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Between Slavery and Freedom: The Transgressive Self in Olaudah Equiano's Autobiography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Susan M. Marren
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Abstract

Olaudah Equiano manipulates the binary terms of racial representation in eighteenth-century England to establish himself as at once a reasoning black subject and, paradoxically, as what I term a “transgressive” subject: one who refuses any definitive racial (perhaps even social) categorization. A profile of the transgressive I in his autobiography reveals a fluid positioning rather than an essence. Initially identified as an African slave, Equiano goes on to depict his narrative self as a social reformer, someone both in and of English society whose differences with it seem resolvable within the existing order. When he suddenly reintroduces evidence of the narrative self's liminal status, therefore, white readers perceive a revolutionary challenge to the binary logic of their social world. Out of this ambiguity arises the possibility that individual and collective identities might be reimagined in a nonbinary mode. Moreover, subsequent black narrators have inherited Equiano's liberating ability to envision a transgressive self. (SMM)

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 108 , Issue 1: Special Topic Literature and the Idea of Europe , January 1993 , pp. 94 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1993

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