Professional Documents
Culture Documents
-7(-I/'/IM'
A series of Columbia University Press
IONATHAN ARAC. E D I TO R
Crit'zcal Genealogies.
' . Historical
- . for Postmodern Literary Studies
~ Situations
-
Jonathan A r a c
Advertising Fiction: Literature, Advertisement, and Social Reading
Jennifer Wicke
Md-Sks of Conquest: Literary Study and Britt's/z Rule in India
Gauri Viswanathan
Toe Author, Art, and the Market: Rereading t/ze Hitter)! of Aesz/zetics
Martha Woodmansee
rary Studies and Social Formation:
Retfiinltzng Clasxr Lite
d Michael T. Gilmore, editors
Wai Chee Dimock an
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I IOSEPH ROACH
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I
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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.
Preface xi
Acknowledgments XV
_/
/
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
(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
.
surrogatton
' (chapt6 rs 2 and 3)) in law and popular culture (chapters 2 and
P R E FA C E xiii
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
.. .- 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
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?
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
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
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
1.3 K i n g Zulu.
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]
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
r - f a1:
.
m. ..
1 ,
L
A.r ,
_ ,
,2
_ . _
.
, I, f .
-..o _ .- _ . .I
1 U " !7 o A KIM/n1!- fmwnhm.
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
....;. ,
5......)
mm. u
pawn/p i
. . _ . . 0
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 ?
mmummmmmnu mummfiifi
m u u I - t l l n l n u n - n u . - n . . 0 4 . . . .
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
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
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
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
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
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
.
. "'r n
51
n
. 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
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
between
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"
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/.
ace 0 . . -
{EnglSh
'ndred . _ kmgs,ofawamng
Signlficance the corpse o
t w o kinds of performance: first,
e
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
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
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
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:
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
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
.
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 .
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
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,
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.
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
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
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
Stance
Its r elationship
' . to the dea
Irit
Sp~
. 1'1 C0
World ex ntroctSt to the mortuary rituals
_ o s . l'
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
. 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
conduct boo
egeneral
'
resuggests
proliferationof seventeenth-.and e1g
that GildOn sflfeISthcenf
- E a r t.hlpa Iy
- [57
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
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?
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
followers
III 0b an [oc21
. 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
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
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
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,
.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
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
. 0r
Rowes 1709 editon 5h
(figure 3_6)_ 13 ed hands t e Stage bUSiness in Wthh face
' a blacksd
.
. .,
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 ,
.
, m o s t 19( an
Desdemona. 'I'he I'mage 0' e [110ug
rs more than a cautionary Ml .
. 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
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 . . ~\
-
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 . . -
) 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
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
. (COIre . we ) In
grave: The sweetest part of a life
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
,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
. 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
'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
' ( . ) 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
., Rf
:meficahich
along t e Water
Was t
routes from I
In
if \THFRFD PEOPLES
asan 31mm. .
tinent fin-e [0 ( r e ~ .
. 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"
. 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
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
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
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. . . . . . . ~
S t .
as possessions 15pe
for instance, suggests the conventions whereby thc LU P
r ( ) can
of Africa and Afri
. . .
.
- lnCOrP 013th' n
eSpamel
Ollared With Pearls and POSlthnecl 1n the C hiP with sprigs
WOUld Otherwise be, lovingly presents hcr lady
' - s
. 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
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
n spend an id
. .-a
, 2): Yarico rescues Inkle from the mass loVers. O
yllic time together as away ouon
. Cast . 13)'
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
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
el)
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
. Goddess
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
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
Scholars general]
in this passage re ' nCl uP
Yagree that the Featherd PWP1ca. d . 'nledgC. ,1t
Chiefs
.
1'11) ta :2:the original-y site of
1 . the pt.) ddon
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
_Like 1]
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
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
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
'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
(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)
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
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:
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:
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)
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.
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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4.6 The four Indian Kings. Handbill for Powell's Puppets (detail),
dated May I, I7IO.
Northwestern University Library
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
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
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:
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
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Amains.
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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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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)
pletely reverses himself and the plays presentation of the essence of Amer
ican justice:
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.
G R A N D
lajrr ,
.viqw-I'""'~'~ a-.t } !
' . 3 !I
- . u . _. . (fizflg
V ) ,
.I
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
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,
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
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
i
magnifg-hly theatrical spectacle. The
St LOuFent thealterlike rotunda, desig
Qnt
18Hotel. The management provi e of the H"d1 unless musxc . is
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Storyville e males
In term f the genealogy of , New Orleans Slave P
themsel n
5 a
ONE moon
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
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
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
'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
. -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
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
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
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
. caned
, 1874,
. at the head of aparamilitary '
m C()nfedrr
Organlzathn
er
White League, Ogden and several Other for r110
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
O"er tl l ' . .
eordmance,
of :ternPts to bringacarnival m actualtty repre
law that and
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
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
. .
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
act fe
Sign Stivel
631:?"
1 the ' assigned place 0 mm
Part a Whlte Para
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
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
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, '
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
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
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
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.
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
,
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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$
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