planes in Memphis on the day of Elvis Presleys funeral.
After the interment atGraceland, crowds of grieving fans were, like the t w o
of us, hurrying through the airport on their way to their various destina
tions across the country. My daughter carried her cousins bridal bouquet,
which she, thinking herself very lucky, had caught, but somehow word cir
culated that the flowers had come from Elviss grave. F o r a t e n s e moment,
several mourners stood across our path, sending mixed signals of reverence
and resentment. Before I could think to say Relatives of the Bride, my
ten-year-old, sensing the moment, invented a tradition. She offered each of
the people standing in our way a sprig of flowers from her souvenir bou
quet. The recipients seemed to accept this wordless gesture asa gift, a sacri
ficial expenditure, a Maussian prestation. In fact, it was. This episode
demonstrates the fantastic speed at which a secular ritualeven one impro
vised at an airport concourse, one of Rosaldos busy intersections-can
create something like the basis for a community among strangers who have
nothing more meaningful in common than the fact that they have come
together within a powerful effigys ambit. Sharing what they took to be the
enactment of a collective loss, they could better imagine a common pur
pose. So the celebrants of the impromptu condolence ceremony gave way,
letting uspass, aswe resumed our journey across Turtle Island, which is
what the Iroquois called America before the ax makers came.
 Will the c o u r t hold that a single drop of Afiican blood is suflfcient
to color a whole ocean of Caucasian whiteness?

, M [ H O N \\1 f o r m

"HERE wt ARE." sm lllli RAISONNEUR IN D I O N Boucncwtts THE Ocroxoom:

or, Life in Louisiana (i859), alerting the audience that he is about to locate
the scene o f the action. H i s a n n o u n c e m e n t i s a t once precise and mysterious:
We are on the selvage of civilization. In the mouth of Salem Scudder, a
homespun character in the Anglo-American tradition of Yankee ]onathan,
the word selvage does a lot of work in Boucicaults play. It literally means
the edge of a fabric, w o v e n thickly so that it will n o t unravel. It more figu
ratively suggests a margin, a boundary, or a perimeter that by opposition
defines the c e n t e r i n short, a frontier. The Octoroon, a popular melodrama
of miscegenation and intercultural displacement, is constructed on a num
ber of frontiers, real and imagined, between white and black, civiliza
tion and savagery, justice and revenge.
In one sense, Scudders sibilant selvage of civilization presents apuz
zling contradiction to the subtitle of the play, Life in Louisiana. Terrebonne
Plantation, the locale of the action, sits just downriver from New Orleans,
which by 1859 had become America's fourth largest city and one Of its
busiest ports, a circum-Caribbean cosmopolis with old family fortunes and
colonial architecture already in various stages of decay (more like Venice,
say, than Dodge City), through which the c o m m u t e of the nations regions
180 O N E BLOOD

and worlds nations passed. In another sense, however, Scudders phrase is

apposite: when he thinks of life in Louisiana as living on the edge of the
worldbetween cultures, between languages, and between raceshe
defines another kind of frontier, or complex of frontiers, in which human
difference, like a selvage, forms the seams at which separate worlds meet.
The Octoroon, along with the Life in Louisiana that it purports to
depict, provides the touchstone far this chapter, in which I propose to exam
ine several genres of performance as memorials to the circulation of cul
tures, material and symbolic, in the circum-Atlantic v o r t e x . The record of
the earlier life of this circulatory system, N e w Orleans, which announces
itself asthe City that Care [Time] Forgot, has become today a place of
memory in Pierre Noras sense. As a favorite tourist destination, it per
forms asasimulacrum of itself, apparently frozen in time, but in fact busily
devoted to the ever-changing task of recreating the illusion that it is frozen
in time. Nora writes: For if we accept that the m o s t fundamental purpose
of the lieu ale memoire is to stop time, to block the work of forgetting, to
establish a state of things, to immortalize death, to materialize the immater
ialjust asif gold were the only memory of moneyall this in order to
capture a maximum of meaning with the fewest signs, it is also clear that
lieux dememoire only exist because of their capacity for metamorphosis,an
endless recycling of their meaning and an unpredictable proliferation of
their ramifications (19). New Orleans is the only inhabited city that exists
simultaneously asa national historical park. Unlike Colonial Williamsburg
or Disney World, each of which it resembles in certain respects, the Cres
cent Citys picturesque inhabitants do n o t change clothes and go home at the
end of their working day to what they erroneously have come to regard as
the real world (Baudrillard).
The mythic original that the present city of N e w Orleans represents
appears asanenvironmental setting, a milieu de memoire, for Boucicault's
Octoroon. How is it that a humble melodrama c a n condense meanings of
such geohistorical scope? Two axes, one running north and south, the other
east and west, intersect in Boucicaults play, as they once did in Louisiana:
the former axis conjoins the river systems of the Mississippi basin with the
Caribbean; the latter follows the path of national expansion conceived by
Anglo-Americans as preordained. Though Horace Greeleys famous
admonishment to the young man was n o t addressed to the Five Civilized
TribesChoetaws, Chickasaws, Cherokees, Creeks, and Seminolesit
did define movement along the eastwest axis in the imperative, as the
 ONE BLOOD 181

Indian Removal A c t of 1830 did by mapping o u t the Trail of Tears. Simi

larly obligatory m o v e m e n t along the north-south axis is remembered collo
quially in the ominous phrase, sold down the river." Set at the point where
these t w o axes crossed, The Octoroon stages a narrative of encounter, a
dramatization of Anglo-American contact with the creolized interculture of ,
the Latin Caribbean. It e n a c t s the story of the radical reduction of one kind
of frontierthat of multiple identities, which are primarily am a t t e r of cul
t u r e i n t o another kind of frontierthat of the catastrophic antinomies of
manifest deStiny, which are primarily a m a t t e r of blood.
Against the generic lineage of The Octoroon, however, which descends
from the so-called mortgage melodrama, a specialized performance of
Euro-bourgeois anxieties concerning entitlement and dispossession
(Brustein, 16869), I also propose to juxtapose t w o other exemplary perfor
mance genealogies. The first involves the Mardi Gras parades of New
Orleanss Black Indians," the African-American tribes or gangs who
masquerade as Native Americans during carnival and share some of their
traditions with such diverse sources asAfro-Caribbean festivals and nine
teenth-century Wild West shows. The second takes up select occasions fea
turing the performance of race in daily life in Louisiana, culminating in the
staging of Plea-{y v. Ferguson, the visionary but disastrous New Orleans civil
rights case that was adjudicated by the Supreme Court of the United States
in 1896. The principal effect of Plesry was to establish separate but equal
n o t just in the Louisiana Separate Car law, which had been disobeyed by the
appellant, but asthe law of the land.
The performance of r a c e a s an alternative to an ontological commit
m e n t to its realitycounted for a great deal in a society that began under
the displaced influence of the French colonial doctrine of One Blood but
then experienced a century-long transformation by means of more or less
obligatory surrogations. The essays in Arnold Hirsch and Joseph Logs
dons Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanifation (1992) meticulously
document previous instances of what these spectacles continue to perform:
asLatin laws and c u s t o m s were hollowed out, remodeled, and reinhabited
after the Anglo-American occupation, a new social order was improvised. I
w a n t to examine the contingent and opportunistic performance of those
improvisations, which include antebellum slave auctions, sex circuses in the
legalized brothels of Storyville, and finally the apocalyptic Anglification of
the old Code noir in Plessy v. Ferguson.
Common to these restorations and reinventions of behaviorthe com
 t82 ONE BLOOD

modity at auction, the victim of sacrificial expenditure, and the transgressor

before the lawis the liminal figure o f the o c t o r o o n . Such ubiquity was
l neither accidental n o r the consequence of pervasive numbers. Defined asa
person of one-eighth African ancestry, an o c t o r o o n w a s legally black but in
m o s t cases passed for white. In fiction and in drama, as well as n o w and then
in the practice of everyday life, the so-called tragic mulatto became an
effigy whose fate, prepared in the crucible of gender and sexuality aswell as
race, condensed hatred and desire in the same imaginary liquidmixed
blood. In this strange world, where bipolar laws and c u s t o m s attempted to
s o r t o u t kaleidoscopic tints and hues, mulattoes of any kind might be
expected to induce crises of surrogation, but even m o r e so when the marks
of mixture were ambiguous or invisible.
In their representations of Native Americans and African Americans, I
will argue, aswell asin their depiction of the forms of violence that I have
termed the performance of waste, certain condensational eventsperfor
mances of The Oczaraon, New Orleans slave auctions, Mardi Gras Indian
parades, Wild West Shows, and the staging of the Plessy casethematize
the law" of manifest destiny and the doctrine of monoculturalism that it
inscribes. But they also propose, each in its o w n way, the historic opportu
nity to accept or reject analternative to the bloody frontier of conquest and
forced assimilation: the paradigm of creolized interculture on the Caribbean
modela plural frontier of multiple encounters, another version of Life
in Louisiana.

Circum-Atlantic America
My argument unfolds in a context shaped by the c u r r e n t revision of the field
OfAmerican studies, areconfiguration heralded by Karen Halttunens Con
fidence Mm and Pailted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in Amer
ica: 8301870 (1932) and Lawrence Levines Hzg/zrow/Lowbrow: Tlze
Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (1988) and n o w hastened by the
publication of works such asEric J. Sundquists To Wake the Nations: Race
in the MakingofAmerican Literature (1993), Jay Fliegelmans DeclaringInde
PendencesjeflGrsan, NaturalLanguage, and tlze Culture of Performance (1993),
and Eric Lott 5Love and Theft: Blackfizce Minstrelsy andthe American War/:
z'ng Class (1993). Haltunnen and Levine found in performance the occasion
of the exquisite production of hierarchies of exclusion. Heeding the
prophetic voice of W. E. B. Du Bois, Sundquist defines Pan-African cul
 ONE BLOOD I83

rural forms as central to an understanding of American law, politics, reli

gion, folklore. and music, as well as literature. Both Fliegelman and Lott
grant o r a t u r e pride of place as testimony to the fact that difference is one
thing that m o s t Americans have in common. To the discussions enabled by
their research into the complex reciprocities of culture and national identity,
I would add an observation on the timeliness of the reexamination also cur
rently under way of the questions raised by the fact of global English.
It should come asno surprise at this stage of the argument that I see the
study of circum-Atlantic literatures and o r a t u r e s in English (as well asin
other languages) as m o r e promising and more urgent than the study of
canons organized around the existence of national borders. No taxonomy is
innocent, of course, but the deeply ingrained division within English stud
ies between American literature, on the one hand, and English or British lit
erature, on the other, has foreclosed the exploration of certain historic rela
tionships in a particularly invidious way. Thinking in terms of regional and
hemispheric intercultures, of which the circumAtlantic world is but one,
will, for instance, allow canons and curricula to accommodate more readily
the extraordinary florescence of contemporary drama, poetry, and prose
fiction from Africa and the Caribbean. By accommodation 1do n o t mean
simply the Opening up of an isolated specialty within the coverage model
of English or any other literature (Graff) but rather the reorganization of
ways of thinking about how cultural productions at every level and from
many locales dynamically interact.
TIn: Octoroon, for example, was written after a brief period of residence
in N e w Orleans by an Anglo-Irishman of French ancestry who learned his
trade asmelodramatist in Paris. He w r o t e The Octaraon for aNew York pre
miere in 1859 and r e w r o t e it for a London opening in 1861. Although the
play is one of the m o s t frequently anthologized in collections representing
drama in the United States, Boucicaults status asan American dramatist
has, understandably, been the subject of prolonged but largely inconclUSive
debate (Kosok). No doubt there is still much to be learned by reading The
Octaroon in connection with, say, Royall Tylers T/ze Contrast (1737), With its
treatment of the frivolous Anglophile, Billy Dimple, and his down-to-earth
foil, the original Yankee Jonathan. There is more to be learned now, how
ever, by reading The Common in connection with, say, Thomas Southernes
Oroonoko, the work of another Anglo-Irish playwright, or An 5650 in the
Bone, by Jamaican Dennis Scott. All three plays dramatize a narrative of
diaspora and enslavement in the plantation economy at different times and
184 ONE BLOOD

from different vantage points along the Atlantic rim. Like The Octoraon,
Oroono/ro is a drama of encounter among white, black, and red peoples, and,
also like both The Cataract: and An Echo in the Bone, it t u r n s on the forbid
denand violently punisheddesire between lovers characterized as
belongingto different races.
Even the best histories of American melodrama (Grimsted; McConachie;
Mason) generally omit mention of the fact that plays like Oroonoko remained
in the English-speaking repertoire well into the nineteenth century. B u t that
plays triangular entanglement of races, its improbable but providential res
cues, its noble savages and sentimental heroines, its deployment of the sex
ual aggression of a white villain against the doomed miscegenistic couple, in
short, its obsession with identity and difference could play effectively to the
audiences that also applauded The Octoraon. Such scenes could still play, per
haps above all, because those audiences were composed of patchwork col
lections of diverse citcum-Atlantic identities and interests thrown together
on the selvage of civilization.
In this light, the ritual performances embedded within Oroanolro, lee
Octoroon, and An Ec/zo in the Bonehuman sacrifice, rites of passage, and
the return of the dead on Nine Nightcan be reinterpreted in relationship
to a variety of nontheatrical performances from Condolence Councils to
jazz funerals. They existed and continue to exist to make something like
common sense o u t of the challenge posed by the gabble of different tongues
to the echo of dimly remembered voices. They broadly conform to the
practices that I have delineated aspertaining particularly to the formation of
circum-Atlantic identities under the pressure of c o n t a c t and exchange:
death and burials, violence and sacrifices, laws and (dis)obedience, com
modificationand auctions, origins and segregation. These are the structural
mainstays of performances that define America asan ever-shifting ensem
ble of appropriated traditions. They m u s t be sought both inside and outside
the venues that sopresumptuously refer to themselves as legitimate theater,
organized religion, and the dominant culture. They also m u s t be sought
both inside and outside reductive binaries such asblack and white or minor
ity and majority, which suggest that human skin and social position exist as
reciprocally fixed polarities rather than asa color wheel that t u r n s over
through time, the changing hues or tints of which bear no fixed or essential
relationship to cultural affiliation and social position. Even from a perspec
tive standing at Plymouth Colony and looking w e s t (Schlesinger), the truth
of this vision of America could beperceived by those with sufficient acuity.
 ONE BLOOD 185

And from a perspective standing in N e w Orleans along Americas Third

Coast, such a vision is impossible n o t to see, however often (and however
violently) it has been disavowed.
Walking in the city makes this truth visible. In a letter to Albion W.
Tourge, the attorney who prepared the principal briefs for the Plessy case,
civil rights pioneer Louis Martinet described the historic effects of One
Blood, which included the large-scale assimilation of the Native American
population into the African-American, aswell asthe African into the Euro
pean and vice versa. As he surveyed the streets of New Orleans in 1891,
Martinet pointed o u t the absurdity of juridical assignments of racial iden
tity in such a place: There are the strangest white people you ever saw here.
Walking up & down o u r principal thoroughfare-Canal StreetYou
would [be] surprised to have persons pointed o u t to you, some aswhite &
others ascolored, and if you were n o t informed you would besure to pick
o u t the white for colored 8cthe colored for white (quoted in Olsen, 56-57)
Among those who would m o s t certainly have been piCkEd out for white
was Homer Adolph Plessy, the creole o c t o r o o n whose arrest for riding i n
the Whites Only passenger c a r of an East Louisiana Rail Road train set
the eponymous legal case in motion. The logically desperate situation Of
those who argued for the binary separation of the races in the face of its
unassailable risibility is best summarized by some touristic verses, penned
around [829 by Colonel James R. Creecy:
Have you ever been in N e w Orleans? If n o t youd better g0,
Its a nation of a queer place; day and night a shOW!
Frenchmen, Spaniards, West Indians, Creoles, Mustees,
Yankees, Kentuckians, Tennesseeans, lawyers and trustees,
Clergymen, priests, friars, nuns, women of all stains; .
Negroes in purple and fine linen, and slaves in rags Md chains.
Ships, arks, steamboats, robbers, pirates, alligators,
Assassins, gamblers, drunkards, and cotton speculators;
Sailors, soldiers, pretty girls, and ugly fortune-tellers;
Pimps, imps, shrimps, and all sorts of dirty fellows;
White m e n with black wives, et vice-verse t 0 0
A P r o g e n y Of all colorsan infernal motley crew!
(quoted in Latrobe, 172)

A sense of burdensome superabundance, so characteristic of Anglo-Amen

can responses to the teeming human and material panoply of the cucum
 186 O N E BLOOD

Atlantic cityscape, weighs heavily on these already limping verses. There are
t o o many incommensurate objects, species, mixtures, and colors, the propin
quity of which the entrepot of N e w Orleans makes continuously visible.
Anxiety over a perceived surplus of difference, of course, is n o t new to
3
l American studies, nor is it, m o r e surprisingly, entirely a thing of the past.
l
1 My definition of race, writes Eric Sundquist, is deliberately limited to
the relationship between black and white cultures. With only a barely per
ceptible blink of his scholarly eye, Sundquist drops the very different set
of questions raised by American Indian literature and oral tradition from
further consideration in his study of race in American literary history (8).
The pioneers in the academic study of American theater and drama who
were exploring a new disciplinary frontier forty years ago arrived at a sim
ilar impasse. It seemed to them asif cultures and races could best be imag
ined one, or at the m o s t two, at a time. In the first sentence of his important
and influential survey, Theatre U..S.A, 1666 to 1957 (1959), o n e of those texts
that define the boundaries in which subsequent research agendas would be
imagined, Barnard Hewitt moved decisively t o end a c o n t r o v e r s y that had
arisen about the scope of the field: Theatre or the stuff of theatre existed
in the ceremonies and dances of the American Indians when the first settlers
arrived in what is n o w the United States, but o u r theatre owed nothing in its
beginnings to native sources (I). Hewitt was rejecting the vigorous case,
iOintly put forward by A. M. Drummond and Richard Moody in 1953, that
American Indianpeace treaties, performed with songs, dances, and speeches
by tribal members of the great Iroquois Confederacythe Condolence
Councilsshould be canonized as the first American dramas. Their
premise was that Amerindian rituals, like the Greek songs and dances on
the threshing floor, constituted foundational texts in the field of American
theater research.
Although scholars in the new field of theater history, emerging from
what they saw as their Babylonian captivity in departments of English,
agreed that the study of performance is indispensable to the proper under
standing of dramatic literature, Drummond and Moody w e n t further. They
wanted to extend the scope of the field of American theater and drama to
include all varieties of what they termed theatrein-life e v e n t s . This was a
remarkable move, enlarging the canon of legitimate objects of study: Some
of these theatre-in-life events Weparticipate in playfully: charades, initia
tions, parades, costume dances, foot-ball celebrations, snake dances, and the
like. Others we act in more solemnly and oftentimes unwillingly: burials,
 ONE BLOOD 187

marriages, commencements, church services, c o u r t r o o m trials, and such. In

all of them we easily recognize the theatrical, show-like qualities. . . . The
Indian Treaties were theatre-in-life dramas of the highest order (15).
In rhetoric aimed at legitimating the study of performance, Drummond
and Moody would have opened up the field of Anglo-American drama to
the study of other American cultures and ethnic traditions, embracing ora
t u r e aswell asliterature in the evaluation of cultural forms of the highest
order. Their concept of theatre-in-life, later called invisible theatre
(MacNamara), decenters the role of high-cultural forms of theaterthose
primarily reflecting the interests of the dominant, anglophone middle and
upper classesand implicitly supports (by promoting bisocietal treaty
negotiations as drama) Mikhail Bakhtins insight that the m o s t intense and
productive life of culture takes place on the boundaries" (Speed! Genres, 2)
At an early m o m e n t of disciplinary selfdefinition, Other scholars re
jected Drummond and Moody's proposed canon as t o o inclusive, arguing
instead for a thoroughgoing, stringently focused exploration of what
Barnard Hewitt called our theatre. The clearest articulation of the rea
sons for concentrating research efforts on a more limited sphere appears in
Walter Meserves pointedly subtitled history, An Emerging Entertainment:
The Drama oft/1e American People to 2828 (1977). Contrasting Amerindian
performance culture to AngloPuritan antitheatricality, Meserve allows that
one people in America who did n o t object to theatre but incorporated it
into their daily ritual were the American Indians. Their performances,
however, though clearly dramatic in a general sense, nevertheless lacked
the artistry and imagination imposed by a dramatist. Hence they do n o t
belong in the history of American drama (56).
The numerous representations of Native Americans brought on stage
through the imagination and artistry of white dramatists, however, play a
paradoxically central role in the formation of a selfconsciously national
drama: For many writers interested in establishing a sense of nationalism
in literature, Meserve writes, the American Indians seemed ideal charac
ters (246). In this schema, Native Americans can enter into the history of
the Drama of the American people only as they are representedby white
authors and a c t o r s . In such rolescast aseffigiesthey become integral to
the self-invention of the American People only through literary artistry
and imagination. Even in a field supposedly predisposed to value perfor
mance, then, literature prevails over orature. Without aesthetics, there is no
real drama, just aswithout writing, there is no real history.
188 ONE BLOOD

From the point of view of narrative typology, Walter Meserve 5 account

of Native Americansfirst invoked, then erased, then reinvented asaes
thetic objects or ideal characters by Euro-Americans seeking native spir
itual authenticity without having to deal with living autochthonspartici
pares in a larger project: the legitimation of manifest destiny, in which the
inevitability of Anglocentric displacement of indigenous peoples and rival
colonial interests takes on the golden penumbra of a creation myth
(Slotkin). The immense economic and social energy released by westward
migration generated a voraciOus appetite for legitimating images and repre
sentations from which the expanding frontier and America emerged as
coextensive imaginative spaces (Truettner, 14989). What Francis Jennings
has called the cam of conquest develops t w o main themes in depicting the
Indian (The Invasion ofAmerica), both of which help to erase memories such
asthe mutual regard attained under the Covenant Chain. The first, which
stresses the unremitting and vindictive barbarism of the savages, suited
the ideological needs of the Calvinist New Englanders especially, though it
did n o t end with the bloody Indian wars of the seventeenth century. The
second, which develops the notion of atranscendently wise and just Indian,
living in innocent harmony with n a t u r e but doomed by the advance of civ
ilization, predicates doctrines of tribal purity and authenticity that have yet
to r u n their course in American belief and law (Pagden). The t w o sides of
Anglo-American imagery, the w a n t o n savage and the noble savage, might
beseen to reflect, in aneerily doubled projection, the duality of American
justicethe retributive violence of the law of the frontier, which is to say
vigilantism, and the grandly sweeping constitutional appeal, o v e r the heads
of all previously existing civilizations, to the Enlightenments Laws of
Nature, of which manifest destiny, which is to say cultural vigilantism,
was one.
In this narrative, the function of the surrogated aboriginal is to disap
pear, and historians of American drama have recounted in detail the contri
butions of nineteenth-century popular entertainment to the wistful celebra
tion of the vanishing Indian (Jones; Wilmeth). Borh the novel and the stage
play exploited the sentimental fascination of the last of stories: Last oft/1e
Min/deans; Logan, The Last oft/1e Race of Shikellemus; and the celebrated
melodrama Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanaags (1829), by John
Augustus Stone, whose work had a second life in the popular parody by
John Brougham, Met-a-mora; or, The Last oft/1e PolZywogs (1847). In the
original, which premiered concurrently with the debates leading to the pas
 O N E BLOOD 189

sage of Indian Removal A c t of 1830 (which relocated the Five Civilized

Tribes from the southeastern United States to Oklahoma), ascenery-chew
ing Edwin Forrest played the title character (Grose). Stone meant to give
Metamora equal measures of savagery and nobility, and Forrest died
grandly and very extensively before a tableau of burning wigwams with the
words, We are destroyednot vanquished; we are no more, yet weare
forever (38). In the deflationary burlesque version, the chorus of stage
Indians, the Pollywogs, massacred by an army of popgun-firing whites,
sings, Were all dying. Theirs was somethingof aspecialty a c t within the
aesthetic priorities of AngloAmerican representation, taking their place in
agenealogy of Indian death scenes: puritan John Eliots Mg Speeches of
Several Indium (i685) seems to have founded a popular American genre that
continues today at every performance of To m jones and Harvey Schmidts
The Fania-nicks (I 960), in which the Old Actor recites Shakespeare and the
Indian dies, obediently beginning his final agonies whenever hehears the
command, Mortimer, die for the man" (51).
N e t to belabor the elements of national wish fulfillment in these genoci
dal fantasies, I w a n t simply to point o u t that the issue of race in America is
hard to reimagine without considering Native Americans. The stark polar
ity of the frontier trope of c e n t e r versus margin traps the imagination of
historians aswell asdramatists in a monotonously self-replicating closure, at
monologic foregone conclusion in which only the vict0r remains to mourn
his vanquished victim. The violence of this narration reinscribes the vio
lence of laws such asthose mandating Indian removal: the Native American
disappears, at the stroke of the white mans pen, and only the aesthetic
Indian remains behind, in memory, in representation, in effigy, and (very
often) in fact.
I believe that an alternative historical model of intercultural encounter,
one based on performance, will suggest an alternative historical narrative Of
American literature and culture, one more resistant to the polarizing reduc
tions of manifest destiny and less susceptible to the temptations of amnesia.
Such a model would emphasize the truly astonishing multiplicity of cultural
encounters in circum-Atlantic America, the adaptive creativity produced by
the interactions of many peoples. Such a model would require a perfor
mance genealogy in which the borderlands, the perimeters of reciprocity,
become the center, so to speak, of multilateral self-definition.
When Native Americans, for instance, speak of their cultures, they tend
to do so with a recognition of their v a s t diversities of language, custom,
190 ONE BLOOD

and experience. Amerindian e n c o u n t e r narratives (recounting interactions

with other tribal groups aswell aswith whites and blacks) are apt to contest
the monolithic story told in Anglo-American fiction, historical or other
wise. David Whitehorse, for example, an authority on the contemporary
panIndian powwow, explains the performance genealogy of the Trail of
Tears, showing how one of the consequences of Indian removal was a pro
ductive cross-fertilization between extremely r e m o t e cultures: Eastern
ceremonial expressions such as the Busk, the Green C o r n Dance and the
Stomp Dance were retained by the Five Civilized Tribes. With the removal
of these tribes to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) in the 1830s,
they carried their ceremonies from an agrarian based society to a marginal
Southern Plains environment. Within the span of t w o generations, the
dances and ceremonies of preexisting Southern Plains tribes had been
interspersed with those of the Five Civilized Tribes through the process of
cultural diffusion. In this manner, the southern variant of the inter-tribal
pow-pow had its genesis (5).
Whitehorse, whose lineage is Sioux, Comanche, and Irish, reminds
scholars n o t only that Indians live in different yet dynamically interactive
cultures but also that they are capable of a far wider range of human behav
ior than retreating, dying, and vanishing. The Indians he describes inno
vate, improvise, and adapt. One major influence on intertribal powwows,
Whitehorse explains, was the popular Anglo-American Wild West show,
which provided disparate Indian traditions with "commonly understood
frameworks within which to conduct the affair (12; see Laubin and Laubin,
81, 455). The powwow, which follows no written text, illustrates some of the
dynamic opportunities of a truly interactive dramatic performance, o n e that
Drummond and Moody would call atheatre-in-life e v e n t .
Whitehorse also articulates by vivid example a theory of contemporary
cultural politics, a new epistemology of difference, which disrupts received
conceptions of circum-Atlantic identities. His a c c o u n t shows how inter
tribal powwows embody the kind of permeable, negotiable, and fluctuating
boundaries described in contemporary social environments by postmodern
ethnography (Clifford; Conquergood; Rosaldo). But postmodernity, what
ever its uses, promises nothing like utopia, as postmodern ethnographers
are the first to admit. Perhaps the m o s t troubling and informative essay on
this Subject is James Clifford s probing examination of identity in Mashpee,
an account of the legal struggles of a New England community to establish
its people as members of an authentic Native American tribe (277346).
 ONE BLOOD 191

Their purpose w a s to reclaim \Vampanoag ancestral lands from Massachu

setts real-estate developers. They claimed in effect that, contrary to Stones
melodrama and Forrests famous death scene, Metamora was n o t the Last
of the Wampanoags. The vexed question before the c o u r t was: What con
stitutes an authentic tribal culture in the eyes of the law? The verdict was
that a mere oral tradition, handed down since the seventeenth century
through generations of forced and voluntary assimilations, massacres,
intermarriages, and acculturations, was insufficient proof, in the absence of
proper written documentation, of the existence of an organic" or histori
cally continuous whole tribal culture. With the typically solemnified vio
lence of American law, the federal c o u r t reenacted an apparently inex
haustible scenario of erasure, staging the melodrama of the vanishing
Indian against a poignant backdrop, n o t of burning wigwams, but of rising
condos.
The marginal condition of life between powerful categories, the condi
tion that postmodern ethnographers find so rich in cultural expressiveness:
renders the people actually trying to live within it extremely vulnerable to
the punitive consequences of their undecidability. Whether they choose n o t
to take the path of straight-line assimilation, a decision that ultimately
leads perhaps to symbolic ethnicity at m o s t (Gans), or are forbidden this
path by some uncorrectable accident of their births, they live, for better or
worse, in a double culture, invested in t w o worlds (at least) yet faced with
powerful laws and c u s t o m s favoring unitary identities (Du Bois). One rea
son for this phenomenon in American society, I believe, is a historic juridi
cal tendency, epitomized by the majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson, first
to collapse culture into categories of race and then to t r y to enforce those
categories as absolutes, as if they were set down in black or white. Such
racialist thinking surfaces in the very conception of a tribe or ape0pl nec
essarily existing asan organic whole."
Challenging the view of human culture as organic in any biological
sense, Clifford speaks for a quite different conception of American legiti
macy when he writes, Groups negotiating their identity in 011!th 0f
domination and exchange, persist, patch themselves together in ways dif
ferent from a living organism. A community, unlike a body, can lose a cen
tral organ and n o t die. A l l the critical elements of identity are in specific
conditions replaceable: language, land, blood, leadership, religion. Recog
nized, viable tribes exist in which any one or even most of these elements
are missing, replaced, or largely transformed (338). Such an entity is less
192 ONE BLOOD

like a plant and more like a quilt, pieced together o v e r time by many hands
o u t of odds and ends, the borders doubled over asselvage, multiple edges
of c o n t a c t among the particolored patches. As an alternative to the mirage
of monocultural continuity or to its related hallucination, the binary of t w o
impermeable races opposed, Clifford explores the possibility, suggested by
the history of the Caribbean basin, of organic culture reconceived as
inventive process or creolized interculture (I 5). Responsive to such con
sequential worldhistorical e v e n t s asthe African diaspora and the geopoli
tics of rival Eurocolonial systems, this view has many promising implica
tions for the study of genealogies of performance, exemplified in my
account by that of the Mardi Gras Indians of N e w Orleans.
The last decade has seen a great florescence of this extraordinary tradi
tion. As the Big Chiefs and other Indian masqueraders have challenged each
other a st o who i s the m o s t pretty, their c o n s u m m a t e mastery o f a total a r t
form of costume, music, dance, heightened speech, and dramaturgy has
transformed the streets of the city during the extended Mardi Gras season.
Chiefs such asAllison Tootie Montana of the Yellow Pochahontas, Bo
Dollis of the Wild Magnolias, Larry Bannock of the Golden Star Hunters,
Victor Harris of the Spirit of Fi-Yi-Yi, and others t o o numerous to mention
have become world-historical messengers. The message they share has
roots as deep as memory, but it m u s t reinvent itself anew every year in
hosannas of feathers, beadwork, gesture, and song. In Japan such messen
gers would be revered as Living National Treasures. In N e w Orleans they
are still harassed by the police for parading without permits.

Life on the (Caribbean) Frontier

There is no agreed-on explanation for the origins of present-day Mardi
Gras Indians in New Orleans, and it would be surprising if one were ever
established.As the beneficiary of slave importation under the French, Span
ish, and American regimes, Louisiana, in the words of o n e historian of life
on its sugar plantations, shared the socio-economic experience of the
larger circum-Caribbean culture (Fiehrer, 4). Recent scholarship has
explored the cosurvival and coadaptation of West African festival perfor
mance genres in the Jamaican John Canoe (Junkanoo) Christmas cele
brations, the Amerindian Masquerade of St. Kitts-Nevis and Bermuda, the
Trinidad carnival, the Cuban compamzs, and N e w Orleans Mardi Gras Indi
ans (Hill, Trinidad Carnival; Nunley and Bettelheim).
 ONE BLOOD I93

The musical of the Indians call-andresponse songs, with

structure
counterrhythms supplied by a percussive Second Line, certainly suggests
West African derivations (Sands). An ethnomusicological account of the
tribes as they were in the early I97os dates the first activity to the early
nineteenth century and c o n n e c t s the gangs s t r u c t u r e to traditional African
mutual assistance societies, which developed in nineteenth-century N e w
Orleans as social aid and pleasure clubs (Draper). The Standard sociology
of African-American N e w Orleans relates the Indians to neighborhood
groupings within the Negro population, which remain a salient feature of
its social life. The city of N e w Orleans is divided into Uptown and
Downtown, the latter referring to the older, historically creole French
Quarter and environs, the former to the more Anglo-Americanized sec
tions; the Indians were likewise divided into Uptown and Downtown
gangs (Rohrer and Edmondson, 3839). After the release of Maurice
Martinez and james Hintons documentary film, TheBlack Indians of New
0 1 " : (1977), a controversy developed over Martinezs acceptance of the
Indians o w n a c c o u n t s of their authentic Amerindian origins dating to colo
nial times ( D e Caro). Yet just such a claim of genuine ethnicity, including
family ties, is a recurring theme in the oral histories. Big Chief Allison
Tootie Montana of the Yellow Pocahontas, for instance, affirming his
family history of Indian blood, says of his cousins, Man, they just look
like an Indian (chimed in Berry, Foose, and Jones, 21011)
In America, blood is the talisman of authentic identity, b l " the history 0f
the Mardi Gras Indians frustrates unitary explanations. New Orleans phO
tographer Michael P. Smith, an a c u t e and knowledgeable observer of cul
tural traditions of the African-American community, has suggested some
connections between the Mardi Gras Indians and the special reverence for
the Sauk Indian chief, Blackhawk, a feature of worship in local spiritual
churches (Spirit War! , 4 3 , 66). Both Samuel Kinser, in his study of Gulf
Coast carnival, and Smith, in his r e c e n t Mardi Gras Indian-S (1994): point to
the 18805 as the m o s t likely decade for the formation of the Mardi Gras
Indian practices that continue today, and Smith has developed some sug
gestive evidence that the visit of Buffalo Bills Wild West in 188485, along
with later visits by other shows, including the Creole Wild West Show and
the African Wild West Show, influenced the Mardi Gras Indians (97-105).
More than a few Mardi Gras Indians find the suggestion that Buffalo Bill's
Wild West influenced their traditions deeply offensive, but fortunately
there is no shortage of alternative genealogies. Smith elaborates what he
194 ONE BLOOD

sees asa number of linkages between present-day Indian gangs and the
renegade bands of Afro-Amerindian Maroons who tormented the colonial
authorities in Louisiana (Mardi Gras Indians, 2125), as they did the o v e r
seer in The Octomon (Boucicault, 8), the English governor of Suriname
(Southerne, 92), and his counterpart in Jamaica ( D . Scott, [oz6). Reid
Mitchell, in his recent A l l ona Mardi Gras Day: Episodes in the History of
New Orleans Carnival (1995), sums up (and gives up) by citing Hobsbawm
and Rangers Invention of Tradition (1983): With the Mardi G r a s Indians,
the working class black people of N e w Orleans t o o invented a tradition
(115)
Such diverse claims for the origin of Mardi Gras Indians provide a crux
for the construction of collective memory o u t of genealogies of perfor
mance. The tangle of creation narrativesthe romantic reaching back to
extracolonial encounters between black and red m e n and women, the Afro
Caribbean ties to Trinidad, Cuba, and Haiti, the links to West African dance
and musical forms, the social hyp0thesis stressing fraternal African-Ameri
can bonds in the face of oppression, the presence of a s t r o n g spirit-world
subculture, and the catalyst of the Wild West Showdoes n o t exhaust the
possibilities. I believe that each story contributes its o w n grain of t r u t h
the trace of a once powerful surrogation. Taken together, the stories exem
plify Cliffords reformulation of a contemporary cultural politics of
authenticity: I f authenticity is relational, there can be no essence except as
apolitical, cultural invention, a local tactic. This line of thinking leads him
finally to his summary of Mashpee Indian identity: Groups negotiating
their identity in contexts of domination and exchange . . . patch themselves
together (15, 338).
Byreinvoking the metaphor of patchwork amid exchange, I do n o t mean
to imply that there is anything haphazard about Mardi Gras Indian perfor
mance. On the contrary, the extraordinary artistry and craftsmanship of the
costumes, which may take a year to build, taken together with the many-lay
ered protocols of Sunday rehearsals, parade-day tactics and strategy, and
music-dance-drama performance, make the honor of masking Indian a
New Orleanian way of life (figure 5.1). The victories earned in intertribal
competition, their exact meanings, and their deep significance, like the sol
idarity won by thousands of hours gossiping at the sewing table, c a n n o t be
shared with outsiders. The tribes, brilliant apparitions on Mardi Gras, St.
Josephs Day, and Super Sunday keep the secrets of their undecidability.
Nobody aint never gonna find the code, asLarry Bannock, Big Chief of
5.1 L a r r y Bannock, Big Chief of the Golden Star Hunters, 1984.
Photo: Michael P. Smith
196 O N E BLOOD

the Golden Star Hunters, put it: The map has to be in your heart" (Ban
nock, personal interview).
The map certainly m u s t be in the heart of the Big Chief because the
parade routes followed by the gangs are unannounced, except to the tribal
inner circle, led by the First Spy Boy, who serves as s c o u t . The Flag Boy
relays signals between the Spy Boy and the Big Chief. Each office is multi
plied,sothat there are Second and Third Chief, Second and Third Spy Boy,
and soon. There is also a Wildman or Medicine Man, distinguished by the
cow or buffalo horns on his headdress, who dances from side to side across
the line of march, both inciting and holding back the crowd. Queens some
times accompany the Chiefs. The formation takes up several blocks, and the
costumed Indians are supported by the Second Line of supporters and
respondents. (There is also, according to Michael Smith, n o w a Third
Line, which is how the revelers sardonically refer to the band of ethnogra
phers, ethnomusicologists, and English professors taking pictures, making
recordings, and compiling n o t e s [Smith, Hidden Carnival, 7].) The Spy
Boy, who m u s t bethe m o s t savvy Indian n e x t to the Big Chief, looks o u t for
the other tribes in the vicinity, but the Big Chief decides whether to accept
or to avoid aconfrontation.
Violence punctuated the earlier histOry of Mardi Gras Indians. I t s pre
sent role is unclear. Contemporary Big Chiefs point o u t that the object of
the confrontations now is to show excellence in c o s t u m e and performance
style, to make the enemy Chief bow by superior display. Some also admit
to carrying weapons and stashing them with their Second Liners. This car
ries onatradition. The great jazz musician Ferdinand Jelly Roll Morton
(ca. 18851941) contributed his memories of growing up in N e w Orleans to
the Library of Congress archive of oral histories. M r. Jelly Roll, who was a
Spy Boy around the turn of the century, recalls that the tribes wanted to act
exactly asthe Indians in days long by. . . . To dance and sing and go like reg
ular Indians. They would form a ring, in a circle, dancer in the center,
sending his head way back, while the tribe members made a kind of
rhythm with their heels. There were friendly and unfriendly tribes, and
when theyd meet a real enemy, . . . their main object w a s to make the
enemy bow. If the enemy did n o t bow, there could be real trouble. Some
even carried pistols, Morton recalls; The n e x t day there would be some
one in the morgue (jelly RollMorton).
What did it mean for Jelly Roll Morton and the tribal members for whom
he scouted to act exactly as the Indians in days long by? Granting the
 O N E BLOOD [97

undecidability of pure origins and organic" cultural wholes, what con

nections r e c u r and thus point toward a genealogy of performance? The ear
liest detailed description of a gang of Indians is Henry Rightors n o t e in his
history of N e w Orleans, published in [ 9 0 0 , actually a promotional effort
for N e w Orleans tourism. Rightor noticed something that I have n o t seen
commented on elsewhere but that I think is highly significant. Though the
phrase masking Indian is used to describe the Mardi Gras performances
and the way of life that supports them, Mardi Gras Indians dont always or
even often wear masks. Every body part of an Indian Big Chief may be
covered with sequins or rhinestone beads and ostrich plumeS, completely i

altering his silhouette and hiding every inch of his skin, but, asRightor i
notes, the Indians face, then as now, usually remains exposed, except per ;
4
haps for w a r paint:
The favorite disguise with the negroes is that of the Indian warrior,
doubtless from the facility with which it lends itself to a complete
transformation of the personality without use of the encumbering
and embarrassing mask; and in w a r paint and feathers, bearing the
tomahawk and bow, they may be seen on Mardi Gras running along
the streets in bands of from six to twenty and upwards, whooping,
leaping, brandishing their weapons, and, anon, stopping in the middle
of a street to go through the m o v e m e n t s of a mimic war-dance, chant
ing the while in rhythmic cadence and outlandish jargon 0f no sensi
ble import to any save themselves. (63:)
The s e c r e t s and occult powers of their jargon served asanother kind of
mask, dnguising their meanings from uninitiated observers and adding to
their mystery, but the absence of facial masks suggests several other P551'
bilities. First, masking w a s illegal in the city of N e w Orleans, and although
the law may have ignored the violations of the White krewes, there isno 3 '
son to suppose it would have overlooked a black Indian who crossed the
line. Second, Rightors impres5ion that the Indians personality was com
pletely transformed (a problematic observation about someone Righter
could n o t have known) evinces another meaning of disguise in cultural pol
itics. What the masquerade transformed was the stereotypical {Negro} per
sonality. It accomplished acarnivalesque inversion of the ordinary experi
ence of workingclass blacks in post-Reconstruction Louisiana, in which
the laboring body was exposed while the facial expression remained
masked. That todays Mardi Gras Indians expose their faces should be
198 ONE BLOOD

understood, I believe, n o t merely asa literal unmasking but asself-fashion

ing revelation. Every Indian, Larry Bannock says, parades in his o w n
way (Bannock, videotaped interview). At the same time, the way in which
every Indian parades does not, precisely speaking, belong to him alone, no
m a t t e r how virtuosic the productions of his musical and kinesthetic imagi
nation might be. He performs the gestures and actions, he sews the feath
ered and headed costumes, and he sings the songs, all of which constitute
living artifacts, spirit-world messages passed on through the medium of his
performance. Occupying and transforming the s t r e e t s in the back of
town, an Indian in his new suit on Mardi Gras morning is ambulant archi
tecture, a living milieu ale memoire.

The Performance of Waste

Like powwows and Mardi Gras Indian parades, the so-called legitimate the
ater enacts what the community imagines to be m o s t important to its sur
vival: the connections between its collective memory and its possible fates.
Audiences at the premiere of The Octoraon did n o t need aweatherman to tell
them which way the wind was blowing (Erdman). The play opened at the
Winter Garden Theatre in New York City on December 6, 1859, four days
after the execution of John Brown. Dion Boucicault, who spent the season
0f 185455 in New Orleans asmanager of the Gaiety Theatre, seized his
opportunity to dramatize the emergency of race in a key locale of circum
Atlantic memory in North America. His melodrama retails the plot of Cap
tain Mayne Reids romance The Quadroon; o r, A Lovers Adventures in
Louisiana (1856), which was itself only one of dozens of novels, biogra
phies, and other representations dealing with tragic o c t o r o o n or
quadroon heroines, beginning in 1836 with Hildreths T/ze Slave (Zanger).
In both Boucicaults play and Reids novel, a rare beauty of delicate man
ners and mixed race, legally exposed by the foreclosure of a mismanaged
plantation, finds herself auctioned off asa slave to the highest bidder, who
turns o u t to be the moustache-twirling villain. Reids hero rescues the
quadroon and then marries her. Boucicault reversed the o u t c o m e for the
New York version o f play: the o c t o r o o n (Zoe) takes poison m o m e n t s before
the letter of credit saving the plantation arrives.
Violence in The Octoroon includes, but is n o t limited to, the villain (Jacob
MClosky) torching and sinking the steamboat Magnolia on the Mississippi
River, murdering the slave boy, Paul, with atomahawk, and in t u r n meeting
 ONE BLOOD 199

his o w n fate at the hands of the vengeful Choctaw Indian, Wahnotee, the
slave boys faithful companion. Ostensibly. these atrocities s t e m from
MCloskys attempts to seize Terrebonne Plantation and its human prop
erty, namely Zoe. On a deeper level, they s t e m from a more violent fear.
The multiplied instances of interracial and intersocietal contact in Bouci
caults scenario add to the threatened displacements of the stock plot of the
mortgage melodrama. They intensify anxieties born of the Louisiana
frontier," a historic zone of circumAtlantic encounter, for which the play
somhinglyin careful increments of bloodsubstitutes binary opposi
tions based on variations of the theme of manifest destiny.
Boucicault plays on the manifold possibilities of frontier life, beginning
with a C00perian image of three m e n o n e white, one red, one b l a c k
going o ff together into the woods to hunt. The hero (George) sets the scene
in act 1: Aunt, I will take my rifle down to the Atchafalaya. Paul has
promised me a bear and a deer or t w o . I see my little Nimrod yonder, with
his Indian companion. Excuse me, ladies (8). Such a piece of staging
evokes Leslie Fiedlers well-known formulation of the relationship
between sentimental life in America and the archetypal image, found in 0111'
favorite books, in which a white and a colored male flee from civilization
into each others arms (F iedler, xii). This describes the mythic embrace of
Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook, Ishmael and Queequeg, Huck and Jim,
but it also echoes the sacrificial offering of the hunt, performed asanact 0f
bloody surrogation amid the violent couplings and unnerving palimpsests
of Pope S Windsor-Forest:
Proud Nimrod first the bloody Chace began,
A mighty Hunter, and his Prey was Man
(Poems, 1:!55)

Alexander Pope and D i o n Boucicault would be thought an odd couple

indeed on any syllabus, but they participate in the symbolic representanon
and memorialization of a hemispheric interculture built up, 35 P3111
Gilroy puts it in broad terms, across the imperial networks WhiCh once
played host to the triangular trade of sugar, slaves and capital" (Unionjack,
157). Apart from the menacing biblical allusionsNimrod stalks his prey
in Genesisthe variety of skin colors alone would suggest that among
Boucicaults dramatis personae somebody m u s t be suPerabundam'
In The Octoroon, the homosocial idyll of the hunt places awhite man in a
triangular relationship with an African American and a Native American.
200 ONE BLOOD

When another plantation owner complains that the Choctaw Wahnotee

should return to his nation o u t West (i.e., postremoval Indian territory)
and MClosky accuses him of thieving and drinking, Zoe defends him: Wab
notee is a gentle, honest creature, and remains here because he loves that boy
with the tenderness of a woman. When Paul was taken down with the swamp
fever the Indian sat outside the hut, and neither ate, slept, or spoke for five
days, till the child could recognize and call him to his bedside. He who can
love sowell ishonestdont speak ill of poor Wahnotee (8). Here the his
toric juncture of Africans and Amerindians, the key cultural linkage in the
performance genealogy of the Mardi Gras Indians, emerges in a representa
tion destined for consumption by whites as the deep, innocent, and essential
ized love among the children of Nature. The Indian doubles the white man,
standing in for him in the role of frontier companion and lover. Todays
Mardi Gras Indians also tend to sentimentalize the African-Amerindian
encounter; as Chief Larry Bannock explains: They were the first people to
accept usashuman (Bannock, videotaped interview). But Bannocks mem
ory of the contact is positioned in historical memory (albeit the imprecise
reminiscence of oral tradition) rather than in Fiedlers Nature, the mythic,
timeless, and homosocial realm of the North American wilderness.
As his foreshadowing exposition suggests, Boucicault also gives Wahno
tee adark purpose in the essentializing symbolic action of The Octoroon. He
is the agent of violent revenge against the villainies of Jacob MClosky and,
by extension, against all the vicious features of white culture that MClosky,
the grasping, bullwhip-wielding Connecticut Yankee, could possibly repre
sent. The crucial scene in the play for my purposes is the kangaroo c o u r t set
up on the Mississippi wharf in a c t 4. Here Salem Scudder, the sympathetic
Yankee Jonathan, presides over the trial, first of Wahnotee, who is falsely
suspected of Pauls murder (since his tomahawk was used in the deed), and
then 0f MCIOSky. who is soon enough found o u t as the culprit. Scudder first
argues against the summary stringing up of Wahnotee: This lynch law isa
wild and lawless proceeding. Heres a pictur for a civilized community to
afford: yonder, a poor ignorant savage, and round him a circle of hearts,
white with revenge and hate, thirsting for his blood: you call yourself
judgesyou aintyoure a jury of executioners. It is such scenes as these
that bring disgrace upon our Western life (32). Scudder convicts the jury,
which is white with revenge, of acting like a bunch of savage Indians. He
appeals to the famed due process of American law. Yet a few lines later,
when the villain MClosky stands in the improvised docket, Scudder com
 ONE BLOOD 201

pletely reverses himself and the plays presentation of the essence of Amer
ican justice:

Fellow-citizens, you are convened and assembled here under a higher

power than the law. Whats the law? When the ships abroad on the
ocean, when the army is before the enemy, where in thunders the
law? It is in the hearts of brave men, who can tell right from wrong,
and from whom justice cant be bought. So it is here, in the wilds of
the West, where o u r hatred of crime is measured by the speed of o u r
executionswhere necessity is law! I say, then, air you honest men?
air you true? P u t your hands on your naked breasts, and let every man
as dont feel an American heart there, bustin with freedom, truth,
and right, let that m a n step outthat's the oath I put to yeand then
say, D a r n ye, go it! (33)
It seems that the Yankee jonathan speaks with forked tongue. He n o w
appeals beyond the law to a higher power that acts in the hearts of free men
and exists outside and above due processan American tree hearing some
mighty strange fruit. He speaks asif he were in some wilderness outpost,
the salvage of civilization, instead of in a long-established colony with
laws in three languages and plenty of lawyers already (G. Richardson). In
fact, the frontier on which he stands is that of cultural difference and sim
mering racial hatreds, one that Boucicaults dramaturgyand n o t only
B0ucicaults dramaturgywants to confuse with the Wild West.
As the n e t of vengeance closes, drawn ever more tightly with increas
ingly ferocious invocations of Judge Lynch, the stage directions read: Wab
n o t e e rises and looks at MCloskyhe isin his war paint and fully armed
(33). Boucicaults faulty pronoun reference underscores the weird substitu
tion of the red m a n for the white: the gentle child of Nature has been trans
formed into the terrifying agent of vigilante justice. Through the course of
the remaining scenes of the play, Wahnotee silently pursues anincreasingly
hysterical Jacob MClosky, who, at one point in the chase, mistakes the
Indian swimming after him for analligator,akind of Louisiana bayou antic
ipation of Captain Hook and the crocodile (34). In the final tableau of the
play, while George holds the lifeless body of Zoe downstage, the stage direc
tion gives anexplicit cue to focus the ending of The Ortaroon on the theme
of bloody vengeance: Darken front of house and stage. Light fires.
D r a w flats and discover Pauls grave.MClosky dead on it.Wahnotee
standing triumphantly over him (40). Here, amid the pious terrors of
202 ONE BLOOD

American justice, Boucicault pulls off a very complicated piece of racial sur
rogation and inversion: a white man is lynched by an Indian for the murder
of a Negro. Scudder unscrambles the code of this anagram when he refuses
to intervene to save MClosky from being butchered by the red-skin and
explains to the condemned man the t r u e n a t u r e of the crime for which he
m u s t die. Scudder also confirms that while the frontier in Louisiana is more
intercultural than geographical, the natural law of manifest destiny m u s t
nevertheless remain in force: Here we are on the selvage of civilization. It
aint our side, I believe rightly; but Nature has said that where the white m a n
sets his foot, the red m a n and the black m a n shall up sticks and stand around.
But what do we pay for that possession? In cash? N o i n kindthat is, in
protection, forbearance, gentleness, in all them goods that show the critters
the difference between Christian and savage. Now, what have you done to
show them the distinction? for, darn me, if I can find out (37).
Scudders sentimental apostrophe of the white mans rule of law, sanc
tioned by Nature, evokes the qualities that Wahnotee has shown in loving
Paul, the womanly and maternal virtues of protection, forbearance, gen
tleness. That the Indian ends the play standing over the dismembered body
of the victim of his merciless revenge completes Boucicaults inverted pre
sentation of the dual symbolismand the dual realityof American jus
tice asthe performance of waste.

Ghost Dance: Buffalo Bill and the Voodoo Queens

Henry Rightors description of a Mardi Gras Indian humbug of around
1900a mimic war-dance, chanting the while in rhythmic cadence and
outlandish jargon (631)makes a revealing comparison to o n e published
in the Dai{y Picayune sixteen years earlier, which refers to an onslaught of
a whole band of whooping red-devils. Like Rightors account, it stresses
costume, speech, and dance: The Indians w o r e their semi-civilized garb,
were gorgeous in their native warpaint and spoke their o w n guttural lan
guage . . . and they w e n t through the weird dances of their race. The
reporter, however, was recounting the street parade and premiere of Buf
falo Bills Wild West, December 2223, 1884 (Dai{y Picayune, December
24, 1884).
Before it departed New Orleans on April 11, 1885, Buffalo Bills Wild
West performed daily for mixed crowds, including a Grand Performance
on Mardi Gras day (Dally Picayune, February I 7 , 188;). Bad weather and a
 ONE BLOOD 203

transportation strike frustrated \Villiam F. Codys design to make akillingoff

the crowds at the \iorlds Industrial and Cotton Exhibition, which had
opened that rainy winter (Deahl). Nevertheless, the show came to t o w n with j
t w o hundred cowboys. Indians, and Mexicans to enact its simulacrum of
manifest destiny: the Pony Express and the Deadwood Coach getting
through, the buffalo hunt, the duel with Yellowhand, the Indians sailp and
w a r dances, the nostalgic adieu to a proud and vanishing race (Blackstone).
Annie Oakley joined the company for the first time in New Orleans, and a
big attraction was added when Chief Gall, the Sioux sachem, strategist of the
victory at the Little Big Horn, arrived for a special guest appearance, includ
ing pow-wows, dances, and a feast" (Daily Picayune, January 3, 1885).
At fifty cents, the admission price (plus carfare or a long walk) was
pretty steep in an economy where the newspaper editorialized about over
payment-Demoralized Negro Labor"when wages for field hands hit
one dollar a day (Daily Picayune, February 16, 1885). The company, hOW'
ever, offered itself free of charge when it paraded on December 22 through
the streets of the city, especially the Uptown areas (Daily Picayune, Decem
ber 2 2 , 1884). It is important to imagine the spectacle of costumed and
armed Plains warriors, some of them r e c e n t victors over Custer, striding
proudly through the s t r e e t s of N e w Orleans on the days before Christmas
1884. Uncontained within the arena of the Wild West Show, which depicted
the white mans view of the Indians subjection as well as their nobility,
they would have made a greater impression, I think, on those who saw them
move through the neighborhoods, speaking their own guttural language
and performing the weird dances of their race than they would have in
the arena, though that spectacle was by all accounts quite impressive in its
own way.
The parades of the Wild West Show, inviting the public To see Scenes
that have Cost Thousands their Lives to View (advertisement, Daily
Picayune, December 2 2 , 1884; figure 5.2), manifested a double nature, their
identity falling somewhere between a folklore procession, with its gala
emphasis on crafts and special skills, and a military parade, with its empha
sis on the display of national power and national will. Anthropologist
James Fernandez explains this distinction: A folklore procession is, by def
inition, a show of local culture and a manifestation of local identity, just as
a military parade is a parade of national culture and national identity. . . .
The military parade is a parade of the instruments of violence of which
the nation-state enjoys the role of possession and legitimate use, just asa
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tisement in the New Orleans Dally Picayune, December 2 2 , 1884.
Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University
 O N E BLOOD 205

folklore parade is a parade of the instruments of conviviality (28o).

Encompassing these contrasting modes of performance, the Plains war
riors performed complex and contradictory roles of enemies and American
heroes, of local specimens and national symbols.
With or without their permission, Indians participate in the often violent
struggle o v e r what and who is or is n o : American. In the symbolic economy
of Wild West violence especially, American Indians are richly polysemic,
and Cody exploited every nuance. Indians could signify reckless defiance in
face of oppression and tyranny. Through the repetition of the word wild in
several of their tribal names, the Mardi Gras Indians seem to invoke this
association, just as the Anglo-Americans did a century before at the Boston
Tea Party. Creole W i l d West was the first Indian gang name to berecorded,
and it dates from the 18805 (Kinser, 16263). Disenfranchised of a conti
nent, American Indians could also signify holders of legitimate entitlement
to either repatriation or revenge. F r o m the time of Plymouth, the Indian
appeared in the bad conscience of white mythology asa symbol of savage
retribution, the dark agent of Gods wrath. Those a generation away from
slavery, exiles from a home they would never know, could identify with
Native Americans, bitter exiles in their o w n land. The slave-holding
propensities of the Five Civilized Tribes (socalled by whites in part because
they held slaves) emphasize the double, inverted nature of the Indian asa
symbol for African Americans: the nonwhite sign of both power and disin
heritance. The theme of frontier spaceand its control bynomadsillu
minates, I think, the importance of the border skirmishes and alarums
enacted by Mardi Gras Indians. On Mardi Gras clay Indian gangs claim the
space through which they move, like a passing renegade band, and the broad
arms-length gestures they make show off more than just their costumes.
They occupy the constantly shifting borderlands, protected on their flanks
by SCOUtS (Spy Boys) as they migrate from block to block, from bar to bar.
They perform a rite of territory repossessed to assert n o t sole ownership:
perhaps, but certainly collective entitlement to fair use. It would be nar
rowly ethnocentric but n o t wildly misleading to describe them asperform
ers in a mortgage melodrama on a world-historical scale, an unsettling
vision, when one thinks of it this way, for the incumbent title holders.
Double identities, however, usually have more than t w o sides. The par
ticularly masculine emphasis of the gangs, their fraternal organization, and
their patriarchal dedication to the Big Chief, aswell astheir death-before
retreat bellicosity, recall the postCivil War rhetoric of resurgent black
206 ONE BLOOD

e nation lurched backward into Jtm

. CFO, ( Blasslnga
me,
, at the edge of living memory f0: [OC'laiIhseTBucket
, askersv
ended on the battlefield or M Ores settled
, aplace Processions
where challenges could beanswered an? schibition"
(Mitchell, 120- The polarity machine of the Wild West Ex '
to becalled a uShowu . sanctified
W d 5 . as1
hISIOr
. .ca

ugh! of asartifacts but as per aofan

Cura
f0rm
move out of the closed a r e
 ONE moon 207

Hal 5
ymbol S . .
Cons Prolllcrzn . . .
tluct themselvc ,,.15Iruct1ng their pasts atthe same time that they
As Fu-K' 5 ( Ritual Performance. 23). Soi t i '
lau B
A f He U n sthen
' an prOCebsi()n.d w- ' tlllmdcr
~ , ot the Kongo Academy in Has-Zaire, said of
01]]
e a
'1 masking
. ,
lesuvals:
e .
to saytheir
People are' allowed 'thin not
' Ce in ordinary lite
.~ but what IS
. gomg on w: truth
mind5 [h ' - .
.
(
qu0ted eir '
l fi n e r b, e- l.. their truth that
. i' n n e r resentments. . . Parades alter
Mard]. Grasin Nunlt
lndi 0),. and Bettelheim, 23).
an Pdradcs
' seem to alter, by r ti g African-American

mu .
[h . nICa
ell ' te [l]
that Imagined crOUgh expreSSiVC performa

ing Iperforman
a u OTmunity, the living and e
the repossesswn
n and of A
5'3). ndi n theim
cc 1nNCW permits, througl .
re-creatio
- .Orleans
agmatwe
1n hi
Sa
'r
hoSt CCOunt 0f the sacred vision of W0
nne known 35 porcu
C _ anc - .
hrls . The re$1011, the Clieye
COuld t 3
thei eep d: PTOmiSe 0f the 6110
eke r World Wncmg in the right spirit,
nesfescent Su Ould be replenished an 1 r
trerhh en lVierablmdance in America, ould dISaPp he Commence
ni h 163110 6 W e r e assembled, he 6
ha t, the Clfer) Violently for awhile, and [hen
' e - . s t lying dOWn beside usimpale,I1 1890,
l
fgr gBull
th Who W a s killed while ncing .
Ghost D3 'maginanono
Stratln
.
g the power of the
208 oNl-l BLOOD

The Ghost Dance, like Mardi Gr

memory with spirit
a ri For.
_ on as Indian observancesa was
-world claims
cuPine saw this resurrect
that voodoo ' mmm terms of Christ, 1n50m
. - et
hing ket

esistan memory1(J.
sYncretism
Scott). Revived (Or atdeflfttmore
necessarily lea orleans 1:10?a
the Pfac use,
mthe 18803 doo in nineteenthcentury Neidoo Qu:fatiflg
' fuI Practices of t w o voveau' OPetakers
6 success ens,

caring the name Marie La

tervention of spirits r
, or lam, the Voodoo 52!1
Queen5, tW0 {Id
0
f
 ONE BLOOD 209

LOu' '
lSlang C r ~ . .
the tombs fWiles llVC closer to the dead than do m o s t Anglo-Americans:
mStance
, 1 o t 1 e a. n c e s t o r s are vtsrted
. . and tended o n All Saints Day, for
. ncr . ' . . .
New 0 els'ngly, however, the line between the hvmg and the dead in
rleans , . . . '
Worked asaSymbolic reiteration of the color line, particularly
With the .
Only Incredslg Popularity in the 18705 and 18805 of expanding Whites
of the Dead.
TheZTSeirii: Segregated Cities d toward a more radical segre
gation of the def (ital support for the tren _ _ he New Orleans Bul
lea}; for Ma edd In a remarkable account printed mt .
man in th: 2? {8731 Buried alive. Sickening tale of our hospital defad:
e driver 5 c m y wagon revives. He attempts to get out of his cof in.
mOthers him. It seems that the driver of the hearse, one 1m
[Im a b
, lack man named George Banks,
turely' YOu n shouted Connors, hittm
briCk a a
"dcethe
~ ~SUffOCating him with the couch seat 0 to bury youu (quoted
d Im going
idnoqors mfCate that you are dead, an atribute to the
Saxon) Dreyer
, and Tallant,
' .
342"' 43)_As butnotallsoa'

ens . s
putit' e Possessed of itself. It 15even Posse
cla. In the mystified but ennobling legal jar o e

r i Ccertain inalienable rights. This amends so:

my rill: Indians) or the Plains Indians, dZIZEPo
e s j _ Ough that is true; they also and. their
agai thplflt 0f thEir ancestors, to p05565 21am hel
e" COmmunities. They dance to r6515
 India
oto: Michael P. n Warrior, 1990.
Smith
 ONE BLOOD 21]

of C0mmoclities.
' t, In other words. they dancedand they still danceto
PosSeSS 4
. gam
. a llclltdgt
s' , . some people would rather see buried
that . alive.
.

SlaVe . Octoroons
SPECtacles and Tragic
0neParticIllarly tntormative
- ~ . of abehavioral vortex
guide to the operation
lSthe . . ure. The staged exiti
lnst .
bitio _ convergence of busmess and pleas
"Utlonal
. n 0f bOdleS for [lie purpose of selling

PEI-{Orm
they anCe genealogy of the slave mark
Th meesSEd 0 find detailed prece

surfafe::efs of [he bUyers) to the custom

30 that ev the Slave 5 body: They were
Purcha y o might see and handle them,
se them' Purchasers took care to have them

i
magnifg-hly theatrical spectacle. The
St LOuFent thealterlike rotunda, desig
Qnt
18Hotel. The management provi e of the H"d1 unless musxc . is

emar Value of the slave auc e atttactive eer,, (Daily Picayune,

br
212 ONE BLOOD

I
5 .41..\\r.:'r.x Al ( C W uulufinDZWKIZ ' 11 " . Al LT I U L A h k fl l l ' l l Ul' h i t X l

5.; Exchange Alley. Harper} Weekly, January 2 1 , 1863.

Courtesy The Historic New Orleans Collection, Museum/ Research Center,
acc. no. 1958.43.24

March 26, 1853). The brokers also provided special theatrical c o s t u m e s : for
mal wear for the male slaves and brightly colored dresses for the women.
These are shown inanillustration from Harpers Weekly in which the preauc
tion display of merchandise takes place on the street in Exchange Alley,
part of the St. Louis Hotel complex (figure 5.5). Captioned A SlavePen at
New OrleansBefore the Auction. A Sketch of the Past, the t e x t and
image, by 3 fOleign artist, offer a retrospective view of slave marketing
before the outbreak of the Civil War: The m e n and w o m e n are well clothed,
in their Sunday bestthe men in blue cloth of good quality, with beaver hats;
and the women in calico dresses, of more or less brilliancy, with silk bandana
handkerchiefs bound round their heads. Placed in a r o w in a quiet thorough
fare, where, without interrupting the traffic, they may command a good
chance of transient custom, they stand through a great part of the day, sub
ject to the inspection of the purchasing or non-purchasing passing crowd.
They look heavy, perhaps a little sad, but n o t altogether unhappy (Harperis
 ONE BLOOD 213

Wee/4y, January 21, 1863). The shock of such a revived memory, a pic
turesque scene that someone stumbled on casually while walking through the
city, is increased by the recognition of the very normality of the slave trade
in the performance of daily life in N e w Orleans. The restored behavior of
the marketplace created by its synergy a behavioral v o r t e x in which human
relationships could be drained of sympathetic imagination and shaped to the
purposes of consumption and exchange. Under such conditions, the m o s t
intolerable of injustices may be made to seem natural and commonplace, and
the m o s t demented of spectacles normal. But normality does n o t happen by
accident. It thrives on exposure (and construction) through extraordinary
performances. Why else dress up slaves in top hat and tails?
Antebellum N e w Orleans, which had the earliest American suburb to
be linked to the urban hub by public transport, was in some respects a pro
totypical circum-Atlantic city. In this urban plan, the Exchange complex,
surpassed in scale only by the St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square, com
prised " 0 t Only a commercial c e n t e r but a ludic space, a stage of cultural
self-invention through restored behavior. Its promoters, ridiculing the old
marketplaces of the French and Spanish colonial period (in which, under
the Spanish liberalization of the old Code noz'r, slaves could earn the price
of their freedom), touted the Exchange asthe Louisianian staging point of
a n e w circumAtlantic empire: We cant say how it is elsewhere, but here,
the going-going-gone of the auctioneers, and the clinching bang of their
hammers, follow the rounds of o u r city and keep company with the
streets, as the roll of the British drum is poetically said to follow the sun,
and keep c O m P a n y with the hours around the world (Daily Picayune,
February 2 0 , 1853). In this estimation, slave spectacles expand the cen
tripetal pull of the behavioral v o r t e x to the suburban perimeters of the
metropolis and beyond.
The eye of the v o r t e x , however, was the rotunda of the St. Louis Hotel.
The building was designed in 1838, by the French architect J. B. Pouilly, as
the anchor of one end of Exchange Alley. Pouilly conceived the alley asa
mall-like promenade cutting through the French Quarter to link the
rotunda to Canal Street, a major thoroughfare of commerce and the sym
bolic dividing line between the Latin and AngloAmerican zones of the
city. The concept closely resembles a contemporary suburban shopping
mall with anchor department s t o r e s at each end of a promenade of smaller
specialty shops. Pouillys protomall featured male-oriented ateliers such as
tObaCCOHiStS, gunsmiths, and fencing masters, mixed in with slave brokers,
214 ONE BLOOD

lining each side and leading to the imposing urban landmark of the St.
Louis Hotel itself.
The hotel was a kind of homosocial pleasure dome with overlapping
commercial and leisure attractions. The informative Historical Sketch Boo/r
and Guide to New Orleans recalled: This exchange n o t only contained the
finest bar-room in the city, but the principal auction m a r t , where slaves,
stocks, real estate, and all other kinds of property were sold from noon to
3:00 P.M., the auctioneers crying their wares in a multitude of languages,
the English, the French, and the Spanish predominating. The entire upper
portion of the building was devoted exclusively to gambling and billiard
rooms. . . . Adjoining the exchange [was] a cockpit (77). The auction
itself began with a promenade, a kind of production number in which
the chorus of commodities paraded to the auction block, led by a high
strutting master of ceremonies. According to an a c c o u n t in the Louisiana
WPA oral history project: Some of the traders kept a big, good-natured
buck to lead the parade (of slaves to be sold) and uniforms for both men
and women, so that the high hats, the r i o t of white, pink, red and blue
would attract the attention of prospective buyers (quoted in Saxon,
Dreyer, and Tallant, 226).
The fancy costumes came off asthe merchandise was stripped to permit
close examination. In her narrative, former slave Lu Perkins recalls having
been stripped at her own sale, noting that there was apractical motive for the
exhibition of her upper body: 1 members when they p u t meon the auction
block. They pulled my dress down over my back to my waist, to show I aint
gashed and slashed up. Thats to show you aint a mean nigger (quoted in
Mellon, 292). Slaves on the block were sometimes expected to dance in order
to show at once their liveliness and their docility. They also had a motive, it
was supposed, to increase their sale price: the m o r e valuable the slave, the
less willingness on the part of the m a s t e r to inflict harm. In his slave narra
tive, James Martin recalls: Then, [the auctioneer] makes em hop, he makes
em trot, he makes em jump. How much, he yells, for this buck? A thou
sand? Eleven hundred? Twelve hundred dollars? (quoted in Mellon, 291).
Here resides a plausible, if as yet relatively unexplored, genealogy of
performance. With music, dance, and seminudity, the slave auction, asa
performance genre, might be said to have anticipated the development of
American musical comedy. It certainly had important linkages to the black
faced minstrel show, which enacted the effacement of the cultural traditions
of those whose very flesh signified its availability for display and con
 ONE BLOOD 215

sumption. But they w e r e n o t the only descendants of slave auction perfor

mance a r t .
In t e r m s of drawing power, the fancy-girl auctions, the sale of
quadroons (one-quarter African-descended females) and octoroons, proved
an exceptionally popular N e w Orleans specialty (Genovese, 41617), per-
formed in an atmosphere charged n o t only with white privilege but with '
male privilege. As anxious buyers bid up the price many times that of agood
field hand, the sale of relatively well-educated and relatively white women
into sexual bondage raised the erotic stakes higher in a public, democratic
spectacle that rivals all but the m o s t private of pornographic exhibitions in
aristocratic Europe (Senelick, Erotic Bondage).
The compelling, even hypnotic fascination inspired by slave spectacles
resides, I believe, in their violent, triangular conjunction of money, property,
and flesh. In the rotunda of the St. Louis Hotel, asit was represented by an
engraving in 1854, three kinds of property go under the gavel at once: pic
t u r e s on the left, real estate on the right, and slaves in the middle (figure 5.6)
In the dramatic lighting provided by the bulls-eye window in the classical,
pantheonlike dome, the centrality of naked flesh signifies the abundant avail
ability of all commodities: everything can be put up for sale, and everything
can be examined and handled even by those who are just looking. In the stag
ing of N e w Orleans slave auctions, there is a fiercely laminating adhesion of
bodies and objects, the individual desire for pleasure and the collective desire
to compete for possession. As competitions between men, the auctions seethe
With the potential for homosocial violence. As theatrical spectacle, they
materialize the m o s t intense of symbolic transactions in circum-Atlantic cul
t u r e : money transforms flesh into property; property transforms flesh into

money; flesh transforms money into property. As circumAtlantic perfor

mances, they epitomize the dependence of commodiftcation on auctions,
organizing an auction community around the event itself and serially reor
ganizing that community and intensifying or transforming its consciousness
of value with each n e w performance. As Charles \V. Smith explains in Auc
tions: The Social Construction of Value (1989): Where most forms of eco
nomic life occur within established communities and in terms of accepted
values, auctions require that such communities and values be continually
reproduced" (14). It could also be said that auctions require such communi
ties and values to becontinuallyperfimned. What anauction organizes isclose
to sacred ritual in circumAtlantic t e r m s because it disposes of luxury fetishes
in the form of excess expenditure: bread is n o t often auctioned off, but
216 ONE BLOOD

5.6 W. H. Brooke, Sale of Estates,

Pictures and Slaves in the Rotunda, N e w Orleans," 1854.
Courtesy The Historic New Orleans Collection, Museum/ Research Center,
acc. no. 1953.149

(where value is shifting, labile, unfixed) slaves, paintings, plantations, and

fancy girls are.
I n t o this highly charged scene, the e n t r a n c e o f the tragic o c t o r o o n o r
quadroon, sometimes advertised asa Yellow Girl, introduced the effigys
uncanny doubleness. Abolitionist tracts appropriated such spectacles to
heighten the pathos of the flesh market, while n o t coincidentally trading on
its erotic titillation. In this genre m u s t be numbered John Theophilus
Kramers Slave Auction (1859), an eyewitness account of the N e w Orleans
slave market designed for readers in the North: There stands a girl upon
the platformtobesold to the highest bidder; perhaps to a cruel, low and dis
solute fellow, who, for a day or t w o since, w o n a few thousand dollars by
playing his tricks at the fare table. She is nearly white; she is nor yellow, as
they call her. She has a fair waist, her hair is black and silky, and falling down
in ringlets upon her full shoulders. H e r eyes are large, soft, and languishing
(26). Her flesh disguises the invisible truth of her blood. She could pass, but
 ONE BLOOD 217

the law and the a c t of sale label her, stripping her of her whiteness. In the
politics of performance, she is marked (Phelan). The performance of a
fancy-girl auction and its representation in nineteenth-century a r t and lit
e r a t u r e definitively illustrate the function of aneffigy in the process of sym
bolic substitutionof a white-appearing body for a black one, of gender
difference for racial difference, and of one commodity for another. They
exemplify the role of surrogation in both the transmission and the displaced
transmission of cultural forms and attitudes.
D i o n Boucicaults o w n residence in New Orleans, at the height of the
spectacular slave auctions of the mid-18505, offers an example of how the
performances of everyday life may bereconstructed for the stage. He made
his N e w Orleans debut on january 23, 1855, though his plays had long been
popular in the Crescent City before his arrival in person. Looking for a
likely venue to establish a permanent company, Boucicault secured local
backing and assumed the role of actormanager-playwright of the Gaiety
Theatre, which opened on December 1, 1855 (Durham, 502). The big suc
cess of the season w a s the acting of Boucicaults wife, Agnes Robertson.
She excelled in roles, often written for her by her husband, in which she
could take on several different identities. In The Chameleon, her Gaiety
debut, she played the part of an actress who impersonates three different
characters to w i n the heart of her skeptical father-inlaw to be. She fol
lowed up this role with t w o other star vehicles, The Cat Changed into a
Woman and Violet; o r, The Life ofan Actress (Daily Picayune, December
28, 1855, and January [ 4 , 1856). Robertsons ability to suggest liminality
and the consequent instability but great attractiveness of her image made
her acting style particularly amenable to surrogationthe metamorphosis
of one symbolic identity into another, an exchange of bodies and souls.
N e w Orleans high society welcomed Boucicault and Robertson hos
pitably, agenerosity that became the source of great local bitterness after the
premiere of the play that purported to show contemporary Life in
Louisiana. Boucicault could n o t but observe the weird demimonde of
playage, the creole c u s t o m of arranging extramarital liaisons with educated
mulatas: some N e w Orleans theaters set aside one performance a week for
gentlemen and their quadroon mistresses; at these miscegenist fetes, the
managements desegregated the seating and disinvited white women
(Kendall, N e w Orleans Theater, 3839)
After a brief r e t u r n appearance in 1857, Boucicault left New Orleans for
brighter prospects in N e w York and London. One of the brightest of these
218 ONE BLOOD

was the chance to craft another role for

,
Agnes Robertson~e_In ' Whthe
icll
she could excel in her specialty of multi .. l ableau7
Ple identity,3 poised walk along
borders of difference, before the clarifying moments of the lm8 1h Con'
when she ispurified by death: 0! George, you may, withOUt a blus
fess your love for the Octoroon! (40). The Daffy PCa-ylme drawivfrtlb
n In on
accounts of the production in t H ' i i

aPpens in a to
0m filled with men, bo'th Sgecstate's
ave assembled
Oucicault for the purpose of Sellirlgn in apt"
5Placement of the public audio brings
Vated in part by sceniC economtymiddlr
t e domestic sphere, a setting that author5
t 6 South could also recognize- Maflyche 110:
Grin T/ze C/zer mortgage mEIOdrama m a S t e r P10: (eoi an:
3 Orclzard) asa Surefire appeal to boul'z:r1subst ,
Variant inVOlving the tragic Octoro melo
- for: eforeclosed properties of the
le 0 1es e of thye

ZSlaverya
0e including the genteel Servtu of 21
'3 Property, but she is
. dlspoSS
- 553
 UK If ll LOOD 219

5-7 Dion BOucrcault,

T/Ie Octoroon,
us, November 30,
I IllustratedLondon Nel Tulane
.1o ,erd-Tlllon
. Memorial Library.

b01IQand
Se . of
prntzmon mat:nal hnkage
.
between the representatl
Wesence of ilnder. Both bt-Come commodities, but It escarcely visi le
10hen Geor ack blood that provides the signifier of c mmodification
b1vEr 0n a frge ardently proposes marriage, Zoe takes her so ewhat obtuse
o0d Count-fink fact-finding tour of her body, including h extraordinary
ZOE '
A
8
abould nd What shall 1 say? 1 - m y mother waS/fl , n o , at her! Why
1ref
t t ese fin er the blame to her? George,do you see tha hand you hold? look

CE0kg I: gem; do ya: see the nails are a bluis tinge?

ZOE. L Yes, near the qUick there is afa nt blue mark
' 00 .
Gi k In my eyes Is not the same color in [h We
220 ONE BLOOD

ZOE: Could you see the r o o t s of my hair you would see the same dark,
fatal mark. Do you know what that is?

GEORGE: No.

ZOE: That is the ineffaceable curse of Cain. Of the blood that feeds my
heart, one drop in eight isblackbright red asthe r e s t may be, that one
drop poisons all the flood; those seven bright drops give me love like
yourshope like yoursambition like yourslife hung with passions like
dew-drops in the morning flowers; but the one black drop gives me despair,
for Im an unclean thingforbidden by the l a w s I m an Octoroon!
(16-17)
Zoes blood is exposed and marked as if it has already been shed. The body
of the white-appearing octoroon (played by the fascinatingly liminal Agnes
Robertson) offers itself as the crucible in which a strange alchemy of cul
tural surrogation takes place. In the defining e v e n t of commercial exchange,
from flesh to property, the object of desire mutates and transforms itself,
from African to woman: its nearly invisible but fatal blackness makes it
available; its whiteness somehow makes it clean.
Such a slave spectacle is, I think, as American as baseball. Boucicault
drew ona large and growing repository of images and descriptions of this
pathetic and erotic scene. The hostile review of the N e w York Octoroon in
the New Orleans Daigy Picayune referred to a delicately colored young
female, enwrapped in white muslin. In the competing images of the slave
auction scene circulated in high-culture venues through easel paintings and
sculptures 0f the period, the delicately colored young female was more
often unwrapped than enwrapped (Honour). The image of Robertsons Zoe
fully clothed on the auction block m u s t be viewed in the c o n t e x t of antebel
lum slave sales and their representation in several popular circum-Atlantic
media (MCEITOY) In that context, Zoe would have had to strip, and she
WOUId have been Stripped by association in the minds of the viewers as she
stepped up on the tabletop ( T. Davis).
Such a strong cultural signification marks American sculptor John Bells
masterpiece The Octoroon, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in
1868 (figure 5.8). The octoroons smooth skin glows childlike and white,
Bells marble medium helping here to reinforce his message. That message
seems to be that slavery is more tragic and exciting when it is suffered by
innocent white women. The o c t o r o o n repines unresistingly in the almost
ornamental chains of her bondage. Like Rapunzel, she sweetly, and very
 5.8 john Bell, The Oczoroon, 1868.
Courtesy the Blackburn Museum and A r t Gallery, Lancashire, England
222 ONE BLOOD

lonlst tracts, the kind 0f play fad

black, child and woman an
. bifurcated imagery that t
Welrdly
_ and race in America.
SlaVery room
aSSOCIation in
. the auction scene Of The 0;: en
the Dem must. This one amplifies the racial1 a ainst a

room by Playing her off Sexually agsee fig,

. She is anChored eapex of acompositional triangle 3 6 via,

the scene of gladiatorial m

and George, her boyfriend
 ONE moon

Victog of Fair/r, 1891.

of Victoria, Melbourne
ReprodUc :9 St. GCOrge Hare, 7716
e by permission of the National Gallery

recalli
ng that the comparable scene m . the 5
as th -dress so that sh
eD
t. Louis :[ra Character cross e girl (Reid,
0 tel to procure the slav
ian C o fair, the ot
V'lcto ouPhng W0 women, one F rinstancef
. e .of t tic exchange.
. flan demician St.
Ing entitledr oT/zet l c a of the circum-Atlan
Vm a y of Fair/z, the Royal AC8
exPloits thls erOtic theme m . the guise.
of areligio ogram,
The o rW1sepuzzling title is explaine

Inv the . .
ltes th
ebeholder to believe that these nudes rep s h the tons.
ginSIn
COlosseUm anCiem Rome sleeping innocentl
The Pr on the last night ~ before thetr
) black
' ata en e
girl, 0
eSalute of the (unchained
224 ONE BLOOD

black peop eare e n ] d du eraries off to the rlght Even from

urlf)azoe o{her
owle,
slave 53
oaccomplis such acoup dethetre, Bouc1cault m u s t 13dte by her cl"
wn ttac of African blood. H dOes this by having her Dora levt,5
hand and t en~miraculousl \ r u r n white. As Zoe exPlrealains, DZen
e t ) repo 5 Her Yes hav c anged color. Ole Pete ex}; hne atwts a
what her 8 l gwm do t gomg up dar, whar defe 5 n body floaug,
OlkS (39 Out Of he ruptur hrysalis of the o c t o r o o n 5 ratio 5 me
mlraculous A can ang r n 3112 d death and transflgtl'Icy of 0
gest that God, Ike onsieu C lbert,ulumately favors the PO
Blood

Storyville e males
In term f the genealogy of , New Orleans Slave P
themsel n
5 a
 ONE moon

0f legally Srea nncdter

American 'i olned ' .'
. prOStltutlon . . the 18905. Uniqueinthe h'mm
during
. Storyvme Was om or red-light districts,
as . . the area that came to beknow y Of
1 p o r t a m lwb 1. established by City ordinance, and it was included asann
I S, bum
house . fron the the new streetcar
d system. Its . architect u r al ly elaborate
m groun up to serve their designated purpose and
marked by pr o m l.n e n t rooflines . . ,
featuring Victorian cupolas made Sto
ryville '
In thanC:mportant urban and even civiclandmark and nodal point.
e .
Isplacement of New Orleaniait vortices of behavior, Storyville
ludic Space on . . Hotel, turning the principal
and mOVlng it a few blocks over, reconstituting the
Its axts
hom050d tion era. Storyville was
separated? pleasure dome in the post-Reconstruc
ro m the Site
' of Congo Square, then renamed Beauregard Park,
by the o] .
Cia] City d Cemetery: like Londons Covent Garden, the modern commer
Place crgrefv UParound the old liminal zones, including the fringe market
: eating a specialized behavioral vortex in which the supply of
n
flesh COUId meet the ever more specialized demand.
1eStoryville skyline belonged to Miss
Lulzlggfsf Prominent cupola onti
and heavile SMahegany Hall, a brothel specializing in mixed-race women
Shed dir y ad'VeIUsed as The Octoroon Club. The whorehouses pub
Cialized seetones or Catalogs (called Blue Books) which advertised spe
' exua] SCWices in highly coded language.
heir skillsInasperformers and their
their self-representa

Th .
WI: beaut'fUI
starlt'e Estelle
Sfamous Russell, now amembe
Octoroon Club, a few rs ago one o
sin Sam T. jacks Creole Show . . .

ored Carmencira. . . . .
. Tall, graceful, wmmng.

at it
8 Peak, Storyville employed eaves for the
toullSm lace for fathers to
fa . and well-controlled shore]
' ' alocal tra
226 ONE BLOOD

5-IOJelly Roll
Morton plays the piano
" 5Miner Ballr00m, Storyville, Cl!- 1904'
3" Ransom
' .erslt
H083 Jazz Archive. Tulane U11" '
V

orton f- piano, WhiCh i5 Played by 3011s

one
( u. . According to M" Jelly rmal
5 mOre demure than usual, for n0 i390 5'
up a screen between the P Circa
 ONE B L O O D 227

that probab ,
Picked the ){ZJZuldn the mentioned, and the imn), a f'
eyes of everybogdest and m o beautiful girls to do fhgnor'lt}, they alwayS
have room deep in); (Lomax, 127). New Orleans brothellnglimfme the
ture of the antebellepresenlatlons and bellaviors spawned inpthr olrmances

re80er behavio . um p.enodand in the reconstructed me: give cu}

"1ent rs COnSC'OUSIY eVOking that period. StoryVille :sifglglid
. Sfeat
"Sed ured auc
asVirgins '
trons ' which
in ' young girls and even gaveled ad to
childrendown
, were put up on front-parlor tables and , ver
thertop bidder.
lNest
and his fralg'iEEIIIOCq photographed a number of the women in Stor 'l]
semrePlesema, .1311ntmg images suggest the performative character 2)";le
nude Young .310 Of the sex workers. Bellocqs portrait of a reclinin
the film 13mg" (the scene restaged with Brooke Shields by Louis Malleigri
that also ch33, Baj) eVOkes the imagery of vulnerability and availability
Spectator erlczlcterized depictions of the tragic octoroon (figure 5.) Mr.
come Upon (Sumated an earlier edition of her specialized type, newly
reCUmbem v 8. Town, plying her trade in Covent Garden. She is the
e I S l o n o f John Bells statue (cf. figure 5.8), except that wher
ever the
photOgmtECk 0: mUlatto Woman is absent, asshe apparently is from this
another stronpublc hair tends to appear. The pose in Bellocqs photo quotes
reclining nudg tradttmn of erotic representation in E ' ' the
Space in Belle Venus and her clothed handmaiden,
expected 0ch COmposition that connoisse
to flu I n . The image of the black wo

kets thl.0
ima , ughOut the circum-Atlantic world (figure
West 5.12).
Indian Bu (identifiedby
woman
geIn '
er headsclfms l t S beholders erased it. The
"955) became all but invisible his formal com
l'ght
PlacerZZd Shade_eVIclence of the succ
In th;1t (BOime 2 4 ; Clay5 0 , 6716)
and fair lstofyville sex circuses, other p Pul r specialities I cluded dark
OrleElns $81313. acts and even displays of bestiality (figure 5 3)' .New
Who lived {Storian Al Rose
i n t o the 19505 andhas interviewed
19605. a nu read
Their histories of 056 prostitutes
ber something like Shaw
rial-rat. 3 initiation c uded being auctioned
informants speaks
Off 1i]:es, eSPeCially when their sexu
the antebellum fancy gir 5. One of Rose 5
228 ONE BLOOD
 ONE 8 1 . 0 0 1 ) 229

Glyn/uh, 1863.
5-12 Edouard Manet,
dOrsay, Paris
COurtesy the Muse

Was .
and IZIEIILgIht and She d have an auction. Some snotty kid bid adollar
Street, On lad 0? 0f the floor men slug hi 'm out in the
dI'ed and Seman bd the both of us in, .
gonna beevfanf1fo dollars each! A lot ofjohns bid, an
uPstairs Waglsfled Wlth just one. He boug
is; We tho it hlm' He Wanted us both .
80Wegunfight hetollght to beentitled to somethtn .o
eon t h h everything weco
. a dance we had worked out where Wejer
aet. _. - We did
and e3C
The h Other off. (quoted in Rose, 14950)
ate - . . - .
the detr_h{SrlanS, alert to the particulars of stage tion
busm s , W111 appreCIate
all In which this virtuosic performance is recordofd I actually
ture exha
patron. The
f the girl
'00 ,
two nights, 1ndeference
( ' to the preml 5 lability o
dyke
the11.
leact a POrnographic m
admess f0r defloration,
_J
'5 Oct. 21. '93;1
5. .
 ONE 111 . 0 0 1 ) 231

33 -
PPth Innocence of prior pemses.
' W"1th their
' purchase comes a fantasy of
their POSSessiOn an echo ' under the
eownership once possrble
' of the absolut '
Old Regime:
The Slaver led her from the door,
He led her by the hand,
To be his slave and paramour
In a strange and distant land.
In New 0 (Longfellow. 28)

White Variet Tleans the. transmission of black slavery was displaced to the
Crow laws (1);" lmOre direct and literal ways than inother places. Asthe Jim
OYOUSIy Se r 3OPCd, the liaisons permitted in Storyville became more rig
g egated. just before the district Closed d ' 7, African
des
cended w O m e n were forbidden
. to work in white
day) hoW e v x is Still prop
613 the Urban behavioral vorte question is not whether slavery
d
asif it did. Reconstitute
Still exist Sbut Wlltither people still treat each
ent ludic space, Storyville lives

SYmb
Mah0:21:31?! in such pseudofleshpots
With stripycl 2:] and Storyville Lounge-Girls,G' 5,
20he asa u S and T'5hirt emporia to re ' omosocial p
SWeltloche for the entire city of New
Caribbe .
a" capital, which has now),somehow
publishes so
natio . .
Promztsiilb'd? ( i t , The Big Easy
Ostess nal hail-am": in the history bed with' rouge,
anboosterism:
along thiagted and Powdered and dau aining her corse
id gesture.
draWin h anks of the Wide river, str
the girlgisher admirers to her with a langu
jadede Sensc, bUt like an aging coquette, a .
xi). In Sucfiw Orleans fascinates the 5 hour taXIEgbecomes
SPace, the bahforWUIation, the city of New Orleans ttse

. If that i: avofal v o r t e x , for the rest 0.

let that therially mytheory
50 [lienpleasure
0mosocral 0
dome

a few city b]0cks from the sites 0

232

'ans met to se m
ttle old scores. It is now the, cy ' center of a CO
clomc
. s0
,me f
and at t h

nblmkingly c ll themselves owners Thls ls OthIZIZnE-hnd OW bu Past

ent egrees of agency involved In the sale 0f. 39 e Yale t he Veryt .diffe
" t0'
!.S
lmk them in a

In the postmodern circ

Gilroy calls the um-Atlantic world Of 13:61::italism
and em
syncretism whe sound system culture both Symboilfigeana and are
reby African, North American, Car
e0 } d5 St "st
t t get Cr In
. a Pl3g].alized interculture. Sou e l l ]hC .
meaning of Performance by separatlgfi
. thlmPOrtam enltt:
the 0ft ofk of
6 input
Who Originally made he recording from .the equxpresses
those 110 adapt and rework it so that 1]: directly e
which it is be'

African~Am on, borne up led c

ericans with the
its Powers of r
"Iime.warnerisecirculation.
Wor Madonnas SlXty m
..
modmes, and ' ectacles. Flesh
'
SENS, I .'t56- s reCY
t Ponderingin the context of an 115 itself, c
[11'I C m
_ 111'10 n' dollar C" 0
cnOn an

. -C
ueer Catholic, and WO-rl uns bina
. Itifufphle
n gwit
q Girl.
aterial
I10t with blac ness alone, she, produced
Throughhers elf as the rnu
flirtano . V151es5
[he 1'
e decade
- As in the case of Zoe in 77
IaCkness marks Octoroofliqerw meafl
changes its v
her flesh asacommodlty extraord
' eve n as .n3rY
alue. BlaCkness and whiteness hav
e
 O N E BLOOD 333

. re I an
l g to a performel 'i n Il ] 1. 5system Of ornate fetishizations N0Wmo 11
ever9[he l ' i
P Ohlllllty Of human flesh to virtually all material objects offered
{61 Sale d] [V
85 an ms, race
e(:()]l0I y Of (HIZISH()])h'1Ce\ .PC d I . y 'I 8]
sell, or
Constitu 7

Changes: form of propertysomethi

rge in his preliminary brief for
- ndeed, asked Albion W. Tou
Pie35.7 V. F e t the most valuable sort of prop
erty, bein airman, w r i~t t e n in 1895, is it no
[)1?
g t 1e master-key that unlocks the golden door of opportuni
(quoted in Olsen, 83)

HOmer Plessy and Whiteface Minstrelsy

re at once the
The Cate 0 1 ]
most Pogerfe: defined by whiteness
U and the most fragile
and nonwhiteness
~ creanons
.
a
of circumAtlantic perfor
manCe- The
Strageness of a society produced insisting
by by
voked onJ.the
Patricia visibility
Williams in
Of theS - .
T/ze Alcifljlons of identity ispoignantly e
cidentally of Race and Rig/its: Diary ofa Law Professor (1991 .
1-1},

1'ace, her (:mer memory of her own debut into the obligatory per
Walking th r a n g e i n t o the cruel lights of its scopic regi
. reugh the city on a visit to New Orleans in 1989:
Unl'Ike ~ . ; this awarenes
not knozte Intimacy Of my mothers t upin hor
was too caugh
mewond. The eyebeheld that I was 5vision1 to hate the
. e hrough it,
1lble fas , r about the source of the eye ht: I learned, in public
window;
every store
black micrrmatron of the news it broug arches her ey9 0r
Places and (-h Image that confronted mein
1
n the eyes of others, I was revealed. ior of the old slave dances
What CatChe . _ .
0f COngo S Sher In i t s eye~15 the restored behav
'flcally to meet the tourist' gaze: In New
the street; it is
(Ware now revived specn ' ems who

inim'l t a .1) e
f en .
transdzrtmmem, like the limbo. It ISa' n invisible properties turned
Craft of rung dance (213). In .Williamss account, asin
5 the real human costs
- the Plessy case, the play Of V15n 5it reflect
nto act .
0f\thel:ns brmgs
The antastic I n t o question/eve
category of not whitea(f re 5-14)
theChrl
complaint signed by Detectlve peace nd d gnity of the State of
Cain charges one Homer
 0NE M o o t ) 235

LoUlSlan
' ' d-It all
c e rest
oOlored race On it
I'll
hat on. june 7. I892,' Plessy,

beinga passenore f d
r0
PeraEEd ithin Ih --"1 0f the East Loursrana Rail Road, a lin:wl lle
H
remainmg
.- . in a e Sdld State unlawfully
. did insist upon going 'mto1
an:1,
compartment. .
5ee (11dSo even thou ,1] 1 . assrgned to passengers of the white race.
Parate accomm dg, 1ehad available to him on the same train equal b t
persons of the white
0 ations . . . for ' and colored races
u
(T/ze 5[ a t e ) 1 . H
Adolp/z Plessy, ARC). Plessy stood accused of violating
Omer
Secti0n 7
- Of act the state of Louisiana,
I l l 0f - ~ enacted in 1890. He spent the
flight ln . . was released the next day on a S300 bond. Plessy did not
Jail md
' Citizens Equal

ad 501-
Pted
he We, Illat :{Very move beforehand including t
O m e r Plessy was n o t white As an octoroon, Plessy held a
descended lrom the position of
FrC e pe r g o
s of Color under the Code noir, m
paSs f 01 w]n' ouisiana and American his
tory: Some 0? They played a unique role
their number, slave owners I

nglO-A
Plessy,s g t c a n vigilance in the 18505'
mer' ' '
' consequences of t
ene r a t I o n inherited
- . the historic
0 He Bl
00d.
Cal sense a bthe
order.Color Their in Louisiana
line narrow goal,was a
ambitious enough '
Chalt minatory pu
- enge t
tlons aCtofhe COnStitutionality of the discri
hav [890, O n e of many passed during the era. Thei b
. '3Said .
Self. ut0pm--goal was tochallenge I
To the la . .
Henry B' . Y reader of the decrsnon writ
la, th lumgs BYOWII and the justly famou
' ' ' P my 1/.

to Cl ) wha t it mea
a
efin
e b . he quesnon
t1d Color( ecause
3 It could n o t define mination.
entlfiCal] ed races. Tourges brief as 5:Is nott determined,
- y COHSldered, very often impossi le 31), On one hand,
236 ONE BLOOD

rsonal judgments, while punching ticltetscilbffmI and

[the
legislators might possibly have been thinking when they said .W 1hiteness
:2:
races. On the other hand, Tourge s brief continues,,1f W 5 0 the
owbe Proven to exist, then on a railroad concluCtor 5 Say
ect deprived Homer Plessy of his Claim [0 5
. benfitsnjoyment
. In other
, the court denied him his ' ' l

irteenth Amendment, which prohibits slavery

' . - . i

n the Unite
. by definition, denies the engulfed tCourt, . [0
Pr0perty in themselves. The majority opinion of the SuPreme ieir fight
l

hOV
ever,. swept aside all th ese arguments. Although the legal 1
received tor 'ssue5 involved
tured scrutiny (Lofgren, I 7 4 4 ) , 31] the major {the
- it) {3" 9"?

. . children
W:nurseSattending . were Permlt [ed 1 1.C
. n
ite cars
3wh'1Ch In
practice
- could mean 0 1y one thin
-
urses attended black children
ace mlnstrelSyal at that t l-m e ( Olsen, he dclll
. C9-t.nde
5Pokes fun at the foibles of white amneSla gu 'ef,
110

n'3irug 6n1)!
. .
color is inVlSlble . the ta
5:11:65 W
eCourt of the United
forgetting that justice is blind'
 0 x 5 BLOOD z37

The lOn
cUSIOm r
evil-:2 ol. 6separate but equal (emphasis onse a .
to those Walkin yer "5 SUPPOSed repudiation by law in .9-P rate) l" PoPlllar
:0rh00d5 CVac $11231), cup, especially along the perimete); (:32:
$36
1eShar l . y w lite flight or atrolled b rw ' l- 1
PerVflsivEil);l:dwn boundaries of the cantemporaiy 1:11:22: :rveymg
absul'dum in li t.OUFSe but pervaSive enoughmakes Tourgesied
s Plenary brief of I89; seem prophetic: Why not
"in :3
:53: all
ed People [O \ y' ' ~ a e y
Other)
' (quoted i'n Olsen. 98). In the practice of laws and (dis)obedience
the ded a fateful occasion to
-, Stagin 0
km a bin: Sf t Homer Plessys transgression
r uggle over the behaVioral
. provi
.
vorttces of the American
5 for public
work,
P ere, Including aCCommodations,
5 h _
. . . .
faCIltttes, schools, place
Places for
Chief 21:11:? final resting places, and places of memor .
"g those who should have been able to explain the historical
dePth of .
the new :15 Snggle to his colleagues at the time of the P l a y decision was
Grover Clesocme lusfice appointed to the Supreme Court by President
glas White tillalld in 1394, Louisianian and New Orleanian Edward Dou
Young law ' hue-Would, in the fullness of time, become chief justice. The
f the doctrine of One
Is
' hOrne State
yer White, . however,
. in o
the unique traditionsfes
of
, WlllCh included the [ .m.a g vestiges
emesis, the rac
econscious

CofoUnde .
memol'y d In 1857' The ironies of Whit
by and C"win-Atlantic performan itions of carnival and the l
uCity
eXam ' g the interdependent trad
th " m
at Care Forgot.
 C A R N I V v - W THE L A W

Stateways c a n n o t changefillrways.
- ' I L I J A M G R A H A M SUMNER

ON JUNE IS. 1993. THE ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RELATIONS. WHICH

reports to the N e w Orleans City Council, held a hearing on the disposition
of the Liberty Place Monument, a cenotaph erected to honor a handful of
fallen defenders of white supremacy during Reconstruction in Louisiana.
The hearing was open to the public. In the spirit of Mr. Spectator, though
n o t pretending to his fine impartiality,I included it onmywalk through the
city. Like Joseph Addisons look into the catacombs of Westminster Abbey,
however, the e v e n t proved to bea case study in the uncanny. It featured a
performance of origin, played o u t in an agonistic struggle over a specific
place of memory, o n e formally dedicated to the segregation of the living
asW611 as the dead. The businesslike cadence of the proceedings sounded to
my cars like a shovel in a shallow grave, methodically turning over the 351185
and fralgments, troubling the spirits in their fitful sleep.
The hearing w a s chaired by Rabbi Edward P. Cohn. Among the promi
n e n t witnesses who testified, some very eloquently, pro and con, former
Louisiana State Representative, Klansman, and Hitler enthusiast David
Duke made the m o s t unforgettable presentation. Duke, who has denied the
Holocaust, began by lecturing Rabbi Cohn onthe importance of preserving
o u r memories. As he warmed to his theme of Liberty, linking it to our
24o CARNIVAL A N D THE LAW

heritage 35eIISllIined in the Liberty Place Monument. he itisinuateiriii

every way he could the essential liaison of liberty with Anglos?L es
Whiteness. He did n o t use Steeles phrase, F rec-born Peoples but H r
onated nonetheless in the few silences that punctuated his testimony- I? {flay
the setting of the Liberty Place Monument hearing provided the kmdof 8.
Stage of misremembrance on which whiteness is traditionally Perfo.rn:os.

Duke Wears his e"3")Wh<re like a mask: the skin, scraped shiny by hiding
metic surgeon, bri1Handy reflects the glare of the television lights. 5.mage
a few feet aWily, heseems more fragile in person than his telege'f'c 115 his
Suggests, and certainly more weird: Pmk
tongue, is sculpted asif from the same newly
themold as concise
Michael nose.
jacksonk
115
ere

DUI: and his associates, the Friends of the Liberty Monument

. caned
, 1874,
. at the head of aparamilitary '
m C()nfedrr
Organlzathn
er
White League, Ogden and several Other for r110

the armed overthrow 0f Loulsmna

 241
CARNIVAL AND THE LAW

Orleans found it deeply

eratebattlefield valor. Upper'class whites in New
Satisf 1' h their brave young men actually won
the p y g t 0 c o n c o c t a history i n whic
eace._ dd. . on the ground where early in
this . the Ctvrl
. . War the City
.
f
t::::::a:?:il been forced to surrender. .The Fourteenth of September Was
thrOUgh drdllllaa-nd tlteywere proud of I t . hadteripassedoxt dew: to childttien
yral tradition 11:: getelltngs of tlctiose llgolclday; 1(32'). 7:1:tC
itey31:32:,d:11:
lnSCriptiOn at l (fen reiterate by 0 1cm ac .fv 33am
Coup in b . Vt1e base 0f the monument to specri e l. p '
mination nngmg abOUI the end of Reconstruction tn Loutlsmtrlta, .
Ognized $3: the WOFdS carved in the granite base of the pm 1p
M0rial~ 1 m? S,upremacy and gave us [back] our State. color in the m_
dition of L;e my 5 fiISt black mayor, actually
city conn .10m e : PleSSY-faile ..
"ance to Cl the dominated
Preserve by tradmo
it. By the end of the
101]um . on
em0 lOnger held amajority
street . . n'
stora Improvemems in 1989, the monument W3
f0reedge, Whare it remained until a larvsutt
reerect b)
it (Eggler,
t - , :3ng n 5
he
Kim Iat . Clty council reluctantly to time on[h
tP. mg I t s removal for the secondhoha 5 0

0f thOSe mem . , ,
of 131- for the City S g
Ones me obVIOUS
. e
Cal cg Umbers
.. Of People Of every race n Scope 0 .
ings,,;dmn, national origin, an anew
by ' cum
Such aperformance is, for reason5 that
110w
In t I;.no:. only alocal event but aC"
.
ThIS his:
5 fmal chapter I want to -revrew aPa
' n o the [0C3
1con e ' (erlOCldng
LibErt Ory m u s t include an estimano the context 0 ]
Syst y PlaCe Monument controversy m 15 ance ca .
ems throngh Perfofm
d tinctive m onic admons

ircuTIL .
eHCe T:tlanttc practices- r
taneo elitigation concerningt e the
uSly Wlth
. the legislative
. attemPt by
242 CARNIVAL A N D THE LAW

' March' Gras krewes, first

integrate the old-line ' .) In
' t e. n tamely
. [988 and [l]en
. ' ' was far from I leelty
more adamantly ml 99 19 2. That . timmg
n r a.-s an
1 1e ,March. ( ,c()1nCId- I t l .e - Venn'
. ' ( untdl( . ns I".
man New Orleans l993 Carnival )' B o t ! 1' 1 key quest)
. . t 16
Monument controversies intertwme around 0m 0
- - rights
Plessy v. Ferguson and subsequent ClVll - . bd
cases . sec] on I hePH - o
' Ciple
(-25
o accommodations: the legal control 0f Pubhc
espite the persistent folkways of ractal
. prellldlce
- - . A t i.s s. u e 'S l t I1e POIer [0
maintainor to reconstructthe urban vortices
- 'long the
Atlantic rim. ' of belld. vIOI' 1

Once and Future Kings

A headline in the New Orleans szeschayune
. . for $P [ember
minated a remar
27-7 '9927
kable year in the history of March' ( : r d' s. 1n
' New
R
10Wed. The first
'p in Carnival Revolution. TWO Sub
. )3
. (1IZO'YearOld CO
justified the word revolutzon:
The second tried to
 243
CARNIVAL AND THE LAW

c African traditions and cus

that
tom; e[1n tangling ' t
AngloAmerican . ..
and prob nically complex and divided
Ough centuries of struggle. In an etll stic sites for the playing-out
city c'd l n1le
. . and the law sttll
. prowde
. antagom. al and
and difference. Both carniv
of the
CUIIural pOlitics of social identity ' ' especially in con
, yet both have also

O"er tl l ' . .
eordmance,
of :ternPts to bringacarnival m actualtty repre
law that and

tory taftrst glance, pairing the ter

osites. Carnival, ano .
' mina (whtchever
tran;gr:tverse shackling of opp .
exhaust Slon llmited only by human tmagma 1 law
and even
SItself firs)
against apparently
the law. Baklttinian
In the fl ' co struoffer
yond ,
t l e release from
Cam.lVal
eSqUE, seasonal revelry a
spenSton of l s

0 'ly taken
(1:33:18, :OWEVCI, have necessarl . . e
afflictegeb by more homogenous soaeneS,
Carnival .y deep r(fligious hatreds a
Under its:fiomam). Under aviolent uc e 5
created a n: Y pamally reconstructe s ations co erni g
mber of contradtctory regu eated in its m
0n .
0r ea the O n e hand, the law has dell
' .
S'ly Overlooked transgresston,
, W
only because. un ewal' 1n

Ormer
8 and Performances have often If 0 erlookel
however, . enac
guilt . ubllcly
havey pleasure. In Louisiana,
Offel'ed a release of pefltul ur
tom
, race hatred s waking nightmafhat degree
244 CARNIVAL A N D THE LAW
 145
CARNIVAL AND THE LAW

trans r . ,~ , - . . anctioned, and even legally pro

[ecteg e r5 5 6. d c t l v m e s become dignified,s lous origins of New Orleans
5by a closely knit local aristoc
street PParaCtlces . seems to reflect
ades asupper-class the anoma
performance
I'ac acular culture of Other popular
avis; Ryan,
Amt: C ( " F Z I S I to the predominantly vern
k Can Parading traditions like those of Philadelphia (3. D
AmerlC an Parade).
.
Amld. .
the experience . .
of total cwrc . .
partiCI
c0llec t1' . ..
Enfolces ve mlmml
' -
performance
.
(figure 6.1), carnival tradition asse
1115mm: claims of entitlement,

r .
f people
23:31:::tgaSSifm,anti-Semitism, haps cannot, f
century th er kinds.and other classes 0
Which i2, d? ultlaehte lll n o t , and per .
the law a 'gfty, Usurped from the gradu mt
andCreoles 1. l
eVer $1. nd WOT! in the 18705, (1. ally
Even in the
consometiculous
. .

Privacy cof 15Still

6 , its social gathering;
ownseasonally isall that
performewhichthese remains
- cIUbs seem
everlasting . .1 to
Ce . eir histor c p Vl ege
inili::1:n of .the parades, the members 0 cle of
beyondntsmng o u t the self- a
The suguttermost limit of su
ourgeois left matter of thetra
manipul .elite I n t o a mysttfied
, anon of costumes, tableaux, an

01- N
eW Orleanians steeped m t withW 0m- d awsfl"
de
icPe ..
at:de on where one particupates, d dc
- - ta
ten f Perate, and thus on the m 1 ciall located and
e
) 0 lncluslon
~ . and exclusron
. by WeOld-llfle
. kre
Th
Mi:.e8tab1i3hed pecking order of th '1:
cipletlck Krewe of Comus (founded in 1357) dhose accepted un er
meo .. - '
l' n thefamihes of theelite, m0 atannua
ival (See
eg o redemocratic aegis of the Rex,
as figure
Cends t0 the honor of K i n g Of Cam
246 CARNIVAL A N D THE LAW

What kind of carnival is this? Not an o c c a S I O n tor ' seekmf Perpewaion'

' r release f rom 1
way o f life, i t would seem, but a n i.n s t.i t u t.i o n decimated
. to l 5
After summarizing the supposed violence and vulgarlty . 0f Newv)Or before
lean5
street carnivals of the 18505 (
the disgraceful a c t -i o n s of ruffians . e Pamp
the advent of the Anglo lilet
-American krewes, the commemorat mennialcon' iv
issued by the Mistick Kre
weof Comus on the occasion of I t s ce

ople of the city, naturally orderly, are C0ndmone

.. d to
 . ND THE LAW 247

1dren,5Carnival Club of '

6 '1 911] Museum
Coune5 TI Historic New OrleInns C ll 93
Y Ie " ' 0
(ICC. no. [979.3, . women,

act fe
Sign Stivel

631:?"
1 the ' assigned place 0 mm
Part a Whlte Para

gated? Pamel, 3::nnohelement ore ess mm], or more Sincerely

e cars and mllleherdt e thousan or fif n hundred blackhetorch
lt 21rd, blaz
'2 , between H1 8 m heaffil'ation.
alongside,
s,, white-Sl1rouded, A dollar
toiling,cowled,
but danctng apiece
They
hat dance think
theya
llarbefore
and
or the do
Se ey b
1ng tor r and ahalf, the way is long, the ap
ches hot and lleavybut
 249
CARNIVAL AND THE LAW

f they do It
ha1~ being part of the parade-a part that cant he
. for
dOne W l t bermaid, scrub-woman and
ho! .a part that cook
and charm on the Avenue admires the
blaCkmammy, admire ' asmuch asmadame and chosen
d master, or fine
masks .
true I that might beson and heir, lord an
O Ve . (Carnival, ()3)

P .
OrlelaiTgfm though they may
all scene, Fe old'l'm? krewes actually repre
its Subur.bsorfilldays
Wltl] revelers
leading updrawn from every
to Fat Tuesday, thesegment
str 0
AS of l
995, there are over forty other para
[alge
VenUs r Superkrewes of Bacchus and Endymion and
.
and Ins (Hardy). The newer krewes ape ' 'onal
the icons 0 0
e .
Altthglillng PraCtices, and some 0
outWard Sout51ders may be forgiven he code I

Sivity and PeCtaclev insiders master t

know CUItural Capital: I t is understood, ki 0

Jew (ng that a Word to the wise is sufficient, that a lniion 0

other clcznival, 73). Anticipating objection to was? u _
niva1bu: 5 the official hiStOrianof Comus offer:
Ilival mess the Jewsisget
merchandise their full(Carnival,
bought share/they
73- Bless the Jews,
we couldntbe
CIUd
es) 1n
- 1118
. version of expansive fellow feeling,

ithout
The kthem (Carnival, 74).
rewfi-Centered images 0

and
gmaSkErs in the French Quar ave , -rony a
dra
paradgerformance, Which reflect baC ,_WlTklrewes. Then there
' n g not
ShadOwis and tableau balls of the tradimna ute of the
hut g and sometimes interruptl
a150 .
I he festively absolutist claim
5). A
Ind' long the back streets and 11"
zin
.exPreSSIOIl
thl
- of . - 0
their powerful an'ng on
 6.4 Maid and Lady. Promiscuous maskers, Mardi Gras, I934.
Courtesy The Historic New Orleans Collection, Museum/ Research Center,
acc. no. [979.325.3870
 C A R N I V A L A N D THE LAW 151

Orleans on Mardi G r a s day is a whirling maelstrom of intercultural surro

gations, condensed in space and time, each an eddy in the larger circum
Atlantic v o r t e x .
A n y understanding of these complex genealogies of performance must
somehow take into a c c o u n t the contradictory claims they inspire about fes
tivity and tradition. 0n the o n e hand, Henry Rightor, writing in 1900,
thought that carnival in N e w Orleans would be utterly mined by innovation
of any kind: There are enemies of this Carnival; n o t those chill-hearted,
shrivel-skins who frown on it asadevice of the devil; n O t the clergy, n o r any
o v e r t opposition. It is the innovators who are to be feared, they do n o t
understand the carnival spirit, and seek to have it new (629). On the other
hand, Fu-Kiau Bunsekei, of the Kongo Academy in Bas~Zaire, believes that
festivals are themselves instruments of critique, redress, and transforma
tion: Festivals are a way of bringing about change. People are allowed to
say n o t only what they voice in ordinary life but What is going on within
their minds, their inner grief, their inner resentments. They carry peace
They C a r r y violence. The masks and the songs can teach or curse, saying in
their forms m a t t e r s to which authorities m u s t respond or change. Parades
alter truth. Parades see t r u e meaning (quoted in Nunley and Bettelheim,
23)- Rightor sees seasonal festivals assymbolic of a world that ought to be
kept asit is. Bunsekei views them asa way of imagining the world aswhat
it ought to become. These contrasting opinions about carnival parallel con
trasting interpretations of the law: asa precedent-bound bulwark of conti
nuity 0 1 ' asan a g e n t of expansive change. These contradictions also charac
terize a culture that invents and keeps t w o kinds of time: one constructed as
the SlOW, peristaltic rhythms of social c u s t o m and cultural transmission over
what historians of the French annales school call the longue duree (Braudel),
which New Orleanians like to call timelessness; the other conceived asthe
history of events, as eruptions of sociopolitical topicality, the key word of
which is timeliness. During the Mardi Gras season of 1991-92, these P05
tions collided head-on in the council chambers and in the streets, but they
w e r e S p u n o u t of the same centrifugal distribution and centripetal reconsti
tution o f laws and c u s t o m s .
The French Code noir, by limiting Afrocentric public culture in the form
of slave assembly, provided the first of many precedents for the regulation of
carnival activities under Louisiana law (CN1724, article 13). Subsequent leg
islation, spurred by the bloody slave revolution in St. Domingue, refined the
law further, as in the 1807 amendments to the anglicized Black Code of
252 CARNIVAL A N D THE LAW

1806: Every person isprohibited from permitting in his . or her negro (lluwar
ter, any other assemblies but those of his or her o w n slaves, and from a o)
0
. [115. or her said
mg . slaves the liberty to dance during the nlgllt
. n(LISIet
l Z, '

(1the March. Gras Sprrlt . . 373!leal0 . r1

st Africa;
. . , e
frodYa 1nthe sophrstlcated time secrets),
611 masters, while at the Same lfllre
 153
CARNIVAL AND THE LAW

CamiVal se-d b o n ., when a torce

' -nhundred hundred freedom firrht
of over five D
man officers, Wltll flags unfurled and
drumsrgrjf-l
' Inon WI henOrleans
g,r, New under
local mllltla Hadown the revolt, the captured rebels
. - . put ' yed on pikes atinter
Were sava
Vals 0n tlgtil), executed and theirs 190). In his aboli
1eMississippi levee (HOfS (185961), Martin Delany
tiOn'I s t
evokes :Ovel
h e m Blake; 0 " . The Hut:
E m o r y of these events. Plying the ima
faCtand f.xenon,
. Delany shows how t

alloWed Such unlimited privi

Utm0 8 ! ; e
thinki X t e m 0f its advantages
confirm that planters ' .For 1nstance,1
ng, many accounts esirresisribly
aCl so
the Nelgds of celebrating Negro
Orleans Daily Picayune,
after th .
Bou . e execmmn Of John Brown,
an editorial entitle
SOOtECSHItS
e . Octoroon, g images 0
nditions enjoy
Poor in tits
1ereElders with
North and contrastin
the idyllic co d festivities le
ances an
the B]ack Codes: Day and night,
nCgIO quarters and Illemerry danceunever
Plantanon ht he saw Tee
y Young
1859 . ,
Marci; This Is the scene that Part
Gras flambeaux.

gatio n~ .
1806 Est o reStrrctions
beyo.
Same, er I n s t a n C e , the revrsed Blackvan ahsm, 01'
teen p nalt)death-for any 5av,
Who Committed arson,

Publ'1C .
With Culture i n t o acceptable, 6V5
admons and values drawn from EurOPf
the B1
of te ack Code of 1855, slaves were .
n to twentY-five lashes , 1 exceptions
254 C A R N I VA L A N D T H E LAW

church, funerals, and a strictly controlled public recreation: They may

assemble on the commons for the purpose of dancing, or playing ball, or
cricket, permission to that effect being first obtained from the mayor, but
such permission to that effect shall be granted by the mayor for no other day
than Sunday, and shall expire at sunset. In other provisions, slaves were
prohibited from attending masked balls where free persons of color were
admitted or to quarrel, yell, or sing obscene songs, or in anywise disturb
the public peace (Leovy, 25859). These laws seek to open a narrow, care
fully regulated space for collective expression, a space that Frederick D o u
glass and others denounced asa sinister illusion in which insurrectionary
emotions could be released through a safety valve of revelry, dance, and
play (Genovese, 577). This genealogy of slave performance interprets sanc
tioned assemblies such as the bamboulas in Congo Square as surrogates for
rebellion, assymbolic substitutions of uninhibited physical performance for
unconstrained physical violence, astrade-offs of carnival for carnage.
The measure on Sunday recreations, which governed the mixed assem
blies at Congo Square, was passed to regulate a practice that had clearly
been tolerated for some time, and in that respect it fairly characterizes the
general development of Louisiana law governing festive activities. The
open question was for whom and under what circumstances the law could be
suspended; or, differently put, in whose interests would it be m o r e defini
tively rewritten? In the years between the Louisiana Purchase and the Civil
War, the Anglo-Americans appointed themselves. In the Offenses and
NuisanceS section of the Laws and General Ordinances of 1857, for instance,
the first year in which the upper-class, AngloAmerican Mistick Krewe of
Comus officially paraded on Mardi Gras in masquerade costumes, the city
of New Orleans re-reiterated anordinance that made it unlawful t o abuse,
provoke, or disturb any person; to make charivari, or to appear masked or
disguised in the streets or in any public place. Another, related ordinance
stated: N o person on Mardi Gras, or at any other time, shall throw flour or
any other substance o n any person passmg along the s t r e e t s o r any public
place (Leovy, I73) . .
The contradiction between these laws In plain English and the emerging
practice of Anglo-American krewe parades, in which masked revelers throw
objects from floats, is revelatory. Irish, Italians, and other working-class eth
nics made charivari and rough music, thIOWing flour, fecal matter, and even
quicklime on passersby during Mardi Gras. The Mistick Krewe of Comus,
however, masqueraded by night, and its exotic floats carried the masked and
 C A R N I V A L A N D T H E L.-\\\' 255

6.5 Mistick K r e w e of Comus parade, "Dreams of Homer,

passing before city hall, 1872. Frank Leslies IllustratedNewspaper, March 9, 1872.
Courtesy The Historic N e w Orleans Collection, Museum/ Research Center,
acc. no. 1974.25.19.366

hooded Anglos through public streets cleared for their passage, protected
from the mixed and swirling crowds, in flagrant, public violation of the city
ordinances (figure 6.5). The ad hoc vortices of Latin street festival, in WhiCh
chance e n c o u n t e r s among maskers p u t ordinary social and racial distinctions
at risk, parted before the regulated entry of royalty. Rather than opening
the streets for willy-nilly mischief, krewe parades occupy them in a Style
evoking the civic entries of Renaissance princes, a grandeur supported by
themes drawn from literary claSSiCS. A local reporter's description captures
the already imposing pretensions of an early Comus parade, which drafted
marching bands, police escorts, and equestrian pomp into the welldisciplined
service of the carnivalesque: After the usual vanguard of mounted police
and torch-bearers, and a military band, appeared the jovial God upon anoble
steed, which seemed conscious both of the honor conferred upon him, and 0f
the brilliant trappings with which he was decorated. Comm, sitting with an
easy grace, smiled recognition of the enthusiastic greeting which m e t him at
every step (LVee/cb/ Budget, March 6, 1878). Todays Mardi Gras parade
256 C A R N l V A L A N D T H E LA\V

goers will n o t e that basic elements of contemporary parades, including the

self-important t o n e of noblesse oblige, had already become commonplace in
the early years of AngloAmerican carnival. The early membership of
Comus was coextensive with that of the exclusive Pickwick Club, truly an
everlasting club on the Anglophile model, with memberships handed down
like family heirlooms.
Bourgeois carnival cleanses asit dignifies. The krewes appropriated the
insulting a c t of throwing offensive materials on passersby, a time-honored
carnival prank, and transformed it into the condescending but apparently
good-hearted act of throwing cheap baubles to the acquiescent crowd,
whose members continually plead, Throw me something, Mister. As
New Orleanss hidden carnival substituted revelry for revolution, white
carnival substituted trashy throws for real garbage: each gesture subsri
tutes an act of festive performance for one of symbolic or actual violence.
Every year the floats lumber through cheering crowds, copiously ejaculat
ing beads, cups, and doubloons, special coins cast with the name of the
krewe and the year. Grown men plead for these trifles. Young w o m e n flirt
with the masked riders, and n o w some expose their breasts, bartering for the
prized tokens. The ritualized adornment of Bead Whores is a stunning
condensation of the circum-Atlantic tradition discussed in earlier chapters:
the creation of an auction community motivated by the transformation of
gifts into commodities (Gregory; Hyde; Mauss).
Occasionally, the atavistic violence of earlier Mardi Gras throws breaks
forth, asit did in 1992, when akrewe member emptied a bucket of urine on
the crowd, an insult that may well have passed unrecorded had n o t the vic
tims included acaptain and alieutenant of the N e w Orleans Police Depart
m e n t (Times-Picayune, February 26, 1992). Current municipal ordinances
elaborate on permissible and impermissible throws. Recently, as a civic
rebuke to the countercultural Krewe of Trojan, condoms and any other
sexually oriented device joined insects, marine life, rodents, and any
other animal (dead or alive) on the everexpanding condemned list asnot
within the boundaries of good taste and decency, though womens panties,
apopular traditional throw, remain legit (Times-Picayune, October 4, 1991).
Away from the popular euphoria, the ambitious tableau balls continue in
private, unchanged in basic pomp and circumstance since the mid-nine
teenth century. In t e r m s of Batailles General Economy, Mardi Gras in
New Orleans is sacrificial expenditure. In terms of circum-Atlantic mem
ory, it is a spectacular performance of waste, draped in a mantle of privi
 C A R N I VA L A N D THE L A W 257

leged disobedience. Like anunwritten constitution, one portion of that priv

ilegeAnglo-Saxon whitenessis itself a mythic memory performed in
specific secular rituals.

The Demon Actors in Miltons Paradise Lost

The stirring rhetoric of AngloSaxonism resounds in a privately printed
history of the Mistick Krewe of Comus, compiled to celebrate its centenary
year of 1957: The people of N e w Orleans are under three influencesthe
French, the Spanish, and the Anglo-Saxon. The Spanish influence is espe
cially shown in the early architecture of the city, the French influence by the
manner and c u s t o m s of the people, the Anglo-Saxon by aggressiveness in
developing the commercial and business growrh of the city (Herndon, 6).
The strong claim of superior aggression and superior industry sets apart the
category labeled Anglo-Saxon, concealing its ragtag origins among assorted
freebooters, the teeming refuse of several distant shores, anumber of whom
came to Louisiana via Mobile, Alabama.
Tracing the names and addresses of twentyseven of the original Comus
members of 1857both homes and officesdiscloses that they were rep
resentative of an assortment of American opportunists drawn to New
Orleans between the Louisiana Purchase and the Civil War to seek their for
tunes. A memorandum from the daughter of the first president of the Pick
wick Club records the addresses aswell asthe professions of the founders
steamboat agents, accountants, lawyers, produce wholesalers, and a cotton
pickeryin all, eighteen merchants, four professionals, three bankers, and
t w o unknowns (Werlein Memorandum). Most have distinctly English
sounding names (there are an Addison, a Pope, and a Newton among the
founders), but others, like William]. Behan, who joined after the Civil War,
are Irish or Scots. Early on, this was a very fluid kind of association
mostly young men, mostly wholesalers, who m e t regularly Uptown at John
Pope s drugstore o n the corner o f Jackson and Prytania s t r e e t s a s yet nei
ther a class n o r a caste but rather an imagined kinship network founded on
mutual appreciation for each others industry, invention, and powers of
organization. The founding president 5 daughter sets the scene:
N e w Orleans in 1857 was but acomparatively small place spread over
a very considerable area and divided into a number of small districts,
each of the latter being either under separate administrations or were
recently become a part of the City. It was n o t anunusual thing then,
258 C A R N I VA L A N D T H E L A W

asit is now in small cities, for the better element of young business and
professional men to gather of anevening at the leading drug s t o r e and
to sit or stand around, smoke a cigar and pass a few words with one
another before returning to their work or going elsewhere. . . . At that
time this neighborhood was the c e n t r e of the then new residential dis
trict; there resided the well-to-do American (as opposed to the
French) residents of the City. . . . [At John Pope sdrugstore] the early
affairs of the Mystic Krewe of Comus were doubtless frequently dis
cussed; and it was here that the inception of the Pickwick Club was
made. (Werlein Memorandum, 23)
Reinventing creole carnival prior to and immediately following the Civil
War was animprovisation by Englishspeaking Protestants on themes bor
rowed from Latin Catholic tradition. On one level, the story is mostly of
local interest: socially ambitious Anglo-Americans, hanging o u t together at
the neighborhood drugstore, decided to consolidate their toehold on the
world by building a clubhouse and conspicuously overspending on party
hats and papier-mach. On a deeper level, the story is m o r e generally a cir
cum-Atlantic oneinto the cavities of memory and identity hollowed o u t
by the human floods of manifest destiny, n e w interests inserted themselves,
generating a hybrid performance of social selfsameness. Anglo-American
carnival was adisplaced transmission of asurrogated memorysomething
new, admittedly, but hardly original.
One strong proof of this assertion resides, I believe, in the privileged
role of English literature in the krewes early attempts to accumulate cul
tural capital to complement their material success. Here, canonical memory
serves in its political capacity associal self-assertion. Milton, Spenser, and
Dickens, for instance, were invoked early on to assert English preeminence
and energy in the face of francophone hauteur and reputed creole sloth. The
name Camus derives from the stately masque of the same name by John M i ]
t o n . The first procession and tableau ball of the Mistick Krewe of Comus in
1857 impersonated The Demon Actors in Miltons Paradise Lost. The
great Protestant epic provided ample opportunity for c o s t u m e and charac
terizationdamned characters from the realm of eternal death, of course,
but still at heart English: a classical hell, Tartarus, with harpies, furies, and
gorgons; the expulsion, with Satan, Beelzebub, and Moloch; the conference
of Satan and Beelzebub, with a eh0rus of the seven deadly sins (Young,
Mirtz'ck Krewe, 61). Another early Comus parade took up Edmund Spensers
Faerie Queene and, according to J. Curtis Waldo, in his Histoy of the Cami
 C A R N I VA L A N D T H E LA\V 259

val in N e w Orleans (1882), illustrated in appropriate groupings the princi

pal episode of that delicate and fanciful creation, which, in the centuries that
have elapsed since its birth, has lost no beauty or splendor by comparison
(I 2). Without completely ruling o u t the possibility that Spensers epic
romance spoke urgently to the hearts of New Orleans dry-goods mer
chants, the m o r e likely explanation is that they were claiming kin, perform
ing their intelligence with learned citations.
In the absence of direct ancestors of sufficient prestige, the general con
cept of collective memory organized by race has served to establish a sense
of heritage, however fabricated and illusory. Like Betterton in his library,
the Mardi Gras performers enveloped themselves in the spirits of English
dead. Like Betterton also, they brought the dead back to life by embodying
characters from the fictive ancestral canon. Like voodoo in New Orleans,
these rites had both a public and a hidden character. The satanic face of the
Demon Actors could disappear behind the festive mask of harmless fun.
The Pickwick Club, of course, quoted Charles Dickens, suggesting its
generous openness to the good-hearted members of a motley krewe. The
by-laws of the club explain that it was formed by Comus members to give
continuity to comradeship born under the mask and to conceal the secrets
of their other identity (Tire Pickwick Club, 3).
Secrecy reigned o v e r the krewe protocols, amystificationof their impro
vised rituals of selfreplication. One informative document is a privately
printed, firstperson a c c o u n t by William ]. Behan, Wholesaler and sugar fac
t o r, later mayor of the city of New Orleans, of his 187x initiation into
Comus, whose membership was and is secret, and into the Pickwick Club.
Behan recalls:
At that time, when a duly elected member was presented to the Pick
wick Club, he was m e t by the Sergeant-at-Arms, booted and spurred,
and equipped with the largest and fiercest-looking saber WhiCh COUId
be found. The position of Sergeantat-Arms was filled by the most
robust member of the Krewe, and one whom nature had endowed
with the m o s t sonorous baSSO-profundo voice to be heard on the oper
atic stage. He was an awe-inspiring figure, and the spirit of the new
comer quailed within him, ashe was led blindfolded, into the dark
ened and mysterious chamber where the ceremony of initiation was to
take place. The r o o m was draped with sable curtains, and ornamented
( i f such a word c a n apply) with owls, death's heads, crossbones and
similar blood-curdling devices. Behind the curtains, the merry Krewe
260 C A R N I VA L A N D THE LAW

of Comus was concealed, but never was this re-assuring fact sus
pected until having administered the oath to the aspirant, the Presi
dent asked in a loud and solemn voice: Are you Willing that this
stranger beadmitted, and then a mighty and unanimous r o a r burst
forth from behind the curtains: We are, and the curtains w e r e drawn
back, disclosing the merrymakers. Now, the r o o m was flooded with
light, solemnity yielded to hilarity, and the evening waxed merrier and
merrier, for the Big Mug had been discovered, filled with the wine
of the gods, for Comus and his Krewe. (2)
It is perhaps challenging to keep in mind that the performers in this social
drama are n o t boys, in possession of a t r e e h0use, but grown mensocial,
commercial, and civic leaders of a city that was then reconstituting itself as
an Anglo-American version of a Latin-Caribbean capital. By Behans
account,the Comus initiation follows the classic pattern of rites of pas
sageseparation, liminality, and reincorporationand his hearty effort to
take whole affair lightly conceals neither the serious purposes of homosocial
affiliation that the rite reaffirms n o r the oligarchic entitlements afforded by
membership in the community that it secretly and selectively perpetuates.
The Pickwick Club and the Krewe of Comus exerted social discipline
over the families of the New Orleans elite by minutely regulating both club
membership and the annual invitations to the coming-out balls of the Mardi
Gras social season. In the useful Hand-Book of Carnival furnished by ].
Curtis Waldo in 1873, the Mistick Krewe of Comuss secret rites of social
selection are explained in relationship to its public parades at Mardi Gras:
N o t only have the gorgeous and fantastic processions been the occa
sion of an out-door demonstration on the part of almost the entire
population, but the tableaux and ball which terminate the evenings
festivities have ever been a subject of the deepest anxiety with a cer
tain class of our population. The beautiful and costly cards of invita
tion and the mysterious manner of their distribution, combine with
the social position of those selected, to invest this part of the e n t e r
tainment with a still deeper interest. It has grown to be a recognized
evidence of caste to be the recipient of one of these mysterious bid
dings, and here is sole clue we have to the character of the organiza
tion. (67)
Waldos choice of the word ever to describe apractice that had been instituted
fourteen years earlier (and had been interruptedby the Civil War) shows that
 C A R N I V A L A N D THE L AW 261

by [873 the social position of Comus members and their families had already
coagulated into timelessness. To paraphrase the language of Kafltas useful
parable, the intruding leopards had established themselves in the memory of
some as eternal consumers at the ritual chalices of Mardi Gras.

Darwins Ghost: Justice White and White Justice

The masked struggle between timelessness and topicality in white carnival
takes on a particularly sinister meaning during Reconstruction, 18651877.
These years w e r e also (not coincidentally) the formative period for the
iconographic and thematic material of the old-line floats and ballroom
tableaux that exist today. All claims for the transcendence of New Orleans
Mardi Gras traditionits supposedly disinterested existence outside the
contingencies of law, politics, and time in the city that care forgotmust
be weighed against the e v e n t s of September 14, 1874, and the evidence of
krewe participation in the coup. A boast, attributed to a Comus captain by
the official historian of the Mistick Krewe, proudly implicates the member
ship of the mens clubs and s e c r e t carnival societies: I t is safe to say that
every member . . . capable of bearing arms, participated (Young, Carnival,
34). The centennial pamphlet of the Mistick Krewe lists the coup of 1874 as
a historical highlight: Many Comus maskers took part in the battle (One
Hundred Years of Camus, 23). The official historianof the Boston Club, cen
t e r of the krewe activities of the Rex organization, claims that the plot
against the Kellogg government was hatched at the club and quotes appt0V
ingly a memoir written in [899 that states: The Boston Club party grew
into public u t t e r a n c e as an expression standing for the supremacy of the
white m a n and the perpetuation of the white mans institutions (Landry,
Boston Club, 11516). These are boasts, made after the fact, but further
research supports their veracity: by comparing the muster rolls of the White
Leagues military formations with the names of known krewe members
(whose s e c r e t affiliations krewe membership records disclose), one may
substantiate with details the general picture of overlapping constituencies.
This research documents (with names) what many native New Orleani
ans generally know asa commonplace: that the officer corps of the White
League (and a n o t insignificant number of its rank and file) formed aninter
locking directorship with the secret membership of the exclusive Mardi
Gras krewes and mens clubs, especially ComusPickwick. Like the Ku
Klux Klan elsewhere in the South, the carnival krewes took advantage of
262 C A R N I V A L A N D T H E L AW

their comradeship under the mask to a s s e r t the entitlements of their

group, m o s t obviously against blacks, but eventually against others with
whom they made temporary alliances of convenience: the Crescent City
White League had a separate regiment into which Italians were segregated,
for instance, and another for the Irish. Unlike the Klan, the krewes have ever
since maintained a strict standard of exclusion by c a s t e . Checking the par
tial r o s t e r of White Leaguers in Augusto Micelis l e e Pickwick Club of New
Orleans, a retrospective membership record privately printed in I964, with
T/ze Rollof Honor: Roster of the Citigen Soldiery Who SavedLouisiana, com
plied in 1877 by carnival historian ]. Curtis Waldo, confirms a list of us
names of Comus-Pickwickians who took up arms to fight the Battle of Lib
erty Place in 1874.
First on Waldos Rollof Honoris Major General Fred Nash Ogden, hemp
merchant and member of the Pickwick Club (Miceli, appendix j ) . Ogden
was aConfederate veteran, cited for valor at Vicksburg, and the coauthor of
the Platform of the Crescent City White League, which justified violent rebel
lion against the state of Louisiana on the grounds that the negro has
proved himself asdestitute of common gratitude asof c o m m o n sense. The
Liberty Place Monument was originally conceived as Ogdens tomb. Next
on the list of heroes is Brigadier General William J. Behan, future mayor of
the Crescent City, also a wounded v e t e r a n of Gettysburg, whose brother
was killed at Antietam on his eighteenth birthday and Whose Va n Gennepian
rite of passage into Comus and the Pickwick Club has already been cited.
Most ominously, however, in t e r m s of the history of American race rela
tions in the twentieth century, was the armed service of a young lawyer in
Company E of the Second Regiment, Louisianas Own (Waldo, Roll of
Honor, 7-4): Edward Douglas White. White, later justice and ultimately chief
justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, joined the majority opin
ion in Plesqy v. Ferguson. Justice White was also a member of the Pickwick
Club and perforce the Mistick Krewe of Comus (Miceli, appendix J).
To historians of cultural performance, the m o s t fascinating phenomenon
to emerge from this juncture of coup and carnival is the way in which
Comus rehearsed the former by improvising the latter. At Mardi Gras in
1873, eighteen months prior to the Battle of Liberty Place, the theme for the
Krewe of Comus parade and ball was The Missing Links to Darwins Ori
gin of Species. It presented animal-like caricatures of hated public figures
from Reconstruction, such asUlysses S. Grant asa verminous potato bug or
the radical Republican]. R. Pitkin asThe Cunning Fox [carrying a car
 C A R N I VA L A N D THE LAW 263

6.6 Mistick Krewe of Comus parade,

"The Missing Links to Darwins Origin of Species, 1873. Left, Charles Darwin,
The Sapient Ass; night, "The Gorilla, or The Missing Link.
Carnival Collection, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University

petbag] which joins the Coon. This taxonomy, arranged by phyla in a par
odic version of survival of the fittest, culminated in the mock crowning
of The Gorilla, a caricature of the Negro lieutenant governor of
Louisiana, strumming a banjo with hairy paws, as the Missing Link of
Darwins Eden (figure 6.6). In the tradition of carnivalesque inversion,
the lowest changed places with the highest, but this topsy-turvydom
mocked the regime that Supposedly had created in the first place its o w n
Lords of Misrule by placing black people in positions of power over whites.
The White League 5 Platform denounced Reconstruction as the m o s t
absurd inversion of the relations of race, and its members volunteered to
s e t the state of Louisiana right side up again by turning it upside down.
6 7 Rex parade, Voyages of D'lSCOVCl'y, 1992. Darwin and the Gorilla.
Photo: Barbara Vennman
 C A R N l V A L A N D THE LAW :65

The sense of doubleness provoked by this inversion, however, played

itself o u t in the form of a weird kind of identification through disguise.
White carnival during Reconstruction took on the mask of blackness to
p r o t e s t what it saw as the injustice of its postwar abjection and exclusion
from power. The Krewe of Momus, for instance, representing a mounted
battalion of Moors in blackface, performed such a drama of protest in their
street parade for Mardi Gras of 1873: Trooping down the streets of an
American City, between r o w s of stately modern edifices, came the dusky
battalions of the race who could n o t be conquered, and who fought with
blind savagery for things they only prized because the hated Christians
desired it. Their swarthy faces and barbaric splendour of their trappings
recalled the vanished centuries (Waldo, Hand-Book, 60). In the collective
memory of both blacks and whites under slavery, the historic license of car
nival had provided a locus in which rebellions in the name of liberty could
at least be imagined, if n o t implemented. The restoration of behavior that
such an adventure inspires reappears through the doublings and inversions
of white carnival: the face of the fittest behind the black mask of the
gorilla representing Darwins missing link certainly belonged to a member
of the Mistick Krewe of Comus, perhaps to Brigadier General Behan him
self, who was known to have taken a masked role in the parade (Miceli,
appendix H ) .
In that light, the floats and tableaux from the 18703 make for some very
instructive comparisons to those of 1992: their shared urgency resides in a
kind of two-faced panicqueasy resignation punctuated by eruptions of
c w a g e t h a t local government and its laws are passing from the contr010 f
white people; moreover, in each case, carnival emerges asthe site where
images of violent ridicule may stand in for violent actions (figure 6-7) Then
as n o w the imagery oscillates between timelessness, the supposedly inno
c e n t realm of fantasy and fairy story, and timeliness, direct interventions in
local and national politics, including the denigration of African-Americans
and their claims for equal protection under the law.
The apostrophe of Darwin, uniting reactionary loathing of modern sci
ence with murderous opposition to the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amend
ments, culminates in the mock crowning of The Gorilla, who, holding his
banjo in one hand, with the other pushes open the gate of Darwins Eden,
which the Comus designer depicted asan old Louisiana plantation house.
Evocative of the t e r r o r s of black usurpation of white privilege and derisive
about the evolutionary rise of subspecies, the final tableau at the Comus ball
266 C A R N I VA L A N D THE L AW

,
l u n - a m i sn - W n u n uw fi l l - K W l i m p - o n r . . . n u

6.8 Mistick Krewe of Comus tableau, The Missing Links to Darwins

Origin of Species, Varieties Theatre, 1873. Harpers Weekly, March 29, I873.
Courtesy The Historic New Orleans Collection, Museum/ Research Center, ace. no. I953.69

0f 1373 arranged the phyla of the natural world on a staircase in ironic order
of the fittest (figure 6.8). A correspondent from Harpers Weekly found this
spectacle, atwisted form of carnivalesque inversion, irresistibly laughable:
When the curtain rose on the second tableau the Gorilla had just been
crowned, and was seated on his throne under a dais, with Queen Cha
cona [the Baboon] on his right, and Orang, the Premier, on his left
On either side of the broad ascent to the throne the animal and veg
etable world were crowding toward the royal presence, each in the
order of his rank, the Toilets of the Sea, kneeling, in loyal awe
upon the pavement below. In the midst of the stair were three musi
ciansthe Grasshopper with fiddle and how, the Locust with his r a t
tle, and the Beetle with his hammer. A pedestal on either hand bore the
statuesque forms of the Baboon and the Marikina.
(Harpers Va/(bl, March 29, 1873)
 CARNIVAL A N D THE L AW
267

I t s designers m e a n t this tableau to beread asadouble inversion: Comus, god

of mirth, reigns in perfectly proportioned serenity at the bottom of the hier
archy of grotesques; thus the Bakhtinian displacement of official culture by
the grotesque realism of the carnivalesque body turns bottoms up. The
tableau offers a symbolic preenactmentof the coup dtat in which members
of the Mistick Krewe of Comus (among others), attaCking the most absurd
inversion of the relations of race, violently displaced the reconstructing
monkeys at the top. Comus celebrated the final collapse of Reconstruc
tion in I877 with a triumphant float parade entitled The Aryan Race
(Young, lem'c/c Krewe, 222).
In these improvisatory rituals staged by men, women played a sym
bolically central role. In % m e n in Public: Between Banners and Ballots,
18251880 (1990), Mary P. Ryan decants the literature of the White
League to show how the ladies assumed the role of the endangered to
plead for a r e t u r n to the regulation of race relations in public space (93;
see also Bryan; OBrien). The control of race relations in public spaces
is exactly to the pointconcerning laws and (dis)obediencebut the
w o m e n of Mardi Gras held (and continue to hold) along-term responsi
bility as caretakers of memoryconcerning origins and segregation. In
the coming-out balls of the carnival season, however minutely controlled
by men, the wives and especially the daughters of the krewe members
become living effigies, the overdressed icons of social continuity. Their
performances reveal the high stakes of deep play, marking the bounda
ries between public and private, timelessness and timelineSS, and, as
nubile sacrifices to endogamy, between whiteness and everything else
(figure 6.9).
Lest the demise of the old-line parades conceal the goings-on of the
tableau balls, the society pages of the local paper Still rcport 0" their sym
bolism and iconography. In the 1993-94 season, the Harlequins, a youth
Mardi Gras affiliate of the old-line krewe5> staged a m o s t pointed pageant.
On the surface, the filmjumssz'c Park seemed to provide a theme for the pre
liminary training debut of the Harlequin queen and the maids of her c o u r t .
Underneath the surface, an explicit restoration 0f behavior evoked the local
creation myths of race and caste:

As the tableau began, several Jurassic SPECieS including the

Comusaurus, the Proteadactyl and MomusraPtOt: were seen mean
dering through the primeval forests. They were being watched by
268 C A R N I VA L A N D T H E L A W

6.9 Masker and Maid, Mistick Krewe of Comus Ball, [ 9 7 0 .

Photo: Manuel C. Delerno. Courtesy The Historic New Orleans Collection,
Museum/ Research Center, ace. no. 74.25.19.318

modern man, who was confident that his science, his culture, his
civilization, were superior to that of these ancient beasts. Mans con
fidence led him to believe that times were changing, that ancient
species should die off and bereplaced, and that the dinosaurs m u s t go.
Darwins ghost looked dowu upon the scene with a wry grin, and the
end of the reign of the dinosaurs was proclaimed. But then something
w e n t awry. The dinosaurs refused to accept their fate and rose up in
rebellion, proclaiming that they t o o had rights. Modern man was
unable to dominate them and in the end, the dinosaurs were left to
themselves. (Primeval Partying)
On the liminal occasion of a rite of passage that serves to mark acceptance
of its initiates into society and announce their availability for exchange
within its patriarchal kinship network, the soon-to-be marriageable daugh
ters of the krewes performed a m o s t precise embodiment of selective mem
ory. Theirs is a vividly demonstrable genealogy of performance. The D a r
winian anxiety about being replaced by another species directly quotes
 C A R N I VA L A N D T H E L A W 269

the M istick K r e w e of Comus 1873 parade and grand tableau The Missing
Links to Darwins Origin of Species. The rebellion of the dinosaurs, jus
tified by a proclamation of their rights, makes a clear reference to the
coup of 1874 and its enactment of the survival of the fittest at the expense
of the racially mixed Kellogg government.
There are no trivial rituals. In the service of memory, or in its betrayal,
performances have powerful, if often unpredictable, consequences. Know
ing nothing of the Mistick Krewe of Comus Mardi Gras parade and ball of
1873, historians of constitutional law stress the importance of the almost
magical sway of Social Darwinism over the Supreme Court of the United
States at the t u r n of the century (Highshaw, 64-63): particularly in the Pi'
ions rendered by Justice Edward Douglas White, Pickwickian, formerly
Private White, Company E, Crescent City White League. Many other
influences,no doubt, shaped Justice White 5reasoning in Plesqy v.Ferguson,
but probably none m o r e exhilarating to one who regarded himself asspeak
ing for the fittest than the overthrow of Reconstructionin Louisiana by
carnival in N e w Orleans.

Sovereign Immunity
As white carnivalesque lawlessness evolved incrementally into law, the
emerging ordinances regulating Mardi Gras, like Ples-sy v. Fergwon on the
national scene, adjusted the boundaries of transgressmn and immunity 1n
the use of public accommodations. Transgression and immunity, 1nfact,
while they define the carnivalesque in Bakhtins sense, are eventually writ
t e n into Louisiana law itself. The antebellum ordinance forbtdding maSkmg
was still on the books verbatim at centurys end (Flynn, 543), 1311?!th City
ordinances n o w protected the parade routes of carnival socnettes from
obstruction by vehicles, provisions that involved the City P011:1n clearing
the streets to make way for the activities that the annmaskmg ordinance pro
scribed (Flynn, 1158). The law thus reqUiFed Practical civic assistance to the
outlaw practices of the social elite, who could then memly flaunt the
transgressions, making a seasonal public Spatula 0f the" eternally excep
tional status (figure 6.10). _ .
In that same spirit, current State of Louisiana statutes regulating c a r n i
val masking and throws perpetuate the tradltton of making the carniva
lesque an elite entitlement under the law. In a State eSPECIEIlly celebrated for
' ' ' fl
masquerades, c u r r e n t statutes speak defimHWIY about mask wearing. N0
27o C A R N I VA L A N D THE LAW

6.10 Promiscuous maskers, Mardi Gras, 1902.

Louisiana Collection, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University

person shall use or wear in any public place of any character whatsoever, or
in any open place in view thereof, ahood or mask, or anything in the n a t u r e
of either, or any facial disguise of any kind or description, calculated to con
ceal or hide the identity of the person or to prevent his being readily recog
nized (Louisiana Statutes Annotated, 14:313). This prescription, however,
though descended from earlier antimasking ordinances, has n o w incorpo
rated certain privileged exceptions assanctified by custom: children's masks
at Halloween, participants in historical pageants, and, significantly, per
sons participating in masquerade balls or entertainments, . . . persons par
ticipating in carnival parades or exhibitions during the period of Mardi Gras
festivities, and, with am o s t revealing qualifier, promiscuous masking on
Mardi Gras w/zic/z are dub! authorigedby the governing authorities of the munic
ipality (Louisiana Statutes Annotated, 14:31}, emphasis added). This statute
recognizes and protects a special class of maskers, who continued even after
I374 to dramatize themselves as the embattled but ultimately triumphant
warrior band (figure 6.! 1).
 C A R N I V A L A N D THE L AW 27x

6.n Rex parade, Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears a Crown, 1902. Float #10:
armed knights defend a castle besieged by dragons labeled Socialism.
Louisiana Collection, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University

Other s t a t u t e s define the privileges of this class while limiting its mem
bership. Processions, marches, and parades in Louisiana require a permit,
which in t u r n requires the posting of an expensive bond and, within Orleans
Parish, the payment of fees for police protection. Explicitly exempted is
any procession, march, or parade directly held or sponsored by a bona fide
organization specifically for the celebration of Mardi Gras and/ or directly
related pre-lenten or carnival festivities (Louisiana Statutes Annotated,
14826) This language excludes the processions of black Second Line orga
nizations and Mardi Gras Indian gangS, though it does extend to Zulu. In his
mordant article N e w Orleans Hidden Carnival, Michael P. Smith
explains the consequences of such a regressive system: Black groups . . .
are required to pay exorbitant fees, upwards of $4800 per parade, for police
monitoring services required by the cityservices granted free to clubs
Parading during the official Carnival season (6).
In addition, Mardi Gras krewe parades are protected byaspecial reiter
272 C A R N I VA L A N D T H E L AW

ation of the legal doctrine of assumption of risk. By attending a parade, the

individual reveler assumes the risk of being r u n over by a police motorcy
cle (Carter 1!. Travelers, Inc, 176 So. 2d 176 [1965]), for instance, or being
knocked off a step ladder by a krewe float (McGim'ty v. Marquette, I56 50.
2d 713 [1963]). In one case, however, a Louisiana c o u r t made an exception
to the assumption of risk: it ruled in favor of a woman attending Zulu who
was struck in the head and injured by a flying coconut, the traditional Zulu
throw, though the insurer w o n on appeal (Sc/zafieldv. Continental Ina, La.
APP-a 33 50- 2d 376 [1976]). More recently, the state statutes, which had
already extended to the Mardi Gras krewes the kind of limitations on t o r t
actions enjoyed by state and municipal governments (unless the loss or
damage was caused by the deliberate and w a n t o n a c t or gross negligence),
were amended to wrap the krewes traditional throws specifically in the
majestic mantle of Louisiana law: Any person who is attending or partici
pating in one of the organized parades of floats . . . assumes the risk of
being struck by any missile whatsoever which has been traditionally
thrown, tossed, or hurled by members of the krewe or organization. The
items shall include but are n o t limited to beads, cups, coconuts, and dou
bloons unless said loss or damage was caused by deliberate and w a n t o n a c t
or gross negligence of said krewe or organization (Louisiana Statutes
Annotated, 912796). Once again, carnival infiltrates and expands the law,
this time to accommodate the vulnerabilities, however slight, of the privi
leged to the redress of the injured: deliberate, w a n t o n , and gross negligence
requires a high standard of proof. But deeper meaning of such legal pro
tections is clear. The final incorporation of an ancient carnival tradition
within the law reinforces the official pulz'c status of the krewes under the
law. This status, an extension of the legal doctrine of sovereign immunity,
vitiates any claim to exemption from the law on the basis of privacy, a claim
that cannot stand against the import of the regulations guaranteeing the
krewes protection in the public sphere, for the public interest, and at pub
lic expense.
As long as the political and social power in the city remained closely
aligned, the historic, legitimating reciprocity of carnival and the law in N e w
Orleans could endure. By 1988, however, when debate opened on what
became the Mardi Gras Ordinance of 1991, the balance of power in N e w
Orleanss racial politics had shifted to reflect more closely the actual demo
graphics of the city. This pitted the opponents of the ordinance, which
Passed by a unanimous v o t e initially, against the authority of the city coun
 C A R N I VA L A N D THE L AW 173

cil and the mayor. It p u t those who practiced racial discrimination in carni
val clubs outside the law. It t o r e away the mask coded private" from the
public face of Mardi Gras. In other words, it returned white carnival once
m o r e to its Bakhtinian category of transgression against the official culture,
and, in a way n o t seen for over a century, the world turned upside down.

Mystic Chords of Memory; or, Stevie Wonder Square

Like The Ottoman,- or, Lif in Louisiana, the hearing held by the Advisory
C o m m i t t e e o n H u m a n Relations o n the Liberty Place Monument played
itself o u t as a mortgage melodrama of entitlement and dispossession. As
Michael Kammen points o u t in Mystic Chord: of Memory: Tlie Transforma
r i m of Tradition in American Culture (1991), there is a perceived struggle at
the heart of many American self-conceptions, often melodramatized,
between nostalgia and progress (7023). From where I sat in the hearing
r o o m , the melodrama certainly had a villain, one who is t o o easily hissed
and forgotten: David Duke is n o t to be taken lightly on the subject of the
diseases of American memory. Like m o s t skilled performers, he n o t only
embodies an exception to the social norm; he is also and simultaneously a
condensation of it. This prolific candidate, who openly celebrated Adolph
Hitlers birthday as recently as 1988, came much closer than many people
realize to defeating conservative Democrat J. Bennett Johnston for a seat in
the United States Senate in 1990: of Louisianas sixty-four parishes, Duke
w o n twenty-five, polling a statewide total of 59percent of the white vote:
43.5 percent of all the v o t e s cast (Bridges, 193). As of this writing, With a
growing number of mainstream political figures taking up his nativiSt
themes, it is sobering to reflect on Dukes 1990 prediction of ahappy reso
lution to the mortgage melodrama he revived in Louisiana: We are going
to build a political movement in this country to bring back the political
rights of the majority (quoted in Bridges, 193).
Although in such lieux de memozre as the Liberty Place Monument,
whiteness and rights reappear asinterdependent domains, the self-drama
tizing defenders of their contingent frontiers can never allow themselves to
forget the obvious: they m u s t always keep alive the specter of the others in
opposition to whom they reinvent themselves. At the same time, this neces
sity means that they cannot erase their fear that their surrogated victims will
somehow manage to succeed them after all. Surrendering any bit of their
version of the past therefore means somehow losing control over the total
274 C A R N I VA L A N D THE LAW

ity of the future. Thus the past m u s t become the future, a nostalgic fantasy
that subdivides into the complementary projects of restitution and revenge.
The organizing trope of Richard Verstegens Anglo-Saxonist Restitution of
DecayedIntelligence( 1605) still resonates in Fred Nash Ogdens language of
apocalyptic displacement and r e t u r n : Having solely in view the mainte
nance of our hereditary civilization and Christianity menaced by a stupid
Africanization, the Platform of tlze Crescent City White League announced
in its 1874 call to arms, we appeal to the men of o u r race . . . to re-establish
a white mans government in the city and the State. Prior to the Human
Relations Committee hearing of 1993, David Duke had already hyper
bolized a similar anxiety with regard to the Liberty Place Monument. He did
so, predictably, by assigning a performer to the liminal role of effigy and
surrogate: What about Jackson Square? he asked, referring to the eques
trian statue of Andrew Jackson in front of the St. Louis Cathedral, D o we
have to take that dOWn and change the name to Stevie Wonder Square?
(quoted in POWell, 43).
Dukes testimony touched only indirectly on the White League, how
ever, and n o t at all on the carnival krewes, whose members, in any case,
have despised such white-trash opportunists Since the days of John Popes
drugstore. Speaking of what he called the t r u e meaning of the m o n u
ment, Duke cited the battles of Lexington and Concord as the real prece
dents invoked by the Battle of Liberty Place and its cenotaph: there the
patriotic minutemen had fought and died for their freedom against the occu
pying forces of tyranny. Removing the Liberty Monument would bet a n
t a m o u n t to desecrating statues of Washington and Jefferson, he continued,
which would bedefacing public property symbolizing Liberty itself, an a c t
with dire consequences. To remove the monument would be to rewrite his
tory, argued Duke, Who believes that the gas Zyklon B was used at Ausch
witz only to control lice (Bridges, 116): Then we dont have a civilization
anymore. We have a jungle.
The slippage that conjured the founding fathers o u t of a selfcongratu
latory erection honoring silkstockinged rioters starkly illustrates the mech
anisms of dominant circum-Atlantic memory, which struggle 0 erase the
troubling evidence of intervening improvisations by direCt appeal 0 ori
gins. To Duke this distinction suggested a choice between the alternatives (ff
civilization and jungle. Carried away by his defense of American civ1
lization against a rising tide of barbarism, he likened the opponents of the
monument to bOOk-burning Nazis. Rabbi ( j o h n interrupted the testl
 C A R N I VA L A N D T H E L AW 275

m o n y at this point to ask with perfect chairmanly decorum, asif clarifying

an obscure phrase for the record, Nazis, Mr. Duke? Pardon me, but did I
hear you say Nazis? Duke nodded affirmatively but with apparent con
fusion; then he continued his eulogy, paraphrasing, without attribution and
perhaps accidentally, the mystic chords of memory passage from Abra
ham Lincolns first inaugural address: Though passion may have strained,
it m u s t n o t break o u r bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory,
stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart
and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the
Union, when again touched, assurely they will be, by the better angels of
o u r nature (Lincoln, 224).
A silent witness to the June 15 advisory committee hearing was City
Council Member-atlarge Dorothy Mae Taylor, who was instrumental in
framing and passing the 1991 civil rights ordinance that prompted Comus,
Momus, and Proteus to end their Mardi Gras parades, even though the intent
of the councils legislation was to end segregation, nor celebration. Her
silence was eloquent. Taylors leadership, which was visited by more denun
ciations and ridicule than support, even from some of the Other council
members who had voted for the ordinance (Vennman, Boundary Face
O f f ) , was forged in the crucible of New Orleans racial politics in the 19605
(Hirsch and Logsdon, 2623 19). Taylors record in this regard seemed to fall
prey to a whipsaw of demonization and amnesia. The 1991 ordinance devel
oped logically from the civil rights legislation of the 19605 and indeed from
the historic argument of fair and equal access to public accommodations
(Rogers). But it was widely characterized asa plot to kill Mardi Gras by
attacking freedom of association and the rights of the krewe5. Even before
the final and softened version of the ordinance had been made law, however,
the krewes of Comus and Momus canceled their 1992 parades, and many
N e w Orleanians blamed Taylor for trashing carnival tradition (figure 6.12).
In the mid-19905, the Mardi Gras festivities of the three old-line kreWeS
continue officially only in private but unofficially here and there in the form
of some guerrilla-style street parading lampooning city council members
and others. Rex has inducted three members identified as black. Taylor
retired from the City Council and was subsequently defeated in her run {01'
a lesser office. The Liberty Place Monument still stands, its future tied up,
as they say, in litigation. This empty sarcophagus gives silent testimony to
the suppleness of the law in the performance of memory: that it can be
stretched even to perpetuate the honor of those who once violently dis
 6.12 Death and Surrogation. R.I.P. Here lies MARDI a n s , 18311992.
Signboard carried by promiscuous maskers, Mardi Gras, 1992.
New Orleans City Council member-atlarge Dorothy Mae Taylor in effigy,
usurping a crown marked Comus.
Photo: Barbara Vennman
 CARNIVAL A N D THE LAW 277

obeyed i t , acting in the avowed cause of disenfranchising forever those who

are n o w charged with enforcing it. If stateways cannot change folkways
perhaps it is for the simple reason that stateways are folkways.

Jazz Funeral l
Surveying the N e w Orleans urbanscape, anchored on the landmarks pro-
vided by its famous Cities of the Dead, the pedestrian thinks more readily l
of the city as text, as Roland Barthes did, than asspeech, following the
suggestion of Michel de Certeau. Reading the scene astext, the eye takes in
a history inscribed by rhetorics of exclusion. For all the evidence that sup
p o r t s such a reading, however, it is nonetheless unsatisfactory.De Certeaus
view is also valid, and N e w Orleans offers apowerful instance of the truth
of his insight, nowhere m o r e persuasively than in the mortuary rituals of its
community of musicians. Hearing the city as speech (and song), the ear
takes in a memory predicated on a rhetoric of inclusion.
In 1992 Joe August, the rhythm and blues pioneer known asMr. Google
Eyes, or " G for short, was buried with music. To be buried with music
in N e w Orleans means that the ordinary service will befollowed bywhat the
death notices calla traditional jazz funeral. However traditional it maybe,
there is no such thing asa typical jazz funeral: the tradition is that the obser
vances are adapted to suit the occasion. Like the funeral of the old Congo
slave observed by Latrobe in 1819, the occasion is likely to call for celebra
tion aswell assolemnity, concluding with anup-tempo Second Line parade.
Well-kn0wn and wellloved local musicians, black orwhite, will beremem
bered in this way. Joe August, who recorded Poppa Stoppas BeBOP
Blues for Coleman Records and No Wine, No Women and Rough and
Rocky Road for Columbia, who also w r o t e one of Johnny Aces biggeSt
hits, Please Forgive Me, and who founded the activist agency Blacks That
Give a Damn, qualified on both counts of celebrity and affection. In Under
a Hoodoo Moon (1994), Malcolm Rebennack, better known asD r. John, the
white jazz celebrity, recalls his first meeting with Joe August, who inspired
him asa performer and asapersonality: The first time I ever laid eyes on
him, he was luxuriating outside his club in apurple Buick with leopard-skin
upholstery and leopard skin covering the dash and lining the trunk. D r .
John also remembers that G played his club with his own badass, low
down, bebop scatjazz R & B act (71).
While the mourners, including D r. John, assembled in the parlor to pay
278 CARNIVAL AND THE LAW

their respects to Joe August, the Olympia Brass Band, co;snbt;gtgo::

a -
front.
trom
bones, trumpets, tuba, and drum, waited in the gravel Pal-1mg ceased asif
Inside, friends and relatives heard eulogies addressed I0.I1Ch:first-p;rson
hewere present, spoken on behalf of the community in t. t ride that we
plura .Malcolm RebennackDr.Johnsaid: it ISwulF-liall. The con
carry the message of the blues that you instilled In us aEC: but the auditors
tent of the message of the blues" remained unspecl (:6 r e n t s long since
voiced their assent. Joe Augusts parents and gran P: mensang one Of
deceased, were remembered by name. Joseph COO] D a w
Joes favorite hymns, Bye and Bye:

May the circle beunbroken

Bye and bye, Lord, bye and bye;
Theres a better home a waiting
In the sky, Lord, in the sky.
After a final Parting View, the undertaker closed the casket and the Pall
bearers carried it o u t to the hearse. embled- When the band
Outside, a crowd from the neighborhOOd had as; and baton, the proces
struck up, following the Nelson with a P"1rple .5121 holding hands, walked
sion began down Claiborne Avenue. The faml y, t {0110wed, filling the
ahead of the hearse. The crowd, six 0 1 ' Eight abreissolemn. The marchers
avenue. The pace was cadenced, neither joyoushnomn t u n e I thought I rec
sPoke, neither loud n o r hushed. I heard an Old y
. . , , nc reSP
ogmzed, i t s meter vowing a 5010 call and Cho . onse:

I know moonwise, I know starwi565

lilalklliilathiliiid022llght,I walk in the Starlight

Illl:Zlkhii:fgjgritjyhrd, Ill walk through the graveyard

IIll lfeyihhilsi:2:1:vi:::l.stretch o u t myarms:
Lay this body down.
In earlier days, the procession would havineteries
followed and the
fullhearse
arethe t0new the
gravesite for the interment, but n o W the Oldhceencouragemem 0f the m u S l c '
ones are too far to reach on foot, even Wlth t e
So the family goes its separate way 1 . 11:
' 0 5his
.S m oIS
honor,
. Th' e n t , when
.m called t c u t t 'the
ing
deceased parts company with the processmn 1n
 C A R N I VA L A N D THE LAW 279

the body loose, which cues in the festivity. After a respectful silence while
the c o r t e g e passed from view, the Olympians broke into an up-tempo num
ber and headed back up Claiborne Avenue. The song, addressed with affec
tionate ribaldry to the memory of the deceased, was Oh, He Did Ramble.
B r o w n bags opened up and brightly fringed umbrellas popped open, bounc
ing up and down to the n e w pulse of the march in the dance style of New
Orleans parading known asSecond Lining.
The Second L i n e consists of the marchers following the band, some of
whom dance, others of whom add counterryhthmic accompaniment on
improvised instruments. Tradition has it that the t e r m Second Line comes
from Reconstruction days, when black people, new to parliamentary proce
dure, found themselves jumping up all at once to yell, I second that! The
band and the Second Liners moved their line of march directly under the
Interstate 10 overpass, which runs parallel to Claiborne Avenue, through
what w a s formerly the central tree-lined boulevard of the African-Ameri
c a n community in N e w Orleans. N o w the concrete overpass provided a
haunting acoustical effect as the layered sounds of brass, percussion, and
choric shouts bounced o f f the reflective surfaces of the highway and its
massive supports. The echoes sounded like other bands playing from above
(figure 6.13).
The jazz funerals genius for participation resides in the very expandabil
i t y of the procession: marchers with very different connections to the
deceased ( o r perhaps no connections at all) join together on the occasion to
make connections with o n e another. Moving along with the packed crowd
of the Second Line, which consists of dancers and marchers of different
ages and energy levels, requires a high level of cooperation and considera
tion, n o t to speak of watching o u t for equipment-laden members of the
Third Line, who sometimes t r y to r u n backward while focusing their mini
cams, with predictable results. Along the line of march of Joe Augusts
funeral procession, an elderly Second Liner politely touched my elbow to
draw my attention to my untied Shoelacesa menace amid the flowing
mass of dancing bodies, a literal faux pas. In the spin of this musical and
kinesthetic vortex, the sounds of the city asparticipatory speech contradiCt
the city as exclusionary t e x t : as Richard Allen, observing the revelers at a
jazz funeral, noted in 1962: A t least t w o boys and t w o women danc[ed] with
partners of opposite sex and color.
In circum-Atlantic race relations, the production of culture by means 0f
surrogation has traditionally utilized race asthe threatening mark of differ
28o CARNIVAL A N D THE LAW

6.13 Jazz Funeral for M r. Google Eyes (joe August), N e w Orleans, I992.
Photo: Ed Newman, New Orleans, 1992

ence whereby the effigy is distanced from the community in order to partic
ipate sacrificially in its reaffirmation. Miscegenation r e e n a c t s the primal
scene where that mark of difference becomes affixed. In I960, after an inci
dent in which he was shot by his white girlfriend Vicki, Joe August was
arrested and charged under Louisianas antimiscegenation law, which the
couple had previously tried to evade. Even the precaution of shortening her
long blond hair, dyeing the r o o t s jet black, and wearing ManTan in public
had failed to let Vicki to pass for Creole (Hannusch, 89). The couple was
first arrested on a charge of loitering, interrogated, and terrorized by the
police. After their release, on the day that forced integration began in the
New Orleans schools, Miss Vicki, declaring I f I cant have yon, HObOdY
can, plugged Joe August in the belly with a shotgunloving him n o t
wisely but t o o well. The responding police officers drove the profusely
bleeding singer the half mile to Charity Hospital by a leisurely route, StOP'
ping off for abeer along the way (Hannusch, 90- Although he survived his
wound and the charges of miscegenation were eventually dropped, after
this incident, Gs career slowed, as his obituary put it; he c u t his last
 CARNIVAL A N D T H E L A W 281 l
1
record in 1963, nearly thirty years before his death (obituary,Joseph Charles l
Augustus, N e w Orleans Times-Picayune, October 12, 1992, 3-8).
The s t a t e of liminality, like the state of Louisiana, both of which ethno
graphers find so rich in cultural expressiveness, can be very hard on the peo
ple who a r e actually trying to live there. In relationship to southern proto
cols of ocular circumspection between the races, the adoption of Mr. '
Google Eyes as a stage name proved a tactless choice. It was a tactlessness '
manifoldly compounded by the affectation of the purple Buick, n o t to speak 3
of the white girl. It w a s also a tactlessness that any performance on the mar
gin makes difficult to avoid. As the ambivalence over the London funeral of '
Thomas Betterton shows, circum-Atlantic performers act o u t the anxietyr '
inducing boundaries between whiteness and blackness on the cusp between I
life and death.
Effigies, however, are n o t just for burning. When the mourners at Joe
Augusts jazz funeral c u t the body loose, they held open a place for othfts
through the memory of his life in the celebration of his passing. T113t SPmt
permeated the laughter evoked by the several pointed verses of Oh, He
D i d Ramble. Such obsequies, the suggestive no less than the Solemn, reaf
fi r m the existence of a community without sealing it off from the 1135 Of the
worldPast, present, and future. In the midst of this extraordinary Afro
centric ritual, in the very space it has sogenerously provided for memory as
improvisation, the process of circum-Atlantic surrogation continues to
unfold. It unfolded before my eyes in the guise of Mr. Spectators as it had
unfolded before those of Richard Steele, who look[ed] upon the D i s t h
tions a m o n g s t Men to be meerly Scenical (Tatler, 2:424).
D r . John, Joe Augusts white eulogist, takes his stage name from the f 0 "
midable nineteenth-century N e w Orleans voodoo, alias BayOu 10h! Who
intimidated slaves and slaveholders alike. Malcolm Rebellflack SPOke th:
eulogy under his o w n name as a carrier of the message 0f the blues
instilled in him by Joe August. He reminded the mourners that neither he
n o r G w a s the message; rather, they were both messengers. Malcolm Reben
nack, however, records and performs contractually under the assumEd
n a m e of D r . John, the original holder of which claimed that hewas 3 Sem
galese prince, whose face, like Oroonokos, was scarified in the African
manner, and whose voice, it was said, could be heard from t w o miles away
(Tallant, 3336). Clearly, in the alchemy of circum-Atlantic memory and
surrogation, such a voice can be heard across surprising expanses of t l m e
as well.
 Deep down in the deep seam the waters clear
And cleanfiom the black rack of Afiica.
There are hard: there and craftsmen, heroes, kings,
A n d darlc ecstatic dancers throng the kraals.
- E. M, Roacu

IN THE (LEARNESS or THE WATERS AT THE SOURCE. THE CARIBBEAN POET'S VERSES
imagine purity of origin. While there is every reason to reqUicken and)
celebrate the memory of Africa that these lines evoke, the poets family
n a m e might be thought to muddy the waters a bit. That name points back
from the West Indies to County Cork, where the search for r00ts is arduous,
and n o t only because during the Potato Famine somebody probably ate
them. The very language in which Roach writes the poem, called Fight
ers, maps a story of memory and forgetting, now ever more widely lid,
in which both tellers and listeners have found more recoverable meanings 1n
r o u t e s than they have i n r o o t s . _
In the epigraph to the first chapter of Welcome to the jungle: New Post
tions in Black Cultural Studies (1994), Kobena Mercer cites the Prophetic
voice of C. L. R. James. Decades ago, the historian of the Caribbean revo
lution of the 17905 looked ahead to the I990s and foresaw the impact, asthis
c e n t u r y nears its end, of millions of black people born in Great Britain as
British subjects but n o t yet, by reason of their blackness, fully a part 0f
]ames s a w this divided citizenship, this double consciousness, n o t asa nega
t i o n but as a historic opportunity: What such persons have to say, there
fore, will give a n e w vision, a deeper and stronger insight into both western
284 EPILOCUE: NEW FRONTIERS

civilization and the black people in i t (quoted in Mercer, i ) . That such per
sons have called themselves Settlers sharpens the ironies of Kobena Mer
cers play of geotropes and chronotropes in Welcome to [ l i e jungle: Wel
come to Heathrow: you are n o w entering the labyrinths of a modern Baby
lon, agreen and not-always-so-pleasant Third World Albion" (3)- Despite
the stubborn and sometimes violent hostility of the supposedly autochtho
nous population of Britain, Mercers exhortation to exploration and discov
ery goes o u t to the emerging cultures of hybrtazg, forged among the over
lapping African, Asian and Caribbean diasporas (-5). As N e w Orleans was
once poised on the selvage of civilization, the destiny of London is m a n
ifest: it is the New Frontier.
One of the purposes of this book has been to show how specifically that
destiny was foreseeable and duly foreseen. In the epic vision of Horace
Walpoles prognostication of Mesoamerican sightseers taking in the ruins
of St. Pauls Cathedral or in Alexander Popes prediction of Featherd
Peoples sailing up the Thames, rich allusions to the Mediterranean past
pointed the way to the Caribbeanized future. The English, however, often
imagine the future in and through ruins. This melancholy habit of mind
lends a certain logic to their imperial xenophobia. In John Atkinss Voyage
to Guinea, Brasil, and the West-Indies (1735), for instance, the reader learns
that the Gulph of Mexico . . . may be considered asa little Mediterranean
Sea (232). Such geohistorical homologies plunge Atkins into nostalgic
brooding on the fate of cities and empires: They have adetermined Time
to flourish, decay, and die in. C o r n grows where Troy stood: Carthage is
blotted o u t . Greece and her Republicks (Athens, Sparta, Corinth), with
other famd Asian and African Cities the Turkish Monarchy has overturned.
Their Magnificence, Wealth, Learning, and Worship, is changed into
Poverty and Ignorance; and Rome, the Mother of all, overrun with Super
stition. Who, on the one hand, but feels aninexplicable Pleasure in treading
over that Ground, he supposes such Men inhabited, whose Learning and
Virtues have been the Emulation of all succeeding Ages? In such an evo
cation of the lieux de memoz're, sites lined up along the grand t o u r, the usurp
mg presence of the speaker as emulator (hence performer) of the past
induces his fatalistic prediction of surrogation in the future: And who
again but m u s t mourn such a melancholy Transposition of Scene, and spend
a few funereal Reflections over such extraordinary Exequiae: Perhaps the
Revolutionof asmany Ages, ashas sunk their Glory, may raise it again, or
calrry it to the Negroes and Hottentots, and the present Possessors be
 EPILOGL'E: NEW FRONTIERS 28$

debased (preface, xvii-xviii)- That surrogation is viewed asdebasement

gives emphasis to the pressure the future exerts on the process of imagining
the p a s t . This pressureof origin, segregation, and destinyis most
excruciating when it is phrased in the present tense and addressed to an
imagined community in the first-person plural, such aswhen Enoch Powell
asks. What s o r t of people are we?"
As carnival and the law c a n both be used to affirm, however, surrogation
need n o t be a debasement but an opportunity for renewal: Festivals are a
way of bringing about change. . . . Parades alter truth (Bunsekei, quoted in
Nunley and Bettelheim, 23). The parade, however obdurately resistant to
integration it may see itself asbeingand many parades have seen them
selves in just that w a y i s nevertheless vulnerable. It is vulnerable because
the participants literally succeed themselves before the eyes of the specta
t o r s . As the sound of o n e band dies, another arrives to lift the spirits of the
auditors. Generations of marchers seem to arise and pass away. Because it is
an additive form, passing by a point of review in succeSSion, its ending is
always an anticlimax, a provocation, and an opening.
Viewed as open-ended, like a jazz funeral, the parade of circum-Atlantic
identities is itself a kind of o r a t u r e . As repetition with the inevitability 0f
revision, the parade shares a potentially inclusionary feature with carnival
itself: Carnival, argues Kobena Mercer in his account of Londons Not
ting H i l l Carnival, which is n o w one of the largest public street events in
Europe, breaks down the barriers between active performer and passive
audience (9, 59). Carnival is n o t only anassembly that can beseized 01110
dramatize the call for redress of grievancesas it was fOr the White League
in N e w Orleans in 1873 or for black Britons at Notting Hill in 1976-itis
also a ghostly double to the law asa technique to remember the past and t0
reimagine the future. The opening of access to public accommodations to
all people, the historic strategy of civil rights legislation and judge-macle
law in the United States, finds itself performed in the streets during c a r n i
val, less so, admittedly, within the traditions of the European carnivalesque
but considerably m o r e so within the syncretisms of the African and
Caribbean diasporas.
Today the role of performance in voicing the plenitude of circum
Atlantic futures is exemplified by Apache Indian, the East Indian musician
who grew up in a Jamaican neighborhood in London, who sings reggae
like a native but who identifies himself asa Native American. Across the
transnational groupings and reinvented affiliations of such anoceanic inter
286 EPILOGUE: NEW FRONTIERS

culture but within the stubborn eloquence of the intersecting diasporic

memories performed within its distinctive urban vortices, the precise loca
tion of the New World isno longer clear. Wherever its frontiers might n o w
beprovisionally mapped, however, the discursive life of the ancient concept
of a Free-born People infuses law with the urgency of performance: jus
tice can no longer be imagined assomething that merely exists; it is some
thing that must, finally, bedone. Only then will the Cities of the Dead be
truly free to welcome the new generations of the living.
In Small Am: T/zoug/m an the Politics of Black Culture: (1993), Paul
Gilroy sums up the task facing genealogists of circum-Atlantic perfor
mance: The contemporary musical forms of the African diaspora work
within anaesthetic and political framework which demands that they cease
lessly reconstruct their own histories, folding back on themselves time and
again to celebrate and validate the simple, unassailable fact of their sur
vival (37). Genealogists resist histories that attribute purity of origin to
any performance. They have to take into account the give and take of joint
transmissions, posted in the past, arriving in the present, delivered by living
messengers, speaking in tongues n o t entirely their own. Orature is an a r t of
listeningaswell asspeaking; improvisation isan a r t of collective memory as
well asinvention; repetition is an a r t of re-creation as well as restoration.
Texts may obscure what performance tends to reveal: memory challenges
history in the construction of circum-Atlantic cultures, and it revises the yet
unwritten epic of their fabulous cocreation.
ABBREVIATIONS
ARC Amistad Research Center, Tulane University.
EDA Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Manager-9,
and Other Stage Personnelin London, 161301800. Ed. Philip H. Highfill,ll",
Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans. [8 vols. Carbondale: South
e r n Illinois University Press, 197393.
CN Le Code noir; ou, Recueil des reglements rendus jusqu' present: concer
nant 1egouvernement, l'administration dela justice, la police, la discipline,
et le commerce des ngres dans les colonies francaises. Paris: Prault, I742
Collected in English as Collection of Regulations, Edicts, Declarations,
and Decrees, Concerning the Commerce, Administration of JUStiCE, and
the Policingof the French Colonies of America. With the Black Code and
Additions to the Said Code." TranS. Olivia Blanchard. Baton Rouge: Sur
vey of Federal Archives in Louisiana, 1940. Louisiana Collection, Howard
Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University.
HJA William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University.
LS The London Stage, 16601800. Part 2, vol. I, ed. Emmett L. Avery. Carbon
dale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960.
PB Pinacot/zeca Bettertonaeana; or, A Catalogue of the Books, Prints, Drawings,
and Painting: of M r . Thomas Betterton, That Celebrated Comedian, Lately
288 REFERENCES

Deceased. I am indebted to Judith Milhous for providing me with this

catalogue.

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