Reading the Diasporic San Dominick in "Benito Cereno"

When reading “Benito Cereno” I encountered competing dichotomies (or trichotomies? paradigms?) between intelligence and strength, strength and physical weakness, power and trust, trust and deceit. The defining lines and expectations were blurred, mirrored, switched in the text. All of this happens through the narration of Captain Delano, who “reads” the San Dominick. I think all of this––the fluidity of meaning, the code-switching, the doubling––is made possible by the transatlantic location of the narrative. Many times in our course we’ve mentioned the transnational significance of oceanic texts. It seems to me that “Benito Cereno” is a prime example of this function.

The ship itself, the San Dominick, is a perfect diasporic “gathering space.” Homi Bhabha describes the nature of “gatherings” in “DissemiNation”:

“that moment of the scattering of the people that in other times and other places, in the nations of others, becomes a time of gathering. Gatherings of exiles and emigrés and refugees, gathering on the edge of ‘foreign’ cultures [. . .] fathering in the half-life, half-light of foreign tongues, or in the uncanny fluency of another’s language [. . .] Also gathering of the people in the diaspora; indentured, migrant, interned; the gathering of incriminatory statistics, educational performance, legal statues, immigration status” (291)

On the San Dominick we have the clash of cultures between the displaced slaves and the Spanish seamen. However, the fact that the narrative takes place on a ship places it at the “edge of ‘foreign cultures;” not in Africa or Spain or the US, but encountering all three. Language and fluency is another baffling element of the narrative. When Delano arrives the people aboard (black and white) begin bombarding him “with one voice” with their woes; Delano can speak to them in Spanish because of his experience abroad. The use of Spanish by all on board definitely speaks to “the uncanny fluency of another’s language,” that seems so out of place. This time and space of gathering upon the San Dominick is the perfect atmosphere to explore the boundaries between power, intelligence, strength, trust, and deceit.

Delano reads Benito Cereno as a bad leader and a weak man because of the way he interacts with his crew and the slaves on board. However, he is very impressed with Babo. Early on in the narrative, when Delano is trying to understand what had happened on the ship, Babo takes control of the narrative:

“‘Oh, my God! rather than pass through what I have, with joy I would have hailed the most terribly gales; but––’

His cough returned and with increased violence; this subsiding, with reddened lips and closed eyes he fell heavily against his supporter.

‘His mind wanders. He was thinking of the plague that followed the gales,’ plaintively sighed the servant; ‘my poor, poor master!’” (55-56).

Cereno’s physical weakness enables Babo to speak for him, causing Delano to admire and trust Babo more than Cereno. Just a few paragraphs later, Delano exclaims, “Don Benito, I envy you such a friend; slave I cannot call him” (57). Delano actually unnames Babo a slave, which is appropriate because in this case, it is actually Cereno who is the enslaved and subjugated one. In this way, as Bhabha would say, the margins displace the centre (6). The reversals in “Benito Cereno” serve to upset the expectations of readers (including the “reading” narrator, Delano).

Transforming Knowledge through Language in Blake

This week I want to discuss how Delany uses language, specifically writing, in Blake to shift paradigms, in light of Dr. Doolen’s piece on transnational history.

In Blake, Henry and a few of his fellow revolutionaries are eloquent speakers––it becomes clear that literacy is important for breaking out of slavery on an individual and a institutional level. Henry is described as “the intelligent slave” throughout the text, designating him as being exceptional and qualified to lead the movement. He takes ownership of his use of the English language, even though it is the language of his enslavers and has been greatly used to justify his subjection. This appropriation (and also reconstruction) of white tools occurs not only with language but with religion and with money as well. Henry rejects the religion of the whites, but then he reconstructs it for his own use and it becomes another fuel for his revolution; he is also able to use this new religious rhetoric when encouraging fellow slaves to rise up. Similarly, Henry emphasizes the importance of having money––the same money that was used to “purchase” them––for breaking away from slavery. Though the whites would call it theft, Henry takes what is owed to him, again reversing the rhetoric to serve his purpose, so that he may begin sowing seeds of revolution.

I think all of these things are examples of what Doolen said concerning Delany: “Delany and his antebellum black contemporaries believed that by transforming the production of knowledge, they could help topple the slavery regime” (154). Delany’s characters are doing just that––they are changing the way language is used, resulting in a new rhetoric that fuels revolution instead of pacifying or simply erasing black existence. Discussing the novel, Doolen notes that “while whites tell stories that rationalize their power and justify the institutions of slavery, slaves repeatedly infiltrate the production of knowledge and exert control over narration” (156). I want to discuss the following passage from Blake (a conversation between Henry and Placido) in light of these thoughts. Henry begins:

“But I read across the water, in a Cuba journal at New Orleans, a lyric from your pen, in which the fire of liberty blazed as from the altar of a freeman’s heart. I therefore make no hazard when I this to you impart: I have come to Cuba to help to free my race; and that which I desire here to do, I’ve done in another place.”

“Amen!” exclaimed Placido. “Heaven certainly designed it, and directed you here at this most auspicious moment, that the oppressed of Cuba also may ‘declare the glory of God!’”

“Have you thought much in that direction, Placido?”

“I have, though I’ve done but little, and had just finished the last word of the last stanza of a short poem intended to be read at a social gathering to be held at the house of a friend one evening this week, which meets for the express purpose of maturing some plan of action” (195).

I think this passage is fascinating because it is an example of language (through writing) as a tool for revolution, but it highlights the transnational capabilities of writing. Protest writing, of which we might consider this novel an example, is a powerful tool for changing the production of knowledge, reconstructing the borders and limits of institutions and individuals. I think it’s significant that Henry specifies that he read Placido’s work in a “Cuba journal at New Orleans,” because that city is already constructed as a hybrid space, and the transnational nature of the journal helps to constitute Cuba as the fertile land for revolution. This is an example of how language can spark action, both in Henry’s movement to Cuba and in Placido’s “gathering” where his poem will function as a fire iron to stir up the flames. The use of writing in this passage is an example of what the novel accomplishes as a whole––a reconstruction of boundaries and limits of nations, identity, and rhetoric so that revolution becomes possible, where it was “unthinkable” before.

Magdalena, Streeby, and International Race Romance

I’ve chosen to revisit Shelley Streeby’s thoughts on international race romance (in the context of war literature) in light of Ned Buntline’s Magdalena, The Beautiful Mexican Maid. A Story of Buena Vista.

In American Sensations, Streeby notes that “International romances between U.S. soldiers and elite Mexican women” (like between Brackett and Magdalena) “were often represented in the popular literature as a benign form of imperial conquest or as an alternative to it: the romance plots of a good deal of cheap war fiction were echoed by contemporary calls to conquer Mexico by ‘whitening’ it through transnational heterosexual unions” (64). In the case of Magdalena, I think that their relationship serves more as an alternative to imperial conquest, though it most certainly works to “whiten” both Magdalena and her family.

We can see the “whitening” power of Brackett and Magdalena’s union in the passage I selected. Toward the end of the novel, as Magdalena is watching the battle from afar and rooting for her husband, she and her father have the following conversation:

“A strange transformation has love worked in your heart, my daughter!” said Don Ignatio. “A few days since and on bended knees you would have prayed for the success of the Mexican arms, now you seem only to fear for the defeat of the Americans!”

“It is true my father, but when I wedded him, I became an American. We are not Mexicans. Spain alone has a right to our allegiance. Why should we hope for the Mexicans to conquer in this battle? That this now quiet city should be filled with troops of rude and licentious men, who respect no law and are governed by no principles?” (Buntline 96-7)

The heterosexual US/Mexico union in this text works as an alternative to imperial conquest because it erases the “Mexican maid” Magdalena of her Mexican identity altogether. The most interesting part of that transformation is that not only she, but her father and sister are included in this whitening. And despite the fact that until recently the Valdezes were Mexican, and the fact that we have seen honorable behavior from Mexicans like General Vazquez, here the Mexican is painted as only a copy of Alfrede. And though earlier in the text she was identifying with the Mexican nation (calling Brackett her “foe”), the union with an American erases this national allegiance and will only admit allegiance to America and Spain. This remembrance of Spain is odd, but I think it does two things. First, it reminds us of both Magdalena’s and Brackett’s “high birth” because Valdez was “one of the proudest names in Spain” (67). This validates their union socially and racially, and is another reason why Magdalena might find it so easy to shrug off her Mexican identity. Second, aligning the US with Spain validates the conquest of Mexico––equating the US with knights, power, and high culture and Mexico with a “mongrel race” (Streeby quoting Lippard 55).

Streeby notes that “efforts to forget or redescribe the project of empire-building are often attempts to ward off evidence showing that U.S. expansion is not peaceful, non-aggressive, benignly republican, or directed toward an inexhaustible wilderness” (58). Though there are definitely battles detailed in Buntline’s text, the most interesting battle is the one between Brackett and Alfrede. The US soldier gallantly saves the high-born Spanish lady from a Mexican rogue (and rapist/murderer), and this union erases her Mexican identity. But I don’t think Buntline is optimistic about this type of union working. In the end, it doesn’t matter that the US and Mexico are united in a marriage that erases the unwanted Mexican identity because the physical and practical reality of war overpowers that union. In the end, the Mexican cannot simply be married away––it must be destroyed.

'Bel of Prairie Eden: A Ghost Story

In Jesse Alemán’s article that we re-read this week, “The Other Country: Mexico, The United States, and the Gothic History of Conquest,” he uses the Freudian concept of unheimlich or “uncanniness” to discuss Gothic frontier literature and what he terms “inter-American studies.” I want to discuss these concepts in the context of the ways George Lippard’s ‘Bel of Prairie Eden “unearths” the uncanny relationship between the US and Mexico and the way he uses terror and literal haunting to reveal the “haunting history that must be excavated” (Alemán 409).

We’ve discussed many different possible delineations for how to talk about American literature, but Alemán’s “inter-American” concept works especially well for ‘Bel of Prairie Eden. Alemán frames his idea by clarifying that he is using the prefix “inter” to signify “‘burial’ to emphasize the idea that the presence of the other in the nation is ‘that which is concealed and kept out of sight’” but must also be uncovered through the literature, invoking Freud’s “uncanny” (409).

Mexican history of conquest is interestingly interred in ‘Bel of Prairie Eden. On the surface, it is a story of personal revenge. But folded inside the frame of the main narrative of the Grywins and Don Antonio Marin is the “Three Hundred Years Ago” passage, transporting us to the conflict between Montezuma and Cortes. This hidden history is unearthed and exposed. The history of Spanish conquest of Mexico haunts the narrative of personal revenge and vendetta, which is set in the context of the US/Mexico war. The narratives of imperial power are recycled, just as the violence is recycled between John Grywin, Don Antonio Marin and Ewen McGregor.

The connections between the layers of the narrative are tenuous, but the most interesting way I saw history haunting the “present” of Grywin and Don Antonio is in the Isle of Sacrificio. In a passage describing the earlier historical period, Lippard offers a grisly description of human sacrifice––a man’s heart being torn from his living chest––to the Aztec gods (147). This process is repeated by John, through Red Ewen, upon Don Antonio Marin, this time to appease John’s own sense of retribution. The physical space of the Isle of Sacrificio is haunted by its bloody history, collapsing time and space. Similarly, the individuals in the story have interred national narratives of conquest, imperialism, and violence––they are haunted by these ghosts. Don Antonio becomes literally haunted by Isabel who returns as “but a ghostly image from the regions of the dead, sent to haunt his perjured soul” (Lippard 162). John Grywin is haunted by the memory of his brother, Harry, killed by Don Antonio’s orders after being defeated at Rancho Salado; John repeatedly unearths the narrative, losing his composure at the remembrance of Harry’s death.

The history interred in ‘Bel of Prairie Eden is repeatedly dug up. The characters are haunted by the cycles of violence and retribution they act on one another, and the spaces they occupy are haunted by the imperial violence of the Spanish, being re-enacted by the US. ‘Bel is a ghost story, and when read through Alemán’s notion of “inter-American” studies, we see how the uncanny presence of the “buried” past serves to collapse the borders between space, nation, history, and time. Instead of a South-Westward expansion and a progressive movement of time, we have cycles of violence that refuse to stay in the past––a ghostly hand creeping up from the grave.