6

Leese / McLaughlin / Witalisz (eds.) Migration, Narration, Identity

This book presents articles resulting from joint research on the representations
of migration conducted in connection with the Erasmus Intensive Programme
entitled Migration and Narration taught to groups of international students
over three consecutive summers from 2010 to 2012. The articles focus on
various aspects of the migrant experience and try to answer questions about
migrant identity and its representations in literature and the media. The book
closes with an original play by Carlos Morton, the Chicano playwright working
in the United States.

www.peterlang.de

ISBN 978-3-631-62824-9

Peter Leese
Carly McLaughlin
Wadysaw Witalisz
(eds.)

Migration, Narration,
Identity
Cross-Cultural Perspectives

6
Text M eaning C ontext:
Cracow Studies in English Language,
Literature and Culture
Edited by
Elzbieta Chrzanowska-Kluczewska
Wadysaw Witalisz

Te x tMea ni ng Con t e xt :
Cracow Studies in English Language,
Literature and Culture
Edited by
Elzbieta Chrzanowska-Kluczewska
Wadysaw Witalisz
Advisory Board:
Monika Coghen (Jagiellonian University, Cracow)
Hans-Jrgen Diller (Ruhr-University, Bochum)
Marta Gibinska-Marzec

(Jagiellonian University, Cracow)

Irene Gilsenan Nordin (Dalarna University, Falun)
Christoph Houswitschka (University of Bamberg)
Zenn Luis Martnez (University of Huelva)
Elzbieta Manczak-Wohlfeld

(Jagiellonian University, Cracow)

Terence McCarthy (University of Bourgogne, Dijon)
Andrzej Pawelec (Jagiellonian University, Cracow)
Hans Sauer (University of Munich)
Olga Vorobyova (Kiev National Linguistic University)

Volume 6

Peter Leese
Carly McLaughlin
Wadysaw Witalisz
(eds.)

Migration, Narration,
Identity
Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche

Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the
Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is
available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

This publication was financially supported by

the LLP Erasmus Intensive Programme
"Migration and Narration" and Pan stwowa
Wyz sza Szkoa Zawodowa in Krosno

Cover Design:
Olaf Gloeckler, Atelier Platen, Friedberg

ISSN 2191-1894
ISBN 978-3-631-62824-9 (Print)
ISBN 978-3-653-02331-2 (E-Book)
DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-02331-2
Peter Lang GmbH
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Frankfurt am Main 2012
All rights reserved.
Peter Lang Edition is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any
utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without
the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to
prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions,
translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in
electronic retrieval systems.
www.peterlang.de

Table of Contents
Introduction
Peter Leese, University of Copenhagen................................................................ 7
CHAPTER 1
Iain Chambers, University of Naples
Migrating Modernities ........................................................................................ 13
CHAPTER 2
Gerard McCann, St. Marys University College Belfast
Analysing Lived Experience: Resistance to Structural Dominance ................... 21
CHAPTER 3
Peter Leese, University of Copenhagen
Equianos Memory: recuperative disclosure in the black Atlantic ..................... 45
CHAPTER 4
Pilar Cuder-Domnguez, University of Huelva
Revisiting Slavery: African Diasporic Consciousness in Lawrence Hills
The Book of Negroes........................................................................................... 57
CHAPTER 5
Mar Gallego, University of Huelva
On Both Sides of the Atlantic: Hybrid Identity and the Spanish-Speaking
Diaspora in Agns Agboton, Mnica Carrillo and Eulalia Bernard ................... 73
CHAPTER 6
Linda Godbold Kean, East Carolina University
Current Representations of Latinos in U.S. Entertainment
and News Media: An Overview.......................................................................... 91

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 7
Carly McLaughlin, University of Dalarna
Theres no place like home: on Third Culture Kids and Existential
Migration .......................................................................................................... 105
CHAPTER 8
Justyna Budzik, Jagiellonian University
In Search of Identity, a Place to Belong and Temps Perdu:
Bogdan Czaykowski's Poetic Confession ......................................................... 121
CHAPTER 9
Anna Lubecka, Jagiellonian University
Immigrants and their stories.............................................................................. 133
CHAPTER 10
The Golden Ones A One-Act-Play by Carlos Morton
with an Introduction by Wadysaw Witalisz.................................................... 145
Appendix........................................................................................................... 183

Introduction
Peter Leese, University of Copenhagen
In between places: a coach park, an airport waiting room, a dockside quay. A
passage made for profit but also for escape. A journey filled with empty hours,
with jumbled nostalgia and relief, with numbness shading into elation. At last,
an unnerving arrival of border guards and employment agencies.
The migrant often recalls such places, reasons and feelings.
Late August 1994. Sitting here, for the last eighteen hours, on a journey
from Victoria Coach Station to a railway car park in Cracow. Right now the
coach is stopped somewhere near the German-Polish border crossing, possibly
at Subice, or maybe at some no-name service area where everyone is tanking
up on petrol and coffee, chocolate and cigarettes, for the ten or more hours
ahead. Looking through the window I see a discount store selling off garden
gnomes, toy bears and shrubs. Travelling onwards, gliding across the central
German autobahn network, the coach passes endless empty verges, distant
apartment blocks, and from time to time a pharmaceutical or I.T. factory. Now,
snailing into the rutted and pot holed lanes of western and southern Poland,
there is nothing to look at but suburban traffic, nothing to feel but the bump of
the potholes across synonymous station stop-towns. Seven hours on, twentyfive hours into the journey, I am hypnotized by the road, dazed by my
motionless observation, wearied by the body heat and recycled air of my
fellow-passengers.
This must be my third or fourth such trip in the last eighteen months. Not so
different, this life overseas, from the old student life. Cash-poor, budget travel,
short-stay housing, discomfort and insecurity like the low background rumble of
an engine. Sometimes fatigue, disorientation, uncertainty if new friends are real
friends. A situation, a figure, a landscape can flicker back and forth between
monotone and dazzle, exhaustion and joy, torpor and magic, all in a moment.
After two years abroad the road surface Im travelling on begins to buckle and
subside, map names blur together, a friends face gradually pixilates. Being
abroad gradually becomes being an immigrant.
It isnt exactly an itinerary that got me here, more a purposeful wandering.
Practicalities where to settle, what to become havent really entered my
mind. There is a job, a rationale, but more importantly the addictive shocks, the
weirdness of the journey: the scramble of bag packing, the sensation of time
jammed up or speeding past. The sights. At a bus station on the edge of
Brussels, or maybe at some drop-off bay on the outskirts of Amsterdam, Turkish

Peter Leese

workers gather in a crowd. With mountains of baggage, like a travelling show of

jugglers and acrobats, like high-wire walkers, they wait to go on.
Being such a traveller, being such a migrant, is not merely the result of
getting off a coach or a boat, it does not often happen all at once. It emerges in
thought and feeling as much as from the judgment of the outside world. It stems
from the understanding that something has been left behind, forgotten. Finally, it
is a separation from that time when the world first came into focus, from the
first formation of tastes and beliefs; it is a departure from childhood.
Being an immigrant is always about moving away and moving towards: a
gentle see-saw that might at any moment become a nauseating jolt.
Nor is it ever really possible to go home. The migrant changes, and home
changes. There is no final destination, as the past can never be replaced, as it is
impossible to relive a childhood. Perhaps it is the imprint of childhood, though,
that leads me to settle in Nowa Huta, the post-war communist-built steel town
on the edge of Cracow. The people here remind me in their directness, their
dignity, of the steel town community where I was born, Sheffield, South
Yorkshire. The urgency to search for these parallels is obscured at the start of a
journey, and it may never be openly stated or understood. Nor does it matter
much at the outset.
What gradually becomes clear, though, is that things are not as they were.
Communication changes. A shopping trip is a success when I immediately show
my ignorance, my foreignness, by making some remark; or when a lack of
words, my non-native status, can be disguised and I can escape, purchases in
hand, without a difficult scene. For this reason soon after my arrival in Cracow,
on an early solo shopping trip, and with no common language, I develop the
habit of pretending to have no small change. Returning from my local open-air
fruit and vegetable market or from one of the small stores around my
neighbourhood, I carry silver and copper coins that pool and leak from pockets
into bags, onto shelves. As months pass they become multi-currency streams of
groszy and pennies and cents because now I do this in every country I go to,
England included. The desire to keep others judgments at bay can never
succeed, though. Becoming foreign changes me. In my birth country, values and
ideas include endless possible attitudes and choices, groups of friends, ways of
living; their complexity and richness can never be reduced to a few shorthand
symbols, to a Routemaster London bus or a footballer whose name is a global
brand. In my adopted country, in any migrants adopted homeland, it turns out
this is exactly what happens.
To become a migrant is to enter into a life of continual jolts and tremors, a
life of uncertainty, but willingly or not it is also to act out hope and a belief in
the future. Every migrant is to some degree embattled, enclosed, and yet at the

Introduction

same time exposed. Every migrant is also able to look, to see in a way that is not
available to a traveller or a resident who has only remained within the nearly
invisible borders of a single culture.
Whenever I travel back and forth between Poland and Britain nowadays I
travel within the European Union and on a low cost airline. The journey takes
two hours instead of thirty. Both countries are home. It was one night in a car
park on the Polish-German border, though, that alerted me to the absurd mix of
fear and hope and fascination that comes with being a migrant.
*
Fuerteventura, one of the larger Canary Islands, is a washed out landscape of
volcanic rock-lava fields. Colour is burned away in the scalding air; its high, long
surf beaches and hotel apartment blocks unpersuasively state that the island is
safely reclaimed for settlers and tourists. North Africa is near: almost visible,
hardly imaginable. Morocco, the Western Sahara, feel distant when surrounded by
cosy fish restaurants, bike hire shops and kite design studios. Yet while privileged
northern Europeans might find it impossible to understand a life lived alongside the
Atlas Mountains or in the western deserts, those whose life chances are more
limited have little choice but to imagine the overwhelmingly visible rich.
When photographs of desperate north- and sub-Saharan Africans washed
ashore in their little patera boats began to appear in European and American
newspapers in 2006, and when it was understood that these pictures came from
the coasts of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote rather than, say, Florida, the worlds
poorest migrants were suddenly, unavoidably exposed. These photographs were
striking too because they showed the expanse that separates rich and poor.
Where Africans see a potentially fatal if necessary journey to escape poverty, to
find a true life, Europeans see a desperate bid for the half-illusory riches of
Europe, but perhaps too that even a holiday destination may be more complex
than it first appears.
Caught between Africa and Europe, fringing the Atlantic, the Canaries, of
course, have their own connected, long history of people in motion. At Balos, on
Gran Canaria, is a rock engraving which may be a representation of sails, a
ribbed ships hull or a bench of prehistoric rowers. It is evidence for the use of
boats around the islands in pre-history, that is, before writing, but because it is
the only clue, and because it is so stylised, it is an inconclusive hint.1 Pliny
mentions that, like the Azores, Madeira and the Cape Verdes, the Canaries were
uninhabited, though the presence of Roman amphorae in the third century AD

























































1 J. Mercer, The Canary Islanders: their prehistory conquest and survival (London:
Collins, 1980), 70.

10

Peter Leese

shows there were visitors. In 1402-5 the French conquerors describe the boats
with which Gran Canaria islanders came alongside their ships to barter.
In a story familiar to many native peoples who came into contact with
European explorers and settlers, the ancient Canary Islanders, the Guanches,
were extinguished by the new arrivals, to be replaced with Arabs and Berbers.
By the sixteenth century slave labourers worked the Spanish-owned sugar
plantations. The old slave trade ended in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. By the later nineteenth century Canary Islanders were among the few
Europeans who moved to tropical America, several thousand to Cuba.
By the early 2000s the Canary Islanders were themselves receiving
immigrants: Moroccans with family connections, Sahariwas, and sub-Saharans
arrived from Cameroon, Togo, Ivory Coast, Senegal and elsewhere. By the early
2000s human rights activists, too, were alarmed by the inadequate legal counsel
and sanitary conditions at the old airport on Fuerteventura, which was now a
detention centre notorious for its unsanitary environs and severe overcrowding.
Movement and mobility, scattering and regrouping, settlement and
exploration: these are universal aspects of human experience at all times and in
all places, through pre-history as much as in the twenty-first century.
This universal quality gives the figure of the migrant a complex past and
present, inflected as it is by historical change, moral values and political debate.
Collectively, migrants may be represented as an arrow on a chart; migrants are
often described with images of water in motion: they move in streams, they may
arrive as an incoming tide. An influx is a place or point where one stream flows
into another, or where it flows into the sea. Migrants are, then, something like a
force of nature beyond human reasoning or control, influenced by invisible
gravity-like forces, which attract and repel like planets and stars. Here migrants
appear invisible, unimaginable and not altogether human.
In investigations into the past but also in newspaper stories and the latest TV
current affairs roundup, a dramatic report on the sea journey of some Cubans or
North Africans, third world boat people, a migrant is most often a victim,
possibly a menacing one, overwhelmed by hostile forces. As in the image, for
instance, of slaves, convict deportees or war refugees. Migrants can also be cast
as heroic escapees who succeed by bravery and enterprise, as in accounts of
ethnic and national communities abroad. Just as likely, migrants are destructive,
menacing, cynical exploiters of the host nations hospitality. Cheats, liars and
lawless aliens whose presence can only damage all that is settled and civilised.
If the case in favour of free migration is put, it is usually cast as one of
economic advantage for employers.
Yet in all of these discussions migrants rarely appear human. Indeed, being
defined as a migrant places strict confines on how any individual may be

Introduction

11

understood or treated. A migrant must come from somewhere that doesnt

matter, otherwise there would be no reason to leave; a migrant may add accent,
flavour or costume to the life of the host nation, within reason; a migrant ought
to be grateful, humble even, for being allowed to earn a living, learn a new
language, start again.
Yet it is still worth stating, worth repeating too, that a migrant is first and
above all a human. The denial of humanity has long been a tactic used by states
when they seek to pursue war or to subdue an unwanted population. Describing
the situation of African-Americans shortly after the Second World War, James
Baldwin saw the de-humanisation of others as self-delusion. To accept the black
population as equal was to jeopardise the situation of whites. But not to accept
him was to deny his humanity, reality, his human weight and complexity.2 The
present and past migrant is equally a figure with human weight and complexity,
equally a figure whose experience requires concentration and careful
consideration to be fully appreciated.
At the same time, imagination is at the centre of human movement as
individuals act it out wherever and whenever they move. Imagination and hope
may be extinguished in those who are compelled by force of circumstance or
arms to move; imagination and hope are preserved in those who go voluntarily
on search of the safer, the freer, the more enriching. Faith and desperation
contract together in every act of mobilization. Willingly or otherwise every
migrant must become an interpreter of signs and acts, a decoder of cultures.
Every migrant must cultivate an ethnographers eye to survive.
Our interest is in the human experience of migration in all its ambiguous and
subjective aspects, in the historical circumstances and geographical variations
that have altered that experience, and with it the world in which we all live. For
convenience, though, readers might want to keep in mind that global migration
as it exists now is the result of four phases: 1750-1830, exploration, slavery and
settlement; 1830-1914: mass proletarian free migrations, and the Asian (Indian
and Chinese) indentured labour migration system; 1914-60: movements related
to race and nationalist ideology, war and de-colonisation; since 1960: the new
global labour market, characterised by multiple sending and receiving societies.
Throughout this collection the individual and the collective stories are
inseparable: the technologies of mobility steam trains, bicycles, jet airplanes
are joined to the experience and meaning of cultural encounter; what migrants say
about themselves is as important, or as irrelevant, as what social investigators,
legislators or journalists have said about them. When the history of transportation

























































2 James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, in Collected Essays. Ed. Toni Morrison (New
York: Library of America, 1998), 127

12

Peter Leese

is seen through the eyes of the traveller, connected to the perception and emotion
of speed, distance and arrival, it becomes an altogether more interesting story than
might be suggested by a recounting of the introduction of metal carriage rails in
Shropshire (1767) or the troubled story of the Panama Canal project (beginning
1888). It now becomes a story of the industrialization and later even the partial
digitisation of time and space, of what it means both individually and collectively
to be propelled at increasing speed and across ever greater distances, of how the
ability to move resources gives power and reward to those who have it while
making powerless and disadvantaged those who do not, of how cultures can be
set on a disastrous collision course.
Just as the nature of and response to movement has changed since the advent
of industrialized transportation, so stories by and about migrants have changed.
Migrants have always remembered themselves into the future: projected what is
to come expectations, possibilities, goals based on the known past and not
on the unknown which is to come. What constantly alters is how migrants are
able to tell their story. While it is always possible, not to say psychologically
compelling, to tell stories which unite splintered lives into a coherent whole,
with greater rates of literacy it has become possible for migrants to record their
experiences first-hand as well as to have others write down and interpret their
accounts. Shorthand and tape recorders aid these changes, but also silent reading
beginning in the eighteenth century, writing skills among a growing population
and from it the habit of journal- or diary-keeping, the rise of autobiography as a
literary genre and later on of oral history. The period from the eighteenth to the
twentieth century has seen an increasing range of possible media for selfexpression as well as an increasing tendency to reflect on the feelings, thoughts
and memories of the subjective self.
In this respect communications hold a double meaning, and both of these
meanings express the changing historical experience of migration.
Communication networks are the routes along which travellers may pass:
shipping lanes and navigation routes, air corridors and ports, motorway systems
and dirt-track paths. At the same time, in parallel to the rise of physical mobility,
comes the rise of information mobility: the connections of individuals and
groups, at physically remote locations through the printing press, postal services,
television, the mobile phone and the world wide web.
Once, distances seemed to stretch out across an impossible vastness,
settlements could seem remote, unreal; now, space feels compressed,
everywhere is near at hand, familiar. The story of the migrant is the story of how
we have moved from there to here.

CHAPTER 1
Migrating Modernities
Iain Chambers, University of Naples

A translated world
What happens when roots are uprooted and transformed into routes? After
all, one of the significant ways of narrating Occidental modernity lies precisely
in such narratives of mobility: from the age of maritime discovery and the
Atlantic slave trade to the mass migrations of Europes rural poor to the New
World, to today and capitals global reorganisation of planetary labour power
through the biopolitical selection and policing of the south of the world in its
material and immaterial journeys north. Perhaps more than what I have to say,
Michael Winterbottoms In this world (2002) most effectively illustrates this
and the following arguments. The type of perspective this brushes up against
challenges and ultimately undoes the static identities once proposed by the
European nation state and today expressed in the desire for homogeneous
localisms. It suggests a world in a state of migration and translation. Here the
local insistence on belonging secured in blood and soil fights a losing, if still
brutal and vicious, battle to preserve its claims on the world.
These considerations of a translated and translatable world also lead to a
significant shift in method. Rather than thinking of migration and modernity, for
example, as seemingly neutral objects of historical, sociological, anthropological
and literary enquiry (a criticism that can still be brought against many
contemporary sociological and anthropological perspectives), we might change
register here and begin to think with migration and follow its implications into
the folds of a multiple modernity. Rather than presume a priori to be in the
position to explain and ultimately control the phenomenon, the process, we
might come to be affected by migration in our critical language and everyday
understandings of a changing world. This, again, would be to abandon the
shorelines of previous certainties in order to register, negotiate and navigate
processes that are never simply ours to determine and define.
Opposed to the critical security afforded by an unambiguous terrestrial and
territorial location (for example, think of the display of identitarian certitude in
the organisation of national museums and libraries, in the curriculums and
syllabuses of schools and universities), perhaps we need to entertain a more
open and altogether less assured critical attitude. This would involve learning
from the elsewhere, learning from how what we consider to be our world is

14

Iain Chambers

translated as we come to be dispossessed of a modernity that we are used to

considering only in our terms. The one time objects of anthropological attention
and more occasionally of historical and social analysis the others, the nonEuropeans, the migrants have today to be recognised as historical subjects.
They, too, are translators, taking and transforming our languages, technologies
and techniques elsewhere, rendering modernity otherwise. They are no longer
simply the passive objects of our concerns and concepts. We, in turn, can
become objects of an others gaze; we, too, that is our modernity, can be
translated and rendered different, re-routed and renewed. So, and to repeat, this
is not so much about thinking of migration and the subaltern south of the world,
for example, as thinking with migration and the once excluded world of the
migrant, the rural peasant and the dispossessed of the shanty towns that cling to
edge of todays metropolises.
The initial impetus of this argument is drawn from Antonio Gramscis
consideration on The Southern Question La Questione Meridionale (1926)
that gives attention to the integral part played by the subaltern, peasant south in
the economical and political realisation of the industrial, urban north. Today
such considerations can be extended from the south of Italy to the south of
Europe, to the southern shore of the Mediterranean and, ultimately, to the south
of the planet. The centre is not only dependent on its peripheries, it can also be
evaluated through them. This, of course, is echoed in Frantz Fanons noted
dictum that the First World is fundamentally a product of the Third World.
Now this translatable space, which is the modern world, is increasingly
characterised by the drift of language: consider those earlier empires of violently
sea-borne empires that have left their linguistic, literary and cultural marks all
over the globe: Spanish, English, French, but also more minor empires such as
Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, even German. These languages, clearly no longer the
property of their originary homelands, also host other histories and cultures,
also provide a home for others. Out of this matrix, formed over five centuries as
the world has persistently come to be elaborated in European image and
interests, there emerge counter-histories, counter-narratives, other accounts of
modernity and the modern world.

Migration and modernity

The critical idea, then, is that migration provides a stark cartography with which
to map, narrate and consider the transit and transformation of global
modernities. Nearly every day the so-called immigrant problem occupies the
headlines of European and North American newspapers, often accompanied by
the photos of abject and invariably non-white bodies squeezed together in airless

Migrating Modernities

15

containers, or else huddled on tiny boats crossing the Mediterranean, to be

abandoned, if they survive, on its northern beaches.
Yet these aliens, these foreign bodies are not, of course, foreign; they are
intimate partners in the planetary procedures that have made the modern world.
For migration is one of the central chapters of modernity. Its violent and
structural, not accidental, history proposes a largely unacknowledged critical
narrative with which to register modernity. Today, there exists far more than
merely a suggestive connection between the slave histories and political
economies of the eighteenth-century Black Atlantic and the contemporary
countergeographies of migration.
As the Swiss artist Ursula Biemann puts it: Counter-geography is where the
subversive, informal, and irregular practices of space take place, the ones that
happen despite state forces and supranational regulations. 1 In the subaltern
cartographies of power that sustain the passage from the south of the world
within planetary modernity a fundamental reconfiguration is in play. If Africa in
the Americas not only economically made, but also culturally reinvented, the
New World (from the blues and jazz to reggae and rap), then contemporary
migrations, as the implacable symptoms of the planetary reorganization of the
labour force of capitalist accumulation, are similarly destined to challenge and
refashion the cultural contexts that they traverse and transform. In the words of
the Italian sociologist Alessandro Dal Lago: Immigration, more than any other
phenomenon, is capable of revealing the so-called host society. When we speak
of immigrants we speak of ourselves It is for this reason that an analysis of
immigration which does not put itself in question is constitutionally
amputated and ultimately false.2

Race, power and democracy

Sustained and invariably amplified after 9/11 and the destruction of the Twin
Towers in New York is the increasing identification of modern migration with a
racialized otherness. The aggressive and fundamentalist languages that seek to
defend civilization and European values invariably lend a potent racism to
both individual state and European Union legislation busily identifying and
managing the immigrant emergency, within and beyond its borders. While the
European Union extends itself eastward to include other polities, it

























































1 Ursula Biemann and Brian Holmes, Introduction to The Maghreb Connection:
Movements of Life Across North Africa. Ed Biemann and Holmes (Barcelona: Actar,
2006), 7.
2 Alessandro Dal Lago, Non-persone (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2008), 13.

16

Iain Chambers

simultaneously stretches exclusionary legislation southwards. Laws concerning

citizenship and the management of the labour market increasingly betray the
bio-political powers of national and transnational agencies to organize
populations in racialised hierarchies that are rapidly popularized in everyday
practices and associated forms of discrimination and apartheid. Power is
translated into race and the racialising categories of control.
Racism is itself a direct offspring of the precise construction of existing
political formations and what we call the public sphere. For these are spaces
that are never simply open. They have consistently been constituted through
inclusions and exclusions, through possibilities of access, control, and negation;
and, above all, through the shifting political, cultural and historical orchestration
of what passes for identity and belonging (national, civic, cultural,
historical). This is why, ultimately, the ideology of liberalism, and its associated
freedoms, is founded on the widespread exercise of illiberal practices that
monitor and where necessary negate the freedom of others.
In the end, civil freedoms in the north of the world have been structurally
dependent on the lack, even negation, of the freedom of others. Further
complicating the question is the prison house of identity, invariably tied to the
conquest of the state by the idea of the nation, as Hannah Arendt pointed out in
The Origins of Totalitarianism. The possible heterogeneity of the civil and
cultural components of the state have increasingly been held hostage to the
homogeneity required by modern nationalisms and their narration of modernity:
this is as true of Britain, Italy and Poland, as of contemporary China, Turkey and
Israel. Multiplicity is governed in the name of the singular, the unique; it is
governed in the name of that pulsating abstraction of nationhood where the
mythical securities of blood and soil still continue to reverberate.

The colonial present

So here we are forced to acknowledge that the present response of government
to extra-European immigration is not merely a political reply to immediate
xenophobia fuelled by economical and social crises. Beyond repressive
legislation there is a structural violence inherited in particular modalities of
reason that have historically emerged in the persistent gap between European
humanism, its moral philosophy, and the practices of the West both at home and
abroad. To think of the crucial interrelationship between colonialism,
citizenship, democracy and migration in the realisation of Occidental modernity,
is to register a historical violence both in the colonial cut and the subsequent
postcolonial wound that bleeds into all accountings of the past and the present.

Migrating Modernities

17

Today, this troubled and unruly inheritance is augmented by the fact that the
controlling distance of a colonial abroad is no longer available: Algeria, the
Caribbean, sub-Saharian Africa, India are here amongst us. Such proximities
are the frequently unwelcomed social side of globalisation. It is precisely these
proximities, encountered most sharply in the cities, streets, signs, sounds and
cultures of the so-called First or overdeveloped World that dramatically
accentuate the planetary scale of the cruel interval between justice and the law,
to quote the Cameroon intellectual Achille Mbembe.3 The migrant is always
under the law, invariably in a state of illegality, and hence frequently without
justice.
As the geographer Ali Bensad has justly noted, the contemporary global
opening up of economic space is simultaneously accompanied by the brutal
closing down of human space. Worldly time is domesticated, disciplined and
then differentiated by the political needs of global capital.4 For example, the
current militarization of the Mediterranean, precisely at the point where the
Third World washes up against the overdeveloped one, does not simply recall
other barriers the US/Mexico boundary fence or the wall between Israel and
the scattered territories of an impossible Palestine (not to speak of all the
electronic walls, eyes, and controls that track global movement as we walk
through airports and downtown centres) but more precisely dovetails into
strategies seeking to manage flows of planetary populations and wealth.
Mobility, surely the essence of globalization, is here criminalized subsequent to
juridical control, containment and being held in infinite custody. Once again, the
migrant is inside the law, but nearly always without rights or redress. 5
This, of course, is also the translation of a colonial inheritance into the
contemporary complexities and problematics of the postcolonial city. Faced
with contemporary migration, it is impossible to ignore the ghosts of history,
and the links in a chain that extends from West Africa five hundred years ago to
the coasts of southern Europe today and then on into the heartlands of the
occidental metropolis. These are the abusive links of the hidden, but essential,
histories of the traffic in bodies across the Atlantic yesterday, across the
deserts of north Africa, central Asia and northern Mexico today in the
formation of modernity. The negation of a memory evoked by the questioning

























































3 Achille Mbembe, What is postcolonial thinking? An interview with Achille Mbembe,
Eurozine: www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-01-09-mbembe-en.html.
4 Ali Bensad, The Militarization of Migration: Frontiers in the Mediteranean, in
Biemann and Holmes, 2006, 12-31.
5 Enrica Rigo, Europa di confine. Trasformazioni della cittadinanza nellUnione allargata
(Rome: Meltemi, 2005); also Eyal Weisman, Hollow Land: Israels Architecture of
Occupation (London: Verso, 2007).

18

Iain Chambers

presence of the contemporary migrant betrays a critical incapacity to consider

ones own past and its responsibility in the making of the present. For the
interrogative presence of the migrant announces planetary processes that are not
merely ours to manage and define. He or she draws Europe and the West to the
threshold of a modernity that exceeds itself and is not merely ours to manage
and define.

The right to migrate

The right to migrate was announced in Article 13 of the United Nations
Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Europes poor from Italy to
Scandinavia, from Poland, Greece and Germany to Ireland exercised this
right for several centuries. Today, no European state recognises this right;
migration has largely become a criminal activity. The modern state is presently
conducting a war, through the codified terror of its territorial jurisdiction,
against those considered alien and not belonging to the nation. The modern state
does not recognise human beings, only citizens. The migrant, as a non-citizen or
non-person6 is reduced to an anonymous and abstract legal object: bare life7.
Here, returning to Ursula Biemanns counter-geographies, we can register
that postcolonial spatio-temporalities disturb and interrupt the presumptions of
the measured legalisation of a controlled modernity by consistently inserting the
unruly persistence of continual translation linguistic, historical, cultural into
the picture. The plantation, the slave ship, colonial massacres in deserts and
jungles, concentration camps, transit refugee centres, border agencies and
security procedures, ghettos and segregation, do not simply propose the ghosts
of Europes colonial, imperial and global past; they are also practices and forms
of power that cast their shadows over the postcolonial city and reproduce
themselves in the affective economies of the present. It is, above all, the modern
migrant who most intensely delineates this constellation.
Suspended in the nets of economical, political and cultural expropriation, it
is the migrant who carries such histories and frontiers within herself, exposing
the structural, epistemological and psychological violence distilled in the
everyday textures of the postcolonial city. If the migrants body is expressly
written into punitive legislation, her mobility continually exposes the instability
of abstract distinctions and borders. The migrant is not merely the historical
symptom of a mobile modernity; rather she is the persistent and condensed
interrogation of the true identity of todays planetary political subject. At the end

























































6 Alessandro Dal Lago, Non-Persone, (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2008).
7 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita (Turin: Einaudi, 1995).

Migrating Modernities

19

of the day, his or her precariousness is also ours; for it exposes the coordinates
of a worldly condition in both the dramatic immediacy of everyday life and in
the arbitrary violence that is sustained in the abstract reach of the polity and the
law. Citizenship is not a permanent state, it is a precarious one.

Citizenship and the postcolonial city

Perhaps it is above all in First World cities that the cultural and political struggle
for the hegemony of the global narrative is most acutely relayed. It is here that
different histories are both replayed and resisted as the city reveals in its
biopolitics, racial, gendered and ethnic markers that are continually patrolled
and zoned to establish who is socially, economically and politically out of
place.
In the struggle for a space, a place, in the city, there once again emerges the
archaeology of modernity: the city as the site of sedimented histories of
migration (from the country to the city, from elsewhere to here; once on a local
level now in multiple, and intricately connected planetary, scales). And if the
policing of the city is also the policing of democracy, and the control and
reduction of public space is also the control and reduction of its liberties, then
the hybridisation of urban space in imperial European cities suggests that there
are urban dwellers who are refusing and refuting the definitions allotted them.
Their lives, their actions, suggest that the inter- and trans-cultural spaces of the
city also house uprooted epistemologies in which identities and belonging,
knowledge and understanding, are neither ethnically contained nor sustained in a
single territory, but are rather tied to the multiple movement of urban life; in
other words, are always in process, in transit, in translation.
It is here that the migrants time as the temporality of repressed and
negated times announces the metropolitan pulse of a migrating modernity. An
interruption is operated in our time, like the blue note of a subaltern historical
score: through it modernity migrates elsewhere to return with other modalities
and meanings, but nearly always here lies the disquieting and displacing sense
of an unhomely and decentred modernity within the languages of the West
itself. Here we find slipping through our hands the disturbing theme that the
seemingly universalist syntax of democracy has historically been sustained
through the specific negation of democracy to others. Our political, economical
and cultural rights have been elaborated through the structural negation of
similar rights to others.
In his noted Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), Walter Benjamin
observed that the historical emergency is a permanent condition. He was
referring to the condition of the subaltern and the historically defeated: those

20

Iain Chambers

that today inhabit the interstices and margins of the modern metropolis, the
slums and the south of the world. Today, listening to government
pronouncements and the unilateral sense propagated in the universalist
semantics of the Western media, it would seem that it is we who are under
attack; that Western hegemony is the victim, under siege and in a constant state
of emergency. To evaluate a language based on the violent negation of alterity
(this could equally be a definition of the modern European State, the Cartesian
subject, and the contemporary conceptualisation of citizenship) clearly implies
the necessity to return to the analysis of the very definition of the European
we, and of our democracy.
This, in the end, is perhaps to acquire an apprenticeship in critical
responsibility and to begin to navigate the true heart of darkness of Europe
announced by a Polish writer more than a hundred years ago. That heart of
darkness, which as you may well remember, Jzef Teodor Konrad
Korzeniowski, better known as Joseph Conrad, pointed out, lay not in Africa,
but in Bruxelles, in London, in Berlin, in the cities of Europe; that is, in the
heartlands of its primary narrative and translating disposition: in the very soul of
occidental modernity and its democracy.

CHAPTER 2
Analysing Lived Experience:
Resistance to Structural Dominance
Gerard McCann, St. Marys University College Belfast
Attempts to develop the study of cultural experience as an academic discipline
have caused intense debate across the academic spectrum since the infamous
Oxbridge science versus culture or two cultures exchange between C. P.
Snow and F. R. Leavis in the 1960s. The central contention that galvanized the
differing positions was that culture as a subject of study carries with it a series of
interrelated elements  such as political consciousness, social conventions,
parochial attitudes, communitarian impulses, ethos, gender perceptions or
personal social memories  all of which have a tendency to confuse the methods
of analysing research material from primary sources. For those from more
orthodox intellectual traditions these elements invariably frustrated the
methodology and much of it was seen as unworthy of scrutiny. Ultimately, what
evolved in the discourse around cultural experience through to the 1990s was a
sequence of awkward attempts to utilize (in a theoretical way) meanings and
values which coalesce between the environments within which people live and
the experiences of which culture is a manifestation. The dispute between the
purveyors of science and the voices of culture remained unreconciled.
For many these attempts have not been altogether successful because of the
complication that values, by their very nature, are unquantifiable and essentially
subjective. Lived cultural experiences, problematically for some, have meaning
beyond the context and therefore demand a more protean method of reflection.
Science and theory in a more formal sense have struggled to accommodate these
experiences in a qualitative manner. One of the architects of the discipline of
Cultural Studies, Raymond Williams, defined the problem very succinctly
research methods needed to be informed by the way of life, us: real human
beings. In History in the Making Stephen Woodhams noted of this process: ...
culture is material in the sense that it is the pattern in which our lives are led;
and that pattern has to be lived in consciousness as well as behaviour and
therefore changes in culture are also about changes in ourselves and our selfperceptions.1 The sophistication of the experiences of life, the way of living
and our reflection of this through periods in history, needed a more fluid
methodology than many academic traditions could accommodate.

























































1 Stephen Woodhams, History in the Making (London: Merlin Press, 2001), 176.

22

Gerard McCann

Culture and value orientation are important in the research methods of

disciplines such as philosophy, political theory and history due to their ability to
link context and experience, as well as having the unique attribute of being able
to convey the fluid impressions of actual lived experiences. Philosopher Antonio
Gramsci defined culture as a spontaneous philosophy which is proper to
everybody, that common sense of social interaction within which every society
evolves.2 Hence the theoretical difficulties over the most appropriate methods of
dealing with cultural meaning as social form and the problems faced by those
attempting to accommodate its fluidity, bias and pervasiveness into formal
theory or science. Additionally, and to complicate things further, there is the
question of applied social justice and the belief that lived experiences often
emotionally charged and ideologically packed deserve a hearing. This brings
forward the hypothesis that common experience is the source of human agency
and that through personal and familial sensitivities, campaigning and narrative
reflection, individuals can contribute to meaningful political and socio-economic
change. This article will assess the debate between two contending schools of
thought working with culture and lived experience as subjects of analysis. The
first is based on a structuralist approach with its various deviations, and the
second is the humanist approach as articulated by the early New Left and the
history from below tradition. It will also assess the success or otherwise of
interventions trying to build theoretical bridges between these two opposing
traditions.

Raising the Question of Culturalism

The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) was established in 1964
by Richard Hoggart with the objective of combining academic approaches and
methods which study popular culture. This cross-disciplinary project aimed to
explore the nature of the concept of culture in its broadest sense, providing a
forum for the qualitative analysis of themes which were previously often
quantitatively focused  themes such as the media, popular culture, music and
language. The initiative offered a channel for analyzing subjective elements of
society (this spontaneous philosophy) under the banner of culture and had
the intention of assessing cultural forms in all their practices, institutions and
effects, before relating these to changes within society in general.3 Together
with the developing (continental) school of structuralist theory in the late 1960s

























































2 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence and Wishart,
1971), 419-25.
3 Graham Turner, British Cultural Studies (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990), 76-84.

Analysing Lived Experience: Resistance to Structural Dominance

23

and 1970s, those involved in the Centre set out to survey new interpretations of
cultural theory, and among other engagements tried to refine new ways of
approaching humanist theory and their preference for studying subjective
evidence. Within this dialogue early New Left theory (also defined as
humanist or socialist humanist in the British context) and particularly
influential studies on class experience, political struggles and lived
communitarian experience, came under scrutiny by G. A. Cohen, Paul Hirst,
Barry Hindess, Gregor McLennan, Richard Johnson, Keith McClelland, Stuart
Hall and Bill Schwarz. A particular target was a historical methodology
articulated by E. P. Thompson, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Eugene Genovese,
Dorothy Thompson, Raphael Samuel and the history from below tradition.
As a consequence of this criticism, humanist research methods were to
become the target of a reappraisal based on accusations of populism and
culturalism by the Centres Richard Johnson and Gregor McLennan, while
highlighting the extent of theoretical differentiation that existed between Marxist
structuralism and humanism. As time went on the tensions between structuralist
and humanist tendencies to a large extent became the focus of the Centres
understanding of the disciplines of history and political theory. The hub of the
engagement revolved around the work of Louis Althusser, the philosophical
voice of the French Communist Party in the 1970s and E. P. Thompson, the
British New Left and Labour Partys unorthodox peace campaigner. This
exchange was to become one of the most acrimonious intellectual exchanges of
the 1970s in Western Europe. Scott Hamilton commented on the stand-off in
The Crisis of Theory: Thompson regarded Althusser and his disciples as an
arrogant and otherworldly posse of poseurs, while Althusser believed the
empiricist and humanist tradition Thompson identified with was shot through
with philistinism and obscurantism. 4 Ideologically and philosophically they
were at the opposite ends of the spectrum yet were brought crashing together
with one problem how to deal with peoples subjective interpretations of the
society in which they lived and worked.
Although the initial reception of Louis Althussers structuralism in Britain
was hostile, for an intense period in the 1970s, structuralism a method of
discerning historical evidence through the scrutiny of structural forms  was
assimilated into the spectrum of interdisciplinary university based debate. At
first confronted by sustained scepticism from varying quarters (including
Norman Geras and Andre Glucksmann in the New Left Review), by the mid1970s a core school had emerged to defend and expand on Althussers definition

























































4 Scott Hamilton, The Crisis of Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011),
192.

24

Gerard McCann

of theoretical engagement. 5 The application of Althussers epistemology to

various disciplines (political theory, sociology, philosophy and historiography)
was to have a profound effect on the direction taken by British political theorists
and historians. The Centre, and cultural studies in general, was to follow through
with this assimilation process to incorporate systems theory and indices into the
analysis of lived experience. Structural formation came to be seen as a basis for
human interaction, cultural expression a manifestation of structure. Theory
based on humanism, in order to preserve its broad-based identity and open
system, needed a definitive rejection of any attempted hybrid the integrity of
the experience needed to be maintained. Thompson presented his own
objections to structuralism in his 1978 essay The Poverty of Theory in an
attempt to mobilise a coherent and assertive resistance to the adaptation of
Althusserian methodology into British historiography in particular and the arts
in general. He set out to reaffirm a tradition which emanated from an
uncompromising denial of functionalist and structuralist perspectives  whether
pertaining to a Marxian schema or not. Unlike New Left colleagues Perry
Anderson and Raymond Williams, both of whom found certain aspects of
Althussers thesis offering positive influences (most notably with the concept of
over-determination), Thompsons stance remained stalwart Althusserianism
is Stalinism, Althusserianism... is Utilitarianism of the left. 6 Thus any
theoretical concessions to structuralism were deemed to be compromising a
libertarian tradition, the historiographical methods of history from below and
the work of a generation of radical British historians  Donna Torr, Maurice
Dobb and their successors.
The position taken by Thompson against structuralism and in defence of a
more flexible way of dealing with lived experience provoked a number of critical
reassessments of this peculiar understanding of historical development. Keith Nield
and John Seed in their study of the debate, Theoretical Poverty or the Poverty of
Theory, interpreted Thompsons treatment of Althusserian theory in The Poverty
of Theory as insisting on theoretical closure, an authoritarianism that mirrored
Althussers dogmatism. For them Thompsons fundamentalism in defence of a
libertarian method was every bit as absolute, the bifurcation every bit as
essentialist, as the Althusserian approach.7 The incompatibility between these
two absolutes could be measured by the vehemence of the polemic, where

























































5 John Clarke, New Times and Old Enemies (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1991), 1-19.
6 E. P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (London: Merlin, 1978), 182.
7 Keith Nield and John Seed, Theoretical Poverty or the Poverty of Theory: British
Marxist Historiography and the Althusserians, Economy and Society 8 (1979), pp. 383416, 397-8.

Analysing Lived Experience: Resistance to Structural Dominance

25

Thompson even appeared willing to compromise theoretical practice per se in an

attempt to expel all mechanical reduction. His stated aims were political and moral
in order to emphasize the praxical and dynamic aspects of popular engagement
(protest) against authoritarianism and hegemonic dominance, impulses which
Althusserianism appeared incapable of handling. For Thompson it was about
people struggling for a better society; for Althusser it was about perfecting systems
of interaction. Ultimately, Thompsons belief was that the structuralist
methodology was little more than a complex reaffirmation of the Leninist base and
superstructure metaphor  where the mode of production contained a social
structure (encompassing political, ideological, value-orientated and cultural
aspects) from which a social totality could be theoretically discerned  with all the
elements being accountable to an economic base. This reproach was to dominate
Thompsons objections to structuralism.
The emergence of a structural conception of class in particular shaped
criticisms of Thompsons thought in a number of ways. For those emphasizing
the need for a scientifically discerned method, Thompsons work and his
apparent reliance on historical evidence (lived experience, peoples hopes,
aspirations, customs) left him open to a volley of criticism. This line of thought
led Althusserians Hirst and Hindess to conclude that: Marxism, as a theoretical
and a political practice, gains nothing from its association with historical writing
and historical research. The study of history is not only scientifically but also
politically valueless.8 The repost was targeted at open philosophy also. Their
approach presented a scientifically discerned theoretical practice as the
determining procedure in the analysis of class interaction, thus abandoning or
ignoring lived experience, human agency and cultural forms as ineffective
ideological configurations. Structural prerequisites were all that counted in the
fight to be objective and scientific. Against history from below, G. A. Cohen,
in his seminal work Karl Marxs Theory of History: A Defence, explained the
method in this way:
A persons class is established by nothing but his objective place in the network of
ownership relations, however difficult it may be to identify such places neatly. His
consciousness, culture, and politics do not enter the definition of his class position.
Indeed, these exclusions are required to protect the substantive character of the
Marxian thesis that class position strongly conditions consciousness, culture, and
politics. The structural conception of class enables important distinctions between
types of immediate producer. It was his perception of structure and its importance
which led Marx to claim that he had discovered the anatomy of society.9

























































8 B. Hindess and P. Hirst, Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1975), 312.
9 G. A. Cohen, Karl Marxs Theory of History: A Defence (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), 73.

26

Gerard McCann

Cohen rejected the humanist attempts to interpret this Marxian principle

otherwise. The contradiction for history from below, he believed, was derived
from the equation that if production relations do not mechanically determine
class consciousness, then class may not be defined purely in terms of
production relations. 10 For Cohen, definitions of class depended upon
production relations and not upon culture or consciousness which, he suggested,
they did in Thompsons interpretation. Perry Anderson, in his Arguments Within
English Marxism, was later to concur with and reassert this reading by noting
that Thompsons method relied upon little other than consciousness.11
Thompsons theoretical framework was presented as being grounded in
superstructural premises, largely in order to assault mechanical readings of
class. Cohen assumed that this was not a legitimate critique of the structural
definition of historical materialism, but merely the converse of a dogmatic
mechanistic reading in absolute opposition. Thompson, therefore, in an
approach similar to Georg Lukcs in History and Class Consciousness, would
appear to give consciousness priority in interpreting economic development. As
a consequence this notion of class could be read as merely a theoretical
justification for popular movements and protest, surveyed through any evidence
of oppositional political culture and experiences emanating from socioeconomic relations. Bill Schwarz in The People in History emphasized this
nuance in the belief that it explained the preoccupation of the history from
below historians with the protests and early radical movements.12 Experiences
and cultures were tested for validity or rationality, and history was
subsequently employed to justify the self-affirming prerequisites of a humanist
view of the world. The approach, Schwarz argued, depended on a constant
search to affirm the notion of subjective experience so typical of this school of
thought. It was not objective enough. Gregor McLennan went further in
assessing this aspect of history from below:
Thompsons humility with respect to the human agency he observes in the history of
subordinate classes is counterbalanced by the moral outrage directed against those
(especially Marxists) who seek to replace individuality and agency by the
reification of concepts: a reductionist scholasticism which cannot but lead to
political sectarianism. For Thompson, history requires the closest attention to the
feelings and motives of those who, due to bias or philistinism, have been lost to our
own modern experience. Historical study therefore necessitates a certain suspension
of presuppositions, an empathetic ability to listen to people whose essential

























































10 Cohen, 1978, 75.
11 Perry Anderson, Arguments Within English Marxism (London: Verso, 1980), 40.
12 Bill Schwarz, The People in History, in Making Histories. Ed. Richard Johnson
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), 44-95.

Analysing Lived Experience: Resistance to Structural Dominance

27

rationality in terms of their everyday experience relative to the conditions of their

own society is often cynically dubbed by the right as the spontaneity of the mob, or
by the left as ideology something pre-given by a social structure.13

Thompsons histories appeared to be a reaction to mechanical and economic

determinism in a wholesale opposition. This suggested that his view tended
only to the partisan, the oppositional perspective, advocating a type of
populism in opposition to any form of scientism. Experiences depicting
popular resistance to political and economic adversity became a common feature
of this understanding of class. The allegiances were uncompromising in relation
to structuralist methods. Johnson noted: We must choose a sociology of
structure or a sociology of struggle, become enmeshed in the machinery of
function or minimize conditions in favour of human praxis, construct logical
and empty categories or fall back on the familiar method of hypothesis and
fact. 14 Thompsons interpretation represented such a total objection to
intellectual elitism that it could be defined as anti-elitist in theoretical as well as
political terms. Consequently, his theory of class seemed to be politically
defined through its opposition, the resort to popular resistance  from the
Luddites to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament  being perceived as a
constant renewal of a specific libertarian tradition. Alternatively, Althussers
political thought was unapologetically compounded through elitism. For
Thompson, the polemic against elitism was an attempt to exorcise the sectarian
variant of Stalinism that was emerging in the Left in Britain, while exacting an
invigorated, broader, reference point beyond the orthodox, Soviet Communist
Partys view of historical development.15 The central difficulty facing the critics
of humanist thought was in dealing with this form of experiential analysis with
its obvious radical credentials, and a peculiarly British type of socialism.

Reconciling poles
The label most commonly directed against Thompson for his method of
handling peoples experiences and common values was the one which he had
rejected as far back as 1961 in The Long Revolution. Criticism came under the
label culturalism. Continuing the line of thought that his method was
subjectively inclined and politically populist, some commentators refused to

























































13 Quoted in Richard Johnson, Edward Thompson, Eugene Genovese, and Socialist
Humanist History, History Workshop Journal 6 (1978), pp. 79-100, 84-85.
14 Richard Johnson, Against Absolutism, in Peoples History and Socialist Theory. Ed.
Ralph Samuel (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 386-96, 386.
15 Schwarz, 1982, 44-48.

28

Gerard McCann

accept the ubiquitous nature of class relations which Thompson and his
colleagues portrayed, viewing his work as merely the investigation of
superstructural spheres. Influenced by the work of structuralist thinkers such
as Nicos Poulantzas, Paul Hirst, Barry Hindess and Jerry Cohen, a number of
commentators at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies attempted to
reassess the methodology of Thompson with the view to a compromise. The
proposal tabled by Richard Johnson, one time director of the Centre, was for a
synthesis of the contending poles in the debate surrounding historical analysis
or high theory as the inheritor of the theoretical heritage of the Left in Britain
(Thompson and Althusser representing the theoretical poles). Thompsons
position was presented as the antithesis of the Althusserian position, the
culturalist for which all determination collapsed into the experiential, while
Althusser remained the dogmatic structuralist working through his theoretical
practice. The initial contention was that the humanist perspective broke with
methods that were employed by Marx himself (and Maurice Dobb and the
orthodox British Marxist Historians Group) to apply a restricted, culturally
inclined method. Johnson proposed that this approach should be readjusted and
corrected away from a superstructural emphasis (or, more narrowly, socialisthumanist history) towards introducing a more balanced approach which would
embrace much of the structuralist hypothesis.
Although Thompsons understanding of historical analysis was undeniably
shaped by the political legacy of the autumn of 1956 and opposition to
Stalinism, Johnson saw this stance as generating a moment of culture against
mechanical determinism. From this periodization humanism could be seen to
represent a British variant of a European-wide realignment and a reaction
against the mechanistic constraints of Soviet Marxism:
The English concern with culture and experience, traceable in both literary and
historical work, was matched by Sartres project to blend existentialism and
Marxism and by the more cultural or psychological emphases of the Frankfurt
School. Major figures of the European tradition were re-discovered: the early more
experiential Marx of the 1844 Manuscripts and alienation, the early work of
Lukcs, [and] Gramscis stress on ethico-political relations...16

Alternatively, Althusserianism was seen to be engulfed within the political

absolutes of the Cold War, which enforced a moment of theory in defence of
orthodox Marxism against the increasing popularity of libertarian and humanist
tendencies. What was essential for both, in Johnsons view, was compromise, a
meeting of minds in order to abandon the respective oppositions in the interest
of a more complete analytical platform upon which to work. Johnson, in

























































16 Johnson, 1978, 80.

Analysing Lived Experience: Resistance to Structural Dominance

29

Edward Thompson, Eugene Genovese, and Socialist-Humanist History,

innovatively attempted to construct such a compromise for humanism within the
orbit of Althusserian theoretical practice. In doing so Johnson called for a
methodological return to the tradition of Maurice Dobb and Donna Torr, an
orthodox historiography, by incorporating the procedural traits of Dobbs 1946
magnum opus, Studies in the Development of Capitalism. Dobbs study,
formulated on the basis of an analysis of the mode of production, had operated
from what Johnson referred to as an economic bias. 17 He suggested a
reapplication of Dobbs historiographical method where the theoretical and
categorical could be adapted to integrate the historical and experiential material
which was supplied.
Johnson believed that the late 1950s and 1960s had seen a graduated move
away from an integrated approach by the British historians and increasingly
towards purely cultural concerns  in an attempt to draw from the actual hopes
and aspirations of those who had been engaging in various protests, counter
culture and political engagements. This break, as Johnson saw it, was
epitomized by the inconsistencies which were apparent between Dobbs Studies
in the Development of Capitalism and Thompsons The Making of the English
Working Class. One method analysed the experiences of production, the other
the experiences of communities in protest against adversity (the Chartists,
corresponding societies, religious organisations, labour movements, etc.).
Furthermore, Johnson saw the break as being marked by ignorance, deliberate or
otherwise, of the central concerns of Marx  that of modes of production  to
relocate a peculiar, experientially based reading of the concept of class as the
master category. With this revision the analysis of the struggles of peasants
and the early working class became the primary concern of the humanist
historians, thus dislodging the authentic reading of class for the rose-coloured
peripheries of a purely historical reflection. This Johnson interpreted as a
decentred Marxism. Because of their persistence regarding this tendency,
Johnson singled out Thompson and Eugene Genovese, the American historian,
as exemplary exponents (theoretical twins) of a culturalist perspective.
Typical culturalist texts for Johnson included: Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels
(1959); Asa Briggs and John Saville, Essays in Labour History (1960);
Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll (1974) and The World the Slaves Made (1966); and
of course Thompsons The Making of the English Working Class (1963). Their
combative approach was seen as a deliberately constructed opposition to
structuralism and economic determinism, explicitly expressed in these terms.
Conversely, Althusser had formed his polemic on a trinity of heresies:

























































17 Johnson, 1978, 80-81.

30

Gerard McCann

empiricism, historicism and humanism  each of which had to be expurgated

from theory. His work had been shaped by his rejection of these revisionist
positions.
Although dichotomical, Johnson believed that the two perspectives shared
some points of consensus. In its aggressive posturing, humanism had overlooked
a critical interstice, the materialist reference, in a poverty of historiography that
mirrored Althussers poverty of theory. Johnson suggested that an adaptation of
economic categories was necessary for any reconciliation. Specifically, social
scientific procedures were needed to conduct a more mediated analysis beyond
the limited, culturalist model which they had applied. Johnson agreed that
concepts such as experience were absolutely indispensable and that
consciousness, values and morality were crucial categories for authentic radical
theory. The mediation, however, should be between fact and theory and in doing
this a formal theory could be applied to eventuation (empirical evidence) to
introduce, in effect, a formal philosophy of experience. For Johnson
unreconstructed culturalism was seen as the suppression of a critical substantive
paradigm, denying the analysis of the forms, tendencies and laws of the
capitalist mode of production.18 Without the input of economic and structural
tendencies it remained merely the observation of (listening to) society. With
economic and structural tendencies included, a total understanding could
develop around economic-ideological determinations, and for Johnson this
synthesis approximated an authentic scientific method of historical materialism.
Johnsons hypothesis, however, remained problematic because it invoked core
(and one could argue irreconcilable) themes from Althusserianism to articulate a
scientific methodology, while attempting to qualify the critique of humanism as
not structuralist, but a balance of the two perspectives. He did even appear to
accept Althussers invective of an epistemological break between Marxs
early and later work, and ultimately between experience and structure. In effect,
Johnson failed to account for the tendency of structural forms to dominate
experience, or the authoritarian inclinations of Althussers theoretical practice.
As with Cohen and Hirst on the question of protest and class consciousness,
Johnsons system was vexed by a reductionism towards structures which placed
humanism as deficient of Marxist categories. With a culturalist interpretation,
class was reduced to mere social relationships which relied almost exclusively
on human interrelations and experiences. Historical change resided with protest
movements. In the confusion of defining a theoretical humanism, the economic
and the structural were seen to be sublimated, hidden, in particular historical
events. Consequently, with Thompsons work only occasionally could a

























































18 Johnson, 1978, 91.

Analysing Lived Experience: Resistance to Structural Dominance

31

structural reference be seen to make an appearance. The class relations that were
addressed appeared to lie outside any specific Marxist interpretation of the
social relations of production. Presenting The Making of the English Working
Class as the typical culturalist, reductionist text, Johnson did concede that the
economic was partially present through the category of experience, but he
did not elaborate further on this thought.19 Arguably, his perspective fell back on
Hindess and Hirsts acceptance of one key idea of Althussers, that:
Marx shows that what in the last instance determines a social formation and allows
us to grasp it, is not any chimerical human essence or human nature, nor man, nor
even men, but a relation, the production relation ... and, in opposition to all
humanist idealism, Marx shows that this relation is not a relation between men, a
relation between persons, nor an intersubjective or psychological or anthropological
relation, but a double relation between these groups of men and things, the means of
production ... 20

History versus Structure

Following this analysis, Johnson accepted as deadly accurate Hindess and
Hirsts view that humanist theory had been founded on the study of economic
relations and even depended on it for academic credentials. Thus Johnsons
analysis would seem to reflect many of Althussers own notions and categories
and his desire to return to the interpretation of historical analysis as a form of
science. This theoretical reaction introduced three instances  the economic,
political-juridical and the ideological  all discerned by a fully fledged
theoretical sociology in philosophical guise. 21 For Johnson, Althussers
introduction of the concept of ideological state apparatuses hinted at a
breakthrough by working towards an accommodation within both traditions. It
was, however, Althusser who had originally suggested that the ideological
instance, the cultural-ideological, could be established through concrete
institutions, or apparatuses (particularly communitarian structures, family,
school, church), believing that ideology could have a material existence.22
The resolution lay where culture-ideology-consciousness (feelings, forms of
subjectivity) were accepted by Althusser as imaginary, yet they could be
manifest in institutions. Hence, cultural forms and structural forms could at least

























































19 Johnson, 1978, 91.
20 Louis Althusser, Essays in Self Criticism (London: New Left Books, 1976), 201-2.
21 Gregor McLennan, The Historian's Craft: Unravelling the Logic of Process, Literature
and History 5 (1979), 152-64.
22 Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, in Lenin and
Philosophy and Other Essays (London: New Left Books, 1971), 127-33.

32

Gerard McCann

suggest accommodation. Johnson applied this hypothesis, but left it largely

unexamined except from pointing to the work of Emesto Laclau, Eric
Hobsbawm, Richard Hoggart and Perry Anderson as exemplars of such a
theoretical compromise. In attempting to tie together a cultural-ideological
tradition Johnson drew on a theoretical lineage running through Lukcs,
Gramsci, Williams and Thompson. The premise of such a dialogue was the
identification of the cultural with the ideological (an Althusserian prerequisite),
and, drawing from Althussers Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,
a revisited structuralism was applied to humanist theory to exact the possibilities
of a synthesized Marxist methodology. Any analysis of working class
experience therefore that referenced economy or class could be claimed under
this categorisation. The difficulty with Johnsons proposition was that the
relations of production needed to carry both economic and structural
determinants influenced by the mediation of lived experience. Johnson believed
that this synthesis could accommodate notions such as protest, community,
agency and historical movement through the belief that: ...it is the quality of
human relationships rather than the structuring of these through relations that is
the key concern. 23 The problem remained though in that the humanist
interpretation of class interaction was uncomfortable with any reference to
economic and structural determination.
One particularly sensitive understanding of culturalism within Thompsons
work, in support of Johnsons attempted synthesis, was brought forward by
Gregor McLennans reworking of the philosophy of Althusser. McLennan
contended that whereas the fear of abstraction had forced Thompsons method
into the empirical, similarly, fear of the empirical had moved Althussianism into
the abstract. He saw Johnsons scheme (the synthesis) as a realism that was
accepting, formally, the theoretical to the empirical, thus overcoming the
differences.24 For McLennan, Johnson had set out to diffuse the antagonistic
nature of this relationship in the interests of theory  believing that the fact and
the abstract could not be played off each against the other, but that each was
dependent on the other. Conceding that Johnsons appeal for authentic
Marxism did tend towards the elitism of Althusser, he claimed that this was
not of Richard Johnsons subjective making, but that Marx had suffered a

























































23 Richard Johnson, Gregor McLennan and Bill Schwarz, Economy, Culture and Concept:
Three Approaches to Marxist History. CCCS. Occasional Stencilled Paper, SP No. 50
(Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1977), 222.
24 McLennan, Richard Johnson and his Critics: Towards a Constructive Debate, History
Workshop Journal 8 (1979). pp. 157-66; also Gregor McLennan, E. P. Thompson and
the Discipline of Historical Context, in Making Histories. Ed. R. Johnson (London:
Hutchinson, 1982), 96-130.

Analysing Lived Experience: Resistance to Structural Dominance

33

similar detachment. The suggestion being that not even Marx was sufficiently
Marxist for this twentieth-century orthodoxy. Subsequently, realism needed
its own distinction, even if its initial orientations would be structuralist. As with
the others McLennan interpreted Thompsons method as political historiography
which forced structure and struggle into uncompromising poles before rejecting
structure altogether. Thompsons discipline and thought were presented as
history, which McLennan saw as a category running throughout all aspects
of his history from below tradition. The discipline of history was prioritized
and amplified through humanism and polemic, and using these two forms of
analysis Thompson could then select exemplars or antagonists: the first being
Parsons and Smelsers functionalism, the second being Althussers stucturalism.
Indeed, functionalism and structuralism were condemned by Thompson as
static sociologism, or for adopting a pseudo-scientific sociology, and therefore
emanating from the same theoretical source as Stalinism. McLennan saw The
Poverty of Theory in particular as an attack on all other methods of analyzing
social interaction, in order for Thompson to elaborate a conceptual approach to
history. 25 Therefore sociologism and philosophical idealism (Parsons and
Althusser respectively) were presented together as anathema, working from a
similar worldview and in conflict with human agency and historiography.
Thompson appeared to be attempting to purify theory to support history  the
search was then on to locate various theories and events to ensure this qualification.
Philosophy appeared to have been cleansed by a theoretical exorcism in an attempt
to relieve radical thought, away from the misrepresentation inaugurated by the
dogmatism of Second International Marxism and elitist academic tendencies.
Sociology was damned as mere positivism. Thompson did object to the pretentious
philosophical tradition which held theory as absolute above the heads of the
masses, as an excessively a priori mode of philosophy.26 From this approach
structuralism was presented as not only being condescending towards radicals and
working class people, but Thompson was to locate the catastrophe of Stalinism in
this form of abstraction. His main worry was that radical British history would be
subsumed into this mode of dogma. McLennan conversely insisted that this
position was nothing more than a blanket anti-philosophy.27
Cohen, Hirst, Hindess, Johnson and McLennan  the main protagonists 
argued that by isolating history Thompson could not properly engage with the
intellectual rigour that was occurring within Marxism. This uncompromising
stance made it difficult to accommodate a definite structural reference in his

























































25 McLennan, 1982, 101.
26 Thompson, 1978, 84-6.
27 McLennan, 1982, 103.

34

Gerard McCann

unrelenting intellectual war against those who dealt in concepts such as mode
of production or static theories of class as relations of production. This
perspective could be seen at its most problematic in Thompsons selective
approach to Marxs work to justify his own position, and the view presented in
The Poverty of Theory that much of Marxs work tended towards economism
and therefore was practically useless. In The Poverty of Theory the
economically orientated Marx was exposed and rejected as merely a reaction to
classical political economy. In dividing Marxism, Thompson distinguished
history in the work of Marx and Engels as an autonomous category, reducing
the totality of Marxs project to a polemical in-fight between history and
economics. Thompson in effect tried to invoke a historical common sense in
absolute opposition to any perceived reductionism. As with the view that
Thompsons real tradition was exclusive and confused, McLennan saw
Thompsons divorce of structure and history as more of an overreaction to
reductionism and Stalinism than a constructive response to it.28 Thompsons
attempt to inject the notions of agency and experience into historical analysis in
absolute opposition seemed to leave his work open to the view that he was
deliberately neglecting the structural-economic elements of the analysis
altogether. For many associated with the Centre, Thompson and his humanist
colleagues were in essence presenting a radicalism without Marx.

Dialectical method in the humanist analysis

Although the scrutiny of Thompsons method by his critics undoubtedly
exposed a number of difficulties within his theory, the exchanges were also
productive in highlighting certain aspects of a humanist dialectical method.
Three problems were common to the various accusations tabled against
Thompsons and indeed British humanist theory in general. First, there was a
confusion over the British socialist tradition with which Thompson was aligned
and his theoretical association with Marx and Dobb. As most critics commented,
and as Thompson accepted, his work did have obvious weaknesses in
economic theory, yet he relied heavily upon Marx and Dobb for basic reference
points in his own economic understanding. They presented important historical
milestones in the understanding of social change and agency. Second, the notion
of class was largely accepted as being based on stratification theories which
were not flexible, or appropriate, for the complexities of human interaction. And
finally, the political implications of Thompsons thought were never adequately
appreciated he was a radical political activist first and foremost.

























































28 McLennan, 1982, 103.

Analysing Lived Experience: Resistance to Structural Dominance

35

Thompsons own response to the criticism was muted. He believed that the
very idea of culturalism was the construct of some sloppy and impressionistic
history, gleaned from a variety of sources out of a dubious periodization
(Johnsons moment of culture).29 Over the years Thompson believed that he
had been consolidating and had been consistent in the defence of an active
method  the discourse worked from the theoretical and political agenda of
1956, anti-Stalinism and the disintegration of international socialism. Johnson
and McLennan neglected the political importance of this moment, the effects
of the unstable period of the Cold War, the potential breakup of the Eastern Bloc
and the forced dismemberment of British imperialism. Correcting Johnsons
moment of culture  which Thompson had defined as socialist humanism  he
noted in The Politics of Theory that during this period in the late 1950s and
early 1960s, the Reasoner Group (the title taken from the early New Left
journal) had already been subject to an assault from the right for holding to the
socialist tradition. The theory that the early New Left of the 1950s presented
was, as Thompson put it, not a moment of culture at all, but a common sense of
political crisis. 30 A series of events had led to the humanist critique of the
aggression of western capitalism and Stalinism, and in this continuing polemic
had developed a dialogue and methodology against theoretical dogma,
Stalinism, nuclear armament and an ineffective British labour movement.
Thompson believed that the appeal by Johnson and his colleagues to dispense
with this polemic would expel the conventional political aspects of a long
radical British tradition and would eventually reduce socialist theory to mere
academicism. Discrimination is what matters, Thompson stated, and the
acrimonious terminology which he used was seen as necessary because the
opposition had never hesitated in their assaults upon humanism.31 For him, the
category of culturalism was in itself absolutist (in response to Johnsons slur
on The Poverty of Theory), mischievous and unhelpful for British socialism
as a political and theoretical tradition. This common-sense approach to
theoretical debate was carried through from 1956 to The Poverty of Theory
and the attack on Althusser in 1978.
Counter to the accusation of culturalism, Thompson believed that he
cautiously accepted both economic and structural elements as implicit to the
process, but recognized that any tendency towards the base and superstructure
metaphor  a view which he hinted at as early as his 1957 Socialist
Humanism article  would lead to a vagueness which would neutralize the

























































29 Thompson, 1978, 397.
30 Thompson, 1978, 399.
31 Thompson, 1978, 402.

36

Gerard McCann

dynamic of relations and processes of production, concealing the full political

specificity of the message. It is undoubted that structuralism deliberately
overlooked the active nature of historical movement and human agency in a
simultaneous determination, revealing tunnel vision when it came to the notion
of mode of production. Thompson, alternatively, was persistent in asserting
that modes of production should be viewed as open and protean. Hence,
Thompson found it difficult to accept the theoretical form of works such as
Marxs Capital which concentrated primarily on economic shifts. Raymond
Williams, another historian tarnished with the same accusations as Thompson,
had emphasized the cultural form in the way that others had adopted the
economic form, but whereas Williams came to accept the label culturalism,
Thompsons aim was to explore human interaction with its full political
integrity through the study of the dialectical interpenetration of various
elements. He acknowledged that a culturalist tradition of sorts existed, but
Thompson did not see himself as part of it. His approach was to introduce the
contextual and the experiential as intrinsic to the mode of production, with the
emphasis falling soundly on human interaction, social being together with
social consciousness. In a philosophical sense he had introduced the
ontological into the analysis. Beyond actual productive relations, aspects of
class relations were very much in evidence throughout society and history.
Culture, customs, social norms and practices, value orientations, narratives,
gender relations and social institutions, all offered other avenues into the
analysis of class society. Thompson saw it as his task to concentrate on these
largely overlooked facets of society. However, leaving so much unsaid as a
result of this open dialectic, and the refusal to dogmatize in any way,
inevitably left his work open to misrepresentation. For him, class formation
(along with class consciousness) emerged as people came to experience their
circumstances and began to resist changing economic and political
circumstances. Peoples collective agency (be it the British Suffragette
struggle, the anti-Apartheid movement, or Polish Solidarno of the 1980s)
was the all-important convergence of historical movement and class structure.
Class was a matter of living productive relations, handling determinate
circumstances with the ensemble of the social relations.32 Thompson did
accept objective determinate relations into which men [and women] are born,
or enter involuntarily, but was adamant that the working class made itself as
much as it was made.33

























































32 Thompson, 1978, 150.
33 Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963),
213.

Analysing Lived Experience: Resistance to Structural Dominance

37

The style of Thompsons writing and his subjective (and intensely political)
qualifications reflected across the method employed.34 In humanist theory other
factors applied in the definition of class, such as the belief that individuals,
families, communities as well as the collective should be taken into account.
Class implied more than simply production and productive relations, which the
likes of Cohen and Hirst suggested, but included the experiences of community,
ethos, conventions, customs, embracing various forms of social, cultural, moral,
gender, political and economic relations. Any method of analysis would have to
appreciate this interpenetration to fully appreciate history as a process of change
and as a subject of study; class could only be properly understood by
transcending teleological readings of antagonistic economic relations or
structuralist orbits. In humanisms refusal to stratify or categorize class
relationships their definition came to rely upon human agency  the methods of
Anderson, Hirst and Cohen could not. Thompson introduced history as having
the key task of examining the intricacies and forms of this dynamic (and
unifying) combination  the social forms of historical transformation. Possibly,
the economic relationships had been too rigorously overworked in the past by
socialist theoreticians. However, humanism and history from below intended
from the inception to explore class relationships which were not merely
reflections of the actual processes of production, but may have been subtle
manifestations of peoples protest and resistance to oppression. In the way that it
was not Marxs or Dobbs intention to look at cultural or conscious expressions
of class struggle, similarly it was not Thompsons intention to research
economic or structural aspects.
The selectivity of various correct interpretations of historical process
exposed further tensions over culturalism. Those who contended that humanist
works were culturalist presumed that the analysis of experience and culture, as
opposed to the analysis of modes of production, were theoretically divorced
from authentic Marxist concerns. In particular the suggestion of a break with
Maurice Dobbs Studies in the Development of Capitalism could be interpreted
as fallacious in that unlike Thompson, Genovese, Hill or Hilton, Dobb himself
considered this work to be Marxist economic analysis and not a hybrid of
cultural and economic theory. Johnson and his colleagues seemed unwilling to
appreciate the fact that Dobbs work was a specific analysis of capitalism which
did not scrutinize concepts such as struggle, culture or politics. Furthermore,
Dobbs work involved a conception of socio-economic relations to which all

























































34 Perry Anderson, Arguments Within English Marxism (London: Verso, 1980), 213; also
see Stuart Hall, In Defense of Theory, in Peoples History and Socialist Theory. Ed.
Ralph Samuel (London: Hutchinson, 1981), 378-85.

38

Gerard McCann

of the aforementioned so-called culturalists had acknowledged a debt.35 Indeed,

many of the issues brought up by Dobb became the mainstay of much of the
subsequent humanist critique. The later historiography reflected an acute
sensitivity towards economic reductionism in the shadow of the vulgarity which
had accompanied Stalinism. Works such as Thompsons The Making of the
English Working Class, or Hobsbawms Primitive Rebels, or Briggs and Saville
with Essays in Labour History, should be seen in this context.
The reliance on lived experience remained the source of Thompsons
historiography and the dialogue which he found therein represented a basis for
an on-going school of thought (for example Ralph Samuels History Workshop
and Meiksins Wood in Historical Materialism). The Poverty of Theory, his
central theoretical statement, awkwardly tried to link the various strains of this
tradition together, but stressed the need for theory without formalistic and
systematic pretensions:
My critique was of Theory, of the notion that it could all, somehow, be put together,
as a system, by theoretical means. In every moment of our work we certainly need
theory  whether in defining problems of the mode of production, or microeconomics, or the family, or culture or the state  and we need research which is
both empirically and theoretically informed, and the theorised interrogation of what
this research finds.36

For Thompson, it was history as a way of looking at society, economics and

politics, which was ultimately at stake, in danger of being infringed upon by the
extremes of empiricism (as personified by Popper) or idealism (as personified
by Althusser). The constant confrontation with reduction and dogma brought
him to a certain polemical extreme in defence of his method, and hence the
acrimony of his assaults. However, his work reinforced the belief in a logic of
history, not confined to stated (set) regulations or given patterns, but
appropriate to the evidence concerned. His aim was always to bring history alive
as theory in conflict. To develop this method Thompson did offer some
assistance in the form of six procedures. These procedures are central to the
method applied by humanist theory: (1) The researcher should analyse the
credentials of historical evidence as fact to be affirmed or rejected. (2) The
evidence could be taken at the level of its own appearance, in particular where
it concerned value-bearing evidence. (3) It could be approached from valuefree evidence, statistical procedure, demographics, etc. (4) Evidence could be
related as links in a linear series, the actual happening, by the use of the

























































35 Maurice Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1946), viii-ix.
36 Thompson, 1978, 405.

Analysing Lived Experience: Resistance to Structural Dominance

39

narrative  which Thompson stated to be an essential constituent of the

historical discipline. (5) The discreet facts could be scrutinized as links in a
lateral series of social/ideological/economic/political relations which form
sequences interconnected to constitute the inherent relations. (6) Finally, this
evidence could be scrutinized for structure-bearing evidence  for example,
the effects of a legal system or injunction, a tenurial system, and so on, and their
results. Together, for Thompson, this was a sketch of the method which should
be employed by radical historians.37
The attack on this methodology was arguably introduced by Barry Hindess
and Paul Hirst in their Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production with a judgement
that, ...the study of history is not only scientifically but also politically
valueless. 38 Although Johnson had tried to condemn Thompsons approach as
an absolute, the belief in a dialogue between the two poles has proved
unworkable because of the necessarily assertive nature of the Althusserian
method and the humanist demand that analysis should be subjectively political,
even ideological. The science by its own admittance could not be
compromised. In effect, pro-structuralist approaches did not adequately balance
the criticism, yet preconceived an equal input from both traditions (Thompsons
and Althussers). It looked like a one-sided assault against humanism, with
Thompson taking the brunt of the assault. Assessing this problem, Keith
McClelland, in a similar vein to Harvey Kaye, suggested that the Annales
project in France and the work of Fernand Braudel, in particular, might have
been more appropriate to Johnsons categorization. Kaye noticed that the
haphazard labelling which Johnson engaged in, against the presumed
culturalists tradition (such as certain chapters of The Making of the English
Working Class being more culturalist than others), was inconsistent and
distracting.39 The central text of Thompsons which came under scrutiny, The
Making of the English Working Class, may not have confronted productive
relations in a vigorous manner, but this should not have distracted from the
general integrity of the work.40 Thompsons primary demand throughout was for
flexibility in the analysis. McClelland stated:

























































37 Gerard McCann, History and Theory: The Political Thought of E.P. Thompson
(Aldershot: Avebury, 1997), 119-20; also see Thompson, 1978, 39-43.
38 B. Hindess and P. Hirst, Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1975), 312.
39 Harvey Kaye, The Education of Desire (London: Routledge, 1992), 100-03.
40 Keith McClelland, Some Comments on Richard Johnson, Edward Thompson,
Eugene Genovese, and Socialist Humanist History, History Workshop Journal 7
(1977), 101-24.

40

Gerard McCann
That question cannot be consigned to the arena of the mere future idea, for we can
only make socialism out of the necessities and possibilities created in the past and
present  out of the whole historically constituted objective and subjective
experience of capitalist social relations. And for that to be possible socialist
historians and theorists must attempt to grasp the multiplicity and specificity of
determinations and experiences of the past and present for which a very proper
moral and political commitment to a truly human society has to be part of a
theory of how things actually are or were.41

Furthermore, the object of this exercise in theory, the profession of this praxis,
could not be served by an approach which denied political and, ultimately, cultural
aspects.
Arguably, objective determinations were assessed throughout humanist
thought as implications of the capitalist mode of production. If anything it was
this mode of production which prioritized the objective determinations, and,
therefore, it would be a discrepancy for critics of this system to follow this
reasoning. Thompson drew from Fabian thinkers such as John Wade and
Richard Carlile in The Making of the English Working Class to caution against
taking a utilitarian approach to history, or of placing the mechanics of a system
above human needs and agency.42 The actual effects of rationalized processes
and changes in the relations of production were infinitely more complex than
analyses of mechanical relations could possibly convey. Thompson
acknowledged reciprocity between objective and subjective determination by
examining capitalism as an ideological form as opposed to studying
technological or industrial transformations of a mode of production. As Ellen
Meiksins Wood interpreted it, Thompsons analysis was specifically of the
relations of production and class exploitation. 43 The human costs of
capitalism exposed a fundamental ethos (through the rights and wrongs of
capitalism) and this in turn offered Thompson a subtle non-reductionist
perception of history.
Historical process, therefore, in order to be fully comprehended, needed the
axis of common experience to bring out the coherence of subjective and
objective determinations  how people actually experienced the effects of
capitalism or command economy communism. In acknowledging this, protest,
struggle and change became more analytically apparent and from the earliest
manifestations of capitalism popular protest could be recognized, qualified and
related to a historical process. Primary to this, humanism accepted the

























































41 McClelland, 1977, 114.
42 Thompson, 1963, 845-48.
43 Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Politics of Theory and the Concept of Class, Studies in
Political Economy 9 (1982), pp. 45-78, 57.

Analysing Lived Experience: Resistance to Structural Dominance

41

importance of the working class experience in the turmoil of industrialization

and development, and subsequently, this permitted a moral reasoning to be
applied to resistance to adverse change or progress  expressed in many
different ways  including the making of the working class as a political entity:
The making of the working class is a fact of political and cultural, as much as of
economic, history. It was not the spontaneous generation of the factory system. Or
should we think of an external force  the industrial revolution  working upon
some nondescript undifferentiated raw material of humanity, and turning it out at the
other end as a fresh race of human beings? The changing productive relations and
working conditions of the Industrial Revolution were imposed, not upon raw
material, but upon the free-born Englishman  and the free-born Englishman as
Paine had left him or as the Methodists had moulded him. The factory hand or
stockinger was also the inheritor or Bunyan, of remembered village rights, of
notions of equality before the law, of craft traditions. He was the object of massive
religious indoctrination and the creator of political traditions. The working class
made itself as much as it was made.44

The Thompsonian approach acknowledged radical popular consciousness as

political intent (a concept which Stuart Hall for one found difficult to accept).
However, interpreting the experiences and expressions of working class life for
strategic purposes remained open to conjecture. Thompsons approach
recognized populism as potentially socialist, serving a benign role within
political resistance and being located throughout history  for instance, the
Richmond Blacks as portrayed in Whigs and Hunters; the Luddites,
Corresponding Societies, and the Trade Union movement of The Making of the
English Working Class; the Muggletonians of Witness Against the Beast; the
1930s Popular Front as presented in Beyond the Frontier; through to the antiStalinist and anti-nuclear movement of Zero Option and Protest and Survive 
all representing radical movements ideals, cultures and histories. This theory of
liberation, as read through the history, demanded the revitalization and
articulation of radical politics through rigorous historical reference, informing
an active libertarianism which remained faithful to working class history and its
political agency. The object of doing history was thus to provide exemplars
and emphasize this sense of continuity. Meiksins Wood made the point
succinctly:
In this debate, however, it is important to recognize that to dissociate Marxism from
Thompsons kind of populism  whether by rejecting it with contempt or even by
granting it qualified and patronizing approval as a useful but naive ally of Marxism
in its struggle to mobilize people, a romanticism not infallibly Tory in its results 
may be to propose a significant redefinition of Marxist theory and practice and to

























































44 Thompson, 1963, 213.

42

Gerard McCann
make a far-reaching political choice. The logic of this choice may lead away from
the self-emancipation of the working class and away from class struggle as the
principle agent of change.45

This method would explain Thompsons adamant promotion of the notion of

struggle-in-context, and his passionate participation in the anti-nuclear and
New Left movements, theory linked directly to a politics from below.
Thompsons understanding of historical process represented more than
merely the correction of flawed theoretical premises. More implicitly,
Thompson aimed to apply political sources to historical engagements, working
out a moral critique of capitalism and command economy communism, and
following through from the undertakings of utopians and romantics such as
Blake, Wollstonecraft, Godwin, Paine, Morris and contemporary interpreters.
Thompsons histories relayed class where class conflict could be analysed and in
this cultural aspects did feature prominently as an analytical channel, access
points for the understanding of rights and customs. Thompson, working on the
flip side of the coin from Engels, Marx and Dobb, opted for subjective criteria,
leaving him open to the labels of culturalism, subjectivism and populism, in the
way that these other theorists left themselves open to accusations of economism,
objectivism and reductionism. Further to this the humanist approach could
reinterpret both the idea of mode and of production to be constantly
changing, bringing up new formations, coalescing, consolidating and again
transforming. Structuralism could not do this. The impression was consistently
that of society becoming, the movement of history and the social making of
it. In emphasizing the common experience of struggle, Thompson was
approximating and divulging the active processes of history, asserting struggle
as a central theme in a radical conception of history and its historiographical
methodology. Analyses of objective or structural determinants alone could not
handle this qualification.

Conclusion
The ubiquitous simultaneity operating between the various elements of
becoming and agency, the belief that humanity (in terms of social
interdependency) can do infinitely better, was core to the message Thompson
tabled against structuralism. The cultural, value orientated analysis which
became a trait of his histories and history from below represented, first and

























































45 Meiksins Wood, 1982, 70; see also Meiksins Wood, The Debate on Base and
Superstructure in E. P. Thompson: Critical Perspectives. Eds. Harvey Kaye and Keith
McClelland (Oxford: Polity, 1992), 125-52.

Analysing Lived Experience: Resistance to Structural Dominance

43

foremost, the social relations that he believed his method could best define. It
aimed to readjust the imbalance of elements away from the usual economic bias.
Although his earlier histories could be open to criticism for being blatantly antieconomist, he appeared to be more careful in his later studies which attempted
(in a measured way) to incorporate the economic and the structural without
prioritizing them as determinants. Works such as Time, Work Discipline and
Industrial Capitalism, The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the
Eighteenth Century, Eighteenth Century English Society: Class Struggle
Without Class? and Patrician Society, Plebeian Culture, as the titles suggest,
offered examples of the interpenetration of cultural-experiential and economicstructural forms  where relations of production and themes based on customary
relations coalesced towards a totality. All were interactive and determinate
within a historical process. As he stated in 1974: To say that it [this method]
was cultural is not to say that it was immaterial... too fragile for analysis,
insubstantial.46 Such a method would be too limited in scope. The conflicting
relations between the working class and the ruling class (class relations) were
studied as power relations, as protest and reaction, the ubiquitous elements
developing around this subtle mediation. This made it relevant across different
political and economic systems. For the theorists of lived experience perhaps the
most efficient way of analysing this movement was through evidence of how
people were affected by change in their day-to-day lives and how they came to
express themselves in opposition. This could even be through the analysis of
narrative accounts of personal or communitarian experience, thus giving voice
to those being subjected to the infringements of human rights. The whole
spectrum of domination and legitimacy, power relations, within states and
systems could be exposed in order to be brought to account. Central to this
methodology was the attempt to introduce a non-reductive concept of class, and
along the way freeing ideological forms, culture and experience from previous
reductions. For many in the Centre, the endeavour to confine both the humanist
and history from below methods to the rules of the academy or systems
analysis, in many ways did not appreciate what historical agency, this
spontaneous philosophy, was about.

46 Thompson, Patrician Society, Plebeian Culture, Journal of Social History 7 (1974), pp.
382-405, 387.

CHAPTER 3
Equianos Memory:
recuperative disclosure in the black Atlantic
Peter Leese, University of Copenhagen

Olaudah Equiano: personal and collective memory

On the 10th of December 1761, shortly before setting sail on what he hoped
would be his last voyage as a slave, Oluadah Equiano was, not for the first time,
betrayed. Equiano had worked to gain the trust and respect of his long-time
owner, seemingly an honourable man, yet was now to be sold on rather than be
allowed, as he had dared to hope, his freedom. In The Interesting Narrative
(1789) Equiano recounts Captain Pascals rage when the enslaved man dared to
argue his case.
At Gravesend, nevertheless, without any chance to collect his books or chest
of clothes, Equiano was ordered off his ship, pushed at knifepoint, and told a
new owner would be found for him immediately. Just beyond Gravesend, and
after several attempts to find a buyer, Captain James Doran of the Charming
Sally agreed to buy Equiano. The ship was due to set sail for the West Indies on
the next tide. On board Captain Doran and Equiano confronted one another: the
one determined to take control of his property, the other refusing to see his past
life and future hopes washed away on the incoming tide:1
Do you know me? The Captain asked.
No, said Equiano.
Then you are my slave now.
But my master cannot sell me, nor can anyone else.
Why, did not your master buy you?
Yes, replied Equiano. But I have served him many years, and he has taken all my
wages and prize money, for I only got sixpence during the war; besides this I have
been baptised, and by the laws of the land no man has the right to sell me. I have
heard a lawyer, and others at different times tell my master so.
But these people are not your friends.
It is very extraordinary that other people do not know the laws as well as you.
You talk too much English. If you do not behave yourself well and be quiet I have a
method on board to make you be quiet.

The exchange betrays bitter resolve on both sides, but while the enslaver has
financial as well as material resources, not least the threat of violence, the

























































1 P. Edwards, ed., Equianos Travels (Oxford: Heinemann, [1789] 1996), 50-3.

46

Peter Leese

enslaved has only words. Equiano uses them to the fullest extent of his skill both
in this confrontation and in his autobiography to defy every Captain Doran. His
encounter, and his Narrative, recalls the fear of losing past hopes and past
experiences as well as the need to imaginatively recreate that past. The claim
that Equianos account is not entirely factual highlights recalls purposes,
processes and complexities.
In The Interesting Narrative the author alleges he was kidnapped as a child,
aged about ten years, from what is now Eastern Nigeria. This could have been in
the mid-1750s. Subsequently he went to the West Indies, the Mediterranean, and
Canada under General Woolf during the Seven Years War; in 1766, at the age of
twenty-one, despite his disappointment at Gravesend, Equiano managed to buy
his freedom. In the early 2000s Vincent Carrettas research brought into
question Equianos account of his birthplace: was it somewhere in south-eastern
Nigeria, as Equiano claimed, or more likely, as Carretta suspects, and as newly
found documents seemed to show, in South Carolina?2 This claim draws our
attention to the wider processes of social memory which are also attached to
Equiano and The Interesting Narrative. In March 2003 for instance, Ike Anya, a
Nigerian medic and writer, attended the first International Conference on
Olaudah Equiano, held at the University of Kingston near London. Anya reports
the strong reaction to Carrettas suggestion:
Question time released a torrent of pent up rage, the critic C. L. Innes and a couple
of others chastised Iwuanyanwu for his imputation on Carretta. Sinanan deplored the
fact that Obiwus comments were too personal . . . Kerry Sinanan tried to ask me
why it was so important for Equiano to have been born in Africa . . . I struggled to
explain what it meant to me but found it difficult . . . The coffee break this time was
more relaxed with Carretta posing for photographs with the Igbo lynch mob.3

The tensions present in the reception of The Interesting Narrative in the early
1790s, when some reviewers doubted that it could actually have been written by
an African, and in Carrettas reinterpretation in the early 2000s too, allow us a
consideration of what Mark Freeman calls recuperative disclosure.4 That is,
agents of insight and rescue, recollection and recovery, serving to counteract
the forces of oblivion which cannot be singled out as either personal or

























































2 See especially V. Carretta, Questioning the Identity of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus
Vassa, the African, in F. A Nussbaum, ed., The Global Eighteenth Century (Baltimore
and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 2003), 226-35.
3 Ike Anyas article is on Nigeriaworld.com http://nigeriaworld.com/articles/2003/
mar/273.html. [Accessed 06.10.2011].
4 On the reception of The Interesting Narrative see V. Carretta, Equiano the African.
Biography of a Self-Made Man (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2005),
350-2.

Equianos Memory: recuperative disclosure in the black Atlantic

47

collective, but which are continually and inseparably both.5 Equianos account,
and the debates which have always surrounded it, bring us towards an
examination of personal and social aspects of migration memory and the ways
in which these two are interconnected.

Performance, language and lieux de memoire

Thinking first of the social and psychological processes which allowed Equiano
to create his account, it is necessary to acknowledge the political context of its
publication. The significance of The Interesting Narrative is as the first
complete account in the voice of an African-Briton: of the slave trade in Africa,
Europe and the Americas, of the possibility that humanity, learning and spiritual
sensibility could exist in a formerly enslaved African. The appearance of the
account in 1789 thereby answered the urgent need of the transatlantic slavery
abolitionist movement for just such a personal account; The Interesting
Narrative appears in the immediate wake of James Ramsays An Essay on the
Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the Sugar Colonies (1794), and
the London establishment of the Committee for Effecting the Abolition of the
Slave Trade (1797).6
In this light we can understand Equianos work as an accomplished literary
performance wherein the author directs the material of his own life story to
persuade his European audience towards his cause. This is a carefully
orchestrated portrayal of identity too, where form as much as argument, the
portrayal of a vivid personality as much as the course of events, make the central
claim for the integrity, intelligence and humanity of an African who had been
caught by the vicious trap of transatlantic slavery. The achievement of such an
eloquent, expressive form came quickly as the Narrative was composed in 1788,
but was doubtless made possible too by a life-long struggle to master language,
to use it both as defence and as weapon. The ambiguities, misuses and wonders
of speech and writing are themselves a powerful theme throughout Equianos
account. Wherever he was born, Equiano was doubtless aware of the intrigues
and power contained within his own use of words. Describing the complex
interplay of native African languages in 1750s South Carolina, for instance, the

























































5 M. Freeman, Hindsight. The Promise and Peril of Looking Backward (Oxford: OUP,
2010), 43-4.
6 For the wider context of Afro-British writing in the eighteenth century see introduction to
V. Carretta, Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-speaking
World of the Eighteenth Century (Lexington, Ken.: University of Kentucky Press, 1996),
1-16.

48

Peter Leese

community in which Equiano could easily have grown up, Phillip D. Morgan
notes that:
Only after midcentury do we begin to hear of native-born slaves like Stepney, who,
can very readily invent a plausible tale if questioned, or Toby, who was cunning,
artful and bold. Gradually the vocabulary broadened: after midcentury, we learn of
sober, upright, knowledgeable and sedate-looking slaves or, more frequently, of
roguishly inclined, arch obstreperous, saucy or cunning ones. 7

Slaves speech is here reworked to control or direct the interpretation of their

essential traits; Equianos achievement is to escape this interpretive process. To
describe how he achieves this the author of The Interesting Narrative charts his
own growing acquaintance with English and with literacy, transmitted especially
through his friendship with Dick Baker, his curiosity with talking books, and
his gradual acculturation. In one critical switch of fortune, when he is betrayed
by Captain Pascal and confronts his new master James Doran, Equianos faith in
language holds up. The argument for freedom remains eloquent and passionate;
the slavers are forced to the threat of violence.8
Equianos past, then, remembered in The Interesting Narrative with thirty or
more years hindsight, constitutes a lieu de memoire for the author himself as
well as for the broader audience and community of 1789. Any such site of
memory has a symbolic significance beyond immediate circumstances and
events, and there are many other examples in connection with the black Atlantic
of the eighteenth century. Here I will mention only two. The controversy over
Equianos birthplace was preceded by a similar question in 1995, when Philip
D. Curtin, a pioneering historian of the Atlantic slave trade, described Joseph
Ndiayas tours of Gore Island, in the harbour of present-day Dakar, Senegal, as
phony. Senegalese authorities in turn argued that such accusations erased their
past of enslavement, symbolised by the Gore Island Slave House, which drew
visitors from across the world to witness its emotive door of no return.9 If the
door of no return is a physical place of memory, the Haitian Revolution (1791)
is a memory event which also draws on earlier stories and projects itself into the
future. One source of inspiration for the events of 1791 was the story of Francois
Makandal (d. 1758), who was born in Islamic West Africa, raised on Muslim

























































7 Phillip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint. Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century
Chesapeake and Lowcountry (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina,
1998), 465.
8 See especially Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings, ed. V.
Carretta (London: Penguin, [1789 ] 2003), 65-7; 68; 92-4.
9 Ralph A. Austen, The Slave Trade as History and Memory: Confrontations of Slaving
Voyage Documents and Communal Traditions, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series,
LVIII:1 (January 2001), 229-44.

Equianos Memory: recuperative disclosure in the black Atlantic

49

literature in Arabic and shipped to St Domingue at the age of twelve. Later he

became a Voudou priest, whose beliefs amalgamated several Western and
African faiths, and inspired the failed 1751-7 conspiracy against slavery.10 The
same set of events, the Haitian Revolution, inspired too C. L. R. James
remarkable work of Marxist and de-colonialist interpretation The Black
Jacobins: Toussaint LOuverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938).
Equianos Interesting Narrative is, then, one of several instances of lieux de
memoire connected to the eighteenth-century black Atlantic. Returning to Ike
Anyas question of why such moments hold a powerful emotional grip in both
past and present, the answer lies in their ability to bear witness, to license moral
acknowledgement, to disclose the past recuperatively.

The uses of recuperative disclosure

The intricate connectedness of present telling to past events can be better
understood by considering the relational nature of memory: the creative
interplay of individual recollections within common, collective pasts.
Psychologist Martin Conways recent work on autobiographical
recollection, which he describes as the self-memory system provides a relevant
starting point. 11 Conway identifies two categories of retrieval. The first is
direct: a spontaneous response to some particular prompt. The second,
generative, has three aspects: the production of retrieval models, the constraint
of conscious information available, and the contextual goals of retrieval.12 In
this view, coherence and correspondence are the principles which underlie
autobiographical memory, the second of these making varied instances of the
self in the past and present possible is based on the principle of goal-direction.
The intricate interconnectedness of self and autobiographical memory is, of
course, not easily comprehended or captured, but it is apparent that the self
constrains what is remembered, and memory acts to constrain possible selves.13

























































10 See especially C. E. Fink, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from
Below (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990), 60-74.
11 See, for example, M. A. Conway, Memory and the Self, Journal of Memory and
Language 53 (2005), 594-628, and other articles cited below.
12 M. A. Conway and C. Pleydell-Pearce, The Construction of Autobiographical Memory
in the Self-Memory System, Psychological Review 107:2 (2000), 491-529.
13 J. Sutton, C. B. Harris and A. J. Barnier, Memory and Cognition in: S. Radstone and B.
Schwarz, eds., Memory. Histories, Theories, Debates (New York: Fordham University
Press, 2010), 215-6. See also M. A. Conway, J. A. Singer and A. Tagini, The Self and
Autobiographical Memory: Correspondence and Coherence, Social Cognition 22:5
(2004), 491-529.

50

Peter Leese

The interrelational aspect of self and autobiographical memory is

complicated further by the particular social setting within which recollection
takes place, so that creating a history of mentalities-on-the-move, of mobile
individuals and communities, requires a reconstruction of its specific contexts:
Equianos background, circumstances at the time of creating his account, as well
as the social and political circles in which he mixed, for instance. The
reconstruction of specific contexts as far as they can be recovered relates to both
the material conditions and the textual interpretation of self-made accounts.
Further, we can locate the thread that connects the material and textual in the
process of narrativization: the drawing together of whatever contemporary
sources, ideas, structures or images happen to be at hand for the purpose of
connecting present purpose to past event.14
In this respect personal memory cannot be constituted from the individual
alone, but must emerge out of particularities in language, culture and history. In
whatever form it arises spoken or written there is the possibility then, that nonevents will also arise; that some moments are paid great attention while others
quietly drop out of sight. That Joseph Ndiaya will, over the course of many years
describing the same scene, become more emotionally engaged and imaginatively
compelled to describe the millions who departed through the door of no return;
that Francis Makandal might take on a mythological or supernatural aspect which
survives in the oral culture of Haiti to this day.15 That Equiano, over a lifetime of
struggling with successive abrupt, absolute separations from past lives, should
work towards an autobiographical account which resolves this past, and that he
should do so by using the materials of past recollection, narrative, and surrounding
realities. Not surprisingly, then, The Interesting Narrative is a remarkable fusion of
contemporary eighteenth-century European literary genres: apologia, spiritual
autobiography, travel, adventure and witness accounts are combined here with
historical, economic and perhaps too fictive aspects.16
To sum up, autobiographers, like all story tellers, recreate in order to
interpret, order and make sense of. Mark Freeman describes this quality as
recuperative disclosure, which acts not merely to achieve mimesis, but which
activates potential meaning, reveals that which might otherwise be undisclosed.
Moreover, to recreate and remake the past it is necessary to draw on memory

























































14 See M. Freeman, Telling Stories: Memory and Narrative, in: Radstone and Schwarz,
2010, 236-77; and Freeman, Hindsight, 276.
15 See for example the material on Macandal.org, including extracts from the 1998 PBS
documentary.
16 See especially S. E. Oguda, Facts into Fiction: Equianos Narrative Reconsidered,
Research in African Literatures 13:1 (Spring 1982), 31-43. Carretta, Equiano the African,
353-4.

Equianos Memory: recuperative disclosure in the black Atlantic

51

resources beyond the individual. In this respect all remembering is relational:

it cannot exist without social interchange and criteria which are defined by the
group. The purpose of social interchange is also to create the common grounds
for conversation. In cases where there is disjunction, erasure and ellipsis, for
example when the individual is broken away violently or forcibly from
childhood, settlement or culture, finding common grounds for debate is all the
more difficult.
Equianos task then, politically charged by the abolitionist debates of the
criteria for the full acknowledgement of his personal identity, and at the same time
to relate this to an English audience. In the process Equiano made himself more
fully an acculturated member of that community. Moreover, witness and
reconciliation imply some kind of justice, some kind of public acknowledgement
for pasts which have been distorted, wrongly represented or ignored, so that
personal accounts always resonate within a broader set of social, cultural or
historical conditions. Maurice Halbwachs describes the process:1780s, was to
generate a version of his own life which fulfilled his personal
Every time we situate a new impression in relation to the framework structuring our
existing ideas the framework transforms the impression but the impression in turn
alters the framework. This creates a new moment, a new place, modifying our sense
of time and place; it adds a new dimension to our group, which we now see in a
different light. Hence the continual work of adaptation.17

In this light, Equianos first purpose was one of recalling his first community of
memory, which was constituted in the communal, collective past of his African
ancestry. It is from this past, this community, that he first draws both memory
resources and moral intention. His second purpose is a transformation or
translation of this past into the genres, traditions and moral expectations of his
second community of memory: the Afro-British community and his wider
British audience, to whom he now gives allegiance, and who eventually provide
him with social recognition and financial security.18

Enslavement and conversion: the past re-made

Throughout The Interesting Narrative Equiano pursues these two objectives
then: the re-discovery and recognition of himself, and the communication of that

























































17 M. Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mmoire (Paris: Albin Michel, [1925] 1994),
135. Quoted in E. Apfelbaum, Maurice Halbwachs and the Social Properties of
Memory, in Radstone and Schwarz, 2010, 77-92.
18 As Carretta notes, by the early 1790s the sales of The Interesting Narrative gave Equiano
full financial independence. Carretta, Equiano the African, 363.

52

Peter Leese

self for political capital. These objectives are present, for example, in the
account of his African childhood and enslavement, in the moment of freedom
refused by Captain Pascal, and in the extended account he gives of spiritual
crisis and conversion.
What is striking in the first two chapters of the Narrative, for example, is
their lesser amount of detail: Equianos failure to name either his mother or
his beloved sister, with whom he is briefly reunited before being separated
forever.19 In the first two chapters Equiano also gives a much less detailed
account of events, establishing himself in relation to his audience as obscure
but attention-worthy because a witness, without special knowledge, but a
humble narrator in the service of a greater cause; different from, and yet
singularly like his audience. I believe there are few events in my life which
have not happened to many; it is true the incidents of it are numerous . . . but,
when I compare my lot to that of most of my countrymen, I regard myself as
a particular favourite of Heaven.20 [Original italics.] Despite his reference to
my countrymen, meaning Africans, at least in the eyes of his Englishspeaking audience, these early chapters preceding arrival in South Carolina
resemble more a collective, diasporic form of recollection. Likewise, Carretta
notes the extent to which Equiano draws on European accounts and
perspectives on Africa to domesticate and familiarise his audience. For
example, he takes his cue from Anthony Benezets digest of European travel
accounts Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the
General Disposition of its Inhabitants: With an Inquiry into the Rise and
Progress of the Slave Trade, its Nature and Lamentable Effects (1788).
Similarly Equianos immersion in the Bible leads him to see parallels
between the customs, complexion and situation of eighteenth-century
Africans and Old Testament Hebrews.21 That Equiano speaks for a collective
diasporic community is obvious too from this widely anthologised passage
describing the conditions for enslaved Africans aboard a transport ship.22
Equianos quest for liberation individually and for justice communally the
fusion of personal and collective expression is elaborated upon in two related
scenes. The first, already described, is Equianos re-enslavement; the second is
his portrayal of spiritual crisis and conversion.

























































19 The Interesting Narrative, 51-2.
20 The Interesting Narrative, 31.
21 I am, of course, heavily indebted to Carrettas work here, especially Equiano the African,
303-29.
22 The Interesting Narrative, 58-9.

Equianos Memory: recuperative disclosure in the black Atlantic

53

In the scene immediately preceding Equianos sale to Captain Doran, the

author describes how, around the age of fifteen, his most urgent longing was for
self-improvement by learning to write and read; he describes here too in some
detail his friendship with Daniel Queen, who was around forty at the time, and
who must have seemed a father figure.23 If we assume the events described at
Gravesend took place in 1762 Equiano was remembering with twenty-five or
more years hindsight, but nevertheless registers the force of the moment with
absolute urgency: I was so struck by the unexpectedness of this proceeding,
that for some time I could not make a reply so that I was too well convinced
of his [Captain Dorans] power over me to doubt what he said.24 Even more
striking to both author and reader is the threat of violence which appears so
suddenly and unexpectedly. . . . he [Captain Doran] swore I should not move
out of his sight; and if I did he would cut my throat, at the same time taking his
hanger [sword].25 Piety, quick wits and eloquence, it turns out, are no match for
brute force.
Within The Interesting Narrative there is, though, an equal and opposite
theme to that of enslavement. As in John Bunyans Grace Abounding to the
Chief of Sinners (1666), temporal and spiritual enslavement, separation,
departure and loss, are matched by their equal and opposite achievement of
freedom. This is especially noticeable in the extended account Equiano gives of
his own movement towards faith and conversion, though which his past life is
re-envisioned in the form of a newly workable present. Equianos moment of
conversion in one stroke reveals Gods providence and makes sense of the
formerly chaotic, random events of his past life:26
Now every leading providential circumstance that happened to me, from the day I
was taken from my parents to that hour, was, in my view, as if it had been but just
then occurred. I was sensible of the invisible hand of God, which guided and
protected me, when in truth I knew it not; still the hand pursued me although I
slighted and disregarded it; this mercy melted me down.

This intensely personal reconciliation of past and present is also a reconciliation

between Europe and Africa, between slavery and freedom, between violence
and language. It is within this context of a refigured personal and collective past
that we might reconsider the question of birthplace. Equianos life story is a
generic tale of liberation; like Grace Abounding, it details a path towards
liberation, but in Equianos the political setting is much more explicit. In both

























































23 The Interesting Narrative, 91-2.
24 The Interesting Narrative, 93.
25 The Interesting Narrative, 94.
26 The Interesting Narrative, 190.

54

Peter Leese

cases the individual expression of a collective experience, that of enslaved

Africans, is entirely accurately told.

Jeffery Morat: the erasure of memory

The Interesting Narrative has its own interesting afterlife. Following its initial
publication in 1789 it went through nine successive editions, the last published
in 1794. During these years the author travelled extensively in Britain and
Ireland to promote his account as well as the abolitionist cause.27 The recovery
of the account in the twentieth century begins with a new phase of the memory
boom in the late 1960s, when Paul Edwards produces a facsimile edition. Since
that time The Interesting Narrative has become increasingly widely circulated,
extracted and discussed. 28 Carrettas intervention is in this respect entirely
characteristic of the most recent phase of the memory boom, which has
increasingly thrown into question matters of originality, authenticity and truth.
Yet from the mid-nineteenth century until the late twentieth the abolition of
slavery in the United States, rather than the British transatlantic slave trade of
the eighteenth century has drawn most attention. In the meantime The
Interesting Narrative fell into obscurity.29
To understand, finally, the collective past which Olaudah Equiano
commemorates and bears witness to, it is only necessary to consider another
black Briton, Jeffery Morat (c. 1719-36), whose life is recorded only indirectly
though the proceedings of the Old Bailey, Londons central criminal court.30 He
was accused of breaking and entering as well as the attempted murder of
Hannah Emberton, housekeeper at the Hanover Square residence he tried,
unsuccessfully, to steal from. Born in Guinea, it appears Morat was separated
from his parents very early and had no recollection of who they were or where
he came from. While Equiano embraced education and faith Jeffery Morat
rejected both, seeming to be of a perverse, unthinking disposition, naturally

























































27 J. Green, The Publishing History of Olaudah Equianos Interesting Narrative, Slavery
and Abolition 16:3 (1995), 317-47.
28 Olaudah Equiano, The Life of Olaudah Equiano: or, Gustavus Vassa the African, 1789
[1st ed.] reprinted with a new introduction by Paul Edwards (London: Dawson, 1969).
On the twentieth-century memory boom see Jay Winter, Remembering War. The Great
War Between Memory and History in the 20th Century (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2006), 17-51.
29 Carretta, Equiano the African, xii-xiii.
30 Proceedings at Sessions of Peace. City of London and County of Middlesex, vol. 2: 17351740, 167-8. Reproduced in P. Leese, et al., eds., The British Migrant Experience 17002000: an anthology (London: Palgrave, 2002), 54-5.

Equianos Memory: recuperative disclosure in the black Atlantic

55

vicious and extremely wicked. At his trial he refused to give any defence of his
actions, and the little we know of him is recorded from the trial account:
While under sentence, he was sick all the Time, did not come often to Prayers, and
at last he was so careless of himself, and grew so nasty, that scarce any body could
go into his Cell. He knew little of Religion, and when I visited and exhorted him in
the cell, he acknowledged his great Sin, and that he was heartily grieving, having
committed this Fact without any manner of Necessity, but merely out of a wicked
devilish temper. He declared that he was a Christian, cried to God for Mercy, and
was at peace with all Men.
On Tuesday Morning of 1st March [1736], when his keepers opened the Doors he
was found dead in the cell. 31

31 Leese et al., 2002, 54-5.

CHAPTER 4
Revisiting Slavery:
African Diasporic Consciousness
in Lawrence Hills The Book of Negroes
Pilar Cuder-Domnguez, University of Huelva1
Black Canadian fiction of the last two decades, as I have maintained elsewhere2,
has rested closely on a historical script and developed a didactic function in
educating all Canadians concerning their shared history. It thus plays a key role
in bringing to light much neglected periods of the life and history of the African
presence in Canada as well as dispelling myths such as the alleged absence of
slavery in the country. As a result, for example, recent black Canadian fiction
has successfully produced a number of plays and novels that can be read as neoslave narratives. 3 Nevertheless, given the large diversity of black Canada,
perhaps one should not overestimate the issue of slavery and should steer clear
of the risk of considering the Underground Railroad as the sole epistemic
center of black Canadian consciousness, as Nancy Kang pointedly warns.4
It is perhaps Lawrence Hills fiction to date that best showcases the recurrent
struggle to record Black history in Canada as well as the tensions and tendencies
within it. His first novel, Some Great Thing (1992), focused on the experiences of
black Manitobans in the twentieth century; his second, Any Known Blood (1997),
reconstructed the Black genealogy of its protagonists on both sides of the 49th
parallel, while his most recent effort, The Book of Negroes (2007),5 is a neo-slave

























































1 The author wishes to acknowledge the funding provided by the Spanish Ministry of
Science and Research for the writing of this essay (Research Project FEM2010-18142).
2 On the subject of the relation between black Canadian fiction and history, see my essay
The Racialization of Canadian History: African Canadian Fiction, 1990-2005, in
National Plots: Interrogation, Revision, and Re-Inscription in Canadian Historical
Fiction, 1832-2005. Ed. Andrea Cabajsky and Brett Josef Grubisic (Waterloo: Wilfrid
Laurier University Press, 2010), 188-213.
3 On the representation of slavery in recent black Canadian writing, see among others my
article African-Canadian Writing and the Narration(s) of Slavery, Essays on Canadian
Writing 79 (Spring 2003), 55-75.
4 Nancy Kang, As if I had entered a Paradise: Fugitive Slave Narratives and CrossBorder Literary History, African American Review 39:3 (2005), pp. 431-57, 434.
5 The novel was published in the U.S. with the title Someone Knows My Name.
Throughout my essay, however, I will keep the original Canadian title, as being more
expressive of the historical background of the story. An image of the original 1783 Book

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Pilar Cuder-Domnguez

narrative charting both sides of the Black Atlantic.6 While it is more obviously his
latest novel that has the broadest geographical scope, it would be wrong to assume
that Hills previous fiction lacked a trans-Atlantic focus. Indeed, as early as Some
Great Thing (1992), Hill included African characters and places alongside Canadian
and U.S. ones in a way that challenged a uniform representation of blackness.7
Rather, one should see The Book of Negroes as a further step in the exploration of
different black identities rooted in diverging societies, homes and nations.
As I will try to prove in this essay, Lawrence Hills The Book of Negroes
stands out as a textbook example of African diasporic consciousness
consisting of multiple departures and returns, and highlighting the powerful
pull of the myth of a homeland lost but never totally forgotten. Moreover,
Hills novel is impressive for its multilayered exploration of the rise of this
diasporic consciousness through discourse as well as for unpacking the
nuances of (un)belonging and (lack of) citizenship for the black subject as
represented, most of all, by the protagonist, Aminata Diallo. By showcasing
the diverse conditions under which black people struggled to survive on both
sides of the Atlantic ocean while the slave trade was at its peak, Hill dispels
the notion that a nation is, as Renan would have it, a soul, a spiritual
principle.8 Instead, black people are shown to dwell in the boundary, those
in-between spaces and fractured locations in which they manage to construct
provisional, hybrid identities. In this latest visit to the history of slavery, and
by stressing diversity, multiplicity, and hybridity, Hill counters the myth of a
monolithic black identity and conveys instead the process of black diasporic
subjectivity and community building. My aim here is to unpack some of these
affiliations in the novel, first by looking into the construction of slavery and
the related concept of freedom and how it interrelates to issues of home and
language, and next by discussing the politics of place and national borders.














































































































































































of Negroes can be accessed at: http://museum.gov.ns.ca/blackloyalists/17751800/
Objects1775/booknegroes.htm.
6 Ashraf H. A. Rushdy among others has traced the origins and development of this
subgenre in the United States since the 1960s; concisely formulated, neo-slave narratives
are contemporary novels that assume the form, adopt the conventions, and take on the
first-person voice of the ante-bellum slave narrative. Rushdy, Neo-Slave Narratives:
Studies in the Social Logic of a Literary Form (New York: Oxford University Press,
1999), 3.
7 In an unpublished interview, Hill told me that the strong and vivid presence of Africa in
his fiction is due to the fact that he went as a volunteer to Mali, Cameroon, and Tunisia
with a Canadian non-profit, non-governmental organization, Canadian Crossroads
International. These experiences, he said, marked him permanently.
8 Lawrence Hill, Some Great Thing (Winnipeg: Turnstone, 1992), 19.

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Slavery versus Freedom: Musings on Home and Language

Set in the eighteenth-century British Empire, Hills third novel The Book of
Negroes undertakes the narration of slavery by means of the long life and many
voyages of African-born Aminata Diallo. The book spans from the middle years
of the eighteenth century, when the slave trade was at its peak, to the early
nineteenth century, when the abolitionist movement, led in the British
Parliament by William Wilberforce, was about to win its first major victory and
obtain the abolition of the trade. Lawrence Hill has managed to endow his
fiction with authenticity with the help of a first-person account that consistently
lends its voice to the enslaved African, Aminata, rather than to the white
abolitionists. This account is divided into four large sections or books, each of
them dealing with the experiences of Aminata at a different location. Book One
records her childhood in the village of Bayo until she was kidnapped at the age
of eleven and taken to the coast, where she was branded and sold. Book Two
describes the Middle Passage and her life under several owners in the Thirteen
Colonies. In Book Three Aminata runs away from her owner and starts working
for the British Army, so she is transported to Nova Scotia with other Black
Loyalists after the American Revolutionary War. In Book Four Aminatas
attempt to start a new life in Nova Scotia meets with failure, and she travels to
Africa under the protection of the Sierra Leone Company. Finally, the entire
narrative is framed by the voice of an elderly Aminata now living in London
after deciding to join the abolitionist movement and to support it by telling her
life-story.
With each change of location, readers come to grasp the sheer magnitude of
the slave system and how it impinges on the lives of millions of people on
several continents. Furthermore, Hill has managed to convey several momentous
events taking place in the Atlantic world during the eighteenth century without
losing sight of the complex position of those black people caught up in them. It
is striking, for instance, how, in the section about the War of Independence, he
transmits the standpoint of runaway slaves who are ready to join the British side
against the so-called rebels who have appropriated the idea of freedom but
failed to extend it to the people they continue to enslave: They thought it
absurd for any white man in the Thirteen Colonies to be complaining of slavery
at the hands of the British.9
The theme of liberty thus pervades the whole novel and comes under
sustained scrutiny in all its complexity, particularly in its deep connection to
parameters of place and language. Thus, my aim in this section is to point out
the multifarious ways in which Hills fiction provides readers with a powerful

























































9 Hill, The Book of Negroes (Toronto: Harpercollins, 2007), 280.

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tool to envisage how colonial intervention in Africa through the slave trade
alienated millions of people from their homeland and their identity, disrupting
their sense of home and belonging. Ultimately, as Aminata discovers, there is no
home for Africans to return to, and so they have been forced to become
travelling peoples. Moreover, as long as slavery exists, they may only remain
free as long as they keep moving.
Aminata Diallos early identity was deeply rooted in the local, in her sense
of place, rather than depending on ethnicity or race. As the offspring of a mixed
marriage  she has a Fula father and a Bamanakan mother  she defines herself
most of all as being part of a community, i.e. as Aminata Diallo of the village of
Bayo. However, this early identity is disrupted when she is kidnapped, her
parents killed and her village set on fire. From then on, home becomes an
elusive concept, that can only be accessed as the object of nostalgia, despite
Aminatas determined promise that she will go back home some day.10
Home remains in the readers sights as Aminata crosses the Atlantic for
the first time. Hill places his readers within the harrowing experience of the
Middle Passage itself, on the inside looking out, rather than looking at it from
outside. Descriptions in this section always name the enslaved Africans
homelanders, i.e. those who come from the same place as Aminata, even
though they are originally from a range of villages and speak a variety of
languages. On the contrary, the sailors and officers on the slave ship are
positioned as the outsiders by using the term toubab, a West African word for
a white person. Also, they tend to lack individual features whereas the
homelanders retain individual names and traits. In fact, speaking out the
enslaved peoples names and villages is one of the psychological strategies for
survival on board the slave ship, a form of resistance against the dehumanizing
process they are going through:
The homelanders hated nothing more than being made to dance over a whip that the
assistant raked over the deck. One day, [] I began to sing a song while we danced,
naming all the people I saw. I tried to name every single face, and give the name of
the persons home village. [] Chekura, I sang, of Kinta. And Isa, of Sirakoro.
Ngolo, of Jelibugu. Fanta, of Bayo. The homelanders spirits picked up, a little.11

However, once the ship lands in South Carolina and the slaves are sold at public
auction, their home fades away, their language is no longer spoken, and their
very names are taken away from them.12 Still a child, Aminata must swiftly

























































10 The Book of Negroes, 51.
11 The Book of Negroes, 80.
12 As a matter of fact, the theme of naming is so important in this novel that it explains the
authors choice of the novels U.S. title, Someone Knows My Name.

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61

adapt to a completely new and cruel environment. She is told that black people
are called niggers, negroes, or slaves by their masters, the buckra, and
also that she comes from Africa, an idea that she initially resists: I belong to
nobody, and I am not an African. I am a Bamana. And a Fula. I am from Bayo
near Segu. I am not what you say. I am not an African.13 But she has already
started on a process that will transform Aminata Diallo of Bayo into Meena Dee
of the Appleby indigo plantation on St. Helenas Island, for nobody, not even
the woman who becomes a surrogate mother to her, can pronounce her name.
The loss of her African name signals the loss of her home, as Meena is a name
given by a stranger. Yet, it is also a kind of mock baptism forced upon her as a
consequence of the Middle Passage, thus encoding the beginning of a different
existence as a slave: [a] new name for the second life of a girl who survived the
great river crossing.14 This new place has imposed on her a new and diminished
identity that she continues to resist even as she learns to her cost the meaning of
slavery. Once more, language becomes the main instrument of her resistance.
She secretly learns to read and write, and she becomes proficient in the codes
spoken both by masters and by slaves, adding them to her already abundant
stock of African languages, Fulfulde and Bamanakan.
As she grows older, her search for a map that will help her get her bearings
in relation to home, occupies her mind more and more. When she finally gains
access to a map of the world, she is disappointed to recognize nothing of the
childhood place she remembers: I saw a lion and an elephant sketched in the
middle of the land called Africa. I saw that it was mostly surrounded by seas.
But the map told me nothing of where I came from. Nothing of Bayo, Segu, or
the Joliba. Not a single thing that I recognized from my homeland.15 Aminata
feels cheated by the colonial appropriation of her home. The colonizers gaze
has set itself apart as the universal, which has damaged Aminatas sense of place
and identity irreparably, although at present she lacks the language to express
such disruption. It is only later that she comes across a poem by Jonathan Swift
(On Poetry: A Rhapsody, 1733) that voices her own challenge of colonial
cartography:
So geographers, in Afric-maps,
With savage-pictures fill their gaps;
And oer inhabitable downs
Place elephants for want of towns.
Elephants for want of towns. I found it comforting to know that already sixty years
earlier, before I was even born, Swift had expressed the very thing I was feeling

























































13 The Book of Negroes, 122.
14 The Book of Negroes, 127.
15 The Book of Negroes, 211.

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Pilar Cuder-Domnguez
now. These werent maps of Africa. In the ornate cartouches of elephants and
women with huge breasts that rose in unlikely salute, every stroke of paint told me
that the map-makers had little to say about my land.16

Later, when Aminata decided to seize her freedom at the onset of the American
Revolution, home was still very much on her mind. It was her eventual
destination, because for her home and freedom were one and the same thing.
Nevertheless, an older Aminata understood that Black people were seldom if ever
allowed to choose their destination. Either through forced migration or in search of
a safe haven, Africans had become travelling peoples, a recurrent term in Hills
novel17 encapsulating the notion that no place in the world was entirely safe for an
African, and that for many of us, survival depended on perpetual migration.18
Now a middle-aged woman who has been travelling for a long time, Aminatas
sense of identity has become as rich and multifarious as the range of places she has
lived in and the languages she has used: It occurred to me then that nobody in the
world had my exact accent, because nobody had lived with the same people in
villages, towns and cities on two continents. I liked having my accent, whatever it
was, and wanted to keep it.19 It is the peculiar combination of languages and
regional accents that confers individuality on her.
Home continues to be elusive even after Aminata has reached the Sierra
Leone coast she left from. She spends some time in the Black Nova Scotian
settlement of Freetown in order to prepare for travelling in search of her lost
village, Bayo. She learns the language of the Temne who own the lands of and
around the settlement, and tries to re-assert her identity as an African woman,
yet she is not accepted as one. The Temne consider her a toubab, a white
person with a black mask,20 an outsider not to be trusted, and Aminata herself
feels that way too:
In South Carolina, I had been an African. In Nova Scotia, I had become known as a
Loyalist, or a Negro, or both. And now, finally back in Africa, I was seen as a Nova
Scotian, and in some respects thought of myself that way too. I certainly felt more Nova
Scotian than African when the Temne women clustered around me, grains and bound
fowl and fruits balanced on huge platters on their heads. [..] By the way they squeezed
my hands and arms, they seemed to think that I was just as foreign as the British.21

























































16 The Book of Negroes, 368.
17 The Book of Negroes, 301, 318-19, 404.
18 The Book of Negroes, 385.
19 The Book of Negroes, 314.
20 There is an obvious echo of Frantz Fanons Black Skin, White Masks (1952) here, insofar
as the Temne are swift to recognize a black person imitating and appropriating white
colonizers attitudes and lifestyles.
21 The Book of Negroes, 385-86.

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63

Moreover, the home that she has so long dreamed of and that she has always
identified with her early freedom is also a place where slavery is an everyday
occurrence. Freetown is located only a few miles from the slave fort on Bance
Island where a brisk slave trade continues to be carried out, and although theirs
is a free settlement, the Black Nova Scotian population is forced to witness slave
coffles in regular transit across their settlement. Freedom and slavery in Africa
are dangerously close. In fact, only the slave traders are familiar with the paths
that would allow Aminata to retrace her steps, but in travelling with them,
Aminata has to trust them with her life and liberty. It is only when she overhears
them making plans to sell her that Aminata finally stops identifying the concept
of home with freedom:
From the day I was stolen, thoughts of home had made it impossible for me to feel I
belonged anywhere I lived. [] But after I heard [the slave traders] words, I felt no
more longing for Bayo  only a determination to stay free. [] I let go of my
greatest desire. I would never go back home. [] I had entrusted my life to a man
who sold people in the same way that he sold goats. He would sell me as he had
bought and sold so many others. And I had helped him in his work. I had offered
myself up to him and paid him for the privilege. [] I would sooner swallow poison
than live twenty more years as the property of another man  African or toubab.
Bayo, I could live without. But for freedom, I would die.22

With the loss of home, the concept of freedom needs to be redefined and
Aminata falls back on the other identity feature that has supported her struggle
for years: language. She becomes a storyteller, a djeli in the terms of her
African people, appropriating the white mans language in order to fight against
slavery: I have long loved the written word, and come to see in it the power of
the sleeping lion. This is my name. This is who I am. This is how I got here.23
Thus, language and storytelling become for Aminata empowering tools to assert
her innermost freedom. In so doing, she has reached a new home (London,
where she is reunited with her daughter Mary) and she has recovered her true
name, Aminata Diallo, instead of being as formerly, Meena Dee or Miss Dee.
Finally, Aminata has seized the power to tell her own story and to draw her own
map of the world, one in which liberty, place and language have finally come
together:
I would like to draw a map of the places I have lived. I would put Bayo on the map,
and trace in red my long path to the sea. Blue lines would show the ocean voyages.
Cartouches would decorate the margins. There would be no elephants for want of
towns, but rather paintings of guineas made from the gold mines of Africa, a woman

























































22 The Book of Negroes, 442-42.
23 The Book of Negroes, 101.

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Pilar Cuder-Domnguez
balancing fruit on her head, another with blue pouches for medicine, a child reading,
and the green hills of Sierra Leone, land of my arrivals and embarkations.24

Lawrence Hills The Book of Negroes thus provides a powerful picture of Black
Atlantic subjectivity. Rather than a single departure with its corresponding arrival,
the narrative sets up repeated arrivals and embarkations that come to constitute the
discursive components of a subjectivity that lets go of essentialized notions of
home and homeland, stage by stage. These are discarded in favour of a more fluid,
less restrictive form of identity. As a result, Hills character and narrator, Aminata,
can truly claim that she has made her home in language. In the next section, the
issue of home is further explored in connection to the lands the protagonist
traverses, and more specifically in terms of the kinds of citizenship each emerging
nation provides for black people, or refuses to.

Transatlantic Geographies and National Borders

Aminata Diallos subjectivity is built on the fragile tensions between the oral
account and the written word, between individual identity (understood primarily,
as described above, as based on private longings for a lost home) and collective
citizenship (or lack of it) as constructed within the borders of the nation. In the
opening chapter, And now I am old, Aminata describes herself as the one and
only author of the account we are about to read, so much so that she has given
instructions to one of the abolitionists that if she were to die suddenly, the text
should be left unchanged. Although she is in full control of the linguistic signs
she inscribes on page after page, her own body, like her life, has been inscribed
onto by others. Aminata is proud of the lovely crescent moons sculpted into my
cheeks25 that identify her as a freeborn Muslim, and therefore insert her into a
specific genealogy and ancestry. Hidden from view, however, are other
unwelcome signs, the initials branded just above her right breast when she was
sold as a slave at the age of eleven.
Consequently, Aminatas relationship with the written word is full of
fractures. When she receives as a gift a beautiful inkpot decorated with swirling
lines of indigo blue, she quibbles that Englishmen do love to bury one thing so
completely in another that the two can only be separated by force: peanuts in
candy, indigo in glass, Africans in irons.26 Aminata distrusts the written word
even while being very much aware of its power, the power of the sleeping

























































24 The Book of Negroes, 470.
25 The Book of Negroes, 5.
26 The Book of Negroes, 103.

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lion.27 It is the spoken word she has some confidence in, insofar as it entails
human contact and mutual trust. Thus, in order to describe her uneasy position
within the abolitionist circle in London she stresses that their lips do not yet say
my name and their ears do not yet hear my story.28 Spoken language and
original names are consistently associated in Hills novel with home,
community, freedom and trust. The different rhythms of speech and sound also
evoke human differences, and thus they signify a resistance to the inexorable
pull towards uniformity that slavery represents. By contrast, the written word
can brand, hurt, or otherwise encode deception.
The tensions between individual and community, the oral and the written,
have clear parallelisms at the level of place and movement, as discussed above.
In each of the milieus and locations Aminata transitorily inhabits, these binary
oppositions are charted on the very soil black and white people inhabit. During
her period as a slave in colonial America, first on the Appleby indigo plantation
and later at Solomon Lindos Charles Town house, the slaves and owners
quarters are spaces clearly separated not only by social status, but also in
conjunction with the freedom to read and write that all whites possess and all
blacks are deprived of. In both places Aminata must keep her new skills a
complete secret on pain of death, but much more so on the indigo plantation,
where she can only read in the evenings with her teacher, the overseer Mamed,
and where the spoken word is enforced by a cruel owner as a way to keep slaves
under his foot and by the slaves themselves in order to maintain a facade of
ignorance that will help keep them safe. In Charles Town, however, Aminata
has access to a much larger range of books and she even comes to possess some.
Every month Mrs Lindo makes her a gift of a book that joins Aminatas most
prized possessions in the backhouse she lives in. Although it remains unsafe for
her to read and to own books, this location affords Aminata a measure of
privacy and freedom she previously lacked. It is also in Charles Town that she
first visits a public library and, under the pretence of accompanying her master,
she can consult maps of the world in search of her African home.
Nevertheless, in these colonial locations hierarchies are rigid and slaves
opportunities for freedom are extraordinarily limited. In Book Three, Aminata
finds an environment more conducive to her freedom in New York City at the
time of the American Revolutionary War. In Charles Town, she had paid little
heed to the first news of a rebellion against British tyranny: Liberty to the
Americans. Down with slavery. They werent talking about the slavery I knew or

























































27 The Book of Negroes, 101.
28 The Book of Negroes, 101.

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the liberty I wanted, and it all seemed ludicrous to me.29 But on first catching
sight of New York City from the ship, she observes a shanty town on the
outskirts, and Mr Lindo informs her that this is a Negro settlement known as
Canvas Town. For Aminata it is an inspiring view, closely followed by
another important moment when she registers at the hotel:
I had now written my name on a public document, and I was a person, with just as
much right to life and liberty as the man who claimed to own me. I would not return
to Charles Town. [...] It was already clear to me that there were Negroes circulating
freely in New York. I would somehow find my place among them. I would not
submit again to ownership by any man.30

Therefore, her path to citizenship as a free person is inaugurated by her entering

the public sphere in signing her full name in the hotel registration book. Next,
her control of the written word increases when she decides not just to be a user
herself, but to teach others to do so. She becomes a respected member of the
black community living in Canvas Town, and although she makes a living as a
midwife, she is better known for her reading and writing skills. She teaches
everyone who wants to learn, and she reads the news aloud for the inhabitants of
this marginal space on the outskirts of New York City. It is Aminata who
informs her peers of the Philipsburg Proclamation of 1779: Every Negro I
taught learned the words of the proclamation, issued by Sir Henry Clinton, the
British Commander-in-Chief: To every Negro who shall desert the Rebel
Standard, full security to follow within these lines, any occupation which he
shall think proper.31 Moreover, after becoming a teacher she is hired as a clerk
by the British officers, thus playing a major (albeit historically implausible) role
in registering the names of the black people leaving with their Loyalist masters
or as free people. This is the Book of Negroes of the title, the ledgers that
constitute, according to Hills Afterword:
[T]he largest single document about black people in North America up until the end
of the 18th century. It contains the names and details of 3,000 black men, women
and children, who, after serving or living behind British lines during the American
Revolutionary War, sailed from New York City to various British colonies.32

However, Aminatas increased mastery of the written word is not concurrent

with a similar rise in her social status. She remains subjected to the very end of
her stay to the wranglings between British and American people over their
property, since they have full access to a citizenship she is denied. Her

























































29 The Book of Negroes, 228.
30 The Book of Negroes, 244.
31 The Book of Negroes, 279-80.
32 The Book of Negroes, 471.

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contempt for that social system takes the shape once more of the spoken word,
as it is the one vehicle for truth that she knows and trusts. Thus, on leaving the
Thirteen Colonies, she declares: I knew that it would be called the United
States. But I refused to speak that name. There was nothing united about a
nation that said all men were created equal, but that kept my people in chains.33
As she enters the borders of another nation, the British colony of Nova
Scotia, where all Loyalists, white or black, have been promised land, and
considering Aminatas continued empowerment, readers expect her full entry
into citizenship. But here, too, it is denied to black people. Similarly to the
binary opposition between Canvas Town and New York City, Aminata now
encounters the outlying black shanty settlement of Birchtown near the white
Loyalist town of Shelbourne. Here as well, while consistently as
disempowered in social terms as the rest of her race, Aminata continues to
attain new levels of proficiency in the written word. She apprentices herself to
Theo McArdle, owner of a print shop and editor of The Shelbourne Crier. By
learning to set the types for the newspaper, Aminata achieves an even higher
level of control and is one step closer to her status as author by the
chronological end of the novel.
The historical Birchtown was at that time the largest free black settlement in
the world outside Africa.34 Since the black Loyalists were the last on the list of
those awaiting the land grants, James St. G. Walker concludes that: The final
result was that fewer than one-third of the black Loyalists in Nova Scotia and
New Brunswick received any land at all, and the farms they did get were
considerably smaller in size and usually in less fertile or more remote regions than
those of the white Loyalists.35 These frustrations worked on the tensions between
the white Loyalists in Shelbourne and those Loyalists in Birchtown, a large
settlement inhabited by over 1,500 black people, triggering violent incidents like
the riot of 1783, which Hill has anachronistically set some years later in his novel.
The poverty endured by the free black people was so severe that many chose to
enter into indenture contracts rather than starve. Birchtown thus becomes for
Nova Scotia (or Nova Scarcity, as it is now ironically known36) the location of
black disempowerment that Canvas Town was once on U.S. soil. Hills novel
charts a rising discontent among the population of Birchtown that climaxes with
the decision by one black Nova Scotian, Thomas Peters, to travel to London to

























































33 The Book of Negroes, 311.
34 James W. St. G Walker, A History of Blacks in Canada (Hull: Minister of State
Multiculturalism/Canadian Government Publishing Centre, 1980), 31.
35 Walker, 1980, 30.
36 The Book of Negroes, 317.

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voice their complaints. This is the origin of what became the first back to Africa
exodus, as Peters came into contact with British abolitionists that had founded a
colony for freed slaves in western Africa and needed settlers. The representative
of the Sierra Leone Company, John Clarkson, came to Nova Scotia to recruit
them among the disgruntled black Loyalists, managing to reach the impressive
number of 1,200 people. According to James St. G. Walker, this feat was
accomplished despite numerous difficulties:
The local establishment, both private and official, rallied its forces to obstruct the
exodus: whites were not anxious to lose cheap black labour, and besides a mass
emigration would serve to confirm Peters complaints that the blacks were badly
treated. [...] Since debtors and indentured servants were ineligible by law to leave,
many whites produced false documents of debts or indenture to keep blacks from
going. The 1,200 who left were, in many ways, an elite. They had been able to avoid
debt and indenture in the past, and to resist the white opposition to the emigration
scheme. When the actual exodus took place in January 1792, it took many of the
most dynamic members of the black communities, including most of the preachers
and teachers.37

Aminatas new home on African soil is also riddled with tensions between two
oppositional spaces: Freetown and Temne land. In Freetown, Nova Scotians
seem intent on reproducing and transplanting the society they left behind, so
much so that Aminata observes that the colony we were establishing was
neither one thing nor the other38, that is, neither truly Nova Scotian nor African.
This is in tune with the comments made by historian Robin W. Winks regarding
the Sierra Leona settlement:
The new settlers did not think of themselves as Africans, however; they were simply
the Nova Scotians. They thought the earlier liberated Africans, as well as the
native groups, were inferior to them, and they held themselves aloof from other
North American Negroes who came later. Into the 20th century the Nova Scotians
remained an identifiable group, and until the 1870s they provided much of the
energy, leadership, and knowledge of Western skills needed in the young and
disastrously mismanaged colony.39

Yet, Nova Scotians are not the only ones responsible for the atmosphere of
repressed violence in the settlement. Underlying a surface agreement is the
Temnes challenge towards the white occupation of their land, one they have
negotiated only temporarily, since they never intended to give up their rights
over the land. Thus, it soon becomes apparent that at least on one previous

























































37 Walker, 1980, 35.
38 The Book of Negroes, 384.
39 Robin W. Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History. 2nd ed. (Montreal: McGill-Queens
University Press, 1997), 76.

Revisiting Slavery: African Diasporic Consciousness in Lawrence Hills...

69

occasion the Temne had wiped out the settlement, and that they threaten to do so
again if their conditions are not met: King Jimmys favourite method of
pressure was to send dozens of canoes full of warriors past our shores at night,
whooping and hollering and beating drums as they went.40
On this last stage of Aminatas travels, her allegiance to the spoken word is
reconfirmed. After her harrowing experiences and particularly after the journey
overland with the slave traders in search of her first home, she finds shelter and
protection in a village where she repays her benefactors by telling stories each
night for a full month. Finally, she concludes: I never managed to return home
to Bayo, but for one month in a tiny village of strangers, I became the storyteller
 the djeli  that I had always hoped to be.41 In fact, all along she has been a
self-appointed djeli. While true djelis need to be born into a special family in
order to have the honour of learning and telling the stories of their community,
even in the most horrible situations Aminata has reminded herself that it is her
duty to be a djeli. See, and remember42, to the extent that, when she finally
reaches London and starts the carefully composed written account of her life,
there are within it the multiple voices of those who never made it through the
musket balls and the sharks and the nightmares, all those who never found a
group of listeners, and all those who never touched a quill and an inkpot.43 As a
result, Aminatas choice in favour of the written word is only made [i]n the
absence of an audience44, by which one must understand that she means an
audience whose heart and mind are ready to receive her message. Moreover, she
hopes that her manuscript will wait, perhaps in the London Library, like a
restful beast with lungs breathing and heart beating45, and that when someone
actually reads it, her whole life will have acquired its true meaning.
It is in London, as Aminata writes her life-story, that the tensions between
the oral and the written, home and nation, are eventually reconciled. This is not
to say that she has found her true home, or even that the nation where she now
dwells is perfect. Rather, it involves a general state of contentment with and
acceptance of the terms of her citizenship in a less than perfect world. Aminatas
perpetual travels end here: After I have met with the King and told my story, I
desire to be interred right here, in the soil of London. Africa is my homeland.
But I have weathered enough migrations for five lifetimes, thank you very

























































40 The Book of Negroes, 393.
41 The Book of Negroes, 447.
42 The Book of Negroes, 64.
43 The Book of Negroes, 57.
44 The Book of Negroes, 101.
45 The Book of Negroes, 101.

70

Pilar Cuder-Domnguez

much, and dont care to be moved again.46 Similarly, the written word acquires
reliability insofar as it is being put to use in the service of her people, that is,
insofar as its only purpose is none other than to bear witness to the trauma of
slavery and the multifaceted exploitation of black people.
The connection with eighteenth-century memoirs by former slaves, and
more particularly to Equianos Interesting Narrative (1789), immediately
springs here. In his Afterword, Hill mentions having read Henry Louis Gates,
Jr.s edition of The Classic Slave Narratives, which includes Equianos
alongside those of Frederick Douglas, Harriet Jacobs, and Mary Prince. Of all
four, it is surely Equianos that has been used more as a close role model for
Aminata Diallo. The author and his text are mentioned several times in the
novel. His writings are brought to her attention in Sierra Leone, and when she
reaches London she is looking forward to meeting him and asking him for
advice about how to write the account of her life, yet she is dismayed to find out
he had died a few years earlier. The opening words of Equianos Interesting
Narrative are also quoted literally in Hills novel in the episode where Aminata
is asked to prove to the African villagers that she has indeed lived among the
toubabu and can speak their language. She pulls out Equianos book and starts
reading, and then translates what she has read. To the question of what kind of
man Equiano was, Aminata replies that he was a man in a difficult life,
travelling many oceans and lands. 47
It is my contention that through this latest novel Lawrence Hill continues to
educate readers in the history of black people in Canada from a transatlantic,
transnational perspective, very much as he did previously in Any Known Blood.
One might wonder to what extent such an effort is indeed necessary nowadays,
and even more so after the recent celebration in several countries (Canada
included) of the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade, a celebration
which was officially endorsed by a number of well-publicized events and public
campaigns. As a matter of fact, Black Canadian History was a much neglected
discipline until the 1970s. David C. Estes analysis of the scholarship produced
in the last thirty years suggests that the 1970s opened up the field, a major
landmark being the publication in 1971 of the first general survey on Black
Canadian History48 Robin Winks The Blacks in Canada: A History, a text still
very much in use in its current second edition (published in 1997). Winks work
would be continued by historians like James W. St. G. Walker, author of The

























































46 The Book of Negroes, 7.
47 The Book of Negroes, 444.
48 David C. Este, Black Canadian Historical Writing 1970-2006: An Assessment, Journal
of Black Studies 38:3 (2008), pp. 388-406, 392.

Revisiting Slavery: African Diasporic Consciousness in Lawrence Hills...

71

Black Loyalists (1976), and sociologists like Daniel Hill Jr., author of The
Freedom Seekers (1981)  and Lawrence Hills father. The 1990s would bring
another major shift in the focus of the new discipline in order to incorporate a
gender approach, Dionne Brand and colleagues Were Rooted Here and They
Cant Pull Us Up (1994) being the first of a number of enlightening studies of
the history of black women in Canada.
However, despite the remarkable progress of the last thirty years, for
Barrington Walker the discipline remains uneven and in need of more foundational
scholarship, perhaps due to the fact that there have been profound institutional
barriers to its development. 49 More importantly for our purposes here, both
Walker and Este concur in pointing out that much of the dissemination of the
history of black people in Canada is not being done from the pages of history
books, but carried out by fiction writers and literary scholars. Este mentions that
[f]rom a literary perspective, the writings of individuals such as George Elliott
Clarke, Wade Compton, Maxine Tynes, Cheryl Foggo, Lawrence Hill, and others
provide revealing commentary on the lived experiences of African Canadians50,
while Barrington Walker estimates that [m]uch of the most interesting historical
work then has been generated by scholars not formally trained as historians51,
again citing George Elliott Clarke among others. I would like to argue that this is
indeed the best way to understand the aims and means of Hills novel, in the
context of the continual efforts of African Canadian writers to make visible the
black presence in their country as well as to highlight the main episodes of a history
that so far has remained substantially neglected. For Hill, these episodes take place
not only locally, but across borders and oceans. Unlike other African Canadian
authors whose writing is more locally grounded, Hills transatlantic approach is
fairly distinctive, whilst at the same time in line with the efforts of other Canadian
artists of diverse origins who, as Dobson has aptly argued, feel that the subjective
project of mapping oneself into the world requires a search beyond the borders of
Canada or of individuals already-known communities.52

49 Barrington Walker, Marginality, Interdisciplinarity, and Black Canadian History, New
Dawn: the Journal of Black Canadian Studies 1:1 (2006), pp. 83-7, 85. Online.
50 Este, 2008, 404.
51 Walker, 2006, 86.
52 Kit Dobson, Transnational Canadas: Anglo-Canadian Literature and Globalization
(Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009), 208.

CHAPTER 5
On Both Sides of the Atlantic:
Hybrid Identity and the Spanish-Speaking Diaspora
in Agns Agboton, Mnica Carrillo and Eulalia Bernard
Mar Gallego, University of Huelva1
Within the framework of Spanish-speaking African diaspora studies, it is
necessary to incorporate womens voices, virtually invisible and unheard
until quite recently. On this side of the Atlantic, and concretely in Spain, one
of the women who best represents these new female voices is Agns
Agboton. In her poetry collection Canciones del poblado y del exilio (2006)
and her autobiography Ms all del mar de arena (2005), the author
expresses the beauty and contradictions involved in the fashioning of hybrid
identities, as well as their constant cultural and identitarian negotiations. On
the other side of the Atlantic, two other womens poetry collections, Peruvian
Mnica Carrillos Uncroma (2007) and Costarrican Eulalia Bernards
Tatuaje (2011), also explore the fluid reconfiguration of multilayered and
dynamic identities.
In so doing, the three authors analyse the contemporary conceptualization
of the African diaspora in their respective countries, and the rewriting of their
official historiographies, thus bringing to the forefront the crucial
contributions of African descendants to the making of both Europe and the
Americas. They also aim at discarding the Eurocentric perspective of
identifying the Other with the migrant or the different. Deconstructing the
overreaching influence of Judeo-Christian thought, and especially of a
Cartesian worldview, the authors manage to textualize the experiences of
women in the African diaspora and their coming to terms with conflicting
allegiances and voices in their reelaboration of the symbolic and cultural
codes that define their subaltern status. Specifically, they articulate plurality
and difference in innovative and fruitful ways in order to shape an alternative
construction of both diasporic community and self.

1 The author wishes to acknowledge the funding provided by the Spanish Ministry of
Science and Research for the writing of this essay (Research Project FEM2010-18142). I
would also like to thank my colleague Carolina Ortiz for drawing my attention to
Carrillos and Bernards beautiful and provocative poetry.

74

Mar Gallego

In the Diaspora was the Beginning: Africa on my Mind

As a starting premise, the three women writers undertake the investigation of those
hybrid and subaltern identities by firmly establishing the link to their very diasporic
condition. They show their keen awareness of what constitutes their diasporan
beings and the indelible imprint on their character. In this section I will argue that
the deterritorialization of the subaltern subjects depicted in these four works
interrogates a monolithic tendency to explain away the African diaspora by
questioning the historical relationship between Africa and the Americas, on the one
hand, and Europe on the other. The return myth, new migration waves, the legacy
of slavery and colonisation and the ancestral land will be examined in their incisive
proposal for a reformulation of the connection to the past.
Mnica Carrillo sets the stage for this interrogation with a crucial image:
el flujo y reflujo, that is, the ebb and flow.2 And she expands on this
idea by asking the crucial question of the return from diaspora: regresar
de la dispora? [return from diaspora?].3 The return to the ancestral land as
a myth presides over her considerations and finally leads to the conviction
of the impossibility to actually return. 4 Many questions are posed by the
mere allusion to the mythical return to the motherland, Mama frica as
she calls it: returning exactly where? To which idealized configuration of
Africa? And perhaps more pointedly, returning from where? This
controversy is further complicated by the reference to the maternal land,
the land of the ancestors Which ancestors? Both female and male figures?
But Carrillos reflection on the return goes beyond that impossibility in
order to connect concerns that are present in the whole of the African
diaspora:
You think that it is the end of diaspora,
And that we will return together to
Mother Africa

























































2 Mnica Carrillo, Uncroma (Lima: Santo Oficio, 2007), 23. All extracts in Spanish have been
translated by the author of this article. This ebb and flow is an adequate image for diaspora in
itself, and has inspired this chapter to the point of becoming its structuring principle.
3 Uncroma, 24.
4 In diaspora studies, the return myth is considered one of the most important requirements
to ground the very notion of diaspora. The connection to the ancestral land can be
illustrated by the different diasporic classifications, that of William Safran being the best
known one: They regard their ancestral homeland as their true, ideal home (Diasporas
in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return, Diaspora 1 (1991), pp. 83-99, 83).
Stuart Hall insists on the idea of the impossibility of the return: migration is a nonreturn journey. There is no home to return to (Minimal Selves, in The Real Me.
Postmodernism and the Question of Identity (London: ICA, 1987), 44).

On Both Sides of the Atlantic: Hybrid Identity and the Spanish-Speaking Diaspora... 75
And we will perhaps end up in the smallest
country in South America.5

Carrillos poetry thus affirms a diasporic consciousness that transcends national

borders, transgressing the fixity of both geographic and cultural distinctions and
celebrating the plurality within the African diaspora itself. In this sense, her
writing becomes an icon of the true diasporic spirit that permeates the three
poetry collections and the autobiography.
Turning now to Bernards work, diasporan reverberations are also a crucial
element in the construction of her poetic universe, with many revealing
instances. One of these epiphanic moments can be found in the poem titled
Katrina, which is a startling reflection on the devastating effects of the terrible
event which affected the African diaspora everywhere:
There were waters
In marshes, bogs and swamps
From Africa,
From America,
From the Caribbean
To Europe.6

What is truly intriguing in the movement described by the author is its backward
character, which resonates with the African slave trade, but also with the profit
that actually supported the shaping of modern Europe. Through the telling
image of the circular movement of water that finally reaches European coasts
the author manages to denounce the greed, spoilage and slaughter that founded
the perverse and perverted European project in the Enlightenment and that
continues to surface in diverse forms up to today.7 The Katrina disaster clearly
shows the manifold and intricate ways in which the African diaspora is
entangled in what has been termed the Western empires. In the end, as the
poetic voice evocatively suggests, there are giant waters carrying sufferings8
whose flow may flood Europe, turning into the most suitable epitaph for the
decaying and waning West.9

























































5 Uncroma, 24.
6 Eulalia Bernard, Tatuaje (San Jos: Ediciones Guacayn, 2011), 56.
7 Drawing from the suggestive imagery used by Paul Gilroy in his seminal publication The
Black Atlantic (1993), the circular movement seems to effect a singular route backwards.
It markedly signals the enormous debt that European countries owe to Africa, as well as
the role of the Middle Passage in the course and progress of Western civilization.
8 Tatuaje, 56.
9 The Katrina disaster had an interesting coverage in the media and of the articles that
followed, particularly interesting was the Democracy Now! initiative on the
commemoration of the fifth anniversary of Katrina on August 30, 2010 entitled

76

Mar Gallego

Agbotons tone in her two works differs strikingly from the two previous
writers take on diaspora for several reasons: firstly, she is the only actual
migrant, indeed first-generation migrant, since she decided to leave her country
of origin, Benin, to settle permanently in Spain at the age of eighteen. Secondly,
and in addition to autobiographical elements, her position as a cultural griot10
dictates her writing production, as she intends to embrace her original Beninese
but also her adopted Spanish cultures both Castilian and Catalan. Her
diasporic consciousness is less encompassing than what can be detected in either
Carrillos or Bernards views, especially as both of them relate to the
interconnection of the African diaspora with the Americas and the historical
events that profoundly marked the nature of the encounter between Europe and
the Americas.11 In her case, the sense of diaspora seems to be limited (although
not restricted) to current migration waves and the difficulties faced by those
fellow migrants from Africa that she considers her brothers and sisters: The
problem of the African migration to Europe is flagrant, and she continues: it is
necessary, absolutely vital, to search for solutions.12 In her shattering account
of the myriad of deaths at sea because of the desperate attempt to reach
European soil, she conveniently highlights the multiple forms of exploitation
instigated once again by human greed and deceit of which most of these people
are victims.
In her search for solutions, as she puts it, Agboton claims the migrants right
to fair treatment as fellow human beings by making reference to another migrant
wave that took place within Spain from the impoverished Southern Andalusia to
industrialized Catalonia.13 Concretely, she cites Francisco Candel who wrote:














































































































































































(Remembering Hurricane Katrina: Voices from the Storm. Available on: http://
www.democracynow.org/2010/8/30/remembering_hurricane_katrina_voices_from_ the).
[Accessed 14/10/2011].
10 This is how she considers herself, as she has repeatedly stated in interviews and public
performances. According to Inmaculada Daz Narbona, Agboton is also a translator, a
passeur between cultures (Agns Agboton, a una y otra ribera del mar de arena, in
De Guinea Ecuatorial a las literaturas hispanoafricanas. Ed. L. W. Miampika (Madrid:
Verbum, 2010), pp. 239-252, 245).
11 A recent rendering of such an encounter is skilfully presented by Toni Morrison in her
novel A Mercy (2008), where Natives, Africans and Europes (Morrisons coinage)
interact in a presumably free space in which rules and hierarchies (on the basis of race,
class, gender, etc) are not yet clearly drawn.
12 Agns Agboton, Ms all del mar de arena (Barcelona: Lumen, 2005), 157, 158.
13 After the Spanish civil war in the 1940s, many Andalusians had to migrate to other
countries and regions in Spain in search of better work and living conditions. This
migration wave grew in intensity in the 60s and lasted until the beginning of the 1980s.
In general, Andalusian migrants were not welcome despite the urgent need for unskilled

On Both Sides of the Atlantic: Hybrid Identity and the Spanish-Speaking Diaspora... 77

When they [Catalonians] expected labour force, human beings arrived.14 It is

worthy of note that she draws this parallelism with an internal migration wave
within the confines of Europe in order to emphasize the similarities in patterns
and subsequent reactions. Moreover, this equation between Southern Spaniards
and Africans also calls attention to the so-called divide between North and
South, and the irrationality behind arguments that attempt to back up more
militarized vigilance to shield the infamous fortress Europe. Agboton
problematizes this strategy of la prisin al revs or a prison upside down,
whose main objective is to seclude the people who want to get in. 15 In line
with many current opinions in migration studies that advocate the pressing
need to take into account migrants views, the author focuses on migrants
important contributions to the ongoing debates about the construction of a
new Europe16 that may address and integrate all its components, populations
and cultures into a polyhedric mosaic.
In these writers revision of the relationship between Europe, Americas and
the African diaspora, a common historical moment is revisited which becomes a
guiding thread throughout the four works: slavery and its aftermath. Each author
recreates the poignant legacy of slavery as the springboard to tackle the
intricacies of diasporic identity. Thus, this legacy becomes the vantage point
from which to understand the incongruent workings of history and to conjure up
the impossible weight that lies at the very core of the modern world. The tragedy
of millions of human beings who were transported and trafficked as
merchandise and property looms on leaving a blemish, a stain impossible to
wash away, a gap that can never be refilled, the initial s being displayed as the
mark of everlasting shame and condemnation, if not moral damnation. 17














































































































































































labour and many demeaning stereotypes proliferated that deemed them as lazy, easily
contented and intellectually inferior. Estimated numbers of those who left Andalusia are
around two and a half million, Catalonia being the main destination, pointedly known as
the ninth Andalusian province. An updated account of the features and consequences
of this migration wave can be read in the volume La novena provincia, la emigracin de
andaluces a Catalua [The ninth Andalusian province: Andalusian migration to
Catalonia] edited by the Centro de Estudios Andaluces in April 2010. Enlightening
novels about this migratory experience are Olga Merinos Espuelas de papel (2004) and
Quim Arandas El avin de madera que logr dar media vuelta al mundo (2007).
14 Ms all del mar de arena, 158.
15 Ms all del mar de arena, 158.
16 Not so new or recent anymore, since these debates have been part and parcel of public
discourses, both political and legal, for almost two decades now in most European
countries.
17 This recalls the A in the classic The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a sign for
the crime of adultery that was embroidered on Hester Prynnes clothes, and later

78

Mar Gallego

Reparation, debt are invoked in these poets lines but are rarely fulfilled, even
considered as unfulfillable demands.18
Agboton meditates on the traces of the slave past and the ignominy of
colonisation on the Slaves coast in the opening pages of her autobiographical work.
She concludes by stating that of that huge and ignoble tragedy all were responsible.
The traders who commerced with human beings, the kings that sold their war
prisoners or their own subjects for a few coins.19 Considerable irony resides in the
fact that many Catalonian families were actively involved in the heinous trade too:
Now I know that some of the big fortunes of Barcelona were obtained thanks to the
slave trade, and it can be said that I am friends with some descendants of those
families.20 The unqualified and generic all of the first sentence is thus exposed as
a common we which clearly accuses both Europeans and many Africans of their
protagonism in the deprived task of human trafficking. Their accursed lot cannot be
denied, Agboton declares it explicitly; furthermore, her work bears witness to the
open rebuke of the horrid consequences of the slave trade and the institution of
slavery, while simultaneously remapping the contours of the study of that legacy by
putting Spain back in the picture, as it were.21














































































































































































branded on her skin (evoking the disturbing and inhuman practice of branding slaves
on plantations).
18 Some efforts have been made in this direction in recent times, especially political
statements around 2007 such as the bicentenary commemoration of the abolition of
the slave trade in Britain or the proclamation of 2011 as the UN International Year
for People of African Descent, but somehow they do not seem enough or fall short of
their promises. In the case of France, for instance, Jean-Yves Camus registers that
there has never been any attempt to seriously confront the French involvement in the
trade of slaves, despite the raging debates over the issues of multiculturalism and the
public commemoration and recognition of slavery (The Commemoration of Slavery
in France and the Emergence of a Black Political Consciousness, The European
Legacy 11:6 (2006), pp. 647655, 647). A similar situation is to be encountered in
Spain where recent attempts have been made on the part of the black population to
seek public acknowledgment of the involvement of the State in the slave trade. More
commendable examples are the erecting of monuments and memorials, such as the
Lancaster memorial curated by Dr. Alan Rice and the benches by the road
promoted by the Toni Morrison Society, both in the United States and Europe. For
instance, Agboton mentions the building of the monument aptly named the door of
no return in Ouidah in 1992 (Ms all del mar de arena, 21). On the whole, however,
most countries have not officially recognized their role in the horrendous slave trade
to this day.
19 Ms all del mar de arena, 21.
20 Ms all del mar de arena, 23.
21 Coinciding with other efforts by Spanish scholars such as Isabel Soto from the UNED
who organized the 2007 Conference in Madrid on Blackness and Modernities. Or

On Both Sides of the Atlantic: Hybrid Identity and the Spanish-Speaking Diaspora... 79

But Agboton goes on by including in her revision of the history of her

country of origin, Benin, not only the legacy of slavery but also its undesirable
twin project, colonisation. Indeed, the author undertakes the task of delineating
the harmful impact of both geographic and mental colonisation, in this case
retelling the events that eventually led to the French colonisation of the country
up to 1960. But her emphasis undoubtedly lies in the recreation of the long-term
effects of the colonial past, namely the mental colonisation to which the
inhabitants were subjected, that stretched well beyond colonial rule. She selects
a very meaningful example in the figure of her father:
He was, of course, the result of colonisation, and was divided between the weight of
his lineage, that implied respect in the traditional sphere, and the education that he
had received from his teachers, that was a completely French education. French
Cartesianism inserted in African mythologies can bear strange fruits.22

These two warring allegiances, an obvious consequence of the mental

colonisation inflicted upon colonised people, are thus ever present in her fathers
life and represent another legacy that Agboton must come to terms with in her
own making as an individual, but also a collective legacy with which the
African diaspora needs to reconcile itself.
In Bernards poetry heritage is a key word, as it figures prominently in her
rendering of the relationship between her poetic persona and the collective self.
As Manuel Delgado explains in the prologue, the very title of the collection,
tatuaje or tattoo, invokes that individual and collective history fittingly
summarized in that striking image: We are a tattoo23, since the tattoo has been
embedded in the fine texture of diasporic identity. But that sense of heritage
must acknowledge the journey back to the origins, to the actual roots that
substantiate the self, to the sea and the Middle passage. Thus, the second poem
that opens the collection is titled The year of the sea, and speaks about the
enraged and murderous sea, but also the charitable and brotherly sea that engulfs
the corpses of all the Africans who never made it to the other side of the
Atlantic. The last stanza is particularly worth highlighting, as it alludes with
searing honesty to the sense of distance that characterizes the African diaspora:
It is distance
That separates peoples
That separates skies














































































































































































ground-breaking books such as Marta Sofa Lpezs Afroeurope@ns. Cultures and
Identities (2008) and Mar Gallego and Isabel Sotos The Dialectics of Diasporas.
Memory, Location and Gender (2009).
22 Ms all del mar de arena, 31.
23 Tatuaje, 11.

80

Mar Gallego
That separates winds
It does not agree with fire
It is nurtured by moon and sun.24

The insistence on the gulf, the troubling gap and criminal neglect that separates the
diverse peoples can then be interpreted as that void left by millions of Africans who
never crossed the Atlantic, and to whom respect is owed. Additionally, it may also
embody the real difficulties descendants of the African diaspora may encounter in
their attempt at unity in the midst of plurality and specificity.
Her intentional reconstruction of the past delves into the slave and the
colonial past, but tries to reach further behind, to the ancestral African land. She
reflects upon the reality of the building of her nation, Costa Rica, on the backs
of a unique race/constructed/on the fantasy/of the flooded tragedy.25 Ghosts of
the Middle passage are revived here, together with the piercing image of los
nios de barro/sobrevivientes del holocausto [mud children/holocaust
survivors].26 The conflation of the slave ordeal with holocaust images makes the
former acquire even greater and more appalling dimensions. Also the recourse
to the mud element emphasizes even more the tragedy and the loss of those who
could not survive those atrocities, and the mud children that are their rightful
inheritors in the Americas. With this strategic association the author is able to
vividly bring to the forefront the legacy of discrimination and inequity that
resulted from the exploitation of human lives at the roots of the New World.
To counteract that obscure history, Bernard makes another deliberate move,
in this case effecting a leap all the way back to Africa in order to ground a more
satisfying sense of individual and collective self:
Talk to me land
So ask
for their home
my Orishas and gods.
Willing to cultivate
the lost love.
Befriend me with my past.27

The ancestral gods, the ancestral rhythms are all part of Bernards recreation of
a mythical past that has to be recovered and cherished by the new generations
of the African diaspora. To find again the lost love which may stand for that
whole legacy that has been silenced and disrupted, the past needs to be

























































24 Tatuaje, 16.
25 Tatuaje, 52.
26 Tatuaje, 52.
27 Tatuaje, 29.

On Both Sides of the Atlantic: Hybrid Identity and the Spanish-Speaking Diaspora... 81

revisited and reconceptualised. Without that crucial step of reconnection to

roots that may help heal the traumatic past, the ever bleeding split, Bernard
seems to be implying together with many other writers from the African
diaspora,28 the individual may dissolve, or worse drown, in the rising waters of
racist discrimination and ostracism. To change the course of events, it is vital
then to facilitate an actual reconciliation with the past and its recurring
nightmares.
In the case of Mnica Carrillo, her vision of Africa and the legacy of the
past is even more radical; she affirms that her poetry needs to address issues
such as: the ghetto/or my loves/or slavery.29 For her all these topics form
her poetic universe, insomuch as she tries to design a black aesthetics that can
truly encompass the diasporic community linking Africa and the Americas. Hers
is an inspirational and committed poetry that stems from the denunciation of
both racist and sexist discrimination and the resulting social injustice directed
against blacks, and especially black women. She thus becomes the spokesperson
that may personify:
My internal nation
my lost Africa
my hidden native
and my subjected white woman.30

She extends the notion of diasporic consciousness to count in the indigenous

populations as strategic allies as the title of another poem confirms, even
understanding the possible commonalities with white women. In this sense, she
relentlessly explores the whole universe of intersubjective relationships, as
Anbal Quijano aptly remarks.31 But the main emphasis lies in her lost African

























































28 Reconnecting with original roots as a way to heal both individually and collectively is
one of the priorities on the agenda of many writers of the African diaspora, specifically
undertaken by women writers such as Toni Morrison, Julie Dash, Paule Marshall, Alice
Walker, Toni Cade Bambara. A perceptive approach to this concern can be read in Gay
Wilenzs Healing Narratives: Women Writers Curing Cultural Dis-ease (2000), and
Silvia Castro Borregos Back to Africa: Internal Colonisation and Narrative Strategies
in African American Women Writers in Identity, Migration and Womens Bodies as
Sites of Knowledge and Transgression. Eds. Silvia Castro Borrego and Mara Isabel
Romero Ruiz (Oviedo: KRK, 2009), 85-92.
29 Uncroma, 47.
30 Uncroma, 48.
31 He continues by explaining the way in which this universe in Latin America is constituted not
only by diverse subjectivities, but historically heterogeneous, and simultaneously classified and
hierarchized according to a power whose basic nature is its coloniality. Quijano, Anbal. El
silencio y la escritura, Quehacer 107 (1997), pp. 79-81, 81.

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Mar Gallego

heritage that needs to be unearthed and reappropriated for the well-being of that
extended community.
In that call for reappropriation diverse crucial elements are assigned great value,
especially tied to the ancestral sense of spirituality. So she begins her ghetto rap:
The spiritual inspiration of my ancestors
the shadowy sunset
the obscurity
all nurtures
all stimulates.32

Her lyrics, especially in the second part of the book, are infused with the
urgency and tragedy of ghetto life, but also with the strength and resilience that
a sense of survival communicates to ghetto inhabitants. Carrillo is able to expose
the insidious consequences of the historical events that have been discussed
above mainly the traumatic legacy of slavery and colonisation from yet a
fresh perspective. In so doing, she claims for a lost heritage that can be
reactivated to help disoriented and restless African descendants everywhere to
achieve redemption and actual freedom.
Within that general claim, she proposes reparation as the only viable way
to make peace with the past:
The shout is reparation . . .
this is a moment for reparation
these are stories for reparation
the image whitens...turn the control off
If you repair the shoes with which I walked in history
I will knit socks deprived of memory
That will guide me to a path where I will not remember the past
But will feel that my spirit has not been violated.33

This interesting pairing of history and memory will then dispel negative,
hegemonic assumptions and help to contest and unlearn the traumatic legacy of
the past, eventually leading to spiritual restoration and the connection back to
ancestral wisdom.34 Reparation is acknowledged as the key to recovering a

























































32 Uncroma, 43.
33 Uncroma, 49.
34 For an enlightening discussion of the workings of memory and history in the African
diaspora, see Morrisons classic essays Memory, Creation and Writing (in Thought 59
(1984), 385-390) and The Site of Memory (in Toni Morrison. What Moves at the
Margin. Ed. Carolyn Denard (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1987), 65-80).
Another compulsory reference is Justine Tallys sharp analysis of Morrisons Paradise in
Paradise Reconsidered (Mnster: Litverlag, 1999).

On Both Sides of the Atlantic: Hybrid Identity and the Spanish-Speaking Diaspora... 83

usable past, while simultaneously overriding its crushing influence. On the

way to spiritual fulfilment, images play a crucial role as conscience shapers and
control instruments. Reparation also means to question and undermine the
power structures that continue to monopolise a univocal concept of history
where the African diaspora has been systematically silenced and forgotten, the
millions or more that were unaccounted for as Morrison would famously
phrase it.35 Reparation entails, then, taking the control out of the hands of the
greedy and the soulless powers that be, and placing it in the hands of those in
need. In Carrillos poetry the underrepresented become the true protagonists of
the tales and lyrics because they are the ones who have been condemned to
permanent exile, as Carmen Oll perceptively argues in the prologue to the
collection. 36 According to this critic, the exile of a whole people is
undoubtedly the leitmotif of Carrillos collection, but I would contend, also of
Bernards and Agbotons works discussed here.

Reconstitution of the Diasporic Self and Celebration of Hybridity

All the works clearly look for what could be called an alternative myth of
origins, although not in the literal sense. That is, their thorough investigation of
the past effects a leap forward in the sense that it decisively encourages a
positive reconstitution of the diasporic self, both individual and collective,
firmly grounded in the past but not trapped by it. The sense of doom is thus
overcome by a celebration of hybridity that may replace narrowing and limiting
views of the so-called Other. Here it is the Other who takes the initiative
appropriating the subject position and revealing himself/herself in all his/her
plurality and complexity. There is thus a reversed journey in which the ones
who have been othered, marginalized, rejected and ostracized are not ashamed
of their difference. What is more, they display difference persuasively and
capitalize on it as a true asset, not anymore a commodity to be used and abused
by the ruling white or Westernized elites.
In this celebration of difference, Carrillo claims firstly the right to humanity
as a necessary step towards a satisfying sense of identity: I dont know when I
stopped being like my mother:/ a thing they brought in a cellar/ and I became
human.37 Thus, she argues for the transcendence of blackness as a sign in itself
in order to be more than black.38 Blackness is thus codified as one identity

























































35 In her novel Beloved (1987).
36 Uncroma, 10.
37 Uncroma, 19.
38 Uncroma, 19.

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Mar Gallego

marker, but not the only one, and I would add, not necessarily the most
important one; Carrillo carries out this message in her poetry by means of the
subversion of conventional stereotypes, both racist and sexist. Indeed, those
stereotypes ultimately lose their currency. Moreover, she implodes such
constraining definitions and denies them their power to subject the Other to
the violence of univocal identity: to prevent from being reduced to what he
wanted me to be.39 The generic he that is used throughout this poem titled
Intersection points at the hegemonic and also patriarchal order that tends to
homogenize and simplify the Other.
In Bernards poetry hybridity figures prominently from the very first poem that
opens the collection when she mentions her nieces and nephews of infinite
colors.40 For the author the reappropriation of ancestral rhythms and roots is
intimately related to the reaffirmation of an all-encompassing notion of blackness.
In her poem The night that image is described as true and pure: Dont say no to
the night/embrace it.41 The night of blackness is construed as truthful and beautiful
insofar as it does not lie, and helps to bring to light the unknown or the forgotten. It
is brave and honest, and hence equated with the very idea of truth. In her reversal of
conventional Judeo-Christian imagery and connotations, Bernards poetry unsettles
readers expectations and beliefs propitiating a second reading where the dislocated
and decentred is eagerly reconstituted. The night triumphs over the sun because it
remains true to its main objective: to unveil what has been hidden by the
treacherous sun. Embracing the night becomes a leitmotif in Bernards book that
enunciates a complete subversion of the status quo and received hegemonic
notions, while opening up new venues for the conceptualization of blackness and,
subsequently, whiteness. Accomplishing a pivotal reversal, Bernard enlarges the
diasporic vision by challenging the traditional associations and endorsing a peculiar
new diasporic order.
The encounter between blackness and whiteness is also the main focus of
her poem Two worlds. In this poem tourism is codified in white terms through
two significant images, hands and (insect) repellent:
Dark hands work
create, sell.
White hands enjoy
relax, buy:
native, tourist.42

























































39 Uncroma, 20.
40 Tatuaje, 15.
41 Tatuaje, 44.
42 Tatuaje, 30.

On Both Sides of the Atlantic: Hybrid Identity and the Spanish-Speaking Diaspora... 85

Mass tourism in so-called third-world countries is materialized in the exchange,

especially in the commercial exchange, that takes place between dark and white
hands. Bernard evidently targets here the social and racial system that allows for
the continuation of the terrible social injustice that underlies such an exchange. To
support her case convincingly, the opposition between dark and white hands
acquires greater proportions through the use of the image of the repellent:
The tourists
smell of repellent
two worlds reject each other.
The country people
also use their repellent.
Two worlds are mutually incompatible.43

Interestingly enough, hands are transformed into bodies that interact but do not
come into contact through the loose connection of the repellent. And the contrast
between dark and white hands is now projected onto the clash between tourists and
country or rural people, which may be a penetrating insight into the relationships
between Europe and the Americas, and particularly Costa Rica which has been
marketed as an exotic paradise. In this paradise dark hands and, by extension,
dark bodies are at the service of white tourists, in all possible senses of the word.
Thus, Bernards engaging lines convincingly argue for an end to the exoticization
and objectification of dark bodies in a globalized economy.
But perhaps the most militant tone of the collection is to be found in her
captivating poem Neither I, punning on Langston Hughes oft-cited I too.44
In this poem she compares the stereotypical representation of blacks at the
disposal of whites with the revolutionary black person, and more specifically,
the black man. Obviously here Bernard speaks back to a demeaning and
univocal definition of black men as hyperaggressive and violent usually
summarized in the representation of the so-called black macho.45 Ironically,
she starts off by stating her denial of the revolutionary black man, that
criminal that did not enjoy being a slave, who believed in Martin Luther
Kings ideology, and was not restricted to the only spheres where his presence
was tolerated (and even publicly celebrated): sports, art and sex. And she

























































43 Tatuaje, 30.
44 I Too was written by Hughes in 1925 and published in his groundbreaking collection
The Weary Blues (1926), one of the crucial manifestations of Harlem Renaissance poetry.
45 The first study about black men was undertaken by Michelle Wallace in her controversial
Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (1978). More recent contributions to
black masculinity studies comprise the stimulating work by feminist critics such as, for
instance, bell hooks We Real Cool (2004), Patricia Hill Collins Black Sexual Politics
(2005), or Athena Mutuas Progressive Black Masculinities (2006), to name a few.

86

Mar Gallego

illustrates this idea indicating that even in those spheres he should be humble
enough to know his place:
I dont want the black man
who became a couch
if to be a good player
should be enough.46

The irony distilled in these lines is cleverly used by the writer to evoke slavery
ideology that urged slaves to submit themselves to their inferior and animal-like
status, hence to the hands of white paternalistic power. Only Uncle Toms can be
admitted if they play their role accordingly. Otherwise, Bernard concludes the
poem, they must be erased/from the white map 47 , precluding any further
interaction between black and white people. In this surprising conclusion Bernard
is intent on showing the undesirable effects of a monolithic representation of black
men, inferring that the only possibility for a real communication lies in discarding
any one-dimensional representation of the black Other. To counteract that mutual
rejection between the two worlds, it is necessary to forge a concept of identity that
reconciles both extremes: I am half river/half sea.48 This beautiful metaphor for
the encounter of the river and the sea generates a revolutionary friendship49 that
may transcend the dichotomies and difficulties, provoking a fracture in racial
supremacy (or at least destabilizing it). It actually engenders hope, no matter how
fleeting and elusive it may be conceived by Bernard.
Bernards anguished and combative tone is counterpointed by Agbotons
hopeful message contained in her collection Canciones del poblado y del exilio.
Elsewhere I have argued that in this book Agboton is able to visually enact a concept
of hybridity fostered by a rather formulaic constitution of divided identity:50
I would like to discover the just center
where eventually meet
the two persons;
Not to be anymore just one tendency
tentatively approaching
the other.51

























































46 Tatuaje, 61.
47 Tatuaje, 61.
48 Tatuaje, 36.
49 Tatuaje, 36.
50 See Mar Gallego, Gender, Migration and Identity: Agns Agbotons Canciones del
poblado y del exilio, in Cultural Migrations and Gendered Subjects. Eds. Silvia Castro
Borrego and Mara Isabel Romero Ruiz (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, 2011), 75-98.
51 Canciones del poblado y del exilio (Barcelona: Viena, 2006), 35.

On Both Sides of the Atlantic: Hybrid Identity and the Spanish-Speaking Diaspora... 87

Agbotons poetry prompts a profound reflection on the pangs of bifurcated

identity as Eva Hoffman would term it.52 Underlying it, though, is a desire to
unify conflicting identities and voices in the poetic persona product of two
warring allegiances on both sides of the sea land separating Africa from
Europe. She certainly feels torn between one and the other shore/of the sea
land.53 The poignant sense of belonging to both and none at the same time
seems to consume the poetic persona, together with the nostalgic desire for the
ancestral land, Benin, the red land. The internal division is a recalcitrant
fissure that can be visualized in geographic terms since the two territories can
never converge but also inflected by the striking contrast between rural and
urban settings, in Africa-Benin and Europe-Spain respectively:
I know, I know,
on the other shore of the land
the harmatn is already blowing
and I have my feet anchored
in the hurting stones,
in the cold corners
of these streets.54

Coldness, despair and loneliness are the resulting heritage of displacement,

accompanied by feelings of fragmentation, restlessness, disorientation and loss
that are profusely articulated through the collection, also common enough in
most diasporic accounts. In this picture the red land is invoked as the real,
meaning viable, basis for a nurturing and healthier construction of a self, both
from an individual and collective viewpoint. However, and despite all these
images that permeate Agbotons poetry, hers is not a sad tale of forced
displacement but a very different story of a voluntary migratory project.
All in all, what we find in Agbotons poetry is the assessment of the difficulties
encountered by those who need to integrate two cultural backgrounds and
allegiances, and the identitarian negotiations that are involved in that process. By
the end of the book she emphasizes the rifts in that process that cause anxiety and
perplexity: I am tired, love, and I am afraid.55 I would contend that her
illuminating account of that fractured identity is representative of the voices of
firstly arrived migrants in her poetic collection, later tempered by a more mature
and reflexive voice which appears in her autobiographical work. Published only a
year apart, the two works share many preoccupations, but also differ in rather

























































52 Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation (London: Vintage, 1989), 261.
53 Canciones del poblado y del exilio, 43.
54 Canciones del poblado y del exilio, 81.
55 Canciones del poblado y del exilio, 91.

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Mar Gallego

significant ways. In Ms all del mar de arena Agboton conveniently chronicles

the development of a diasporic subjectivity on the threshold, as Maya Garca de
Vinuesa observes.56 Not a dichotomous divided self, but a sort of inclusive third
self reminiscent of that devised by W. E. B. DuBois, where the two selves may
merge in a better and truer self.57
In line with other contemporary configurations of self, but especially Rosi
Braidottis elaboration of the subjectivity nmade58, Agboton gestures toward
a fluid conception of subjectivity that continuously goes through flux and
change, and is therefore flexible and adaptable enough to resolutely face trying
circumstances. Conversely, Agboton enriches the debate about migrant and
diasporic identity by attributing it a degree of fixity encapsulated in the image of
the tree: I am a big tree, with the roots buried in the red land of Hognobu and
the branches lifted up to the blue sky of the Mediterranean.59 Deeply investing
in the unceasing interaction between her two lands and subsequent internal
landscapes, this image enhances the very notion of identity itself by proclaiming
its multifaceted and multilayered nature. It also triggers off a whole array of new
nuances regarding the sense of belonging and its identification with a
subjectivity perpetually in motion, yet anchored in the territories of origin and
destination. Agbotons poetry postulates a more open formulation of the
deterritorialized Other who feels firmly rooted, but also attests to the
inexhaustible ebbs and flows of the self.
These authors works highlight some key concerns that plague diaspora
studies. The obliterated self, continually devalued and repressed, aligns itself
with defiant and assertive voices that yield a multiple diasporic consciousness.
In so doing, they present multiplicity and heterogeneity revealing, as Carolina
Ortiz Fernndez perceptively states, that the subalternity is not a coherent and
fixed whole, it is also a construction that assumes multiple historical forms.60

























































56 Maya Garca de Vinuesa, Desde el umbral: Mara Nsue Ange y Agns Agboton.
Iniciacin en las escritoras hispanoafricanas, in De Guinea Ecuatorial a las literaturas
africanas. Ed. L.W. Miampika (Madrid: Verbum, 2010), pp. 253-265, 255.
57 W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Bantam, [1903] 1989), 3. Despite
the fact that this critic theorised the notion of the third self in his classic The Souls of
Black Folk published in 1903, discussions about the complexities of diasporic identity
are clearly invigorated (and I would say haunted) by his pioneering and prefigurative
theory of double consciousness, and its multiple sequels.
58 Basically, she defines it as the simultaneity of complex and multilayered identities
(Rosi Braidotti, Feminismo, diferencia sexual y subjetividad nomade (Barcelona: Gedisa,
2004), 214).
59 Canciones del poblado y del exilio, 105.
60 Carolina Ortiz Fernndez, La letra y los cuerpos subyugados: Heterogeneidad,
colonialidad y subalternidad en cuatro novelas latinoamericanas (Quito: Universidad

On Both Sides of the Atlantic: Hybrid Identity and the Spanish-Speaking Diaspora... 89

Historical rewriting and reconnection are paramount in the reassessment of the

past conducted by these three writers. Confronting the traumas of the slave past
and the lingering effects of coloniality results in a transgressive attitude on their
part that shifts from victimization to retaliation. The unresolved longing is thus
transformed in a subversive scenario whereupon to enact the identity drama.
Indeed, subaltern and othered identities are nurtured and cured in order to gain
new confidence and a firm grounding in the two or multiple territories they
inhabit. Being on the threshold undoubtedly contributes to them plunging into a
deep investigation of received stereotypes and cultural and identitarian scripts
that are conveniently debunked and replaced by alternative ways of proclaiming
a more inclusive and hybrid sense of both diasporic individual and collective
identity.

Andina Simn Bolvar, 1999), 86. Although she applies this to the Andine region in her
study, I consider it relevant to the analysis of the Spanish-speaking diaspora as
represented by the three writers under scrutiny here, noticing the possible discrepancies
and different connotations in each of the cases.

CHAPTER 6
Current Representations of Latinos
in U.S. Entertainment and News Media:
An Overview
Linda Godbold Kean, East Carolina University

US-Latino Immigration
In the past two decades, the Latino population in the United States has grown
tremendously. According to 2000 and 2010 U.S. census data, the Latino
population is the largest minority group in the U.S. 1 In 2000, census data
recorded 281.4 million individuals living in the United States of America.
Latinos made up 12.5% of the population at that time. Data from the 2010
census indicate that 50.5 million people or 14.2% of the U.S. population selfidentify as Latino. Blacks make up 12.2% of the population (37.7 million);
Asians account for 4.7% (14.5 million) and Whites remain the numerical
majority with 63.7% (196.8 million) of the U.S. population. While these
numbers point to a White majority population, when looking at population
growth over the last two decades, an interesting story emerges. From 1990 to
2000 and 2000 to 2010 the fastest growing population in the U.S. was the Latino
population which grew by 58% and 56% in the two time periods.
In addition to collecting population statistics in these broad racial and ethnic
categories, the U.S. census also gathers information on country of origin.
Individuals are asked to indicate their country of origin or place of birth. This is
done to capture not only those who have immigrated from other countries but
descendants of immigrants as well.2 Census data from 2010 reveal that 31.8
million Latinos identify Mexico as their country of origin; Puerto Rico is named
by 4.6 million; and Cuba is the country of origin for 1.8 million. However,
Latinos of Guatemalan decent were actually the fast growing sub-group between
2000 and 2010 which grew by 180% between the years of 2000 and 2010, while
the Salvadoran population grew by 152%, the Columbian population by 93%,

























































1 All statistics in this paragraph are cited from Jeffrey Passel, DVera Cohn, Mark Hugo
Lopez, Hispanics Account for More than Half of Nations Growth in Past Decade
(24.03.2011), Pew Hispanic Center. Web; Betsy Guzman, The Hispanic Population,
Census 2000 Brief. Washington: United States Census Bureau, 2001.
2 All statistics in this paragraph cited from Mark Hugo Lopez, Daniel Dockterman, U.S.
Hispanic Country of Origin Counts for Nation, Top 30 Metropolitan Areas (26.05.2011).
Pew Hispanic Center. Web.

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Linda Godbold Kean

and the Dominican population increased by 85%. All of these statistics point to
the growing importance of the Latino population within the United States of
America.
As with other racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., the Latino population is
diverse in geographic residence, income, occupation, and education. In terms of
residency, at least half a million Latinos live in 16 of the 50 states in the U.S.
California and Texas are home to 47% of the total U.S. Latino population.3
According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2012), the median family income in the
U.S. was $60,088 in 2009. For White families, the median income in 2009 was
$62,545; for Black families, $38,409; Asian and Pacific Islanders, $75,027; and
for Latinos the U.S. median household income was $39,730. Although Latinos
have significantly lower earning than Asian or White families, they have the
highest labour force participation rate at 67.5% (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012).4
Almost 70% of Latinos in the U.S. have high school degrees and 16% have
earned bachelors degrees or higher.

Images in the Media

With the rise in the Latino population, there are many important aspects of
Latino life in the U.S. being explored. These areas may include how this
particular ethnic group contributes economically to the U.S. and how public
education is impacted; but can also involve aspects of Latino family life,
political ramifications of the changing U.S. population, and how the shifting
U.S. demographics are affecting the non-Latino population in terms of
perceptions and attitudes toward this ethnic group. Many of these topics are
played out in the U.S. media not only in news, but in entertainment
programming as well. From a media effects perspective, we must ask  how is
the largest ethnic minority being portrayed in the media? This review looks back
on the past 10+ years of research to get a clear picture of how Latinos have
recently been portrayed in the U.S. entertainment and news media.
The importance of this topic goes beyond understanding the mere
representations of different groups in the media, but stems from an assumption
that images and messages in the media have an impact on media consumers.
Thus arises a second question: how might the portrayals of Latinos affect
perceptions and attitudes of members and non-members of the Latino

























































3 U.S. Census Bureau. Hispanic Americans: Census Facts, Hispanic Americans by the
Numbers. Pearson Education, 2010-2012.
4 Labor Force Characteristics by Race and Ethnicity, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Web.
Available at http://www.bls.gov.

Current Representations of Latinos in U.S. Entertainment and News Media...

93

population? George Gerbner argues in his writings on cultivation theory that

television in particular can have a very powerful impact on society. He points
out that television has grown to be the story teller of modern times and therefore
shares in the creation of the culture itself.5 The television story becomes reality
for those who consistently look to the television media as their source of
information and entertainment. 6 Television content helps to cultivate the
norms and beliefs of our society. In their research on televisions cultivation
effects, Gerbner and his colleagues look at media consumers as either heavy or
light viewers, explaining that heavy viewers are those that watch a great deal of
television and do not actively seek out alternative forms of information. Light
viewers are those that watch many fewer hours of television a day and find
entertainment and information from a variety of sources.7 Cultivation theory
then posits that heavy television viewers perceive the real world to be more like
the television world than do light viewers. The perceptions of heavy viewers are
coloured such that when asked about descriptions of the world and people in it,
the heavy viewer tends to give answers that describe the television world more
than the real world.8
Beyond just perceptions however, Gerbner argues that these lessons we
learn from television cultivate our values, ideologies  our attitudes. 9
Cultivation first influences how individuals see the world, and then may affect
subsequent attitudes about particular topics, occupations, groups of people, etc.
Cultivation theory argues that those who view more television will be more
likely to have perceptions and attitudes about members of specific racial and
ethnic groups that are in line with televisions portrayals as compared to those
who are light viewers. Therefore, following the logic of Cultivation Theory, one
of our concerns as we look at the experiences of the U.S. Latino population,
must be how television is portraying members of this ethnic group and how
those images might impact on the perceptions and attitudes of the media
consumer. Children Now, an organization focused on the health and education
of children, said it best in their review of the impact of television images:

























































5 George Gerbner et al., Growing up with television: cultivation processes in Jennings
Bryant, Dolf Zillmann (eds.), Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research (Mahwah,
N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002).
6 Gerbner, 2002.
7 Gerbner, 2002; see also Laurie Oulette. Media Education Foundation Study Guide.
Gerbner Series (Northampton, MA: Media Education Foundation, 1997).
8 Gerbner, Cultivation Analysis: An Overview Scholarly Milestones Essay, Mass
Communication & Society 1:3/4 (1998), 175-194.
9 Gerbner, 1998, 185.

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Linda Godbold Kean

Televisionsends a message that some groups of people are more valued by

society and worthy of attention than others.10
Over the last decade, there have been many studies focused on U.S. Latinos
and media. These studies consider diasporic media (both entertainment and
news), Spanish language media, U.S. commercial advertising, news specific to
immigration, the economy, etc. The review of the literature presented here is
focused specifically on the U.S. mainstream entertainment and news media
content over the last 10+ years. Cultivation theory argues that most people are
still primarily viewing mainstream media and it is this content that is ripe for the
effects laid out by cultivation theory. Therefore, this essay examines how
Latinos have been portrayed in the U.S. entertainment and news media over the
last decade and offers some discussion as to how these images may be
cultivating the perceptions and attitudes of U.S. media consumers, both Latinos
and non-Latinos alike. Most of this research looks specifically at the major
networks in the United States, ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX. While a myriad of
cable television stations are available throughout the U.S., their availability may
differ by market and cable supplier, whereas the four major networks are
available throughout the U.S. without a cable subscription. Additionally, most
viewers still get most of their programming from these major networks.11
The images of Latinos in U.S. mainstream media have remained fairly stable
over the past decade. Overall, the picture is one of very few representations of
Latinos in the U.S. both in entertainment and news media. When Latinos are
portrayed, the images tend to be less positive than other racial or ethnic groups,
particularly when compared to the White television population. This review will
first take a look at entertainment programming and then turn its focus to the
news media content.

Entertainment portrayals of Latinos in the U.S.

Harwood and Anderson coded one episode of each primetime drama and
situation comedy on ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX in 1999. 12 The authors
reviewed 61 television shows including 37 sitcoms and 24 dramas for a total of
43.5 hours of programming. The authors coded characters ethnicity as White,

























































10 Children Now Media Messages About Race, Class & Gender, Children Now. Web.
http://www.childrennow.org/index.php/learn/media_messages_about_race_class_gender/.
[Accessed: 27.01.2012].
11 All Eyes on Broadcast (2010). The Media Center The TV Authority. Web. Available
at http://www.mediacenteronline.com.
12 Jake Harwood, Karen Anderson, The Presence and Portrayal of Social Groups on
Prime-Time Television, Communication Reports 15:2 (2002), 81-97.

Current Representations of Latinos in U.S. Entertainment and News Media...

95

Black, Asian, Latino, Arab/Middle Eastern, mixed, unclear or other. The coding
scheme also consisted of reviewing the role the character played in terms of
being a starring or co-starring role, supporting character, or a minor character.
Finally, the authors looked at facial attractiveness, dress, personality and story
function of the character, in order to code the perceived positivity of the
character. The investigators found that 83% of the characters were coded as
White. According to the authors, this is higher than the actual U.S. population of
69%. Latinos were significantly under-represented in primetime programming
with only 2.6% of the characters being coded as Latino. Finally, Blacks were
11% of the TV characters coded and Asians were 2.6%. Neither Black nor Asian
representation differed significantly from actual population statistics.
Interestingly, the investigation did not reveal any significant relationship
between ethnicity and role prominence. Based on the percentage of each groups
representation overall, all racial and ethnic groups were equally likely to have
characters in starring or co-starring roles. For perceived positivity, Latinos were
rated less positively when compared to other groups, particularly in the areas of
personality and story function. Overall, there were few Latino characters and
those that were present were found to have less positive attributes than other
characters.
A few years after the Harwood and Anderson study, Mastro and BehmMorawitz also investigated images of Latinos in mainstream U.S. media when
they reviewed the 2002 primetime television season.13 The research involved a
review of two weeks of programming from the major U.S. networks, ABC,
CBS, NBC, WB, and FOX. The authors coded 67 programs. They reviewed the
numbers of characters and multiple variables associated with the characters. The
investigation considered the status of a character by reviewing the role, the
occupation, the conversation topic, the socioeconomic status, the job authority
and the social authority of the characters. The authors also coded for physical
attributes such as attire and attractiveness. Additionally, the coding scheme
included variables that described particular character traits such as motivation,
work ethic and intelligence. Finally, issues of temperament such as verbal and
physical aggression were coded. Findings revealed that of the 1,488 characters,
80% were coded as White, 14% Black, 4% Latino and 2% Asian. Again, what
stands out here is the incredible statistical under-representation of Latino
characters as compared to the U.S. population. In terms of the roles played by
Latino characters, both men and women were more likely to appear in the role
of family member (as opposed to a particular occupation) when compared to

























































13 Dana E. Mastro and Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz, Latino Representation on Primetime
Television, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 82:1 (2005), 110-130.

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their Black and White counterparts. For conversation topic, Latino men were
more likely to discuss crime or other topics and Black men were more likely
to talk about work as compared to other characters. Although the findings did
not indicate differences among socioeconomic status, they did show that among
men, Latinos were coded with lower job authority while females had lower
social authority as compared to White characters. In terms of physical attributes,
the authors report that Latino men were coded as being less appropriately
dressed than White characters and that Latino women were coded as less
appropriately dressed than Black female characters. Latino characters were
found to be less intelligent than both White and Black characters and men were
also more hot-tempered while the female Latina was more verbally aggressive
and had the lowest work ethic. Overall, not only were Latinos incredibly underrepresented numerically compared to their real world numbers, they also tended
to be portrayed with many negative stereotypical traits. One bright spot is that
Latinos were not exclusively relegated to minor roles. Like in the Harwood and
Anderson study, when they were a part of the television landscape, Latinos were
just as likely as Whites and Blacks to occupy major roles.
Another group to tackle this topic was Children Now (2004) with their Fall
Colors 2003-2004 report. 14 In this report, the organization reviewed two
episodes of each prime time entertainment series during the fall 2003 season
from six networks UPN, WB, ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX. In this study, the
findings yielded a typical pattern of numerical representations. Of the total
number of characters coded, 73% were White, 18% Black, 6.5% Latino and 3%
Asian. Again, the standout is the under-representation of Latinos on television as
compared to the U.S. census data. In terms of the types of programs reviewed,
the investigators were interested in looking at whether programs tended to
represent only one ethnic or racial group or whether they had a mixed cast
containing members from various backgrounds. Results indicated that sitcoms
were the most segregated only 15% of programs had a mixed cast, and dramas
were the most diverse 45% of programs had a mixed cast. Reality shows also
were more likely to include individuals from a number of ethnic and racial
backgrounds with 43% of this programming type containing a mixed cast. In
terms of the occupation of the characters coded, 36% of Asian characters, 32%
of White characters and 26% of Black characters were coded in high status
occupations such as physicians, attorneys, judges and elected officials. Latinos
were most often cast in low status occupations with only 11% of Latino

























































14 Christina Romano Glaubke, Katharine E. Heintz-Knowles, Fall Colors Prime Time
Diversity Report 2003-2004. Children Now. Web. Available at: http://www.
childrennow.org/uploads/documents/bigmedia_2003.pdf.

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characters appearing in high status roles. Latinos were in fact four times more
likely to be cast as a domestic worker compared to other racial groups. Children
Now has been reviewing television portrayals since 1999. Over that time, the
investigators found that both the African American representations and the
Latino representations have gone up numerically. The former went from 14% of
the characters on television to 18% in 2003. Latino representations doubled
from 3% in 1999 to 6.5% in 2003. While it is encouraging to see the progress in
terms of numbers, it still represents half of the actual U.S. Latino population.
Further, the evidence exists that the type of portrayals tends to lack the true
diversity that exists among Latinos living in the U.S.
Signorelli provides us with a recent look at the television landscape with her
content analysis covering 2000-2008.15 Signorelli argues that her data reveal that
minority groups other than African American are almost non-existent on
television. Signorelli reviewed 706 programs and 2,926 characters appearing on
ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, UPN, WB and CW. Of those characters, 80% were
coded as White, 15% Black, 2% Asian and 5% Latino. Signorelli found that
there was no year to year statistically significant change in the percentage of
Latino characters and the number of minority-only programs decreased from
11% in 2001 to 3% in 2008. Latinos were most often characters in dramatic
television fare and least likely to appear in comedies.
One of the most in-depth reviews of television and Latino portrayals comes
from the National Latino Media Council and their annual television network
report card.16 This organization reviewed ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX and the
2009-2010 television season. Rather than simply count the number of characters
who appear to be Latino, this organization grades the networks overall on their
support of Latinos in the television industry. The study considered program
content as well as who was employed by the network in all roles including
actors, executives, writers and directors. One of the arguments made is that
when there is diversity behind the camera in the roles of producers, writers, etc.,
we will see more diversity in the characters and story lines being played out on
the television screen. The report concluded that ABC had done the best job over
the past decade, but was criticized for its decline in the past year of Latino
actors, directors and executives. The report noted that two programs, Ugly Betty
and Modern Family, with central Latino characters, helped the network, but that

























































15 Nancy Signorielli, Minorities Representation in Prime Time: 2000 to 2008,
Communication Research Reports 26:4 (2009), 323-336.
16 National Latino Media Council. Television Networks Report Cards Reflect a Striking
Decline in Latino Diversity. Press Release (Pasadena: The National Hispanic Media
Coalition, 2010).

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overall there was a decline in recurring roles for Latinos as well as Latino
individuals in reality programming. However, the report did note that ABC had
programs in development with Latino characters. NBC had a bad year according
to the National Latino Media Council in that it lost half of its Latino regular
characters and 90% of its recurring Latino characters. CBS received the best
diversity score of all the networks for 2009-2010. This network was lauded for
its creation of an internal program for increasing network diversity. Finally, the
FOX network was criticized for its lack of transparency which made getting
accurate figures difficulty. The network is doing well in reality television
programming according to the report, but overall the number of Latino
characters is decreasing.
The articles reviewed here represent a great deal of the research that has
been done over the past 15 years looking at portrayals of Latinos in the U.S.
entertainment media. Overall we find a lack of images of Latinos in the media.
While different studies present slightly different numerical findings, the pattern
is very clear. Latinos are almost absent from the television landscape with fewer
than 7% of characters being coded as Latino in any of the studies reviewed.
Additionally, the portrayals that are included are often negative and limited in
terms of the diversity that exists among the U.S. Latino population. Often
characters were less likely to have authority at work or high status occupations,
and were coded as being less appropriate in dress and in interpersonal behaviors.
This certainly provides us with an overview of the day-to-day message media
consumers are receiving about this ethnic group in the entertainment media.

News portrayals of Latinos in the U.S.

A next step in considering what stories are being told to the U.S. media
consumer is to look to the news media. One might argue that this content should
contain a more accurate reflection of the reality of the Latino experience.
Although entertainment media often includes unbelievable storylines and two
dimensional characters, television news media could be expected to be more
accurate as it attempts to provide unbiased information to viewers. However,
just as images in entertainment programming may affect how viewers see
Latinos, so may those images in the news media. This will be particularly true if
the images in entertainment media and news converge so that the story being
told in both is similar.
Over the last 10 or so years, most of the research on images of minorities
has focused on entertainment rather than news media. Among those studies that
did look at news media, some concentrated on print and others on broadcast
media. Because this review is focused on cultivation theory as its basis, and that

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99

theory was specifically designed to look at the ubiquity of television, the focus
here is on those studies that considered television news media. One of the more
recent in-depth analyses done on this topic was by Lynn C. Owens. 17 In
providing her reasoning for the study, the author argues that news outlets have a
responsibility for accurate qualitative and quantitative representations of the
population on which they are reporting. Owens believes that televisions
portrayal of racial minorities can shape the publics perception of them.18
Although she does not couch it in these terms, this is very much a cultivation
theory argument. The author completed a content analysis of 857 stories from 84
national newscasts during 2005 from ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly
News, and CBS Evening News. These three broadcast news programs make up
a majority of the news watched in the United States. In her analysis, Owens
looked at the topic of each news story, the race of the reporter, the race of the
source, and the source type. Overall, 77% of the on-camera sources coded were
White; 8.6% were Black; 4.2% were Latino; 2.6% were Asian; and 6.3% were
Middle Eastern. In separating U.S. non-Whites from foreign non-Whites, the
author reports that among U.S. sources, 13.8% were minorities. Of these, Black
sources accounted for 8%, Latinos 4.2%, Asians 1.5% and Middle Eastern
minorities were 0.11%. As in reports on entertainment programming, we can see
that Latinos are under-represented as sources in television news as compared to
their U.S. population figures. In terms of story type, Latinos were most often
sources for stories on accidents/ disasters/weather. Almost one quarter of the
time Latinos appeared as sources in the news media, it occurred in
accidents/disasters/weather related stories. To contextualize this finding, one
must remember that Hurricane Katrina was a big story in 2005. This storm hit an
area in Louisiana that was mostly populated by low-income minorities, and
Black and Latino sources were often used in these stories. Even when Owens
removed stories about hurricane Katrina, she still found that Latinos were likely
sources in the category of accidents/ disasters/weather as private individuals, not
as experts. 13.8% of the time that Latinos were sources it was in stories about
economics and 7.7% of the stories were about sports and entertainment. No
stories about science and technology or electoral politics contained Latino
sources. In terms of role type, Latinos were more likely to be private individuals
as their source role as compared to any other role type, such as expert or
government official. The second most typical role Latinos had as source was as
an activist, with 6.5% of the Latino presentations appearing in this category.

























































17 Lynn C. Owens, Network News: The Role of Race in Source Selection and Story
Topic, The Howard Journal of Communications 19 (2008), 355-370.
18 Owens, 356.

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Linda Godbold Kean

This was often seen in stories about labor unions and illegal immigration. In
terms of images of Latinos in the television news media, we find once again that
the numbers represented on camera are much lower than their real world
population figures. Additionally, much of the time they were associated with
topics such as discrimination/illegal immigration, but never with science or
technology.
Dixon and Linz conducted a study concerning the images of Whites, Blacks
and Latinos in terms of crime coverage on television news in the Los Angeles,
California, viewing area. 19 They reviewed two composite weeks of news
programming during 1995-1996 and 1996-1997. The researchers were
specifically looking at the race of victims and perpetrators of crime in the L.A.
and Orange county area. The authors report that overall, Blacks and Latinos
were less likely than Whites to be portrayed as victims and more likely to be
portrayed as perpetrators. This was true for overall level of crime and homicide
in particular. In addition to comparing racial/ethnic groups to each other, the
authors looked at the rates of representation in news stories as compared to total
number of arrests made. In looking at this comparison, the researchers focused
specifically on homicide related news reports in the media and actual arrests.
The data revealed that Latinos were under-represented as both victims and
perpetrators as compared to their real world statistics. Blacks were overrepresented as perpetrators but not over- or under-represented as victims, and
Whites were over-represented as victims but neither over- nor under-represented
as perpetrators. Again, for Latinos, we find their absence in the television
landscape. As compared to real world numbers, Latinos are under-represented as
both victims and perpetrators, making them, and the issues related to their
communities, invisible to the viewers.
A final article on the topic was published in 2003 by Poindexter, Smith and
Heider.20 Like Dixon and Linz, the researchers looked at local news for patterns
of minority portrayals. The authors considered newscasts from 26 different
stations in 12 cities during 1987, 1989 and 1998. Although this research goes
back a bit further than other studies reviewed here, the results give us a sense of
the consistency of the media message regarding Latino portrayals in the U.S.
news media. The study coded for gender and race/ethnicity of anchors,
reporters, and sources in each story. In total the investigation reviewed 596
stories. Of those stories, 28% were told by reporters. The reporters were most

























































19 Travis L. Dixon and Daniel Linz, Race and the Misrepresentation of Victimization on
Local Television News, Communication Research 27:5 (2000), 547-573.
20 Paula M. Poindexter, Laura Smith, Don Heider, Race and Ethnicity in Local
Television, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, December 2003, 524-536.

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often White (73%) followed by Black (16%) and then Latino (3%) individuals.
When news anchors were reviewed, 79% of the time a White news anchor was
the first to speak. Latino anchors were the first to speak on a story 2% of the
time and 11% of the stories were introduced by a Black anchor. In terms of
sources within a given story, a majority of those appearing in the news casts
were White, with 2% of the sources being coded as Latinos. As with previous
research, there is a dearth of images of Latinos in the U.S. news media both as
sources and journalists.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Latinos are consistently under-represented in the media in both entertainment
and news programming. When taking the studies reviewed here in sum, Latinos
represent 2-4% of the characters, reporters, sources and focus in programming.
As they make up the largest minority population in the U.S., this is surprising.
Further, we find that the type of representations can be ones that are less positive
as compared to the portrayals of other ethnic and racial groups, particularly in
entertainment media.
As with all research, we must be willing to view the limitations of the
conclusions we draw. As a critique of this research as a whole, one must
recognize that although there are often multiple coders and an acceptable
intercoder reliability achieved, bias can still enter into the research process. One
must be careful in how definitions are constructed for items such as positive
personality, dress, or attractiveness as these definitions in and of themselves
may contain judgments which are perpetuated in the results of our
investigations. For example, in the Harwood and Anderson study, characters
were coded less positively in terms of personality if they were annoying, cynical
or aggressive. How one defines or sees aggression or cynicism may say
something about the coders as well as the characters. These characteristics may
be more or less appealing/offensive to different social groups (including age,
gender, ethnicity) or in various contexts (e.g. work vs. home). This is perhaps
even more true when we consider a variable such as appropriate dress. We know
that age, gender, and culture can influence what is seen as appropriate.
Researchers must be careful to ensure that their coding schemes do not
preference the styles of a particular culture to the exclusion of another.
Another caveat we must consider is the coders ability to accurately
determine racial or ethnic background. Determining an individuals ethnic
origins is not simple and can be fraught with potential error. This criticism is not
specific to any one study, but to all analyses in which we attempt to judge racial
and ethnic origins. Although it may be more meaningful to have self-report data,

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in the instance of entertainment media, studies are often considering characters

versus actual people, so self-report is not possible. Additionally, because actors
often play outside of their own race/ethnicity, reviewing the cast will not
provide a complete picture of the characters in a program. This is not to say
there is not value in these types of content analyses, only to recognize that
coders can make biased or inaccurate judgments which may affect the results of
these types of studies. In other words, coders may be under-representing the
actual number of characters/actors that are Latino because they simply do not
recognize them as being members of that category.
Even in the face of potential error, there is systematic evidence that Latinos
are not fully represented in the U.S. entertainment and news media neither in the
numeric representations of real world numbers nor in the diversity of
occupation, personality type, etc. In connecting this back to cultivation theory,
the concern becomes how viewers construct their perceptions of and attitudes
toward Latinos in terms of their role in U.S. society. Cultivation theory would
argue that in the minds of viewers, the Latino community is largely irrelevant
due to the low numbers of images of this group in the media. If we do not see
this group depicted, we will not be concerned with issues that might be relevant
including economics, health care, education, etc. Further, when the images that
are present are stereotypical and/or negative, that may be the over-riding frame
in which viewers see this ethnic group.
In addressing this issue there are two major recommendations to be made
here. The first is to work with entertainment and news media organizations in
terms of both hiring practices and the images on screen. For example, the
National Latino Media Council is working with ABC in a training program for
young Latino writers. This is just one way in which media organisations can
work with the Latino community to build up the workforce associated with
television entertainment programming. As more writers, executives and
producers with Latino heritage are involved in the enterprise, we will likely
begin to see more diversity on screen as well. This is true for both the
entertainment and news media industries. For example, Owens found that
minority reporters were more likely than White reporters to interview people of
colour for news stories. Overall, increasing the diversity behind the scenes may
help to increase the variety of characters we see, storylines played out, and
images and articles in the news media.
A second way to address the potential effects of exposure to limiting
messages is to increase the media literacy of television viewers. Programmes in
schools, faith-based centres, libraries, and other community venues can help
train consumers of all ethnic and racial groups to understand the limits of the
content available in the television landscape. By giving individuals practice in

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the ability to critique messages, viewers will be less likely to take in such
messages without first scrutinizing them. Changing the television landscape and
educating media consumers can help to dull the cultivation effects that a
monolithic message may have on the perceptions and attitudes of television
viewers regarding the largest minority population in the U.S.
Overall, it is crucial that we recognize and celebrate the diversity of where
we live in terms of race and ethnicity, age, gender, occupation, etc. because
television may play such a dominant role in the way we tell stories about our
culture. It is important we understand the stories being told and work with both
the producers and recipients of those messages to ensure as much as possible an
acceptance of and appreciation for diversity.

CHAPTER 7
Theres no place like home:
on Third Culture Kids and Existential Migration
Carly McLaughlin, University of Dalarna
In her essay The New Nomads, Eva Hoffman touches upon the various terms
which are used for talking about individuals who move from one country to
another, from immigrants to refugees, to emigrants and expatriates, and the
inevitable assumptions that are made about those individuals and their financial
and social circumstances.1 A refugee, driven from home by traumatic events, has
little say in the decision to migrate, whereas the expatriates migration is an
expression of freedom and more often than not a privileged background. Choice,
then, becomes the crucial factor in defining ones identity as a migrant. This
categorisation of the various migration experiences does not only have concrete,
practical implications for those individuals involved, determining their legal,
economic and social status in the host country. It has also served to shape
theoretical discussions of migration, prioritising some migrant experiences
whilst marginalising, if not neglecting, others. Those forms of migration which
display a greater degree of choice have tended to lose out to the focus on
instances of forced migration. On Hoffmans scale, Third Culture Kids (TCKs),
the children of expatriates, and existential migrants, who choose to leave their
home for personal, philosophical reasons, stand at a great distance from those
individuals forced to migrate. Theirs is not a migration necessitated by traumas
of war, natural disasters, or difficult economic circumstances. In many respects,
they are a product of globalisation, of a world in which cross-cultural
movements have become the norm, in which leaving ones home no longer
represents a dramatic or traumatic event.
This element of choice and agency coupled with the absence of drama does
much to explain why these forms of migration have tended to be overlooked in
discussions of migration.2 Further, the choice of whether to go or stay for
expatriates or existential migrants is an individual and a personal one. We are

























































1 Eva Hoffman, The New Nomads, The Yale Review, 86:4 (1998), pp. 43-58, 44. Said
also refers to the various ways in which the migrant experience has been categorised in
Reflections on Exile in Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 173-187, 181.
2 This is also something which Greg Madison points out in his study The End of Belonging.
Untold stories of leaving home and the psychology of global relocation (Lexington, KY:
Creative Space, 2010), 13.

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thus not dealing here with mass movements of groups of people whose
experiences are summarised in statistics and which give rise to new immigration
policies. Rather we are concerned with individuals and families who pass
unnoticed through airports and whose border crossings do not make national and
international headlines. By and large, their passports country of issue presents
no obstacles to settling in the places they choose. However, a closer look at the
individual experience of being a Third Culture Kid and of existential migration
makes these assumptions about freedom and choice less clear-cut. Third Culture
Kids certainly have no say in whether they leave their native country, where
they go and when and whether they return home. Many existential migrants feel
that they had little choice but to leave for the sake of their mental and emotional
well-being. Furthermore, even though the push factors underlying these two
forms of migration are, from the outside, much less insurmountable than those
faced by refugees and economic migrants, this by no means lessens the internal
trauma of departure and arrival as experienced by individuals. As Greg Madison
points out: the act of choosing to leave does not seem to reduce the turmoil of
doing so.3 This means that some of the themes central to the study of migration
identity, belonging, dislocation are as pertinent to the experiences of Third
Cultural Kids and existential migrants as other migrating groups. That said, the
particular nature of these forms of migration, as well as the age in which they
are taking place, means that concepts such as home and national identity can no
longer be taken for granted. Indeed, they indicate the need for a radical
refashioning of such concepts in order to take into account the cultural
complexity4 of the modern world.
We can no longer talk easily of what Pico Iyer calls the immigrants
bifurcation5, the splitting of an immigrants identity between home and host
country, past and present, belonging and dislocation. For Eva Hoffman, the
fundamental shifts in the experience of migration mean that many immigrants
no longer live in this bipolar world. This structure, which has always given
migrant biographies a clear narrative, is gradually disappearing: a new narrative
is needed. 6 Yet most accounts of global nomadism arguably deliver an
unsatisfactory alternative narrative. They tend to highlight the ease and
carefreeness of movement; as Hoffman says leaving ones native country is
simply not as dramatic or traumatic as it used to be.7 Such accounts pay little

























































3 Madison, 15, n. 1.
4 David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken, Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among
Worlds (Boston: Nicholas Brealey, 2009), xi.
5 Pico Iyer, The Global Soul (London: Bloomsbury, 2001), 18.
6 Hoffman, 48.
7 Hoffman, 45.

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heed to its darker side: stories of not belonging, of homelessness and

rootlessness.8 That a sense of dislocation, loss and grief are as much a part of the
experiences of Third Culture Kids and existential migrants has begun to emerge
in studies of individuals based on interviews and therapy sessions. It is often
only in telling their stories and developing a language to talk about their
experiences that individuals become aware that they are part of a wider
phenomenon. One instance of this is the anthology of childhood recollections by
writers published in 2004 under the title Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of
Growing up Global.9 The countless websites, blogs and chat forums dedicated to
this topic also bear witness to the therapeutic value of relating and sharing
experiences of nomadic childhoods. 10 The past two decades have seen an
increasing number of publications, often commissioned by multi-national
corporations which send many of their employees abroad on temporary postings,
which highlight the issues faced by expatriates and their children. Many
function as self-help guides, providing helpful tips for relocating abroad and for
the return home. Ruth van Rekens and David Pollocks study on Third Culture
Kids also offers practical advice to expatriate parents. A quick browse on
Amazon confirms that there is a huge market for such books. However, the
specificity of the targeted audience of such publications no doubt also accounts
for the marginality of expatriates within more theoretical discussions of
migration. To a large extent, then, the story of such new forms of migration
remains untold within the context of migration studies. Greg Madison, author of
the pioneering recent study on existential migration, The End of Belonging,
points out that the history of existential migration is still to be written.11 Such an
alternative human history, he argues, would shed a very different light on the
relationship between home and sense of identity. This article thus aims to
heighten the visibility within the context of migration studies of two forms of
migration which have so far been neglected. Further, it seeks to show that these
can lend new and important insights into discussions of migration and the
concepts that continue to be taken for granted. Whilst Third Culture Kids and
existential migration constitute two highly distinct forms of migration, the study

























































8 One exception to this is Anand GIRIDHARADAS article The Struggle of the Global
Placeless (26.03.2010), New York Times. Web. http:// www. nytimes.com /2010/03/27
/us/ 27iht-currents.html [accessed 23.09.2011].
9 Faith Eidse and Nina Sichel, eds., Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing Up
Global (Boston: Nicholas Brealey, 2004).
10 Some examples are: http://www.tckworld.com/; http://www. interactionintl. org/
home.asp; http://3rdculturekids.blogspot.com/; http://www.bookcase.com /~claudia/mt/
archives/000544.html [all accessed September 2011].
11 Madison, 208-9.

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of which to date has remained within specific academic disciplines, sociology

and psychology respectively, they nevertheless both indicate the need to
reconsider traditional concepts of belonging and home and thereby highlight the
importance of taking into account newer forms of migration.
Finally, this article will also address the inevitable fact that despite all talk
of globalisation, cosmopolitanism and the championing of the global soul, we
cannot quite leave behind the concept of home and the idea of belonging.
Without exception, all accounts of migration acknowledge the fundamental need
for home and a sense of belonging. 12 Stories told by former TCKs and
existential migrants are no different. Whilst post-modern theory constantly
reminds us that there is no such thing as a stable self, the lived experience of
migration as narrated time and time again reveals a fundamental need to belong
and to somehow forge a sense of identity amongst the shifting spaces of a
globalised modernity.13 What is needed, arguably, is a reconceptualisation of the
very notions of home and belonging.

Third Culture Kids: the case for reconceptualising cultural

identity
In order for us to better understand the specificity of Third Culture Kids
experiences of migration, it is important to remind ourselves of some of the
defining features of their parents, expatriates. Expatriates tend to feature
fleetingly in discussions of migration as representatives of a more privileged
experience of relocation, where the decision to move to another country is based
on financial, professional or lifestyle grounds. Since it is largely assumed, and is
mostly the case, that expatriates eventually return to where theyre from, or
move from country to country every few years to finally return home for
retirement, they tend not to form lasting bonds with the host country. Another
important factor to bear in mind is that since expatriates have an entirely
different economic status from refugees or economic migrants, they are not
placed under the same expectations in terms of integration, financial
contributions, language learning etc. It has thus been assumed that questions of

























































12 Hoffman, We must acknowledge the need for frameworks that contain us, for sites that
are more than temporary shelters. (57); Simone Weil: To be rooted is perhaps the most
important and least recognized need of the human soul. (quoted in Said, 183); Madison:
Home is a human aspiration. (40).
13 This has been highlighted for instance by Sudhir Kakar in his lecture Globalization and
Identity: An Indian View at Princeton University in 2010 which emphasised the
importance of place for the formation of consciousness, particularly in children. This
lecture is referred to by Anand Giridharadas in his article.

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home, identity, belonging, unavoidable for other immigrants, are of little

relevance to expatriate experiences.14 Most expatriates and their children fit
quickly after their arrival into existing social and educational structures which
cater to their specific needs during their time abroad. They thus remain absent
from discussions around multiculturalism, integration etc. even in countries
where such topics cannot be separated from wider debates on migration. The
general consensus seems to be that since expatriates will eventually return home
and have an entirely different economic status from other migrants, there is little
to be gained from including them in theoretical discussions on migration.
A very different set of factors define the experience of their children.
Whereas expatriates will predominantly have grown up in their country of birth,
relocating to another country as adults with the intention of returning there after
their posting, the experience of their children is entirely different. The offspring
of expatriates make up an ever growing group of nomadic children who have
spent their formative years15 outside of their parents home country, forming
deep bonds neither with their passport country, nor the host country. It is this inbetweenness which sets them apart from their parents:
Growing up global, nomadic children often enjoy an expanded worldview but may
lack a particular national identity. Though their parents may have strong ties to their
home countries, these children often feel as though they are citizens of the world and
must grow to define home for themselves. They belong everywhere and nowhere
they are other wherever they find themselves and in their search for common
ground, they often gravitate towards those whose childhoods have been similarly
unrooted, often finding affinity in blended cultural groups.16

In the English-speaking context, the uniqueness of their experience was first

observed and explored in the 1950s by the sociologist Ruth Hill Useem who was
at the time studying American missionaries working in India. Whilst her
husband focused mainly on the interaction of expatriate adults from one home
culture which the Useems termed first culture with the host culture, the
second culture, Ruth Hill Useem became interested in the children who grew up
in the expatriates interstitial culture, the shared lifestyle of the expatriate
community a so-called third culture. She coined the term Third Culture Kids

























































14 An exception to this is the growing body of literature endorsed by multi-national
corporations who send large numbers of employees abroad and are increasingly
concerned with training these employees for successful stays abroad as well as for the
process of repatriation.
15 This is one of the defining elements of a Third Culture Kid: that the child spends the
years in which his values, outlook and beliefs in a foreign, expatriate environment. See
Pollock and Van Reken, 21.
16 Eidse and Sichel, 1f.

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to describe a group of children whose shared traits were not a result of their
parents common experiences but rather their own experiences of growing up in
a culture different from that of their parents.
Thus far, studies of such children have been limited to specific national
contexts. American scholars have driven the investigation of the development of
American nomadic children, often better known as military brats or missionary
kids. Interest in Third Culture Kids continues to come almost exclusively from
America.17 The other country which has developed a strong interest in this topic
is Japan, where the government has funded research into the development of
Japanese expatriate children abroad and their subsequent reintegration into
Japanese society, particularly the education system. Although very different in
approach, both academic traditions share a recognition of the fundamental gap
in the experiences of parents and their children. Whilst most expatriates will
have grown up in their home culture setting in which their basic worldview,
value system, sense of identity and core relationships with family were formed,
the children of expatriates do all of this in a multi-cultural environment. Yet in
what ways is this experience different from that of children who are forced to
immigrate with their parents? Second generation immigrant children also grow
up in a culture often radically different from their parents, and end up
incorporating aspects of both cultures into their own distinct cultural identity.
Nevertheless, the resulting binary identity seen in the terms Turkish-German,
or Chinese-American , no matter how complex or problematic these terms are,
is very different from the identity of a child who moves every three to four years
to a new country. Whilst an immigrants child will tend to seek out children who
have parents from the same home country, a Third Culture Kid will have more
in common with another Third Culture Kid from a different country than with a
child from the same passport country. In this respect, the third culture in which
expatriate children grow up transcends nationality, race and, to a large extent,
language.18 Third Culture Kids grow up in a genuinely cross-cultural and mobile
world, which is not always true of other immigrants. Furthermore, because
expatriate families normally intend to return home at some point, decisions
about a childs schooling, language learning etc. will normally be based on this
intention and thus will remain largely independent of the host country.19 This is

























































17 An exception to this is the current research project being carried out at the Technical
University in Chemnitz, Germany: "Third Culture Kids? Auslands-entsendungen mit
Kindern und Jugendlichen" which is specifically interested in the impact of living abroad
on children. The research is based on interviews. For further details see http://nbnresolving.de/urn:nbn:de:swb:ch1-200600739 [accessed 23rd September 2011].
18 See Pollock and Van Reken, 13.
19 Pollock and Van Reken, 17.

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obviously very different from those children who have migrated with their
families on a more permanent basis.
Nevertheless, as the Useems were working in the 1950s, and were dealing
with a very specific context, their term has unsurprisingly since then undergone
a reconceptualisation.20 David C. Pollock, co-author of the study Third Culture
Kids, developed the following definition in 1999:
A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her
developmental years outside the parents culture. The TCK frequently builds
relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although
elements from each culture may be assimilated into the TCKs life experience, the
sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background.21

Of course, experts working in this field are quick to point out that the term TCK
does not represent one homogenous identity. The parental background, for
example whether the parents are part of a minority culture in the home country, or
whether the parents are from two different cultures, will have a significant
influence on the individual experience of a TCK. Indeed, as a consequence of
increasing mobility and cross-cultural encounters, it is hard to define a unifying
experience with which all TCKs can identify. The increasing cultural complexity
of the world, and the huge variety of childrens experiences of multicultural
upbringings, led Pollock and Van Reken to coin the term Cross-Culture Kids
(CCKs) in 2001, which they defined as follows: A cross-cultural kid (CCK) is a
person who is living or has lived in or meaningfully interacted with two or
more cultural environments for a significant period of time during childhood (up
to 18).22 This approach allows a greater number of childrens experiences to be
explained in terms of a cross-cultural model as distinct from their parents
experience of migration. For example, it enables children of immigrants to be
studied independently of their parents, and to a large extent independently of their
national identity. This could have far reaching consequences for the resolution of
issues and problems encountered by immigrant children which are often
explained by recourse to the specific immigrant group. In the case of child
refugees, it has also allowed an understanding of their identity development
independently of the trauma and conflict experienced by their parents and focused
more on the formation of a cultural identity as distinct from their parents.23

























































20 See Momo Kano Podolsky (2004-01-31), Crosscultural upbringing: A comparison of
the Third Culture Kids framekwork and Kaigai/Kikokushijo studies (PDF). Gendai
Shakai Kenky 6 (2004), 6778. Web. [Accessed 4.07.2011].
21 Pollock and Van Reken, 13.
22 Pollock and Van Reken, 31.
23 See Pollock and Van Reken, 36.

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Carlos Morton

As vastly different as the experiences of a child refugee, a second generation

child immigrant and a Third Culture Kid are, what all these children have in
common is that they will all defy many of the usual categories of identification.
As Ruth Van Reken points out: Traditional assumptions of what it means to
belong to a particular race, nationality, or ethnicity are constantly challenged by
those whose identities have been formed among many cultural worlds.24 Third
Culture Kids and cross culture kids cannot be understood within traditional
frameworks of culture. Nor can they be understood within the paradigms of
post-colonial discourses on migration and binary/hybrid identities. Pollock and
Van Reken use the example of Barack Obama, perhaps the worlds most famous
TCK, to highlight this point. The struggle to define Obamas ethnic and cultural
identity, the fuss over his birth certificate highlight the increasing irrelevance of
categories of identity based on nationality, ethnicity, country of birth etc. As the
introduction to Unrooted Childhoods explains:
The usual clues that identify a person dont apply to globally nomadic children.
Language, place, family, and community shift for these children with each
geographic move. Self-image is slippery; they refuse or are unable to conform to
standard definitions of who they are. [...] They are composites, bits and pieces added
with each relocation, each new cultural influence.
Unrooted children absorb fragments of the many cultures they are exposed to and
develop kaleidoscope identities.25

This defiance of traditional identity categories is the reason why the return home
for many Third Culture Kids is not just difficult, but traumatic and can have
long-reaching consequences. The coining of the term Adult Culture Kids,
ATCKs, is a recognition of the impact of a global childhood on an individuals
long-term development. For although many nomadic children will fit easily into
visible identity categories of ethnicity, race, gender and even class, their inner
identities in terms of their values, world-view and upbringing, may be vastly
different from other children of their home country. In other words, the markers
of their cultural difference are invisible. Their hidden diversity can lead to
them being hidden immigrants when they return to their passport countries
following their childhood abroad.26 Eva Hoffmans emphasis on the role of
culture for our individual psyches indicates the possible difficulties faced by
children who do not have such a uniform influence in their early lives:
each culture has subliminal values, predispositions, and beliefs that inform our most
intimate assumptions and perceptions, our sense of beauty, for example, or of

























































24 Pollock and Van Reken, xi.
25 Eidse and Sichel, 2f.
26 See Pollock and Van Reken, xi and 55.

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113

acceptable distances between people or notions of pleasure and pain. On that

fundamental level, a culture does not exist independently of us but within us. It is
inscribed in the psyche, and it gives form and focus to our mental and emotional
lives.27

In the light of this we might ask what this means for children who grow up
without what Hoffman describes as the potent structure and force of ones
original home, and whose lives cannot be structured around a narrative of preand post-dislocation from ones home? Although Hoffman is concerned with
undoing the privileging of exile within post-modern thought, her arguments
arguably trivialise the process of migration as experienced by nomadic children.
Whilst the enormous benefits of an expatriate childhood are perhaps
immediately obvious a rich wealth of experience, travel, a good level of living
in the host country what is often neglected is the downside of this constantly
mobile world, of what Van Reken and Pollock refer to as the multiple and
repetitive cycles of loss and grief experienced by children as they move from
country to country and in between say goodbyes to their families and friends in
their parents home country.28 Even as part of a privileged existence unhindered
by financial worries, this pattern of departure and arrival is arguably no less
traumatic than the shock of loss experienced by exiles and other migrants who
relocate permanently and continue to feel the sense of gravity exerted by home.
The introduction to Unrooted Childhoods echoes the sociological definition of
TCKs but also highlights some of the deeper issues involved in the experience
of relocations and dislocations:
Lifted from one home and set down in another, these children learn not to attach too
deeply. Yet despite their resistance to rooting, these children need a sense of
belonging, a way to integrate their many cultural selves and find a place in the
world. Like all children, they need a secure sense of self, a stable identity.

To summarise, Third Culture Kids defy the identity models applied to other
migration accounts in their lack of a concrete home or origin and their inability
to be reduced to a single or even a hyphenated cultural identity. In this respect,
they typify a postmodern flux and plurality of identities which are products of
globalisation. They exemplify a worldwide experience typical of many children
who grow up outside of a traditional monocultural environment and the
psychological difficulties this entails.29 Individual accounts reveal that this rich
experience, the fluidity of movement and identity come at a price. This indicates
that the need for home and a sense of belonging remains as powerful and

























































27 Hoffman, 50.
28 Pollock and Van Reken, 74.
29 See Pollock and Van Reken, 16.

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Carlos Morton

pertinent as for those who have been forced to leave their home against their
will. Their sense of affinity with others who have had similar experiences
transcends markers of cultural difference which so often keep people apart. In
turn, this suggests new modes of cultural identification which go beyond
traditional categories of identity: an identity based on lived and shared
experience. As a consequence, the term is moving away from just being a useful
paradigm for explaining a specific group experience to being seen as something
which can have further reaching significance for todays phenomenon of global
nomadism. As the sociologist Ted Ward argued as early as 1984 third culture
kids [are] the prototype citizens of the future.30 That is to say, the experience of
growing up between cultures will eventually be the norm. Consequently, the
experience of Third Culture Kids has important insights to lend into wider
discussions of globalisation and the redefinition of concepts such as home, and
cultural and national identity. Indeed, much has been made of the fact that not
only Barack Obama, but much of his administration, fit into the category of
TCKs. It has been argued that this group of individuals with their unique crosscultural upbringing may pave the way for a new type of global politics.31 The
success of Obamas term in office aside, the interest in the complex cultural
identities that make up his administration suggests a growing recognition, in
America at least, of the importance of acknowledging the distinct experience of
children in discussions of migration. The specificity of childrens experiences of
migration has thus far been largely, and surprisingly, neglected within migration
studies, with emphasis being placed much more on ethnicity or gender. The
concepts of Third Culture Kids and Cross Culture Kids provide new paradigms
for considering children independently of their parents and, to a certain extent,
of their national or cultural identity. Needless to say, these concepts will always
intersect with context-specific issues such as family background, economic
status, parent and host culture. Nevertheless, they pave the way for considering
children of migration in their own right. This approach does not only shed fresh
light on certain aspects of migration, but also provides paradigms of cultural
identity which transcend the traditional markers of race, nationality, language
which in many ways are increasingly losing relevance in todays highly mobile
world.

























































30 Pollock and Van Reken, xiii.
31 See for example: Jay Newton, Obamas foreign policy problem, Time Magazine
(18.12.2007). Web. http://www.time.com/time/politics/ article/0,8599,1695803,00. html
[accessed 23rd September 2011] and Ruth van Reken, Obamas Third Culture Team
(26.11.2008). Web. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles /2008/11/26/obamas-thirdculture-team.html [accessed 23rd September 2011].

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Existential Migration: redefining belonging

I would like now to turn to the second form of migration which also serves to
complicate traditional notions of home, belonging and identity: existential
migration. Although the phenomena of Third Culture Kids and existential
migration constitute two very distinct forms of migration, there are certain
points of comparison which make it meaningful to talk about them alongside
each other. Given the issues of identity and belonging so central to the
experiences of Third Culture Kids, Adult Third Culture Kids (ATCKs) are
probably amongst the prime candidates for becoming existential migrants. Many
former TCKs have problems readjusting to the culture of their passport country
and often choose to move on when they are old enough, in search of other places
where they feel at home. Both ATCKs and existential migrants will largely
speaking have a different relationship with home and their home culture from
their parents, perhaps even their siblings, and most of their peers. As a result,
their conceptualisation of their own identity will be more fluid and less attached
to specific places. Greg Madison, who coined the concept of existential
migration, offers the following definition:
The existential migrant, [...] chooses to leave his or her homeland, pushed out by
deep questions that cant be answered at home, pulled into the wide world in order
to discover what life is. We are living paradoxes. We need to feel at home but have
never done so, we need to belong but renounce opportunities for belonging, we
venture out into the unknown in order to experience the homecoming that will
finally settle us, but doesnt.32

Madisons starting question is whether the process of existential migration, the

experience of homelessness and the search for home, is symptomatic of a deeper
human condition which can be understood as a response to post-modern,
capitalist society, what Madison describes as the homeless underbelly of our
globalised world.33 Consequently for Madison a study of existential migration is
necessarily not only an engagement with some of the fundamental questions of
migration but also of the human condition itself.34
As Madison goes on to argue, existential migrants differ from other
migrants for a number of reasons.35 They are distinct from expatriates since the
experience of being posted abroad for a specific period of time is very different
from leaving home for an indefinite period. As it is fairly common for

























































32 Madison, 7.
33 Madison, 15.
34 Madison, 25.
35 Madison tries to avoid the use of existential migrant as another diagnostic category or
personal label (122) but uses it at times for reasons of brevity, as I will do.

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existential migrants to suffer financially following their departure from home,

their motivation also sets them apart from economic migrants. Madison is also
keen to distinguish existential migrants from the term global nomads, as used by
writers such as Pico Iyer:
[...] existential migration signifies a deeply felt searching or yearning that expresses
and addresses something in existence itself. The global nomad appears less
purposive in his or her movement, more motivated by superficial curiosity and
conventional values, tinged with the need to escape from but without the meaningful
and self-reflective motivation evident in existential migration.36

Whilst Madisons scathing dismissal of the term is typical of his somewhat superior
tone throughout the study, something I will comment on briefly below, I would
concur that the concept of global nomadism is too broad and vague to be able to
take account of the complexity of movement in todays world. Furthermore,
accounts of global nomadism which centre on dislocation and homelessness as the
norm in our globalised, postmodern world undermine the continuing lived
experience of migration as something which is painful, traumatic and coupled with
loss and grief. Madisons study is based on interviews conducted with therapy
patients which bear witness to the painful aspects of voluntary migration.
It is also the apparent element of choice, that existential migrants could have
chosen to stay and can return whenever they choose, which distinguishes them
from the experiences of refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants.
Further, and this is something which is not acknowledged by Madison, the
decision to leave is one facilitated by sufficient financial resources and a
freedom of movement. Most existential migrants have the luxury of choosing
their destinations and the conditions of their departure and arrival. Thus, as with
expatriates and their children, existential migrants have not had to face the
hardships connected with forced migrations.37 The prerequisites of a freedom of
movement and the necessary financial means are things which Madison
apparently takes for granted in his study. This is an oversight which is
symptomatic of a wider tendency of Madisons study to overly romanticise the
concept of existential migration, marking it as a philosophical undertaking
driven by lofty needs and dismissive of the more prosaic, physical needs which
often lie behind leaving home, or, indeed, staying at home, such as the need for
shelter, food or greater financial or physical security.
Nevertheless, as the stories of existential migration presented by Madison
highlight, the individuals concerned often felt that they had little choice in the

























































36 Madison, 78.
37 The experience of existential migration introduces degrees of choice and can invert
other common understandings of migration. Madison, 19.

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matter of leaving. Whilst they were not faced with poverty, violence, the threat of
persecution, the internal need for self-fulfilment, meaning and a sense of belonging,
none of which could be found at home, was a powerful enough force to make
staying at home impossible. At the same time, this rift between home as a physical
place, where they come from, and the sense of belonging entails a different
understanding of the home/belonging paradigm that is normally taken for granted
in discussions of migration. Most examples of existential migration which Madison
uses highlight a greater sense of belonging away from the home environment; it
appears that most existential migrants feel more at home in a foreign country. Often
it is the status of being a foreigner which allows for an emergence of self which
was not able to develop in the home environment. This highlights migration as a
positive process, in which difference the idea of migrant as admired other38
becomes the condition for discovering a new sense of self and, hence, belonging.
For whilst the existential migrant may reject the familiarity of the home
environment and choose homelessness in the search for fulfilment, he/she will
continue to seek out those who share similar values and outlooks. In this respect,
existential migrants set out in search of a home they have never known, and
nostalgia is rewritten as a longing not for a past but a future state of belonging. In
other words, existential migrants seek and find a home within homelessness.39 The
fact that existential migrants are often drawn to other migrants and international
groups reflects the possibility of belonging within difference.40 Thus, similarly to
Third Culture Kids, existential migrants will form bonds with other individuals
which transcend traditional markers of cultural difference. In this respect,
existential migrants act out other modes of belonging which are becoming
increasingly common in transnational and transcultural contexts.
Madison understands this sense of homecoming within a foreign place in
terms of the relation between inner and outer worlds. Whereas for most migrants
who have a definite sense of identity connected with a specific place the process
of moving to a foreign place entails a sudden and painful rift between their inner
and outer worlds, for existential migrants the act of moving to a foreign place can
actually serve to lessen this discrepancy.41 Accordingly, home becomes less a
place than a sense of connection with the outside world which mirrors an
individuals internal world. This, in Madisons view, entails a reconceptualisation
of belonging and home as tied to a physical place into the idea of home as a selfworld interaction, that is, home as a psychological reality that relies on a

























































38 Madison, 42.
39 Madison, 70.
40 On this, see Madison, 73 and 82.
41 See Madison, 19.

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correlation between ones inner and outer environment. 42 Accordingly, for

existential migrants, belonging is not to be found in the physical place where they
are from and where they grew up. The notion of home is thus radically different
from the one found in many accounts of migration and entails a radical
reconceptualisation of the relationship between home and identity.
Madison is not content to explain this as a result of individual pathologies,
as psychologists have done before him43, but sees it as part of a wider human
phenomenon better addressed and explained by philosophical ideas rather than
by psychological analysis. It is in this context that he turns to the philosophy of
Heidegger to account for existential migrants inability to feel at home and their
subsequent global wandering. For Heidegger, existentialism is the awareness of
mans fundamental homelessness, a condition for which home, familiarity and
convention are only illusory solutions. The only authentic response to Being is
the seeking of the beyond and a coming to terms with the uncanniness of life.
For Madison, this existential state has striking parallels with the individuals he
interviewed whom he considered to be existential migrants. Existential
migration thus becomes a response to the sensing of the uncanny in existence
and a refusal of the self-deception of home.44 Many individuals forgo comfort,
financial, emotional and professional security, even family, in the search for a
more authentic mode of being. In this respect, they seek out a life akin to
Heideggers mode of dwelling, a more conscious and authentic form of
existence which has nothing of the illusion or self-deception of home:
We dwell most honestly in the awareness of how strange our existence really is.
Without this homelessness we do not dwell. Existential migration is an invitation to
dwelling, an invitation requiring choice.45

Yet for Madison, dwelling does offer some kind of homecoming, which is
understood not as the return home to a geographical place, but more a return
from our superficial commercial hominess back into the mystery of the world.46
It is this return that offers us a form of belonging which redeems us from
aimless, meaningless global wandering:
And still for some of us the idea is not to be at home, but to be longing for home,
forever on the way home. That feeling, that tragic sublime homelessness, is where
we feel most alive, and where we most belong.47

























































42 Madison, 70 and 102.
43 See Madison, 21f.
44 On this section, see chapter 10 of The End of Belonging.
45 Madison, 172.
46 Madison, 176.
47 Madison, 213.

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Home, then is deferred and a sense of belonging eked out in the certainty of this
deferred possibility. Whilst the notion of existential exile is hardly new in a
philosophical context, it is here given a new slant in Madisons suggestion that it
is the very notion of home which has made man homeless: Existential
migration suggests that we are not-at-home not because we have been exiled
from home, but rather because we have been exiled by home from ourselves.48
That is not to say that this understanding of home plays no role whatsoever in
the individual experience of existential migration, as Madison points out: We
all start from somewhere.49 Nor does it mean that the pain and loss of departure
is foreign to the existential migrant. Indeed, Madison argues that the concept of
existential migration accounts for the more painful side of global nomadism and
postmodern flux which concepts such as the global soul and cosmopolitanism
render invisible. In this respect, Madison reconciles the increased unproblematic
mobility of a globalised world with the concrete, lived experience of migration
and the enduring, fundamental need for a sense of home and belonging.
There is no doubt that Madisons study of existential migration lends itself
to criticism. Its poetic extolling of migration undertaken for philosophical
reasons, with which Madison so clearly aligns himself, exposes a disregard of, if
not disdain for, the more mundane instances of global movement. Freedom of
movement is taken for granted, a point which not only discounts factors such as
country of origin and financial resources but also issues such as gender.50 It is
nevertheless the first study of lived existential migration which is significant for
its problematisation of concepts and notions so often taken for granted in
migration studies. It also sheds light on a form of migration which, although
relatively minor in terms of numbers of individuals involved, nevertheless points
to shifting relationships between home and identity. Madisons study thus paves
the way for more nuanced approaches to instances of global nomadism.

Conclusion
The model of Third Culture Kids and existential migration are instances of global
nomadism which are not just to be understood as forms of migration, but new
forms of existence altogether, as a result of which our traditional understanding of

























































48 Madison, 175.
49 Madison, 77.
50 At the beginning of the study, Madison states that there was no assumption, nor later
indication, that gender, age, or originating culture had any significant impact upon what
emerged (28). A more thorough study of existential migration would no doubt want to
look into this claim further. It goes without saying that these factors will impact on the
availability of choice for many would-be existential migrants.

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what home is is undergoing a radical refashioning. Perhaps, then, there really is

no longer any place like home; Eva Hoffman has termed this the loss of loss51
and Greg Madison the end of belonging. Yet whilst dislocation and
fragmentation may be central tenets of post-modern theory and, increasingly,
discussions of globalisation, the real-lived accounts of migration show the pain
and loss of migration, even of voluntary migration, to be a very real one. Terms
such as dislocation, nostalgia, home thus remain relevant to these new categories
of migration, albeit in a very different form. Both concepts studied here are
indicative of new approaches that are needed in the study of migration trends to
which national and cultural identities are of secondary importance. Within the
context of globalisation or cosmopolitanism concepts of belonging and home
require significant reconceptualisation, as independent of a physical place, but
remain a fundamental part of the narratives of global nomadism.
Furthermore, the studies of Third Culture Kids and existential migration
powerfully highlight the therapeutic value of being able to tell ones story, a
process which not only makes an individual more conscious of his/her own
identity, but which also offers the possibility of discovering shared narratives. This
indicates the role that literary studies has to play in the recognition of such modes
of migration, an idea on which the anthology Unrooted Childhoods is based:
the only permanence is in memory and in the stories they tell. [...] In a nomadic
world, telling our stories is one way to establish our place in time, especially when
ties to extended family and community becomes tenuous and personal histories may
be fragmented by moves. [...] Telling our stories binds us in an act of
remembrance.52

It is these stories which will also allow nomadic children and adults to give voice
to issues of loss and grief. Indeed, the very act of telling ones story can
compensate for the sense of dislocation and dispossession as a result of
migration.53 An important part of this is developing a conceptual language which
not only enables people to tell their stories, but for them to be understood and
acknowledged by others. This of course entails a broadening of the conceptual
scale addressed by writers such as Eva Hoffman and Edward Said. It is this
connection between real life stories and academic discourse which needs to be
nurtured. The recognition, then, of such forms of migration which are distinct
from experiences of diasporic communities, exiles, refugees do not only serve to
widen theoretical discussions of migration, but perhaps more importantly allow
the individual instances of global nomadism to be told and to be heard.

























































51 Hoffman, 50.
52 Eidse and Sichel, 4f.
53 See Madison, 19.

CHAPTER 8
In Search of Identity, a Place to Belong and Temps Perdu:
Bogdan Czaykowski's Poetic Confession
Justyna Budzik, Jagiellonian University
Polish migr literature has often been the subject of many scholars thorough
critical analyses. These publications have tried to define its characteristics by
comparing it to Polish literature written in Poland. Many studies have been
devoted to coining terminology to fit a historical period and a political context in
which Polish writers were leaving their native land.
The complexity of the themes Polish writers tackled in their works seems
among the most intriguing aspects of Polish writing abroad. In this plethora of
topics we might distinguish a recurrent leitmotif in the prose and poetry of many
Polish writers living abroad. It concerns the literary description of writers states
of mind affected by the experience of living in a foreign land. The philosophy of
life of a man placed in a new reality (both in political and cultural terms),
constantly balancing between two worlds the present and the past, the one he
has left behind, and the one he has just encountered could be an intriguing
subject of analysis. The nostalgic tone of this writing, which in many cases
resembles an intimate confession revealing the condition of a writer living far
away from his birthplace, should come as no surprise, as scenes from the past
always come back to him, revived by kaleidoscopic memory. migr writers are
in a constant search of temps perdu. In their memories they return to the places
they have left, in other words, they are always en route to the origins of their
own biography, to their native land and their childhood. They endeavour to
redefine their enriched identity and to find the place in the world where they
belong. A journey made both in geographical and symbolic space, experienced
through the imagination, and an attempt to domesticate a new place, often
combined with the dilemma of feeling at home and the feeling of estrangement,
are just the two of the themes most frequently chosen and explored by Polish
migr writers.
This essay is devoted to Bogdan Czaykowski a Polish writer who lived
and wrote miles away from his birthplace in Vancouver, a city in Canada, in
the province of British Columbia, on the west coast of the country. The complex
and multifaceted reflections on the meaning of the geographical and symbolic
place in which the poet was trying to find his home will be the subject of this
essay. A discussion on this aspect of his writing will be presented alongside

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thoughts concerning his identity, shaped and modified by different symbolic and
geographical places to which the poet makes reference throughout his poetry.
In 1940, as an eight-year-old boy, Bogdan Czaykowski was driven from
Poland to Russia with his family. He lived consecutively in Uzbekistan,
Turkmenistan and Iran. The future poet spent the 1940s in Persian and Indian
refugee camps and orphanages. In 1948 he reached England, then Ireland, where
he commenced his studies in modern history. He also studied Polish Philology at
the University of London. In 1958 he was involved in the creation of the Polish
migr literary magazine Kontynenty Nowy Merkuriusz, which was published
in London until 1964. Among the creators of the magazine were, apart from
Bogdan Czaykowski, Florian mieja, Zygmunt awrynowicz, Bolesaw
Taborski, Jerzy S. Sito, Adam Czerniawski and Andrzej Busza. Accompanied
by Janusz A. Ihnatowicz, Jan Darowski, Mieczysaw Paszkiewicz, Ewa
Dietrich, Maria Badowicz and Ludwik Buyno, they formed the Kontynenty
group of poets. The unique and exceptional character of this group has been
analysed by many literary critics in essays devoted to this interesting
phenomenon which appeared in London in the late fifties. They have argued
that, for the first time, a milieu of Polish writers appeared as a collective in
exile. The London poets felt united by the same living situation all of them
had long been away from their homeland. Some of them, like Busza,
Czaykowski and Czerniawski, left Poland as infants (Busza was one-year old),
and all of them wished to pursue Polish poetry in London.
They wanted to stay in touch with their motherland, and they took a keen
interest in the changes that were observed in Poland after 1956. Nevertheless,
their attitudes significantly differed from the pattern widely accepted in the
London migr Polish community. They did not lose interest in Polish matters,
though this did not curb their fascination for European culture. They were wellversed in English literature in Shakespeare, Byron and Eliot, to name but a
few writers whose literary talent they held in high esteem. In their own works
they would often allude to these writers, in style and sometimes in themes. This
keen interest in and fascination for the English poets and prose writers should
not strike us as odd or unusual, as some of the Kontynenty poets were raised in
British culture. They were all concerned with universal matters, and thus their
works did not try to emphasise a distinctively Polish character. Some of them
could be distinguished by their cosmopolitan nature and outlook on life.
Therefore, it should not seem peculiar that such poets as Bogdan Czaykowski
had a very atypical attitude towards the notion of geographical place, and to the
idea of (not) belonging. The same concerns the dilemma of feeling at home and
experiencing an acute sense of estrangement in a foreign land. In Czaykowskis
case, these are multidimensional phenomena. The poet recognises and poetically

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scrutinises two different categories of space (place): a geographical one, which

he associates with certain points on the map of the world, coming from both the
past and from the present time, and a symbolic one, whose expression he finds
in philosophy (e.g. in the philosophy of time), metaphysics, and mysticism. In
this essay I would like to focus on the first understanding of place/space, and on
the authors attempts to feel at home and to domesticate his new place of
residence Vancouver.
Czaykowskis biography proves that a journey might be the best metaphor
for human existence. The phrase world traveller seems very apt with regards to
this poet, who had encountered many cultures and lands before settling down in
Canada. It is, however, worth noting that the idea of travelling was not
connected with an irresistible urge to reach new, remote places, but to a large
extent, it was conditioned by his fate and by historical factors. The latter were
deeply rooted in the biography of this poet, essayist, literary critic, translator of
Polish poetry into English and professor of Slavonic literature at the University
of British Columbia.

Travelling in geographical space

In 1962 Bogdan Czaykowski made the decision to leave London and to head for
Vancouver. British Columbia was the last stop on the poets journey. He finally
settled down there and he never tried to find another place to live. He found
stability in Vancouver and neither the circumstances of his life, nor a yearning
for change made him inclined him to leave the city.
One could advance the thesis that in Vancouver Bogdan Czaykowski
understood that it is possible to feel at home and to be deeply rooted in one
place in the world. However convincing such a presupposition may sound, we
cannot have any certainty about it in Czaykowskis case. In Rebellion in Verse
the poet stressed that the place where he was born could have been located
anywhere, suggesting at the same time that he did not long for any particular
real (physical) place/space in which he could feel at home:
I was born there.
I did not choose the place.
I would love to have been born in grass.
Grass grows everywhere.1

























































1 Bogdan Czaykowski, Jakie ogromne szczcie. Wiersze wybrane z lat 1956-2006
[A Great Happiness. Selected poems from the years 1956-2006; trans. J. Budzik.
Hereafter Jos]. Ed. Boena Szaasta-Rogowska (Krakw: Polski Fundusz Wydawniczy

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Carlos Morton

It seems, however, that some change in the perception of this problem comes
with the collection of poems titled Orchards of the Okanagan. In the title
poem, Czaykowski confesses that feeling at home in one particular place is
possible, and that he discovered a previously unknown extreme happiness with
this feeling, and an undisguised enchantment with a particular here and now.
The poet confirms this by saying:
Born many times, I have been born again.
I grew attached to the place.2

Vancouver is a remarkable city. Once it has been reached, a visitor may be

struck by the impression that he cannot go further, that the borders of the world
end here. A peculiar experience Having realised this, Czaykowski
concentrates on the indescribable beauty of the land he treads. British
Columbias landscape is extremely diversified, and two of its most striking
characteristics are the openness of the space and the soaring landscape. From the
north and east, Vancouver and its environs are surrounded by majestic
mountains, and from the west the city is washed by the Pacific Ocean. Heading
towards Whistler a famous ski-resort the tourist sees endless oceanic bays,
fjords that cut deep in the land on the one side, and towering rocks and high
peaks on the other. Two spaces horizontal and vertical intuitively tangible in
the geographical richness of this place, permeate in Czaykowskis poetry. The
former is symbolically represented by the water (the ocean), and the latter by
mountains and high trees densely covering the province and the city. No wonder
there are so many references to nature in Czaykowskis verse. Through the
medium of the landscape the reader witnesses dynamic changes in special
configurations happening in his poems. This movement can be observed in two
dimensions, but the vertical mobility happens usually through contact with
nature, modulated by the imagination, and through defining ones own
ontological conditions in the circumstances tied to nature. 3 In the vertical
space, the poet travels from bottom to top and from top to bottom, and also from
the past to the present. This peculiar journey takes place concurrently between
two worlds and two spaces a horizontal and a vertical one. Confronting the
past filled with memories with the journey happening in the present, which
Czaykowski describes in Supercontinental Toronto-Vancouver Triptych,














































































































































































w Kanadzie, Wydawnictwo Znak, 2007), 19. All poems in this article come from this
collection of poems. Unless otherwise stated, translations are by J. Budzik.
2 Jos, 199.
3 Robert Mielhorski, Jedynie autentyczna teraniejszo Dzieci
stwo w poezji
Bogdana Czaykowskiego, in Zbigniew Andres et al., Poezja polska na obczynie. Studia
i szkice (Rzeszw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego, 2005), 7-34.

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125

seems to be the crucial issue for the author. Nevertheless, significance is

ascribed to only one permanent element of this journey the return to the poet's
everyday space, which is woven out of facts of his life. In this way Czaykowski
attempts to emphasise the reality of the things happening in a particular place,
which cannot be substituted. Thus the parade of the cities from the past in
Supercontinental is presented in line with Canadian cities and provinces:
Toronto, Calgary, Manitoba, Regina and Alberta.
The journey from one edge of the horizon to the other, from the east to the
west and from the west to the east, and from the present to the past and the past
to the present, finds its best poetic expression in the Triptych. On his way from
Vancouver to Toronto and back, Czaykowski passes through many cities which
he instantly recognises and describes. The poetic description has been enriched
with reflections on time and memory of places from the past. This travelling
turns into a consoling voyage which has also some therapeutic traits. Its main
aim is to help the poet acknowledge the existence of the new space by shaping
the image of the present moment, while recalling the places from Czaykowskis
childhood years.
Marek Zalewski claims that memory is an act of imagination which
consists of the scenes originating from different periods of time.4 Czaykowskis
poetic imagination is suffused with images from his childhood, memories of
situations related to his beloved ones (like his father, who appears in The
Fathers Woods), and with some places (Little Journey to the East) and
emotions which he describes in 'Cantos'. Memory enables him to recall a
bygone world and create a myth of his own origins.5
In search of his own identity, Czaykowski draws from the past, ascribing
great importance to memories of place: Things which have been inscribed in
a memory of place usually have a metaphorical meaning they are a kind of
(...) identity mark stemming from the history and geography of an author.6
Czaykowskis journeys to particular places from his childhood, such as the
Ukraine or Iran, through memory, may be interpreted as the poets attempt to
reconstruct the past. The act of recollection is not merely connected with
returning to a certain geographical space, but first and foremost, it should be
perceived as a symbolic return to the past self. This retrospective outlook on the
past would never be complete without Czaykowskis participation in the present
time, which fosters the process of the conscious arrangement of the scattered
elements that he starts to perceive from a wider perspective, and that he

























































4 Marek Zalewski, Formy pamici (Gda
sk: sowo/obraz/terytoria, 2004), 22.
5 Zalewski, 2004, 27.
6 Zalewski, 2004, 40-41.

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Carlos Morton

gradually begins to understand. This complicated mental process, which engages

the memory of the past and an awareness of the present, through which the poet
delves into the remote past, reveals the complexity of Czaykowskis identity.
Plato's anamnesis plays a double role here it helps to build a coherent whole
out of miscellaneous elements from the past, while creating a symbolic bond
between the past and present time. In this way, the poet settles accounts with
himself and endeavours to put certain facts in order, not forgetting, however, the
elements which shape his present life. As a result, the author of the Orchards of
the Okanagan reaches the roots of his identity, travelling from the present to the
past and from the past to the present, and coming back as a creation of time7,
having been formed from the past and present day.
Through his memory, Czaykowski is on an ongoing journey heading for
some place and returning to the place where he lives. He expresses this in
Supercontinental: I am travelling / From Toronto / where I arrived from
Vancouver / and I am coming back to Vancouver / [] I am coming back to
myself.8 There is one unalterable element of this journey: any here and now
cannot erase there and then. The memories of real geographical places and of
sensuous experience which filled the poet continuously permeate his poetry. He
metaphorically refers to this in The Wind from the Other Side:
The wind from the other side and the sun at once.
The sun and instantly the wind from the other side.9

The space which the poet is confronted with accumulates the intensity and
spontaneity of the world, which he expresses in Supercontinental:
Suddenly the city, unexpected like life,
Rye-coloured, tawny Toronto [trans. A. Busza]
[]
Hundredfold vibration.
Hot, cold,
green, black,
joyful,
miserable.10

Czaykowski tries to find a place for himself in an open space with no

boundaries. This place is filled with the air and the sound of the wind, and both
phenomena seem tangible, though invisible. One can sense the movement of
space and all the creatures vibrating in it. The contrasts of this world still

























































7 Jos, 257.
8 Jos, 258.
9 Jos, 140.
10 Jos, 246.

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pervade one another, stability goes hand in hand with the dynamics of entities
and beings. These internally conflicting and antithetical phenomena form a kind
of mystic order, an undisturbed harmony of mobility and stagnation, of daily
glare and night shadows, which the poet describes in Supercontinental.
Every single image of a place the poet passes through during his journey
unwinds / into a new space11, and at the same time, each place is like a micropoint in a macro-scale of the space it co-creates. In Supercontinental, space
becomes the object of fascination and amazement to the writer, through its
indescribable and inexplicable spirituality. The higher the train climbs up the
mountains, the more intense the feeling:
(...)
here a spirit took your breath away
And so becharmed motion
That in the very sovereignty of matter
It unfolded like a seance12

The simultaneous appearance of the wind and the spirit in the space described
by the author might be interpreted in many different ways. One possible
interpretation was suggested by John Paul II, who said that the presence of the
wind is connected with the existence and the appearance of the Holy Spirit.
Czaykowski's philosophical discourse is often related to God, so it is possible
that he found a connection between these two phenomena.
A very careful study of Supercontinental Toronto Vancouver suggests
the thesis that, for Czaykowski, omnipresent nature has become the space where
he feels at home, and which has become his symbolic home. In one of his
essays, Wojciech Ligza writes about the aesthetic domestication of space,
while emphasising the importance of the intuitively experienced strangeness
hidden in the details of the landscape.13 Upsetting as it may seem, strangeness
tempts and enchants the poet with its dual and changeable character. The writer
mentions it in poems from the collection Point-no-Point, where he writes about
the stillness inscribed in particular parts of the Canadian landscape:
() serene
like a lifeless eye
clear without tear
with a bizarre tree bent
by transient wind14

























































11 Jos, 251.
12 Jos, 268; trans. A. Busza.
13 Wojciech Ligza, Kanada polskich poetw. Szkice z natury, in Andres, 2005, pp. 110135, 124.
14 Jos, 101; trans. A. Busza.

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Carlos Morton

Strangeness sensed in the details of the landscape cannot, however, be

associated with the experience of otherness felt in the moment of coming into
contact with the people who live in Canada. In Czaykowski's poetry, it is hard
to find unequivocal proof for the hypothesis that, in the new society, the poet
began to perceive his Polish origins as a stigma, and himself as someone who
is different (in a pejorative sense of this word), who feels stigmatised by his
otherness. The terminology used by Zygmunt Bauman, who writes of life
with indefiniteness' and the horror of indefiniteness, does not apply here
either.15 Both terms refer to a way of responding to a stranger which might be
observed in host countries, where the indefiniteness of a newcomer
provokes ostracism, and sometimes even aversion. The dilemma of living
with the feeling of indefiniteness16 does pertain to Bogdan Czaykowski, but
it should not be analysed in the context of where he settled down. The feeling
of indefiniteness is tied to the poets identity, which he constantly tries to
redefine. The writers incapacity to define it in a decisive manner might have
intensified his feeling of strangeness. Thus, it would be pure simplification to
say that he experienced indefiniteness mainly in his contact with Canadian
people.
Although the new space (and landscape) differed so much from those which
Czaykowski had stored in his memory, it finally began to fascinate the writer
with its dynamics, which he describes in the verse From the Rocky Mountains:
The mountain moved
the range breached by a tunnel
as by a dark thought
crumbled17

The ravishing energy of the landscape he looks at and admires does not
eliminate the acute sense of distance the poet constantly experiences. In the
quoted poem the reader may sense the inner unrest of the poetic persona. It
seems as if the energy and dynamics of nature intermingled in the mountain tops
with a force deprived of life-giving powers. Wojciech Ligza writes about this
strange unity the object of which is the lake: It looks at us, but seems dead and
shorn of human compassion. 18 This beautiful yet disquieting landscape
resembles a masterpiece. Once it has been described by the poet it is granted a
double image. On the one hand, it is extremely sensuous: one can see, feel and

























































15 Zygmunt Bauman, Wieloznaczno nowoczesna.
(Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1995), 79.
16 Bauman, 1995, 79.
17 Jos, 102; trans. A. Busza.
18 Ligza, 2005, 119.

Nowoczesno

wieloznaczna

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129

hear it; on the other it seems bereft of any signs of life which make it resemble a
still-life. A struggle between two motifs life-giving water and the cathedrals of
mountains can be seen in this poetic description:
() the watershed
rivers unbraiding from streams
air so pure
you can almost see your own death19

The state of the poets mind is largely determined by the continuing tensions and
contrasts he observes. In Supercontinental he courageously states: I grew
attached to the place, but as a matter of fact, any particular point in time or any
present place cannot deaden bygone experiences, which never fade. The poet
says that Memories are like a persistent tear.20
Nevertheless, the poetic persona tries to settle in the new space, which he
endeavours to make more familiar. Such efforts aim at eliminating the
strangeness and hostility which Czaykowski might have sensed in the new
country. In this beautiful emptiness of woods and lakes // [...] In this land of
space, in this emptiness of trees21, the poet plants an apple-tree and he slowly
starts being surrounded by many. In effect, the space seems domesticated, at
least to some extent, which he suggests in the poem We were followed by
trees. This is a very peculiar poem, both in terms of its construction and the
theme it addresses. It is written in the form of a story which speaks of people
who live surrounded by trees or, using the authors turn of phrase, who create
their world planting the space with trees.22 Ligza notes that the poem is like
an atlas of dendrological specimens, in which birds of passage become
gardeners and co-creators of a pristine Eden.23 Undoubtedly, the surroundings
Czaykowki describes bear a paradisal element, and the people who inscribe
themselves so naturally in this space, seem to create it as if God had granted
them a particle to create this world.24 The poet does not reveal who the people
are, but we can suppose that he is speaking about his wife, himself, and their
garden, where even a willow was given a name Jaga. The metaphorical layer
of this verse is worth noting. A man plants his trees and creates his garden, and
he gradually becomes more and more deeply rooted in this land. In another
poem, You say my garden is magic from the collection The Wind from the

























































19 Jos, 102; trans. A. Busza.
20 'Tuktoyaktuk', Jos, 99.
21 'Psyche', Jos, 155.
22 'They were followed by trees', Jos, 160.
23 Ligza, 2005, 127.
24 'They were followed by trees', Jos, 160.

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Carlos Morton

Other Side, the idea of the place is more precisely defined, it becomes private,
as expressed by the use of a personal pronoun: my.
Czaykowski's surroundings turn green, and birds and insects appear more
often than before:
From distant London make yourself at home, dear
Adam, friend from nearly the other side of the globe.
Sit down first under the fir-tree, may its sap
Sprinkle you, may the blue-jay accept you.
Do not read now, simply dwell amid the greenery,
Sipping juice through a straw, tossing nuts
To the jay when she screeches.
You can also watch the carpenter-ants
As they toil to turn our patio into sawdust,25

The Wind from the Other Side closes with a poem devoted to the Vaseaux
Lake which is able to receive / a hundred thousand wild geese.26 It resembles
an art gallery charming a visitor with Cezannes, Matisses, and cubist and
Japanese canvases. An oar held in one hand is like a paintbrush which has its
share / in this unequalled art.27
Undoubtedly, Czaykowskis abode becomes more private and familiar to
him through contact with nature, with which he is in constant dialogue. The
process of domestication in a new space never ends, but it can be stated with
certainty that the author is fully aware of experiencing each stage of it. He
openly admits this in one of his poems, where he confesses: I found my way
to them / not having originated from them nor having been one of them /
rumour has it / that I exist. 28 Czaykowski makes clear reference to the
Canadian people, admitting that the process of assimilation and domestication
does not proceed without the presence of others. This reflection is
complemented by an observation that one should keep ones distance in this
country29 In the same place he also comments on his contact with Canadian
art, mentioning the names of famous painters (e.g. Emily Carr), but his
fascination for the famous Group of Seven does not eliminate the aesthetic
insufficiency he suffers. Czaykowski confirms such speculations saying:
sometimes the atmosphere happens to be aesthetic / [] sometimes the
atmosphere gets poetic.30 This pessimistic view of art that he is confronted

























































25 'From Distant London', Jos, 181; trans. A. Busza.
26 'The Vaseaux Lake', Jos, 194.
27 'The Vaseaux Lake', Jos, 194.
28 'In a secret notice', Jos, 144.
29 'In a secret notice', Jos, 144.
30 'In a secret notice', Jos, 144.

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131

with does not stem from the poets high and unrealistic demands. It should
not strike us as odd that a person who has a multicultural identity, and who
became familiar with different cultures, may long for the most sophisticated
forms of art.
Nevertheless, at the end of his journey in Supercontinental, the spaces
voice is freed and enlivened. It appears to be endowed with mystical attributes.
Not only does the traveller recognise the space, but we can observe the reverse
situation, as expressed in the question: Will it recognise me? / It does / It says:
Is it you?31
The journey homeward has come to an end, and it appears that the harmony
in nature has also been retained. Vertical and horizontal space once again come
together as one:
Valley into valley
Peak into peak
while night breaks into dawn32

It seems that the poet has finally found his own place, where he belongs and to
which he joyfully returns. He discards the feeling of uncertainty and uneasiness,
he overcomes the feeling of distrust. In spite of this, neither in this poem nor in
any other verse which reveals the dilemmas of the author does he explicitly
write that he found his home in Vancouver. Nevertheless, it is hard to deny that
in Vancouver the poet realised, at least to some extent, the need to feel at home
in one place in the world. He spent over forty-five years in Vancouver, and he
died there in 2007.
The process of domestication is complex and fluctuating for this poet, but it is
undeniable that the man and the world that surrounds him, with all the elements
that constitute it (nature, other people, culture), come nearer to one another.
It is worth noting that alongside the reflections related to particular
geographical places, the poet develops another aspect in his poetry, regarding
his own existence and the space where he belongs. But this time he analyses it in
philosophical terms. In this way he trespasses beyond geographical limitations
and enters an ontological discourse, in which the philosophical analysis of time
seems most significant.
In the Orchards of the Okanagan, in Supercontinental, and in the last
poems of Bogdan Czaykowski, contained in the volume Jakie ogromne
szczcie (A Great Happiness), the poet still travels in different spaces,
including the most remote ones, which he remembers from his childhood. The
ongoing process of reconstructing the elements of the past and ones own

























































31 Supercontinental, Jos, 272-273.
32 Jos, 272; trans. A. Busza.

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Carlos Morton

identity is made possible as the film of memory continues running on inside of

us long after we have come to a physical standstill. 33 The poet tries to
understand the phenomenon of time, symbolically translocating between the two
time spheres which are most important from his perspective the past and the
present, elaborating on them not only in the context of his personal life
experience, but in the most universal philosophical terms. Bogdan Czaykowskis
effort to feel at home in Canada and in the world is undoubtedly stimulated by
this second, deeply philosophical attitude to his own existence.

33 Ryszard Kapuci
ski, Travels with Herodotus. Trans. K. Gowczewska (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 79.

CHAPTER 9
Immigrants and their stories
Anna Lubecka, Jagiellonian University
The year 2011 was exceptional in the sense that it was marked by three
important anniversaries. The first one was the 60th anniversary of the 1951
Refugee Convention, which can be regarded as a milestone in the recognition of
the rights of the people who have been displaced by persecutions mainly
religious and political. The second one commemorated the Convention on the
Reduction of Statelessness from 1961 which also applies to thousands of
economic and ecological immigrants who, in search of a safer and better life in
dignity, left their houses and illegitimately entered democratic countries. The
third anniversary honoured the 150th anniversary of the birth of Fridtjof Nansen,
the First Commissioner for Refugees at the League of Nations, who has become
a symbol of humanitarian aid to and solidarity with the stateless, the borderless,
the uprooted, the displaced, refugees and asylum seekers whose number has
reached 43 million today.1
The anniversaries we are celebrating today invite us to make some
reflections about European immigrants, although today Europe itself has
become an important immigrant destination. To understand better who they
were and what their life was like in the new country it is useful to read their
stories. Although often depreciated, they are important para-documents about
the challenges, dramas and victories of immigrants. They are also witnesses
completing our knowledge about them and often demythifying migration. As
such they are of great value for societies and individuals, both their authors and
their audience, be it family or total strangers.
The aim of the present article is to reflect upon immigrants stories and
discuss their socio-cultural values. To illustrate the issue The Quota Story by
a Customs Officer from Ellis Island is used. It is a Polish American immigrant
story whose choice has been motivated by two factors. Firstly, considering the
number of immigrants, Poland can be called a nation of immigrants and the
story is a tribute to all of them. Secondly, its message is optimistic and makes
us believe that both individuals and communities have deeply human values
and virtues such as human solidarity and empathy independently of time and
place.

























































1 UNHCR Global Trends 2010. Web. http://www.unhcr.org/4dfa11499.html [Accessed
20.7.2011].

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Poles: a nation of immigrants

Poles have had a rather significant share in the history of migration from its very
early years in the seventeenth century until the present moment. It has been
estimated that there are from 20 up to 21 million of Poles scattered all over the
world2 [Polonia w liczbach] literally in every corner of the globe and on every
continent, even in such distant and exotic places as Haiti (19th c.). The members
of the Polish Diaspora who migrated for bread and to escape political
oppression and regimes, constitute 35% of the Polish nation. According to Karl
Cordell, a British political scientist and academic, such a great number of Polish
immigrants has historical significance as: There are few countries in Europe
whose history has been as turbulent and indeed sometimes tragic as that of
Poland.3
The first wave of Polish political immigrants took place in the nineteenth
century after the partition of Poland. After two failed uprisings in 1830 and
1863, a great number of Poles from the Russian part were then displaced by
force to places such as Siberia and Kazakhstan. Others migrated to France and
Great Britain to establish there centres of Polishness and continue their fight for
the independence of Poland with other weapons than arms. The second wave
was in the twentieth century in 1939 when Poland was attacked not only by the
Nazis but also by the Soviet Union (see the Ribbentropp-Molotov Pact). Forced
displacements and deportations to slave labour camps and gulags in Kazakhstan
and Siberia were the destiny of 1.7 million Poles from Borderlands of which
only one third survived. France and then London became a destination for Polish
soldiers and politicians. The first ones joined the Allied Forces, the second ones
established the Polish government in exile in London (it was dissolved only
after Poland had become a truly free and democratic country in 1990). The third
wave was after the end of World War II when as a result of Yalta Poland
became a satellite country of the Soviet Union and all those who did not accept
the political change were treated as political enemies.4 A return home from the
West where the Poles served in the Allied Forces meant political processes,
prison and repression. Those who were in Poland but did not approve of the new
political order also tried to immigrate to escape political oppression and prison.
The third wave was during the Solidarity times but the number of people who
left Poland at that time was significantly smaller than during the first two waves.

























































2 Polonia w liczbach, in Stowarzyszenie Wsplnota Polska. Available on http://
archiwum.wspolnotapolska.org.pl/?id=pwko00. [Accessed 10.7.2011].
3 Karl Cordell, Poland and the European Union (London: Routledge, 2000), 1.
4 J. Siedlecki, The fate of the Poles in the USSR in the years 1939-1986 (London: Gryf
Publications, 1987).

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As for economic immigrants, the first of them encouraged by the Homestead

Act of 1862 left Upper Silesia, the region of Bielsko Biaa towards the end of the
nineteenth century for Texas, USA. They founded the first Polish settlement
Panna Maryja before New York and Chicago became the main destinations for
Poles.5 Both Americas were target destinations for bread migration, as well as
the mining areas in France, Belgium and Great Britain in Europe. Since 2004,
when Poland became a member of the EU and consequently European labour
markets slowly opened to Poles, a near mass economic migration of Poles to
Western Europe, mainly Great Britain and Ireland, has been observed. Unlike
their predecessors, many of them are young, educated professionals and highly
qualified specialists, fluent in English, with experience of working for
transnational corporations as well as good manual workers. This is why, for
Favell, they should preferably be called free movers as they significantly differ
from the so-called for bread migration typical of previous generations.6
Each group of immigrants has created its own narratives. Their stories,
especially from the past, are full of patriotism, love for and longing after the
motherland left behind, which often existed for the immigrants only as an
emotional memory. They also recount their life in a new place, their everyday
problems, their great loyalty to the new home and hard work for it as well as
their activities to preserve their Polishness. On the other hand, the stories of
those who have miraculously survived their forced displacement, Soviet gulags
and deportation camps had to be erased from memory for a long time as the
politicized history in Central and Eastern Europe did not leave them space in its
making. Today, told even to an international audience, like the film Katy by
Andrzej Wajda, which is a tribute to his father deported to Siberia, they fill up
white areas in the knowledge of world history and redefine historical memory.
Other stories, told by contemporary Polish economic immigrants, whether in
private, or re-written by journalists7 simply make the listener understand better a
life in a new country. They tell of the immigrants hope, ambitions, dreams,
pain, vulnerability, resilience and fear, their failure, disappointment, shame, lost
self-confidence and self-respect.

























































5 T. L. Baker, The First Polish Americans: Silesian Settlement in Texas (Texas: Texas
A&M University Press, 1979), 8.
6 A. Favell, The new face of East-West migration in Europe, Journal of Ethnic and
Migration Studies 34:5 (July 2008), pp.701-716, 703.
7 A. Gentleman, Poland going where the work is and coming home, The Guardian.
Web. 6 April 2011 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/new-europe. [Accessed
25.07.2011]; Polish professionals in London. Web. www.http:// pbms.
polishprofessionals. org.uk/podstrony/about-us.html. [Accessed 28.08.2011].

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Immigrants stories: mirrors of micro- and macro-worlds

Migration can be narrated in many different ways depending on who is the
narrator and what is his/her aim. S/he can focus on its objectively interpreted
historical, political, economic, social, cultural and psychological aspects, which
helps understand the process and show its complexity. S/he can also deal with
individuals and their personal, subjective experience, which allows to see
migration as a real event with immigrants as its subjects, not merely a sociopolitical process.
The first, formal approach typical of historians, who look for facts, data and
their objective interpretation, is important and results in an unquestionably true
and academic treatment of the issue. It makes use of all kinds of documents,
especially produced by immigration officers, local authorities, even jail records
which reconstruct both an individual immigrants and the whole groups history,
giving raw facts about them. Today preserved in museums such as the
Immigration museum on Ellis Island in New York which was the immigrant
entrance harbour to the United States, the documents mainly show the process
and its efficiency as each immigrant had to be registered at first in immigration
books where his/her name, country of origin, number of accompanying family
members and the date of arrival were meticulously written down. Individual
human beings have got lost in the process, reduced to the sea of information on
endless pages of registration books where they just appear as anonymous
strangers, subsequent registration entries, human masses who each day landed
with hope and fear on American soil, the land of plenty. It is rather unusual to
find among the data the records which treat the newcomers in a more personal
way. Although their first step in the new land was not made on a red carpet,
reading historical documents it is hard to come across any information about
their personal feelings, especially the negative ones such as fear, uncertainty,
insecurity, individual tragedies and family dramas.
Administration procedures and political regulations usually ignore the
deeply human dimensions of each immigrant which, regardless of its motives, is
always first and foremost a narrative of people who at some moment in their life
had to leave their motherland and search for a new home among strangers. Each
immigrant story, individualized and personalized as it is, on the one hand
contributes to the historical discourse and provides information about the sociopolitical order of the receiving country as well as of his/her own. On the other
hand, however, it reflects the immigrants micro-world, private, intimate and
often hidden to strangers, and it shows his/her vulnerability.
Thus, to understand migration, its complexity and multidimensional
character, history has to be completed with stories, which enrich it with purely

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human, non-objective and personal aspects and the basic inner truth about
people and their everyday, often a non-heroic struggle to survive in a new
environment. Reconstructing the history of migration and its story resembles
weaving, where macro-narrations  history, politics and economy  constitute
one thread and personal and private micro-narrations, another. Only telling
individual stories which usually start with a difficult and painful decision to
cross the border of the known and familiar world and then recall everyday life in
the new land, brings to the surface daily dramas, challenges, joys and victories
of particular immigrants, refugees and borderless people. These in turn, show
the real impact of history, politics and society upon individuals, both the
immigrants and also the members of the host countries. The contact between
these two groups never affects only one of them. It changes both of them but the
final result positive or negative depends on them being open, tolerant and
empathetic enough to step out of their frame of mind and emotional routine to
meet the challenge of the unknown, on how well they are prepared and willing
to explore the potential each encounter with the stranger offers to them. It is true
that a stranger can be a threat to the existing status quo and the established
order, but s/he can also be an opportunity for self-growth and self-cognition as
well as a source of capital, both symbolic and economic, for the host country.
Despite so many synergic advantages implied by intercultural encounters, still
today immigrants are rarely welcome and it takes much time for them to become
accepted as partners.

The value of immigrants stories

Immigrants stories, often told as personal biographies, have both social and
personal value. They are significant at least for four different reasons. First of
all, they are of academic importance as they are useful in reconstructing social,
cultural and political history by providing interesting and less widely known
pieces of information about a given historical period and the social and cultural
aspects of the country which has been the immigrants motherland as well as
his/her destination. They can successfully perform the function because they are
based on authentic material gathered by an immigrant who, involuntarily and
most often subconsciously, becomes a home-made ethnographer, an amateur
anthropologist engaged in continual field work. S/he does it for the simple
reason that s/he has to find a way for him-/herself in the new place. Observing,
comparing, evaluating and experiencing the clash and also the dialogue of
cultures which happens around and in him/her, s/he becomes a third culture kid
although s/he is an adult. This has also been an experience of Eva Hoffman, a
Polish Jew and an immigrant herself, first in Canada and then in the USA.

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Today a citizen of the world, a perfectly cosmopolitan and global person, she
still remembers the difficulty she was faced with trying not to get lost while
translating herself into the new language and the new culture. Her own
experience of an immigrant makes her claim that
[] every immigrant becomes a kind of amateur anthropologist  you do notice
things about the culture or the world that you come into that people who grow up in
it, who are very embedded in it, simply don't notice. I think we all know it from
going to a foreign place. And at first you notice the surface things, the surface
differences. And gradually you start noticing the deeper differences. And very
gradually you start with understanding the inner life of the culture, the life of those
both large and very intimate values. It was a surprisingly long process. It is what I
can say.8

Secondly, private and personal aspects of immigrants stories are of value,

although not to the same extent, for immigrants and their families, children and
grandchildren as well as the whole Diaspora. Performing this function stories act
as time keepers which bind family and Diaspora members together around
family and national values, legends, heroes, symbols and events. Thus they
constitute a unique family and Diaspora culture whose borders delineate the
inner world and make it distinct from the outer world. The first one, a
microcosm in itself tends to contain whatever is known, friendly and safe. It
stands for acceptance and belonging but it also contains the pain of loss of the
past. It is often marked with a strong feeling of nostalgia, longing for the home
and the life left behind. Immigrants stories can sometimes be like a stigma
which does not allow the past and the reason for migration to be forgotten. Thus,
they may make the new life difficult for both the immigrant and the host society.
The immigrant who has to come to terms with his/her previous experience
encapsulated in his/her story sometimes needs his/her whole life to succeed in
this. It is often a generational problem as it is the case of many Jews belonging
to the 2G or the second generation. These people are the survivors of the Second
World War strongly marked by the Holocaust for ever, who can neither
intellectually nor emotionally understand what has happened to them and why
they are alive while others have been killed.9
Thus each immigrant story has a built-in space and time aspect. It is
dynamic as it crosses these two dimensions and at the same time binds them
together when told by family members who belong to different generations. In
the above sense immigrants stories are like milestones in search of individual as

























































8 R. Birnbaum, Eva Hoffman. Author of After Such Knowledge converses with Robert
Birnbaum (2005), Identity Theory. Web. http://www.identitytheory.com/eva-hoffman/.
[Accessed 25.7.2011].
9 Birnbaum, 2005.

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139

well as collective, diasporic identity. They point at its roots helping its members,
but especially the younger generation who often do not remember the
motherland, learn where they come from and what cultural heritage they belong
to. Knowing and emotionally experiencing an affinity with the country and the
culture of their parents and grandparents is necessary in the process of building a
harmonious and stable identity which is a result of conscious choices and a true
identification with values it embraces. Most immigrant identities are cleft
identities, which has always been difficult as they directly point at a double
cultural tradition. It tends to be hybridized in them in an asymmetrical way as
one of the traditions is usually representative of the mainstream culture of
opportunity implying success, both personal and social, while the second, the
culture of the immigrant minority, can be a stigmatizing mark minimalizing the
immigrants chances of being included in the mainstream society. The stories
often bear witness to human dilemmas as they make cultural identity choices
more conscious, which has lately resulted in the so-called hyphenated identities.
The hyphen between two terms defining two cultural identity sources both
unifies them but also shows them as independent, e.g. the Polish-Jewish identity
or the American-Pole identity.
The identity dilemma implied by immigrant stories often additionally results in
making the narrator experience his/her strangeness in a more acute way as they
make him/her aware of a gap between the mother culture values s/he cherishes but
which might be neither understood nor approved of in the new country and the host
culture values s/he cannot fully identify with. Thus immigrant stories are necessary
to find symbolical cultural threads connecting immigrants with their motherland
and the new home country. Treated as a form of oral literature, as many of them
have been recorded or written down only quite recently, they play an important role
in constructing imagined communities.10 Their last function makes them act as
invisible but strong bonds which link together people who live in diasporas with
their motherland and make them feel one community.
Thirdly, immigrants biographical stories play the role of bearing witness to
a national and world history of genocide and terror. In this way they actively
contribute to the collective memory of humankind and make their listeners
remember. They act as guardians of collective memory and wardens of
unpoliticised truth in the time of political censorship and merely power-oriented
political alliances. They also fight, albeit bloodlessly, for the basic human rights
to truth, freedom, self-dignity, self-empowerment and respect. They can perform
this role as many of them give accounts of both personal and national dramas,

























































10 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991).

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usually prior to the decision to immigrate (e.g. World War II and the change of
the political system in Poland afterwards, the invasion of Poland by Soviets in
September 1939) as well as during the new life when they could not get rid of
the stigma of, for example, the experience of Russian gulags, the World War II
Jewish survivors trauma, etc. However, they are told not to accuse and feed the
spiral of hatred but to remember and in this way to contribute to building solid
fundaments of international and intercultural dialogue as well as a society which
uses it on a daily basis. Thus their value should be cathartic, leading to
reconciliation and harmony but before that stage can be reached they bring with
themselves pain and speechless horror.
Moreover, as most decisions to leave the motherland are forced upon the
immigrant by the hardships of both political and economic systems, their stories
also have a didactic value. They should be treated as a lesson, a warning and a
reminder to politicians, decision makers and, generally speaking, the people in
power not to repeat the same mistake again for which thousands of people have
had to pay with their physical and psychological homelessness, split identities,
inner struggle, conflict of values etc.
Fourthly, immigrants biographical narrations and life stories are also
mirrors which reflect the encounter of two language- and culture-communities
and the process of their mutual assimilation, adaptation and acculturation11, their
moving from being strangers, marginalized and ignored by the mainstream
society to its centre. In America, the culture shock was especially strong in the
case of the first waves of immigrants, except for the British and the Irish who
could speak English. America, the land they had dreamed of, appeared to them
as an unfamiliar and unfriendly place. Many of them were farmers or came from
small villages and the view of American cities overwhelmed and overpowered
them. They felt shy and uncertain, vulnerable, surprised and lost, unable to
interpret the reality around them not only because of the lack of language but
because of not being previously exposed to an experience of otherness and
multiculturalism. The multitude of new things and their unknown meanings
were confusing. The one-dimensional old world was challenged and the
immigrants skills to deal with a multiple reality were only to be learnt in the
future. The new world, much bigger and more overwhelming than the
immigrants dreams, was waiting to be tamed and become their new home  but
not all of them were ready to do it.

























































11 M. J. Bennett, Overcoming the Golden Rule: Sympathy vs. Empathy, in D. Nimmo,
Communication Yearbook 3 (New Brunswick: International Communication Association,
1979), 407 422.

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141

The Polish-American Quota Story

Although mutually exclusive, hope and fear were the strongest emotions which
were felt by all the immigrants on their way to America. Hope was absolutely
necessary to start the journey and convince the immigrant him-/herself that
his/her decision was the right decision. But, fear, its counterpart and strongest
enemy fed imagination and undermined the decision and the image of America
as the land of plenty, of justice, human rights and a chance for a better life for
everybody.
For those who travelled aboard the ships which entered the New York
Harbour on Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty dominated the view as a promise
of a better, more decent and safer life. It was also to confirm their hope and
strengthen it. However, before the immigrants could leave the harbour they were
destroyed by fear because before they went through the immigration procedures
they were never sure if they would be allowed to America. The procedures had
become very strict since the Emergency Quota Act, also known as The JohnsonDillingham Bill, or The National Origin Act, of 1921. Its aim was to limit the
number of immigrants entering the country by defining a monthly quota of each
nationality admitted. When the quota for a given nationality was exhausted the
immigrant was returned home. The regulation was so strictly observed that it
often resulted in human dramas. It thus happened that families were separated as
only parents, or a husband or else one child could be admitted and other family
members were not allowed to leave the harbour. Thus the fear of the unknown
was doubled as a safe journal over the ocean was not a guarantee for admission
to America after 1921.
The rule of the First Quota Act was successfully challenged only once by
the Displaced Persons Act from 1948 which allowed the European victims of
war to enter the United States outside of immigration quotas. Until June 1952
America received 393,542 refugees. Poles constituted 34% of the group, which
means that 133,800 immigrants, mainly former soldiers and orphans, came to
the USA during this period.12
One of the many true quota stories is told by Henry Curran, a commissioner
on Ellis Island during the period between 1922-26. Telling it he is also
commenting on the First Quota Act from 1921 which he finds cruel and
inhuman, even discrediting the American ethos of freedom and human rights. As
Curran notes:

























































12 A. Pilch, Emigracja z ziem polskich w czasach nowo ytnych i najnowszych, XVIII-XXw.
(Warszawa: PWN, 1985), 508-509.

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The hardest quota cases were those that separated families. When part of the family
had been born in a country with a quota still open, while the other had been born in a
country whose quota was exhausted, the law let in the first part and deported the
other part. Mothers were torn from children, husbands from wives. The law came
down like a sword between them.13

Lets think for a while about the effect of such a purely administrative decision
on a real human being. Exhausted after a long journey usually in far from
satisfying conditions, frightened, overpowered with the strangeness of
everything around him/her and uncertain how s/he will manage in the new land,
s/he finally reached the destination which was to mark a new start in his/her life.
In most cases unable to speak English, s/he felt vulnerable and totally dependent
on the good or bad will of the immigration officers who instead of welcoming
him/her coldly announced that the quota had been exhausted and s/he would be
deported home. Or even worse, he could stay but his wife and children could
not. How to take the decision which was hard to understand not only
linguistically but, first of all, emotionally, when the three otherwise neutral
words put the whole immigrants world into pieces. No future, a painful present
and the past which was to belong to the past and live only in memory. A total
blank and the same question of what to do now, which keeps returning but finds
no positive answer. America, the land on which the immigrant had put so many
hopes, deceived him/her without even giving any justification, any reason
except for the sharp and short sentence the quota has been exhausted.
If an immigrant left America to pay a short visit to his/her relatives in
his/her motherland s/he should not worry about quotas as they did not apply to
ex-immigrants. However, even in this case nobody could be absolutely sure that
the immigration officer would not give him/her the bad news. Once more the
already mentioned Curran mentions the overwhelming anxiety of the people
who were waiting in the port for their family coming back from a short visit at
home. The rule of the First Quota Act was applied ruthlessly and literally,
without considering individual cases and the meaning of the decision for each
immigrant. No exceptions was the rule of thumb even if applied to an immigrant
returning to America after a short visit with a child born aboard the ship. This is
exactly what the story by Curran is about:
[] the ship made port, out on the high seas, a baby Pole had been born to the
returning mother. The unexpected had happened, "mother and child both doing
well" in the Ellis Island hospital, everyone delighted, until-the inspector admitted
the mother but excluded the baby Pole. "Why?" asked the father trembling. "Polish

























































13 Henry Curran, Ellis Island Commissioner 1922-26, commenting on First Quota Act,
1921, in: Immigration: Their stories. Stories from the past. Oracle: Think Quest. Web.
http://library.thinkquest.org/20619/Past.html. [Accessed 25.07.2011].

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143

quota exhausted," pronounced the helpless inspector. Then they brought the case to
me. Deport the baby? I couldn't. And somebody had to be quick, for the mother was
not doing well under the idea that her baby would soon be taken from her and
"transported far beyond the northern sea." "The baby was not born in Poland," I
ruled, "but on a British ship. She is chargeable to the British quota. The deck of a
British ship is British soil, anywhere in the world." I hummed "Rule Brittania,
Brittania rules the waves," hummed I happily, for I knew the British quota was big.
"British quota exhausted yesterday," replied the inspector. There was a blow. But I
had another shot in my locker. "Come to think of it, the Lapland hails from
Antwerp," I remarked. "That's in Belgium. Any ship out of Belgium is merely a
peripatetic extension of Belgium soil. The baby is Belgian. Use the Belgium quota."
So I directed, quite shamelessly and unabashed. "Belgium quota ran out a week
ago." Thus the inspector. I was stumped. "Oh, look here," I began again, widely.
"I've got it! How could I have forgotten my law so soon? You see, with children it's
the way with wills. We follow the intention. Now it is clear enough that the mother
was hurrying back so the baby would be born here and be a native-born American
citizen, no immigrant business at all. And the baby had the same intention, only the
ship was a day late and that upset everything. But  under the law, mind you, under
the law  the baby, by intention, was born in America. It is an American baby  no
baby Pole at all  no British, no Belgium  just good American. That's the way I rule
 run up the flag!14

The personal dramas resulting from the First Quota Act were often balanced by
deeply human behaviour on the part of the immigration staff. Human misery
activated human solidarity, empathy and compassion. The seemingly coldhearted immigration officers, inspectors and commissioners showed their
feelings trying to find a way out of the dead end situation, even risking their
own position. Within a larger context the personal story of Curran is both tragic
but also very optimistic as it makes us believe in the universal value of
goodness. It is just one case out of many which had a happy ending but it should
not diminish the deeply human dimension of his act.

Conclusion
The history of migration has always been written in two different but parallel
ways. On the one hand, it was an input of trained historians, sociologists,
political scientists, ethnographers and interculturalists whose professional task
was to examine the phenomenon from its various angles, establish recurrent
patterns of migrations and explain the process of the immigrants acculturation
in the host country. On the other, it has also had its less official and academic

























































14 Curran, 1921, n.p.

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Carlos Morton

face private stories and narrations of real people, immigrants who were active
subjects of the process and experienced its good and bad sides.
The question which arises when comparing the two approaches is about
their mutual relationships and value. They are not exclusive but mutually
complementary, although the private and individual stories may sometimes
differ from the historical account. They are also more emotional and filtered
through the personality and experience of the story teller, which makes us treat
them as a micro interpretation of the world. In the stories which always have a
gendered version and exist as his- or herstory there appears a complex, multiple
reality which is more difficult to capture as it has its own logic, ethics, poetic
justice etc. Stories more often than history offer an insight into everyday life of
immigrants who exist not only as a socio-political group but real people,
individuals with feelings, emotions, ambitions, dreams, fear, hopes,
expectations, dramas, etc. When trying to understand migration processes it is
absolutely necessary to reach for the stories as their meaningful witnesses and
interpreters. Their messages are also personally important for our
contemporaries, global citizens who experience various forms of migration.
Although its effects may not be as acute as they were for the first immigrants or
contemporary ecological immigrants or refugees, otherness and strangeness
constitute a basic dimension and a main challenge in our everyday interpersonal
encounters.

CHAPTER 10
The Golden Ones A One-Act-Play by Carlos Morton
with an Introduction by Wadysaw Witalisz
The Mexican-American playwright Carlos Morton has spent over 30 years
writing and staging politically-involved plays on Mexican and Chicano themes
drawn from history, legend, high and popular culture. His code-switching plays
in English and Spanish have been published in five volumes1 and staged by the
San Francisco Mime Troupe, the New York Shakespeare Festival Theatre, the
Denver Center Theatre, La Compaa Nacional de Mexico, the Puerto Rican
Traveling Theatre, the Arizona Theatre Company and student theatres on many
university campuses in the US and abroad.2 Mortons focus is insistently on
deconstructing the popular, biased, media-created image of the official and
simplified history of the Mexican-American borderland where such concepts as
immigrants and natives, settlers and locals, us and them, are not always what
they seem to be. The world he creates is one of a multi-layered ethnic identity
where cultures, religions and languages meet and clash with one another to
question each others assumptions and meanings. His world is peopled by
figures identified as Spaniards, Mexicans, Americans, Chicanos, Latinos,
Anglos, Yankees, Californios, Cahuillas, Gabrieleos, Luiseos, Diegueos, all
meeting and interacting on real or imagined historical planes which bring the
past and the present into a keen and provocative debate about the identity of the
borderlands.
Mortons theatre has always had an ethnically political agenda which
strongly stresses the Chicano agency in the history and the culture of the
American South.3 He writes about and, primarily, for Mexican-Americans. On
the one hand, he tries to define and promote Chicano identity and traditions as
culturally valid and indigenous to the American South-West, on the other, he

























































1 The Many Deaths of Danny Rosales and Other Plays. (Houston: Arte Publico Press,
1983).
Johnny Tenorio and Other Plays (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1992).
The Fickle Finger of Lady Death (Peter Lang Verlag, 1996).
Rancho Hollywood y otras obras del teatro chicano (Houston: Arte Publico Press &
Ediciones El Milagro,1999).
Dreaming on a Sunday in the Alameda (University of Oklahoma Press, 2004).
2 Including staged readings and stagings of fragments of the plays at Lublin University and
Krosno State College in Poland.
3 For further information see William B. Worthen, Staging America: The Subject of
History in Chicano/a Theatre, Theatre Journal 49.2. (1997), 101-120.

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Carlos Morton

questions and critiques some facets of that identity. I simply stage what the
Chicano people are feeling, he says, and this accounts for the appeal of my
plays.4 Like many other playwrights of the renaissance of Chicano theatre (e.g.
Elena Garro in A Solid Home or Luis Valdez in Los Vendidos)5 Morton utilizes
recognizable stock characters of exaggerated ethnic colour to deliver his
political message. Mortons own characteristic is to put these figures into more
mythological and iconic frameworks such as the Biblical Garden of Eden in El
jardin, the semi-historical folk-tale of Malinche, Hernn Corts translator and
mistress, in La Malinche, the legend of Don Juan in Johnny Tenorio, or the
paintings of Diego Rivera in Dreaming on a Sunday in the Alameda. These
widely-known cultural frames of reference make Mortons drama more
accessible and more meaningful to non-Chicano audiences and allow us to
accept what Morton himself once said in an interview: The base, the nucleus of
my constituency, is Mexican-American, Chicano. I will never deviate from this
central theme in my drama; however, I write for everybody. 6 Mortons
allusions and intertextualities make his political message about Chicano culture
more effective as they help his plays to function in mainstream theatres. His
success outside the circles of exclusively Chicano audiences is also a sign of the
ongoing process of opening up to multiculturalism and diversity in literature and
on stage observed in the US over the last twenty years.7
One more quality that makes Mortons plays universal is what has always
been a characteristic of good political drama, whether that of Shakespeare,
Bertolt Brecht or Arthur Miller, - his language is intensely ironic and his mode,
whether he tells a tragic or a comic story, strongly satirical. Maria HerreraSobek8 reads Mortons early plays (El jardin and El cuento de Pancho Diablo)
as biting satires that use comedy to deconstruct iconic figures from the realm of
the sacred. This quality has remained the playwrights own mark until today.

























































4 Daniel, Lee A, An Interview with Carlos Morton. Latin American Theatre Review
1989: 143-150

5 Elena Garro, A Solid Home (Un Hogar Solido) in The Longman Anthology of Drama and
Theater: A Global Perspective, Compact ed. Eds. Michael L. Greenwald, Roger Schultz,
and Roberto D. Pomo. (New York: Addison-Wesley, 2002), 776-781; Luis Valdez, Early
Works (Houston: Arte Publico Press, University of Houston, 1990).
6 Daniel, Lee A, An Interview with Carlos Morton. Latin American Theatre Review
1989: 143-146.
7 See a comment on multiculturalism in relation to Morton in Yuri Stulov. Playing
Intertextuality Games: Transformation Of Classical Characters In The Plays By Carlos
Morton, Visnyk of the Lviv University. Series Foreign Languages 18 (2011), 265-270.
8 Maria Herrera-Sobek, Introduction to Playing on a Sunday in the Alameda and Other
Works (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), xi.

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Whether he challenges the official history of the Spanish conquest of the

Americas in La Malinche or dismantles the traditional Mexican macho figure in
Johnny Tenorio, the irony of his language and the caricature of his characters
help to drive the message home. One might even accuse Morton of being too
didactic in his use of the satirical mode, but then, as the playwright himself said
commenting on his involvement with the San Francisco Mime Troupe9, A tenet
of the political theatre is that you not only have to expose problems but you have
to provide solutions.10
What problems are exposed and what solutions provided in The Golden
Ones11, Mortons play produced by the Theatre Department of the University of
California, Riverside, in 1997, and published here for the first time? The play
has a typical Mortonian setting in the American South-West (today Riverside
County, California) and traditionally manipulates the historical time of the
action spanning over a hundred years between the arrival of the first Spanish
missionaries in 1774 and the planting of the first commercial orange grove by
Richard Gilman in 1880, though numerous allusions the characters make affect
much later, even contemporary times. The characters fall clearly into two
opposing groups: the male settlers/missionaries and the female natives. Capitn
de Anza, who represents authority, is meant to echo the historical figure of Juan
Bautista de Anza, leader of the first colonizing expedition to the Pacific coast of
California. Padre Bernardino and the Sergeant are fictitious characters but they
are clearly meant to stand for the Catholic Church and the rank-and-file settler.
They openly define their aims in coming to California as they understand them:
PADRE
No, no, no, we're here to save the souls of the savages, to teach them about Jesucristo.
SARGENTO
We're here to find gold and fame and fortune! We're conquistadores!
CAPITN
Excuse me! We're here at the bidding of Carlos, the King of Spain to conquer these
lands in his name.
SARGENTO
You do whatever you want, I'm here to rape and pillage and burn!

























































9 The San Francisco Mime Troupe is an acclaimed theatre of political satire founded in
1959; see e.g. Claudia Orenstein, Festive Revolutions: The Politics of Popular Theater
and the San Francisco Mime Troupe. (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi,
1998).
10 Daniel 1989, 145.
11 The Golden Ones was adapted from Los Dorados, originally published in The Many
Deaths of Danny Rosales and other plays. (Arte Publico Press, Houston, 1983).

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Carlos Morton

The native women are members of the indigenous Cahuilla tribe but are taken
by the settlers to be the black Amazons of the mythical land of California of
which Garci Rodrguez de Montalvo writes in his popular romance Las sergas
de Esplandin (first printed 1510)12, a book which inspired many travelers,
including Cortez. The women roughly parallel the settlers in their social
hierarchy we meet the Queen (Temal), the Priestess (Puul) and the Ingnue
(Menil). Mortons aim in establishing the parallel is to state once again that the
Spanish-Mexican missionaries are invading a culture with its own gods,
hierarchies, and meanings. His reference to the mythical figure of Queen Calafia
from Montalvos utopian vision of his imagined California serves to expose the
settlers complete misunderstanding of what they find on their journey as well as
their hypocritical attempt to romanticize and, thus, conceal the true motives of
their expedition.
The entire play is a satire on political conquest and cultural subordination.
Its bitter ironies are strong, its political messages definitive and pointed. The
festive closure alluding to the prosperous future of the Golden State as an orange
producer does not balance Father Bernardinos hypocrisy. Behind traditional
words of prayer and signs of faith lurks a rapist who takes advantage of the
innocent Ingnue as he pretends to baptize her. Father Bernardinos act of rape
becomes a political metaphor of the conquest and the religious mission.
*
The editors of the volume believe that it is appropriate to close this collection of
essays with an original example of a literary text which deals with many issues
discussed by the contributors. We wish to express our gratitude to Carlos
Morton for allowing us to include The Golden Ones in this book.

12 The book by Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo is available in English as The Labors of the
Very Brave Knight Esplandian, trans. William Thomas Little (Binghamton, N.Y.:
Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992).

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THE GOLDEN ONES

By Carlos Morton
THE PLAYERS
THE SPANISH
Capitn de Anza
Sargento Moreno
Padre Bernardino

THE NATIVES
Queen (Temal)
Ingnue (Menil)
Priestess (Puul)

Spanish words in Bold Face.

SCENE: In and around Riverside County, California.
(THREE MEN DRESSED LIKE SPANIARDS OF THE 18TH CENTURY MARCH
TOWARDS THE AUDIENCE. CAPITN DE ANZA CARRIES A BOOK,
OCCASIONALLY READING AND MUTTERING TO HIMSELF, SARGENTO
MORENO BRANDISHES A SWORD, SLAYING IMAGINARY DRAGONS,
WHILE PADRE BERNARDINO HOLDS ALOFT A CROSS SOLEMNLY
BAPTIZING IGUANAS AND SNAKES. THEY MAKE THEIR WAY ACROSS A
PARCHED DESERT, OBVIOUSLY LOST, MADDENED WITH THIRST.)
SARGENTO
(HE SINGS, TRYING TO KEEP UP THEIR SPIRITS. MUSIC, DANCE.
SUNG TO THE TUNE OF HAY CARMELA.)
Hay vienen los espaoles! (Here come the Spanish!)
ALL
Boom-vara-boom, vara-boom, bam-bam!
SARGENTO
Vos somos los ms fregones! (We are the badest mothers!)
ALL
Boom-vara-boom, vara-boom, bam-bam!
SARGENTO
Y somos los mas chingones, mas chingones! (REPEAT.) (Yes we are the big
fuckers, big fuckers.)
(MAY BE REPEATED ONCE, IN ENGLISH OR SPANISH. THE MEN STOP
THEIR MARCH, AND REST BRIEFLY.)

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Carlos Morton

PADRE
Sargento Moreno, do you have any idea where we are? What is the name of this
valley?
SARGENTO
(LOOKING THROUGH HIS MAPS.) I don't know, Padre Bernardino, but we
can name it anything you want.
PADRE
Capitn de Anza, sir, do you know where we are?
CAPITN
(OBVIOUSLY DELERIOUS.) It says in this novel that we are somewhere to
the right of the Indies, but in very close vicinity to Paradise!
PADRE
(GOING TO THE SARGENTO.) Do you think, perhaps, that Capitan de Anza
is losing it? Look at him, all that heavy body armor, in this hot sun!
CAPITN
Will one of you please refresh my memory and tell what are we doing here?
What are we looking for?
SARGENTO
Spices, my Capitn, spices!
PADRE
No, no, no, we're here to save the souls of the savages, to teach them about
Jesucristo.
SARGENTO
We're here to find gold and fame and fortune! We're conquistadores!
CAPITN
Excuse me! We're here at the bidding of Carlos, the King of Spain to conquer
these lands in his name.
SARGENTO
You do whatever you want, I'm here to rape and pillage and burn!

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CAPITN
Stop arguing! How did I get mixed up with you two? I should have stayed in Spain.
PADRE
Have faith, my Capitn, have faith! La Santa Fe. Where ever Espaa goes, so
goes the Holy Cross. La Santa Cruz. Hey, that's a good name!
SARGENTO
And wherever Spain goes, so goes the big stick, el Palo Alto! (HE PAUSES,
PROUD OF HIS NAMING.) Do you know what I like best about discovering
new lands and people? You can name them anything you want: Indians,
America, Rubidoux, Hemet!
PADRE
Those names are too common, hombre!
SARGENTO
I'm a common hombre.
PADRE
We need names that will give our settlers divine inspiration, like Santa Ana, San
Jacinto, San Andreas.
SARGENTO
I find fault with those names.
PADRE
But those names are blessed by Dios! And centuries from now, when people say
Nuestra Seora La Reyna de Los ngeles an image of the Virgin will appear.
SARGENTO
Not along Hollywood Boulevard it won't.
CAPITN
Will you just name this place, so we can move on!
PADRE
Very well, Moreno, I'll give you first crack what do you want to name this
pleasant little valley?

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Carlos Morton

SARGENTO
Ahhhhhh, let me think . . .
CAPITN
Come on, Moreno, we haven't got all day!
PADRE
(TESTY.) Moreno . . . name the . . . valley!
SARGENTO
El Valle de Moreno! That's it! Moreno's Valley! It'll be a pleasant, quiet place to
live.
CAPITN
Not if the developers have their way!
SARGENTO
Padre Bernardino, if you don't mind, I would like to name those majestic
mountains to the north after you.
PADRE
Oh, that would please me very much!
SARGENTO
From now on, they shall be known as the Padre Bernardino Mountains! (BEAT.
THEY LOOK AT EACH OTHER, SOMEHOW IT DOESN'T SOUND
RIGHT.) Should you suffer martyrdom, we'll change it to the San Bernardino
Mountains!
PADRE
That's better!
CAPITN
I hope you're done with all this silly naming business, because there's trouble
ahead. (LEAFING THROUGH HIS BOOK.) It says here that this land is
inhabited by a tribe of Amazons. Amazons who wear trappings of solid gold!
SARGENTO
Gold, you say!

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CAPITN
Yes, but they slay any man who gets in their way and only keep one or two for
breeding purposes.
SARGENTO
Well, I'll gladly volunteer for that.
CAPITN
They are ruled by a queen, a tall and stately Amazon queen named Calafia . . .
who is as black as a Moor. If that is so, then her kingdom must be called . . .
help me out here.
PADRE
Calafia . . . landia?
SARGENTO
No. Cali . . . flora!
CAPITN
Wait! California!
ALL
California! (PRONOUNCING IT KELLY-FOR-NIGH-AY.)
California here we come
Right back where we started from
Open up those Golden Gates!
California here I come!
(MUSIC, DANCE.THEY EXIT LIKE THE THREE STOOGES, SINGING.
SUDDENLY WE HEAR INDIGENOUS MUSIC. ENTER THREE NATIVE
AMERICAN WOMEN. TEMAL, THE QUEEN; PUUL, THE HIGH
PRIESTESS; AND MENIL, THE YOUNG INGENUE.)
QUEEN
What strange creatures!
INGENUE
They look lost!
PRIESTESS
Tell me what do they look like? (SHE IS BLIND.)

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Carlos Morton

QUEEN
Oh, Woman who cannot see but knows many things, their skin is as white as the
underbelly of fish.
INGENUE
Yet parts of them are like metal that shine in the sun.
QUEEN
They have hair like a bear, on their face and arms.
PRIESTESS
From their smell, which still lingers, I can tell they do not bathe.
QUEEN
These aliens, we must kill them!
INGENUE
Or at least deport them!
QUEEN
We could make slaves of them, or make them work for ridiculously low wages.
PRIESTESS
Wait, there's more to this. What if one of them is . . . Mukat . . . my grandson,
come back from the underworld!
INGENUE
Mukat, he of the prophecy!
PRIESTESS
Yes, remember, after Mukat died and was cremated, on the place where he was
buried beautiful plants began to grow. So I said to his spirit: Mukat, what are
the strange things growing where your body was buried.
INGENUE
And Mukat's spirit answered, Mother, you need not be afraid of those things.
They are gifts from my body.
PRIESTESS
Tobacco from my heart.

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QUEEN
Squash from my stomach.
INGENUE
Corn from my teeth.
PRIESTESS
Watermelons from my head.
INGENUE
Beans from my eyes.
QUEEN
Could it be Mukat, he who gave us bounty, he who gave us life!
PRIESTESS
Lets hide and see! (THEY HIDE.)
(ENTER THE THREE SPANIARDS. THE SARGENTO IS CARRYING A
FLAG, THE PRIEST HIS CROSS, THE CAPITAN A SWORD.)
SARGENTO
Shall I plant our standard here, sir?
CAPITN
Yes, hurry, hurry before someone else does. The bloody British are everywhere.
PADRE
And let us also plant this cross here, to claim these lands in the name of Christ.
CAPITN
Yes, yes, before the Mormon's get here.
PADRE
(KNEELING.) I pray to Almighty God that he consecrate our Holy Conquest.
CAPITN
I hereby take possession of these lands in the name of the King of Spain, Carlos
III, in this the year of our Lord, 1774.

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Carlos Morton

SARGENTO
Que viva Espaa, Que viva el Rey!
ALL
Que viva!
CAPITN
(PULLING OUT A MAP.) It's amazing, just look at the land we've discovered
since 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue!
SARGENTO
Yes, we must have added at least one hundred leagues just this past week. What
a marvelous vista! Mira! Look at that beautiful loma!
CAPITN
(WRITING IT DOWN.) Mira Loma.
SARGENTO
No, it's more like a loma linda, pretty hill.
CAPITN
(WRITING IT DOWN.) Loma Linda? Either way!
PADRE
Mira Loma!
SARGENTO
Loma Linda!
PADRE
(WHILE THEY ARGUE, THE NATIVES HAVE SURROUNDED THEM,
POINTING THEIR BOWS AND ARROWS.) Gentlemen, don't look now, but I
think we are surrounded!
CAPITN
It must be the Amazons!
SARGENTO
Let's go back to Spain, let's go back to Mexico, there's too many of them!
(LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO HIDE.)

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QUEEN
(TO THE INGENUE.) Fire your arrows if they threaten us!
PADRE
The Santa Cruz will protect us!
CAPITN
(DRAWING HIS SWORD.) Stand fast! Remember we are Spanish soldiers!
INGENUE
(ABOUT TO SHOOT AN ARROW.) The man drew his weapon!
SARGENTO
(SLAPPING A MOSQUITO ON HIS NECK.) I've been shot by a dart!
CAPITN
Wait, wait, I think they mean no harm!
PRIESTESS
(STEPPING IN BEFORE THEY START FIGHTING.) Stop! We come in
peace! We are Cahuillas and these are our lands! (DRAWING THE
CAPITN CLOSE TO HER.) Come closer, my son, and tell me, who are
you?
CAPITN
(WITH A LISPING SPANISH ACCENT.) Soy el Capitn Juan Bautista de
Anza, a sus rdenes.
PRIESTESS
You speak a foreign tongue. If you stay here, you must speak Cahuilla so our
people (POINTING TO THE AUDIENCE.) can understand you.
CAPITN
Let me try again. (WITH AN ANGLO ACCENT AS A PORTENT OF
THINGS TO COME.) Captain Johnny Anza, at your service!
PRIESTESS
That's better! I am, Puul, the High Priestess. (THE CAPTIN SHAKES HER
HAND.)

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Carlos Morton

CAPITN
Pool? As in swimming pool?
PRIESTESS
No, PU-UL, as in shaman woman. Welcome to our lands. Tomorrow we shall
hold a feast in your honor.
CAPITN
(LIKE AN ANGLO TRYING TO SPEAK SPANISH.) Moo-chas grass-yaz, and
here are some presentos for you. (THE SARGENTO PULLS THE GIFTS OUT
OF A BACKPACK AS THE CAPITN CALLS FOR THEM.) Coca Cola for the
little lady. (HANDING IT TO THE WARRIOR.) A credit card you. (HANDING
IT TO THE QUEEN.) And . . . a Mickey Mouse for the High Priestess!
INGENUE
(OPENING THE CAN OF COKE AND DRINKING.) Oh, this is very good!
CAPITN
Excuse me, aren't you Calafia, Queen of the Amazons?
QUEEN
No, I am Temal, Queen of the Cahuillas.
CAPITN
Tamale?
QUEEN
No, TE-MAL, which means earth, ground.
CAPITN
Isn't this California?
QUEEN
No, this place is called Jurupa.
CAPITN
Is it off the 60 Freeway?
QUEEN
No, we are near Cucamonga, close to Temescal.

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SARGENTO
(TO THE PRIESTESS.) Oh, golden mother, what beautiful bracelets you have!
Are they of solid gold?
PRIESTESS
No, they are made of what you call fools gold.
PADRE
And what is your name, little girl? (TO THE YOUNG WOMAN.)
INGENUE
Menil. It means moon maiden.
PADRE
MEN-ILL! What a nice name! How did you get it?
INGENUE
When Menil left the earth, she said In the evening you will see me in the west.
Run to the water to where we bathe. Remember this always!
PADRE
Hmmmm, you smell so good!
INGENUE
We bathe every day. Don't you?
PADRE
No, it is not our custom. We use perfume. Here, I have a present for you.
(HANDS HER A CROSS.) You wear it next to your breast, it is a scared cross.
PRIESTESS
(LEADING THEM TO THEIR WICKIUP.) Now, this is your samat, here you
rest, sun is falling.
SARGENTO
Samat? You mean tepee, don't you?
INGENUE
She means samat, a house of brush and grasses.

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Carlos Morton

PRIESTESS
Our samat is your samat!
CAPITN
Thank you, I think we're going to like this samat very much!
PRIESTESS
(FEELING THE CROSS AROUND THE WARRIOR'S NECK.) Where did you
get this? Take it off! (SHE THROWS IT ON THE FLOOR, WHEREUPON
THE PRIEST RETRIEVES IT.)
INGENUE
It was just a gift! (THE PADRE AND THE PRIESTESS GLARE AT EACH
OTHER.)
PRIESTESS
Do not let yourself be seduced by trinkets!
INGENUE
(POINTING TO THE MICKEY MOUSE.) Then why don't you throw the little
rat away?
PRIESTESS
Don't be disrespectful! I'm merely going to study it! It is obviously an icon of
great importance.
QUEEN
The Capitn seems like a very gentle man.
PRIESTESS
But I do not think he is my son, Mukat! And I have a feeling that more of their
kind will be coming.
INGENUE
We'll have to build more fences, hire more guards.
QUEEN
Perhaps we need to pass more laws to keep out the illegals.

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PRIESTESS
Let us sleep on it, tomorrow we'll decide what to do.
(ALL EXIT.)
(THE NEXT MORNING, THE CAPITN IS THE FIRST TO WAKE UP. HE
WASHES HIS FACE IN A NEARBY STREAM, THEN GETS DOWN TO
THE TASK AT HAND, COUNTING OFF ROWS IN A CHECKBOARD
PATTERN. ENTER THE QUEEN, WATCHING.)
CAPITN
(WALKING AND COUNTING.) Uno, dos, tres . . . cuatro, cinco, seis.
QUEEN
What are you doing?
CAPITN
Counting off the streets.
QUEEN
You mean these paths here, what for?
CAPITN
For purposes of surveying, you know, land grants, housing tracts, condominiums.
QUEEN
Condominiums!
CAPITN
Observe. A mile-square grid. Divide the square north to south by streets
numbered one to fourteen, and east to west by streets named for shade trees like
Magnolia and Palm and Redwood and Spruce . . . except, of course for Market
where we'll have the market.
QUEEN
But Capitn, these names don't show any imagination. Besides, we already
named them . . . Cajalco, Jurupa, Guapa, Cucamonga.
CAPITN
They sound very nice, but we should simplify things if this is to be the
commercial center of Paseo del Rio.

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Carlos Morton

QUEEN
Paseo del Rio! I told you, this place is called Jurupa!
CAPITN
Jew-roo-paa, Ha-raa-pa, no one will be able to pronounce it. Besides it's by the
side of the Santa Ana River . . .
QUEEN
Oh, you named the river too, eh!
CAPITN
Well, the priest did. He also wants to name these hot winds that blow in from
the desert Santa Ana.
QUEEN
Now you're naming the wind as well! Just what are you planning to do here?
CAPITN
Design, calculate, fence, subdivide! Nothing more. (PULLS OUT SOME RED
TAPE.) Look, this is my red tape.
QUEEN
Capitn, you had better listen while I explain how we live here in this place you
call California.
CAPITN
Yes, which is somewhere near the Indies and that makes you Indians.
(STARTING TO MEASURE THINGS OFF WITH HIS RED TAPE.)
QUEEN
You are so mistaken . . .
CAPITN
I want you to know I named this place in your honor, Calafia.
QUEEN
I'm very flattered, but my name is not Calafia, its Temal. And our life is guided
by the stars, which tell us what seasons are right for planting. Our guiding spirit
is nature, and her direction is not linear, but circular, like myths that re-occur
over and over.

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163

CAPITN
(NOT REALLY LISTENING TO HER, GETTING WOUND UP IN THE
RED TAPE.) We're going to have to find a way to control the Santa Ana
River.
QUEEN
Why not just let it run its course?
CAPITN
Because it floods. Besides, we need the water to grow crops . . . what kind of
crops? (BEAT.) Also we need to invent plumbing. We'll take pipes, stick them
into the river, and run them into our samats and factories.
QUEEN
What for?
CAPITN
Why, to dispose of the waste.
QUEEN
And where will the waste finally end up?
CAPITN
Who cares, back in the river, in the water table.
QUEEN
Capitn, I do believe you're getting all wound up in your own contradictions.
CAPITN
(ALL WOUND UP IN THE RED TAPE.) We'll build freeways, parking lots,
strip malls.
QUEEN
(HELPING HIM GET UNWOUND.) What an imagination! Come back down to
earth. Let us walk up the mountain and contemplate the world in solitude.
CAPITN
Solitude? Yes, soledad. Soledad, great name for a correctional facility, make
them think, make them suffer.

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Carlos Morton

QUEEN
Correctional facility?
CAPITN
Yes, a place where criminals will be locked up and judged, juzgado. Otherwise
known as Hoose-gows.
QUEEN
But, doesn't that make people worse?
CAPITN
Prisons are good for the economy.
QUEEN
(AS THEY EXIT TOGETHER.) Why not build more schools instead?
(ENTER THE SARGENTO FROM ONE SIDE, THE PRIESTESS FROM THE
OTHER.)
SARGENTO
(BUMPING INTO THE PRIESTESS, A BLANKET AROUND HIS
SHOULDERS, A BOTTLE OF LIQUOR IN ONE HAND.) How! How!
How!
PRIESTESS
How rude!
SARGENTO
(OBVIOUSLY DRUNK, SPEAKING IN PIGDIN ENGLISH.) You like 'em
trade pretty beads for gold? You got 'em any gold?
PRIESTESS
I have no use for your cheap beads.
SARGENTO
These beads worth weight in gold. Wampum!
PRIESTESS
Go and peddle your trinkets somewhere else.

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SARGENTO
Sell me your land. I pay you twenty-four dollars just like Manhattan.
PRIESTESS
This land is not for sale, paleface.
SARGENTO
Why you call me paleface.
PRIESTESS
(TALKING JUST LIKE HIM.) 'Cause you gottum face like bucket!
SARGENTO
Oh yeah, well just for that, someday we're going to chase you down the freeway
and beat you with bully clubs so whole world can see professional Riverside
County Sheriff's Department! How you like them apples!
PRIESTESS
You speak with forked tongue!
SARGENTO
So, you no like 'em my beads, huh? What else we trade for gold? How about this
nice Meskin blanket, huh? Or this bottle firewater? All injuns like 'em drink
firewater, dance 'em rain dance, and yell war whoop!
PRIESTESS
(PREPARING FOR COMBAT.) How about we reenact Custer's last stand!
SARGENTO
(BACKING OFF.) Huh, obviously this isn't working. (COMBING HIS HAIR
WITH SPIT.) How about you play Pocahontas to my Capitan John Smith and . . .
hey, I try to be nice, ask you out for date. Maybe make you my squaw, have
many little Morenos. (LOSING HIS PATIENCE AND GRABBING HER
ARM.) Come on, where's the damn gold?
PRIESTESS
Let go of me, redneck!
SARGENTO
If you don't tell me where the gold is, I'll break your arm!

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PRIESTESS
(FLIPPING HIM ONTO THE GROUND.) Didn't I tell you I knew Kung-Foo?
SARGENTO
(HURTING.) Hey, don't kick me while I'm down, it's not fair! (HE GETS UP,
SHE CHASES HIM.) Did I tell you I'm part-Indian? (THEY EXIT.)
CAPITN
(ENTERING WITH THE QUEEN.) Calafia, please listen to me!
QUEEN
My name is not Calafia, its Temal. My sisters were right you all speak with
forked tongues!
CAPITN
But I'm telling you, we wouldn't be happy in my country.
QUEEN
Are you ashamed of me, Capitan?
CAPITN
No, it's just that certain people wouldn't understand . . . the differences between
us.
QUEEN
In what way am I different than you, in what way? In what way!
CAPITN
In our features, our manner of thinking. (AS THE QUEEN STARTS TO WALK
AWAY.) Although in our hearts we are very much alike. Calafia, I swear to
you, up there on the mountaintop, I understood what you were trying to tell me.
I had a vision: your people and mine are destined to come together and create a
new race of man.
QUEEN
Just one thing, Capitn, I saw the vision also. Why is it that they Spanish will be
the masters, and the Cahuilla will be the servants? Answer that, will you!
(QUEEN EXITS.)

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167

CAPITN
That won't happen, I promise you! We'll be equals, equals! (CAPITN EXITS,
FOLLOWING HER.)
PADRE
(ENTERING. HE KNEELS AND PRAYS OUT LOUD, LIKE A BAPTIST
PREACHER.) Dios! Give me strength! I said, give me strength, Dios. Help us to
conquer the diablos, Dios. Yes, there are devils living in this land. We all know
the Priestess is a consort of Satan.
INGENUE
(ENTERING SUDDENLY, SCARING HIM.) Pardon me, but who are you
talking to?
PADRE
(STANDING UP.) Jesus, child! You scared the . . . out me. I was praying to
Dios, my child, God.
INGENUE
Oh, where is Dios? I don't see her. Is God in the sun or sea or wind or earth?
PADRE
HE is everywhere present, my child. See if you can find him in your heart.
INGENUE
My heart is small, how can Dios fit in there?
PADRE
My little Injun maid, your heart is big as the sky. You have a great capacity to
love, I can feel this. I want you to accept Dios right now! Kneel, girl, kneel.
Ask Christ to come into your little tom-tom right now!
INGENUE
I need to know more about Christ before I . . .
PADRE
(FORCING HER TO KNEEL DOWN.) Kneel and pray to Dios, child! Do like I
do, clasp your hands like so.

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Carlos Morton

INGENUE
(PLAYING A GAME.) Like this?
PADRE
Praise Dios! Throw down your sword and shield, for you shall make war no
more, no more!
INGENUE
How do you know I hate war and killing?
PADRE
My little loincloth, I know everything! Dios speaks through me. Now, lift your
head to the sky, and sing out his glorious name! No more war! No more war!
Repeat after me! Hallelujah!
INGENUE
Hallelujah!
PADRE
Hallelujah!
INGENUE/PADRE
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Haaaaaa-leeeeee-loooooo-jaahhhhhh!!
INGENUE
Oh, that sent chills up and down my spine!
PADRE
There, you see, Dios is taking hold of your body . . . and soul. Praise the Lord!
(DANCING WITH HER.) Praise the Lord! Dance for joy! Yah! Huh! Dance for
joy!
INGENUE
One moment, Padre, what are you doing?
PADRE
I'm saving your soul, girl! It may be too late to save them other witches, but you
are still young, uncorrupted and pure, like virgin gold! Now then, are you ready
to receive Dios! Are you ready?

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INGENUE
Yes, I think so!
PADRE
But first you must confess and forsake your pagan ways. Cast aside your sins!
INGENUE
I've committed no sins!
PADRE
Have your sisters committed sins, are they thinking of committing sins?
INGENUE
No, no!
PADRE
Don't lie to me, girl, I can see it in your eyes! Tell me the truth!
INGENUE
Why do I have to listen to you? Who are you anyway?
PADRE
I am the voice of Dios! (LAYING HANDS ON HER.) Cleanse yourself of evil, now!
INGENUE
The only evil ones are you! Leave while you still have the chance! Otherwise,
you will die!
PADRE
Oh wickedness, oh evilness! Drive these evil thoughts from your mind right
now! Renounce Satan!
INGENUE
I'm telling you for the last time! Leave now, or be put to death!
PADRE
No, killing is murder, and murder is sin, and sin is eternal damnation!
INGENUE
I don't want to be the one to kill you. So, leave now, while there is still time!

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Carlos Morton

PADRE
(COMFORTING HER.) I embrace you, my little peace pipe! I see that you have
the heart of a true Christian.
INGENUE
I don't want to hurt anyone.
PADRE
Let Dios' love douse the bitter flames of hate. I say, do you feel him growing
inside you?
INGENUE
(PUZZLED.) Is Dios a man?
PADRE
Yes, he is the Daddy of us all. And soon he will enter your soul. I now baptize
you Ramona, after the famous novel yet to be written, in the name of the
Alessandro and Helen Hunt Jackson.
INGENUE
(STRUGGLING LIKE A WILDCAT.) Let me go, my name is Menil.
PADRE
You gotta have a Christian name, girl. My first convert! Let's go, Ramona!
(THEY EXIT.)
CAPITN
(ENTERING WITH SARGENTO, WHO IS MISSING HIS PANTS AND
SWORD.) Sargento Moreno, what happened to you! Where is your sword?
Where are your pantalones!
SARGENTO
I was attacked by hordes of Amazons. I fought the best I could, slew dozens!
But they won the day by sheer force of numbers!
CAPITN
That can't be! Calafia and I have agreed to sign a peace treaty!
SARGENTO
Let's just go back to Spain and forget this conquering business.

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CAPITN
It's too late for that! We just declared independence from Spain in 1821. We are
now part of the newly formed Republic of Mexico.
SARGENTO
1821! Just a minute! Why are we jumping dates so fast? It was just 1775 a few
pages ago!
CAPITN
Don't blame me, blame the playwright! It's his way of condensing history.
PADRE
(ENTERING, ADJUSTING HIS CLOTHES.) Capitn! I just, eh, gained the
confidence of the girl, Ramona. She warned me that an attack is imminent!
SARGENTO
I want to go home, I want my mommy!
PADRE
I say we take the offensive. Slay the Medicine Woman, and take the Queen
prisoner. Than we have the entire tribe by the throat!
CAPITN
You speak foolishly. Calafia and I are in love! We intend to unite our lives and
fortunes in holy matrimony!
SARGENTO
You're going to marry an injun! Have you no shame!
PRIESTESS
(ENTERING WITH THE WARRIOR FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE
STAGE.) Where have you been!
WARRIOR
In the woods . . . with the Padre . . . picking wildflowers.
PRIESTESS
Picking wildflowers! You play while your tribe is in mortal danger! It is time to
attack the strangers, go and get your arms. Wait, why are you crying, what is
this around your neck?

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Carlos Morton

WARRIOR
It's called a rosary!
PRIESTESS
More beads! (RIPPING THEM OFF.) Speak, what is the matter with you?
WARRIOR
Oh, mother, he baptized me and made me pray to his God, and then he . . . I hate
him! I hate him!
QUEEN
(ENTERING.) What happened, why are you crying?
CAPITN
I'm going to parley with them to stop the fighting!
SARGENTO
I'll bring up the rear. (KEEPING BACK OUT OF HARM'S WAY.)
PADRE
I'll pray for peace! (HE STEALS AROUND TO THE SIDE, TRYING TO
HIDE.)
PRIESTESS
(TO THE QUEEN.) Marry him and it will mark the death of our people.
QUEEN
(TO THE CAPITN.) The Padre dishonored my sister! I want his head!
CAPITN
I can't believe the good Padre would do that. But if he did, let me punish him.
(THE CAPITN AND QUEEN EXIT THE SCENE ARGUING. THE PADRE
ACCIDENTLY RUNS INTO THE PRIESTESS AND THE WARRIOR.)
WARRIOR
That's him, the Padre!
PRIESTESS
(AS THEY RUN HIM THROUGH WITH THEIR LANCES.) Take that, you dog!

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PADRE
I only baptized her! (AS THE PADRE FALLS, THE SARGENTO SEES
WHAT HAS OCCURRED.)
SARGENTO
(RUNNING TO TELL THE CAPITN.) Oh, my Capitn! They have slain the
noble Padre San Bernardino! Now he is truly a martyr.
CAPITN
Oh cursedness, oh evilness! (CRESTFALLEN.) Now we will never reconcile
with the heathens. How can we best honor his memory? By canonizing him?
SARGENTO
No, by (SNIFFLING.) naming a baseball team after him! The Padres!
CAPITN
(ANGRY, DRAWING HIS PISTOL, RUNNING TO FIND THE QUEEN.)
Calafia, Calafia! I said I would punish him! But now you have taken matters
into your own hand! (ENTER THE QUEEN.) I demand her head (POINTING
TO THE PRIESTESS.) in exchange for the life of our dear Padre San
Bernardino.
QUEEN
You shall not touch her!
CAPITN
Oh, yes I will! Get out of my way.
QUEEN
(PUSHING HIM.) Stand back! You have no authority here!
CAPITN
(ACCIDENTLY DISCHARGING HIS PISTOL, HE SHOOTS THE QUEEN.
SHE FALLS.) Oh God! Oh God, I killed my beloved! (GOING TO HER,
CRADLING HER HEAD IN HIS LAP. EXIT THE PRIESTESS.)
QUEEN
Promise that you'll take care of my people, promise that you'll treat us as
equals!

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Carlos Morton

CAPITN
I promise! I swear! (THE QUEEN DIES. CHAOS, THE CAPITN EXITS.
ONLY THE SARGENTO AND RAMONA, REMAIN.)
SARGENTO
(TAKING THE WARRIOR WOMAN PRISONER.) From now on you shall be
called Gabrieleos, Luiseos, Diegueos, after the Missions on which you toil.
Now, get to work!
RAMONA
We can't live like this, the woman's quarters are filthy and cramped, with no
ventilation!
SARGENTO
You are forbidden to practice your heathen religion, and you shall take a
Christian name . . . Ramona!
RAMONA
A cursed name, given to me by a hypocrite!
SARGENTO
Silence! You will honor the name of San Bernardino, and build a church in his
scared memory!
RAMONA
You treat us like animals! Within two hundred years, two third of us will die of
hunger and disease.
SARGENTO
All unmarried women and girls over the age of nine will be locked up at night.
RAMONA
We won't let you make slaves of our children! We'll practice abortion and
infanticide!
SARGENTO
You will pick our crops, clean our houses!
RAMONA
At least pay us the minimum wage!

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SARGENTO
No way, I gotta make a profit. Why, if you don't like it, go back to where you
came from!
RAMONA
I am from here . . . Pilgrim!
SARGENTO
Damn foreigners coming in here taking away our jobs and . . . (SUDDENLY,
WE HEAR THE SOUND OF SQUEALING TIRES, AN ENGINE
ACCELERATING, SHOTS BEING FIRED. THE SARGENTO FALLS, THE
VICTIM OF A DRIVE BY SHOOTING.)
CAPITN/BANDINI
(ENTERING, DRESSED LIKE A CALIFORNIA OF THE EARLY 19TH
CENTURY.) What happened! Was it the Comanche Indians?
RAMONA
No, it was a drive-by shooting!
BANDINI
Dios mio, we've got to stick together! Don't you see, they'll wipe us out!
RAMONA
Now you want our help, now that your existence is threatened! You look
different, who are you now?
BANDINI
I'm Don Juan Bandini, just come from Peru!
RAMONA
Bandini? I thought your name was De Anza?
BANDINI
De Anza, Bandini, we have long names and just keep adding them on. Besides,
it's 1834 and it's time to secularize the missions.
RAMONA
1834! I'm getting dizzy! Time is moving by too fast! I wish the playwright
would slow down!

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Carlos Morton

BANDINI
Slavery is abolished! You are free, Ramona! Free! We're Mexican citizens now!
It's time we started issuing land grants.
RAMONA
But you keep the best lands for yourself, leaving us with the bad lands.
BANDINI
Ramona, we're all equal! We intermarried with your people, just as we did in
Mexico. (EMBRACING HER AS HIS WIFE.)
RAMONA
Always holding the Spanish side of your heritage in higher esteem than ours.
BANDINI
Querida, forget the past, it's time to settle these lands. Look, here come the
genizaros from New Mexico! (ENTER A GENIZARO, FORMERLY THE
PADRE, DRESSED AS A NUEVO MEXICANO.)
RAMONA
What's a genizaro?
BANDINI
In English they are known as janissarys.
RAMONA
They look Indian, but dress like Spaniards.
BANDINI
They're Pueblo Indians who became Christianized and took Spanish names.
Welcome, bienvenidos! Yo soy Don Juan Bandini de Anza, Cabrillo,
Vizcaino, Cortes, Pizarro, y Colon!
TRUJILLO
That's a mouthful! My name is Lorenzo Trujillo.
BANDINI
If you help defend us from Ute and Comanche raiders, we'll give you free
lands.

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TRUJILLO
Then we can settle both sides of the Santa Ana River?
BANDINI
(SHAKING HANDS.) Of course! Now, what will call your settlements? You
know, we have a great tradition of naming places!
TRUJILLO
Agua Mansa and La Placita . . . de los Trujillos.
BANDINI
Excellent choices.
TRUJILLO
Later on, we might change the names to Casa Blanca, Maravilla, or East Los!
BANDINI
Whatever you like, it's up to you. (EXIT TRUJILLO.) There, you see, querida,
we are all Mexicanos now. We welcome all people, as long as they are law
abiding, Catholic, speak Spanish, and don't take jobs away from us Mexicans.
RAMONA
I think you're in for a big surprise!
BANDINI
Just look at us, Ramona, nuestros hijos are white, brown, black, all the colors of
the rainbow. Even the Governor of California, Pio Pico, is a mulatto, part black!
RAMONA
But he claims to be Spanish, gente de razn.
BANDINI
Ah well, you know the saying, money whitens. (BEAT.) Looking back, there's
one thing that bothers me. We never found Calafia's gold.
GILMAN
(ENTER GILMAN, FORMERLY THE SARGENTO, WITH MRS. GILMAN,
FORMERLY THE PRIESTESS, DRESSED AS ANGLO SETTLERS OF THE
19TH CENTURY. THEY CARRY CARTONS OF ORANGES.) Did someone
say, gold?!

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Carlos Morton

BANDINI
Who are you, how did you get here?
GILMAN
I took the train, the Southern Pacific. I'm James Gilman and this is my wife,
Martha.
BANDINI
Bienvenidos a su casa, my house is your house!
GILMAN
I think I'm going to like this casa very much!
BANDINI
(POINTING TO THE ORANGES.) What do you have there?
GILMAN
Oranges! We're going to grow citrus right in the San Gorgonio pass. (ENTER
ELIZA TIBBETS, FORMERLY THE QUEEN.) Eliza Tibbets is going to try
her luck in . . . What did you say the name of this place was?
ELIZA
Riverside, we decided to call it Riverside.
BANDINI
How can you grow oranges in this arid climate!
ELIZA
They did it in Brazil! You see, I persuaded the U.S Department of Agriculture to
ship these two navel orange trees from Brazil to my home in Riverside.
RAMONA
Theyre going to need a lot of water.
ELIZA
Well build a canal to divert water from the Santa Ana River.
BANDINI
I knew that plumbing would come in handy.

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179

GILMAN
(HOLDING HIS BOX OF ORANGES ALOFT.) I knew there was gold in them
thar orchards!
ALL
But that's another story! (ALL SIX ACTORS ARE ON STAGE NOW, THREE
DRESSED LIKE YANKEES, THREE DRESSED LIKE CALIFORNIOS.
THE FINALE CONSISTS OF A DANCE. A YANKEE COUPLE WALTZES.
A CALIFORNIO COUPLE DANCE A CORRIDO. THE YANKEES SQUARE
DANCE, THE CALIFORNIOS FANDANGO. AT FIRST THE
COMPETITION IS FRIENDLY, BUT GRADUALLY THE DANCING
TURNS MORE AND MORE AGGRESSIVE. TWO CULTURES IN
TRANSITION, CONFLICT, CLASH, THEY REPELL AND ATTRACT
EACH OTHER AT THE SAME TIME.)
THE END

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Carlos Morton

Afterword
The Golden Ones is an adaptation of Los Dorados, originally published in The
Many Deaths of Danny Rosales and other plays, Arte Publico Press, Houston,
1983. The Golden Ones was produced by the Theatre Department of the
University of California, Riverside in 1997 where the author worked and lived
for 12 years in Moreno Valley with his family. The play takes place in and
around Riverside County, California where the place names are an
amalgamation of Native American, Spanish, and English.
The Cahuillas are of the Uto-Aztecan tribe who lived for thousands of years
in what is now Riverside County. Cahuilla in Spanish means unbaptized
Indian and has been in use since the Mission days. Note also that the Spanish
imported genizaros (janissaries) from New Mexico to form a buffer zone
between the Spanish/Mexican settlements and the wild Indians to the east.
Christianized natives were stripped of their real names (Chumash, Kemayia,
Miwok, etc.) and given names like Gabrielenos, Luisenos, and Dieguenos after
the Missions of San Gabriel, San Luis, and San Diego.
A glossary of some of the place names mentioned in the play:
Agua Mansa Spanish for calm water, a place name near Riverside.
Juan Bautista de Anza One of the first Spanish explorers to enter what is
now Riverside in 1774.
California First applied to Baja California in 1562 and then to what is now
Alta (upper) California. The term referred to a mythical land of Amazons, ruled
by the beautiful Black Queen Calafia as described in a Spanish novel, Las
sergas de Esplandin (The exploits of Esplandian), by Garci Rodrguez de
Montalvo.
Cucamonga From the Gabrielino Indian place name Kkamonga.
Jurupa From Gabrielino horv-nga, sagebrush place.
Ramona From Helen Hunt Jacksons sentimental novel Ramona whose
heroine was a young woman of Cahuilla Indian descent.
Riverside The city was named in 1872 because of the nearby Santa Ana River
that irrigated the citrus crops which brought the area its prosperity.
San Andreas From the Spanish San Andrs. The San Andreas Fault is the
states longest and best-known earthquake zone.
San Bernardino Named in 1819 after Saint Bernardino of Siena.

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181

Soledad Spanish for solitude, after Nuestra Seora de la Soledad in

Monterey County where a notorious prison was built.
Temescal Mexican Spanish word meaning sweat house, referring to the
small native house used for sweating and bathing. Originally Aztec tematcalli,
meaning tema, to bathe, and calli, house.

Appendix
About the Authors

Justyna Budzik has been working as a lecturer since 2005 at the Institute of
English Studies (UJ), conducting courses within the section of the English
Philology with German. She obtained her PhD degree in literature in 2011 at the
Faculty of Polish Philology of the Jagiellonian University (UJ). The doctoral
thesis concentrated on Polish-Canadian migr poetry and on the idea of
bilingualism and biculturalism. She has published several articles on migr
writing; currently she is preparing a book on the dilemma of homelessness vs.
feeling at home experienced by Polish writers in Canada.
Iain Chambers is known for his interdisciplinary and intercultural work on music,
popular and metropolitan cultures. More recently he has transmuted this line of
research into a series of postcolonial analyses of the formation of the modern
Mediterranean. He is presently Professor of Cultural and Postcolonial Studies at the
Oriental University where he is the Director of the Centre for Postcolonial Studies.
Author of many books, including Migrancy, Culture, Identity (1994), Culture after
Humanism (2001); and most recently, Mediterranean Crossings. The Politics of an
Interrupted Modernity (2008), his work has been translated into various languages,
including Italian, Spanish, German, Japanese and Turkish.
Pilar Cuder-Domnguez is Professor of English at the University of Huelva
(Spain), where she teaches British and English-Canadian Literature. Her
research interests are the intersections of gender, genre, nation, and race. She is
the author of Margaret Atwood: A Beginners Guide (2003), Stuart Women
Playwrights 1613-1713 (2011), and Transnational Poetics: Asian Canadian
Womens Fiction of the 1990s (2011). She is currently at work on a co-edited
collection of essays on the Black Atlantic.
Mar Gallego has taught American and African American Literatures at the
University of Huelva (Spain) since 1996. Currently, she is the Director of the
Migration Research Center at this University. Her major research interests are
African American Studies and the African diaspora, with a special focus on women
writers and gender issues. She has published a monograph entitled Passing Novels
in the Harlem Renaissance (Hamburg: LitVerlag, 2003) and has co-edited several
essay collections, the most recent being: Espacios de gnero (2005), Relatos de
viajes, miradas de mujeres (2007), Gnero, Ciudadana y Globalizacin (2009 and
2011) and The Dialectics of Diasporic Identification (2009).

184

Appendix

Linda Kean is an Associate Professor and Director of the School of

Communication at East Carolina University. Her area of expertise is mass media
effects. Dr. Kean has published a number of articles looking at the content of
media, television in particular, and how it might affect individuals perceptions,
attitudes, and behaviors. A focus of her research involves examining issues
related to health such as sexuality, alcohol consumption, and obesity.
Peter Leese is Associate Professor in social and cultural history at the Department
of English, Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Copenhagen. His
current research project, on the history of migrant recollection and observation,
explores the development of migration life-stories, changes in visual representation,
and the development of observer accounts since the 18th century. His previous
publications include Shell Shock: traumatic neurosis and the British Soldiers of the
First World War (2002), The British Migrant Experience: an anthology (2002) and
Britain since 1945: aspects of identity (2006).
Anna Lubecka is Professor at the Institute of Public Affairs at Jagiellonian
University, Krakow Poland. Cross-cultural communication, post-modern
identity, minority traditional and new and their participation in public
discourse delineate the field of her academic research and interests. Her
publications include Requests, invitations, apologies and compliments in
American English and Polish: a cross-cultural perspective, (2001)and Cultural
identity of Bergitka Roma (2005).
Gerard McCann is a Senior Lecturer in European Studies at St Marys College,
Queens University, Belfast. He is the UK and Ireland coordinator of the EUs
Intercultural Dialogue and Linguistic Diversity (Moblang) project and
Academic Manager of the Northern Ireland-Africa Universities Knowledge
Transfer Initiative. Recent books have included Irelands Economic History
(2011), Issues in Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa (2011) and
From the Local to the Global (2009). He is an adviser to the European
Parliament on international cooperation policy.
Carly McLaughlin is a Lecturer in the English Literature department at the
University of Darlarna, Sweden, and is based in Berlin where she also works as
a freelance translator and editor. Her current research focuses on those
migrations which do not make national headlines and have been largely
neglected in migration studies (existential migration, expatriates and their
children etc.). As a literature scholar she is interested in those writers, for
example Colm Tibn, who explore what notions such as home and belonging
mean in todays highly mobile and culturally complex world.

Appendix

185

Carlos Morton is a playwright and Professor of Drama at the University of

California, Santa Barbara, where he is Director of the Centre for Chicano
Studies. Morton has published five collections of plays on Chicano themes.
Wadysaw Witalisz is Professor of English Literature at the Jagiellonian
University and Krosno State College. He has written on Medieval and
Renaissance drama, poetry, romance and religious literature. His recent
monograph, The Trojan Mirror: Middle English Narratives of Troy as Books of
Princely Advice, was published by Peter Lang in 2011. Over the last 10 years
Witalisz has been the initiator and coordinator of many European projects and
conferences on interculturality and migration.