Dwight McBride - Impossible Witnesses: Truth, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony

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Truth, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony

Dwight A. McBride

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London

2001 by New York University
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McBride, Dwight A.
Impossible witnesses : truth, abolitionism, and slave testimony/
Dwight A. McBride.
p. cm.
Includes biblographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-8147-5604-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8147-5605-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. American prose literatureAfrican American authorsHistory and criticism. 2. Antislavery movementsUnited StatesHistory19th century. 3. American prose literature19th centuryHistory and criticism. 4. SlavesUnited StatesBiographyHistory and criticism. 5. African AmericansBiographyHistory and criticism. 6. Slaves writings, AmericanHistory and criticism. 7. AutobiographyAfrican American authors. 8. Slavery in literature. I. Title.
PS366.A35 M38 2001
306.3620973dc21 2001003176

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.

Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The only authentic witness is the one who could not bear witness for what she has seen, the impossible witness.

Jacques Derrida

Il est de tous les temps le got de lhomme pour lailleurs. Mais lapparition de la photographie a exaspr la qute de ce qui est autre: de ses voyages en pays lointains, laventurier rapporte, des images qui tmoignent de la diffrence. Cet ailleurs, il le fixe avec la rigueur obstine de lethnologue, la navet blouie des premiers conqurants, ou lart consomm des premiers plasticiens. Simple constat: aller au bout du monde, cest aller au bout de soi.tranges trangers: Photographie et Exotisme, 1850/1910

Black people need witnesses.

James Baldwin

Authors of scholarly endeavors inevitably incur many debts during the production of their work. Impossible Witnesses: Truth, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony certainly represents no exception in this regard. I thank the staffs of the British Library in London, the Huntington Library in Pasadena, UCLA Research Library and Special Collections, the American Library in Paris, and the library at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

This book would never have been possible without the support, advice, and encouragement of many people who proved in so many ways that they believed in me. For all their help, time, understanding, kindness, and for providing me with a real intellectual community, especially during the years it took to produce the dissertation that preceded this book, I thank the following teachers, friends, and colleagues: Thomas Augst, Lindon Barrett, Juan Battle, Michael Bennett, David Blackmore, Jennifer DeVere Brody, Fred Burwick, Chris Cunningham, Darrell D. Darrisaw, Georgina Dodge, Bill Handley, Phil Harper, Sharon Holland, Jonathan Holloway, Patrick Johnson, Rachel Lee, Arthur Little, Shelia Lloyd, Elizabeth McHenry, John Nieto-Phillips, Cyrus Pa-tell, Jonathan Post, Robert Reid-Pharr, Charles Rowell, Darieck Scott, Jeffrey Shoulson, Eric J. Sundquist, Sam Weber, Michelle M. Wright, Julian Yates; the entire administrative staff of the UCLA English Department, especially Nora Elias, Rick Fagin, Jeanette Gilkison, David Rahmel, and Doris Wang; and a very special thanks to Toni Crowe and Michelle Harding. For their very special friendship and support not only of this project but of my intellectual, spiritual, and emotional well-being in all my endeavors, I thank dear friends Andrew Dechet, Ken Dorfman, Martin Dupuis, Frank Geraci, Fred Haug, Karen Lang, Olivier Lessmann, Olivier Leymarie, Jay Louser and Allen Neilsen, Bob E. Myers, and Lisa B. Thompson. In fact, so much of this book, especially in its early stages as a dissertation, was discussed, debated, and clarified with Bob Myers that it would not have been nearly as interesting or rigorous a process without his input.

Let me also thank the following institutions that have supported and sustained me during my time in graduate school: the Ford Foundation, the University of California Office of the President, the UCLA English Department, and the UCLA Graduate Division. Special thanks are due to Jennifer DeVere Brody, Mark Canuel, Jennifer Fleischner, and Jonathan Holloway for reading and commenting on the manuscript in its final draft stages before publication. Where I have taken their criticism, the book has been made better for it.

I owe a great debt of gratitude to my sister and brother-in-law, Makelia McBride-Hampton and Willie Hampton, for their love and support, which have always been unfailing. And to my parents, James and Bettye McBride, to whom this book is dedicated, my debt cannot be repaid. I also want to express my love and appreciation to Jason K. Martin for aiding and supporting me in the final preparation stages of this book. He is becoming a true partner in all things in my life.

A good part of this book was drafted while I was in residence in the Department of English at Louisiana State University as the Distinguished Dissertation Fellow and Visiting Lecturer. My debts there are also numerous. I thank the following people of the LSU community for their support, friendship, and collegiality: Lynn Berry, Gail Carrithers, the late Matthew Clark, Bainard Cowan, Jesse Gellrich, Michelle Gellrich, Michael Griffith, Rob Hale, Jerry Kennedy, Ricardo Matthews, Preselfannie McDaniels, Ladrica Menson, Elsie Michie, Rick Moreland, James Olney, Laura Sams, Keith Sandiford, Maria Smith, Maria Adams Smith, Leonard and Lisa Vraniak, and the LSU English Department staff, especially Susan Kohler, the late Claudia Scott, and Jennifer Whalen. A special thanks to the students in my senior/graduate seminar, Abolitionist Discourse, for eagerly and enthusiastically pushing the limits of my thinking about many of the questions involved in this book. I offer a very special thanks to Chris Kisling, Pat and Joan McGee, Jean and Kelly Rahier, and Jesse Wiseman for their freely given friendship and intellectual camaraderie, and for enduring me in the various emotional states precipitated by this work in its early stages. My productivity would not have been nearly so high were it not for Pat McGees generosity with his comments, conversation, and good food at his table. He made my time at LSU both rewarding and extremely meaningful. He is a model senior colleague.

I also thank the people and institutions that have sustained me in the completion of this work since graduate school: the UC Office of the President, for a year of postdoctoral study; the UCLA English Department, for hosting me, and Eric Sundquist, for being a superb mentor during that postdoctoral year; the National Endowment for the Humanities, for a summer stipend; Raymond Paredes, UCLA associate vice-chancellor for Academic Development, for providing funds for research assistance; the University of Pittsburgh Department of English, for being a wonderful institutional home and for research and travel support; the University of Pittsburgh Office of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, for summer stipend support, leave time, and travel and research support; Jack Daniel, vice-provost at University of Pittsburgh, for providing funds for research assistance; the Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Newberry Library in Chicago, for a crucial year of postdoctoral work during which I benefited from the friendship and conversation of Canon Schmitt, Pat Crain, Diana Robin, and Jim Williams; and the University of Illinois at Chicagos former English Department head, Don Marshall, and the dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Stanley Fish, for a semester of leave time.