FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND BUSINESS STUDIES Department of Humanities

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FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND BUSINESS STUDIES

Department of Humanities

Crossing the River

An Example of Black Politics of Resistance

Anders Wåke

2021

Student thesis, Bachelor degree, 15 HE English

ENG804

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Abstract

Caryl Phillis’s novel Crossing the River tells a story of the African diaspora caused by the slave trade. The novel not only depicts the physical aspect of diasporic life, but also sheds light on the cognitive aspects. It is visible separately in the four chapters, but also in the prologue and epilogue through Phillips’s use of the mystical voice of the disembodied father who addresses all his children of the African diaspora. This essay argues that Crossing the River is an example of black politics of resistance from two different perspectives. Firstly, Phillips uses the African diaspora to exemplify the hybrid identity, and to reject a binary colonial discourse and racism that have caused tremendous suffering for the African diaspora. Secondly, by not only rejecting the binary colonial discourse but also contesting and taking part in shaping a discourse that synthesizes different worlds, Crossing the River takes part in creating a more diverse and equal sense of the world.

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Introduction

Modern European colonialism can be dated back to the fifteenth and sixteenth century and the voyages of Christopher Columbus and others, but foremost it was fundamental in the commercial project when Western nations seized lands for

government and settlement. The grabbing of land was motivated by generating wealth, to control international markets by securing natural resources and labor power at the lowest possible cost (McLeod 8). The slave trade has been described as triangular due to that the ships departed from Europe to Africa, and after being enslaved, the Africans were brought to the Americas (Cole 30). Thus, the Atlantic slave trade was a

consequence of colonialism and was driven by the demand for cheap and abundant labor force in the European colonies in the Americas. The slave trade also resulted in an African diaspora that through centuries have suffered immensely. The world can be pictured as a “legacy system built on centuries of Black exploitation and global positioning of Black peoples as subaltern” with lingering consequences like racially motivated killings, neocolonialism, police brutality, racism and structural discrimination against the African diaspora (Cornelius 8, 9). To fight this blatant injustice, black

politics refers to:

The collective struggle of people of African descent to gain power and influence in the processes and institutions of government as a way of securing and

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2 In Elvira Pulitano’s interview with Caryl Phillips, she identifies the life journeys and experiences related to the Atlantic triangular map history as part of Phillips’s literary themes. Issues like home and belonging related to the African diaspora are “intricately complex questions” in Phillips’s writing (371). The geographical

triangularity, and issues like home and belonging are also found in Crossing the River. However, this postcolonial novel, which covers four stories that are separated by time and place, also portrays a shared history of dispersal, displacement, enslavement, racist subordination, and resistance. Significantly, the novel includes a prologue and an epilogue that frame the different chapters and indicate a shared origin for the black characters, Nash, Martha, and Travis, derived from the infamous slave-triangle-route.

The relation between racism, slavery, and colonialism complicated. To say that colonialism and slavery gave birth to racism is probably a simplification that ignores the ideas that were behind the colonial endeavor and slavery in the first place. To put these concepts in a timeline is neither an easy task, nor is it the purpose of this essay.

However, what can be agreed on is that these concepts are intricately intertwined. One theory formation that challenges colonial ideas is postcolonial theory. According to McLeod, there is no singular definition of postcolonialism. However, it can be

productively used as a critical framework to rethink and challenge conventional colonial modes of reading and thinking across past and present (3, 4, 6, 38, 39, 40).

So, the Atlantic slave trade created a legacy system with lingering consequences for the African diaspora and also resulted in multicultural experiences that impact us all. Caryl Phillips’s describes an alternate society, a true multicultural society as “one which is composed of multicultural individuals; people who are able to synthesize different worlds in one body and to live comfortable with these different worlds” (McLeod 264). Phillips’s description of a different, more equal world became a driving force

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3 In this context, the need to rethink cultural interaction becomes more urgent in order to demolish the divisive ways of thinking that keep some of us in place, and others displaced. Moreover, the act of reconceptualizing identity and culture in hybrid and fluid is one way of exposing all people to a new sense of themselves, and the postcolonial effort is an important tool to counter the colonial discourse in order to demolish the divisive ways that have resulted in inequality and racism (McLeod 264).

This essay aims to show that Caryl Philips’s novel Crossing the River constitutes an example of black politics of resistance from two perspectives. Firstly, through its use of postcolonial concepts like diaspora and hybridity. Secondly, the essay aims to show that Crossing the River not only rejects a binary colonial discourse, but also contests and takes part in shaping a discourse that synthesizes different worlds.

The essay begins by offering a brief introduction of Foucault’s concept of discourse. Next follows an account of postcolonialism, postcolonial criticism, and the concept diaspora. Also, special attention is devoted to the African diaspora, its

connection to the notion of ‘race’, and the slave trade. The theory section ends by examining the concept hybridity, how it challenges the colonial essentialized identity, thus functioning as an instrument of resistance. In the discussion, examples from the novel are connected to the theory.

Theoretical Framework

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4 and its relation to the slave trade and racism. The theory section ends by examining the concept of hybridity and its function as an instrument of resistance.

Knowledge and Power

According to Foucault, knowledge and power are conjoint. Foucault argues that, “there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute […] power relations” (27). This quote suggests that power is relational and that both action and reaction are

mechanisms of power. It also suggests that discourses “constitute and produce our sense of reality”, and that they “make and shape the world” (emphasis in the original)

(McLeod 46). McLeod further explains that colonialism, apart from its reliance on military force and physical coercion, was based on a colonial discourse. A colonial discourse is “a set of beliefs” that are “encoded in the language which the colonizers speak and to which the colonized are subjected”, which results in popularly held assumptions about the relative differences about peoples of allegedly dissimilar cultures” (44). One important scholar in theorizing and shaping postcolonial studies is Edward Said and his book Orientalism. McLeod argues that, in Orientalism, the Orient is everything that the West is not; the Orient is described in negative terms, the West is ‘superior’, while the Orient is it’s ‘other’, and East and West are “positioned through the construction of unequal dichotomy” (emphasis in the original) (49). This essay devotes particular interest to the colonial discourse of binary oppositions.

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5 discourse and the impact of power as soon as knowledge is involved (86). Thus, since discourse constructs subject positions from where it makes sense, a rejection of a discourse that Hall describes as “The West and the Rest” becomes a counterforce against the power of center to the power of periphery (89).

In the Location of Culture, Bhabha opposes the idea of the nation as essential, cohesive, and homogenous (McLeod 139). Bhabha mainly describes the imagined foundation upon which the nation is built, and a similar theoretical framework can be applied to other identity formations such as culture or race. In other words, even though Bhabha highlights the inherent flaw of a homogenous static identity formation, the flaw is still highly present and marginalizing. Similarly, McLeod argues that “[d]iscourses of power which seek to legitimate certain forms of identity and marginalize others by imposing a logic of binary oppositions remain operable and challenge new forms of identity from emerging” (260). As a solution, Bhabha suggests a replacement of old discourses and argues that it requires a “radical revision of the social temporality in which emergent histories may be written, the rearticulation of the ‘sign’ in which cultural identities may be inscribed. (2). So, narratives that counter essential or

totalizing claims also have the power to disturb ideologies that hold on to or revitalize essentialist identities. As a result, Bhabha stresses the importance of a continuous resistance to a colonial discourse (213). Thus, the shaping of a new paradigm, including the concept of hybridity, offers a way to think beyond the exclusive notion of identity. Further, due to the importance of how difference is conceptualized, the shaping of a new paradigm simultaneously becomes an important political act (McLeod 263, 264). More explicitly, it is the “uncanny presence which Bhabha seizes upon as having the power to disrupt the exclusive binary logic upon which a range of discourses – nationalist,

colonialist, patriarchal – depend” (McLeod 254). This will be dealt will more

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6 counters essential and totalizing claims. Also, by deploying the characters with the diasporic features described in Gilroy’s Black Atlantic, the novel becomes part in rejecting and forming an alternative discourse of culture and identity, and ultimately a paradigm shift thus offering new knowledge and new positions of power to shift the power of center to periphery.

Postcolonial Theory

The colonial discourse is based on an essential binary system that represented the colonizer as civilized, rational, intelligent, superior and normal and the colonized represented the ‘other’ to these mentioned qualities. Obviously, the use of the binary colonial discourse has created an unequal world, and racism has been a determining factor that has paved the way for exclusion, marginalization, and suffering. The postcolonial effort is to dispute and re-examine ‘received’ assumptions of a colonialist ideology that are taught as ‘natural’ or ‘true’ and the concept of hybridity has become important for diaspora peoples and others to think beyond exclusionary, fixed, binary notions of identity, racial and national purity.

According to Barry, one postcolonial critique is the rejection of the unquestioned norm of representing “reality” by “elevated” western or Eurocentric values, thus disregarding, and marginalizing other cultures, settings, ways of thinking and living (194, 195). During the 20th century, the whole world and millions of people were

decolonized and no longer subject to the authority of the British crown, which for more than a century had been the most prominent empire spreading all over the world

(McLeod 7). Both the colonizer and the colonized had been subjected to a colonial discourse based on a binary system that later is internalized and the colonizer

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7 the colonized represented the opposite to these mentioned qualities (McLeod 21, 23). So, the postcolonial effort is to dispute and re-examine ‘received’ assumptions of a colonialist ideology that is taught as natural or ‘true’ (McLeod 25). Moreover, postcolonial criticism, according to Barry, celebrates and explores concepts like diaspora, diversity, difference, and draws on post-structuralist ideas of identity as double, hybrid and constantly changing (197, 199).

In John McLeod’s conversation with Caryl Phillips, Phillips addresses the problem with the word ‘postcolonial’ and the lack of a singular definition (886). McLeod

explains that historically, “particular divisive criteria have been used in some countries with a history of colonialism as ways of manufacturing national unity – based upon ideas of racial, ethnic or religious exclusivity” (131). In other words, even though millions of people were decolonized, a colonial discourse that was based on a binary system survived, and has rewarded some with positions of power and others have found themselves “restricted from positions of authority and condemned as second-class citizens (McLeod 131). A similar approach is relevant when discussing Crossing the River as it takes place in various settings, not all in once-colonized locations. The binary system of the colonial discourse is also evident in the first chapter, as Nash struggles with his cultural identity as an emancipated, black slave who is sent to Africa to convert the natives to Christianity.

Diaspora

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8 group living in a foreign land” (18, 22). Baumann further explains that the term

diaspora appears to “relate to a state of enduring consciousness of living away from home, adapted to the new social and cultural context” (23).

Clifford summarizes William Safran’s definition of diaspora as sharing “a history of dispersal, myths/memories of the homeland, alienation in the host […] country, desire for eventual return, ongoing support for the homeland, and a collective identity importantly defined by this relationship” (305). Clifford also emphasizes the

ambivalence related to any such definition and highlights concepts like displacement, adaptation and resistance (305). Further, a shared history of enslavement, racist subordination, cultural survival, hybridization and resistance is also entailed in the ambivalent, diverse and complex concept of diaspora. As a result, the term diaspora also establishes itself as a signifier, not only of transnationality and movement, but of

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Racism, slave trade and the African diaspora

According to Mike Cole, race is a social construct, and as a concept, it should be abandoned. Racism, however, is a “frighteningly real, burning and omnipresent issue” (1). Cole adopts a broad concept of racism that moves beyond notions of “biological inferiority” as it was in the days of the British Empire under slavery, and its legacy in the United States (2). Cole’s account of racism moves beyond the scope for this essay, but to relate colonialism, the slave trade, slavery and racism, a description of Cole’s account of the older “color-coded racism” is suitable (28). Cole explains the necessity to know about slavery to understand the racism experienced by African Americans today (24).

The first enslaved Africans were brought to Spanish Florida in the 1560s, but after mass slavery was introduced in Virginia in 1619, slavery spread rapidly as the English colonists realized its vast financial returns. The slave trade was triangular, in that the ships departed from Europe to Africa, after which enslaved Africans were brought to the Americas. After, the slave ships returned to Europe. This “blatantly inhuman treatment required the African peoples be rendered subhuman” and facilitated institutional racism (98). A driving line of thinking at the time was that an imperial race was needed to defend the nation and the colonies. The African subjects of the colonies were racialized, missionary work was seen as ‘civilizing’ the natives, and racism in all its manifestations became collective common sense (Cole 30).

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10 will help when discussing the African diaspora as a legacy of colonialism and the slave trade.

The African diaspora is a term that refers to communities that live abroad and are

descended from native Africans or people from. The term commonly refers to the

descendants of the Africans who were enslaved and shipped to the Americas via the Atlantic slave. The Atlantic slave trade was an activity of exceptional brutality in which the victims, their descendants, as well as the whole continent from which they were taken, suffered immensely. The slave trade also fostered racial tensions and was further complicated by the traumatic dispersal of people from their homeland. This trauma has remained part of a collective memory and the creative rebuilding of identity. It has also been argued that it helped to promote the modern world’s cultural diversity and multiculturalism (Richardson 29, 30). The African Diaspora is described to be an umbrella term for collective global black activism. The term includes proponents that emphasize that the people of African descent share a sense of common origin. In contrast, scholars like Paul Gilroy insists on de-centered, and sometimes conflicting black narratives of existence (Vinson 4, 5). Thus, the current situation of Africans of Sub-Saharan descent throughout the globe is heavily associated with the slave trade and its legacy, but also with a black activism and resistance. The African diaspora

constitutes the foundation for the whole novel. The diasporic experiences portrayed in the different chapters are referred to by the parental voice that exposed his “own children” (Phillips, 1) to the horrors of slavery.

Hybridity

It matters how we conceptualize difference, so the act to rethink cultural

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11 of exposing all people to a new sense of themselves (McLeod 263, 264). In a binary colonial discourse, culture and identity relied on rigid frames of what it means to belong. These frames were based on being part of a homogenous group in a certain geographical area. The concept of hybridity has become important for diaspora peoples and others to think beyond the colonial discourse of “exclusionary, fixed, binary notions of identity based on ideas of rootedness, and cultural, racial and national purity”

(McLeod 254). As a result, a new way of approaching the notion of diasporic identity is based on the “’in-between’ position of the migrant” (McLeod 251). In Crossing the River, the struggle of belonging is found in Martha’s story. Martha is living in America as a slave, which means that she is excluded as she lacks the rights of taking part in the society that she lives in. The ‘in-between’ position is exemplified by Nash. When unfolding the concept of hybridity, this essay will turn to the writings of Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha and Paul Gilroy.

Stuart Hall and ‘New Identities’

When writing on identity and racism from a postcolonial perspective, it is almost impossible not to mention Stuart Hall and his essay ‘New Identities’. According to Hall, racism operates on a binary system of representation that “attempts to fix and naturalize the difference between belongingness and otherness”, and that these systems are

constructed of symbolic boundaries that are based on racially constituted categories (446). The effort of conveying a new conception of ethnicity which engages rather than suppress difference, represents a “non-coercive and more diverse conception of

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12 the understanding of the postcolonial identity as hybrid, multiple, and constantly in motion (McLeod 260). This way of thinking of identity conceptualizes “migrant and diasporic cultures in terms of motion, multiplicity and hybridity” (McLeod 257).

Bhabha’s border

As a postmodern or rather post-structuralist critique, Bhabha argues for a revision of the frame, structure, or textuality, thus not only limiting the discourse to a revision of signs of border, race, or identity (McLeod, 251). The reason for a wider revision of the frame or structure is that history has formed the structure that has resulted in social antagonism, subjugation, domination, and displacement. A revision of structure offers new frames of meaning, and a new textuality offers empowering strategies and a foundation for resistance (Bhabha 246, 252). In the Location of Culture, Bhabha addresses migrants and diasporic peoples who live at the border of different nations. Further, it addresses the people ‘in-between’ borders who might struggle with a sense of belonging. Bhabha argues that the borders are not limited or separated by binary

positions like inside and outside, or present and future (McLeod 263). What needs to be stressed at this point is that, according to Bhabha, the border-crossing is not only physical but also cognitive. The “’in-between’ spaces” offer “sites of collaboration” to renegotiate signs of identity, thus redefining society itself (Bhabha 2).

In conclusion, it is by introducing a new understanding of the notion of

boundaries that not only separate but also bridge, that a new textuality can be produced. In this sense, the entirety of the novel constitutes an example of shaping a new

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Restaging the past

Reading Bhabha, the border appears abstract. It is not really a place but a space or moment when time and place intersect. The site of ‘in-between’, the borderland marked with hybridity, moldability, association and conflict captures an “estranging sense of [the] relocation” (Bhabha, 13). However, Bhabha argues that to be “unhomed” is not the same as being “homeless”, but rather a site where differences and cultures come into contact, which disturbs traditional patterns and disrupts binary oppositions (13). In other words, the new experience is produced from the process of “hybridisation” (emphasis in the original) (McLeod, 253). Such interpretation simultaneously demolishes old colonial narratives of identity as fixed since the subject is composed from various sources and locations. Not surprisingly, the concept of hybridity has become important to think beyond exclusionary, static, binary notions of identity based on ideas of cultural, racial, and national purity (McLeod, 254).

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14 prologue where the mystical, parental voice refers to the his children as being ”Broken-off […] [b]ut not lost, for you carry within your bodies the seeds of new trees” (2).

According to Bhabha, the process of “restaging the past” is the process in which more than tradition is introduced to the formation of identity (Bhabha 3). It is the process that opens up for a critical scrutinization of “originary identity of a ’received’ tradition” and marks the point to signify from the periphery (Bhabha, 3). However, ‘received’ knowledge is not dismissed, it is given new meaning as it is mixed with cultural resources from other times and places. Thus, from an ‘in-between’ position, intervention can be made actively by transforming and reinscribing inherited traditional knowledge instead of passively accepting it as truth. Bhabha stresses the importance of this performance as how new hybrid identities are born and “strategies of selfhood” can be elaborated (2). Nash’s struggle upon the arrival on the African coast constitutes a good example for further analysis of a man who is restaging his past as his received knowledge is given new meaning.

Gilroy’s ship

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15 Gilroy attempts to move beyond essential ideas of the modern nation and purity of cultures and argues that it does not reflect the complex contemporary world of

transcultural, multiethnic diasporic experiences (Gilroy, 6,7). Instead, Gilroy suggests taking “the Atlantic as one single, complex unit of analysis” to “produce an explicitly transnational and intercultural perspective (16). McLeod argues that Gilroy attempts to expose borders as porous by using the prefixes trans- and inter- (266). Phillips balances the difficult task of showing the characters’ heterogeneity, thus dismantling the

essentialized black community. Simultaneously, however, he represents them as a unit by using the mystical voice that refer to them as his children (1).

Resistance

The effort so far has been to give examples of how the divisive way of thinking has been shaped by a colonial discourse, a discourse founded by an essential binary system of ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’. The contributions of Bhabha, Hall and Gilroy help to define the concept of hybridity and they all reject the idea of culture and identity as essential or holistic. They trace back the essential and static ideas to colonial discourses and aim to show that such ideas are based on binary falsifications, thus opening for new ways of cultural and identity formation and resistance. However, Hall admits to the difficulty of conceiving and building solidarity and identification “which make common struggle and resistance possible but without suppressing the real heterogeneity of

interests and identities” (445). So, the question of how to build solidarity though difference remains unanswered.

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16 ‘in-between’ perspective that empowerment emerges (4). Most certainly, such

empowerment is a necessity for the multicultural society that Phillips portrays but it fails to answer how this should be done. Another worry is expressed by Gilroy who argues that the “embracing of 'new ethnicities' which emphasize the constructed, hybrid nature of all identities tends to forget the ways that racism still operates in the present. There is still the necessity for a black politics of resistance" (McLeod 266).

McLeod offers a solution how to accommodate different cultures and how to achieve a true diverse society by continuing Gilroy’s analogy with the ship. McLeod suggests that in order to contest the continuation of colonialist, nationalist or racist discourses, “’[s]olidarity through difference’ can be built up by plotting the ways in which diaspora peoples in any one location draw upon the resources and ideas of other peoples in different times and places” (267). Moreover, this kind of mobile

transnational solidarity “help[s] formulat[ing] acts of local resistance that are always themselves finite and, on the move, recasting and remolding ideas from elsewhere in new and unexpected ways” (McLeod, 267). Hall argues that history depends on the ‘routes’, thus emphasizing the replacement of ‘roots’ with ‘routes’ when defining identity. Unlike ‘roots’, there are no unified ‘routes’, which implies that we all come from different experiences and that these experiences are constantly evolving (“Culture and Power”). Similarly, McLeod underlines that by replacing ‘roots’ with ‘routes’ there is no origin that is fixated in a nation, ethnic group, or place, but rather an act of

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Analysis

In the analysis, this essay will present examples of how Caryl Philips’s novel Crossing the River rejects the colonial binary discourse and constitutes an example of black politics of resistance through the use of postcolonial concepts like diaspora and hybridity. The analysis begins to show that racism is evident throughout the novel. It continues by showing how Phillips’s use of the concepts of diaspora and hybridity rejects the colonial discourse and ends by discussing how Crossing the River is an example of black politics of resistance.

Racism in Crossing the River

The binary system of the colonial discourse is perhaps most evident in the first chapter. Nash struggles with his cultural identity as an emancipated black slave and missionary who is repatriated in Africa to convert the pagans of Liberia. In this first chapter, such elevated values are represented through the American Colonization

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18 Nash being ‘civilized’ and Christian. They are not equal despite the fact that Nash clearly is ’equipped’ to ‘civilize’ the natives. So, racism is shown through the binary of ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ based on skin color.

In the second chapter, Martha, who is an old woman that has escaped slavery, dies on her way to the West where colored folks are “prospecting for a new life without having to pay no heed to the white man and his ways” (73-74). She has been a slave all her life. She has lost her husband and daughter in a slave auction and dies on her way to the West in search of a better life. All her life she has been subject to the white man and a colonial binary discourse that has caused her so much pain and injustice only based on her skin color.

In the third chapter, Phillips chooses to include the opposites of the journal of a slave trade and the slave trader James Hamilton’s love letter to his wife in England. Phillips portrays an emotionless, and pragmatic account of one of history’s worst atrocities. It is accounted for with “commercial detachment” (119) and the slaves are referred to as numbers throughout the chapter. Mixed with the journal notes are the love declarations full of affectionate words to his wife. James writes that he “shall do

everything necessary to procure a future happy reconciliation, for beyond this trading community lies family life. My dear, I long to dwell safely in your arms, and revel in the imagined joys that our projected children will bless us with” (120). Thus, Phillips exposes how racism justified the slavery project through James reducing his

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19 The fourth and last chapter takes place in England during World War 2. It is told from the perspective of Joyce. She falls in love with Travis who is one of the stationed soldiers of color in her village. In this chapter racism takes another form. An officer who enters Joyce’s shop tells Joyce that a lot of the men who are stationed in her village are not “used to us treating them like equals” (145). He continues by saying that they are not “very educated boys” (145). Thus, Phillips exposes the inequality and struggle for the same opportunity to education, regardless of skin color, that the people of color were exposed to. Racism is expressed by Len who tells Joyce that she is “a traitor to [her] own kind” (217), and Joyce abandons her and Travis’s mixed child Greer after being exposed to racist remarks regarding the difficulties of raising a mixed child with skin color “like coffee” (228). In conclusion, racism is illustrated by Phillips through the different stories. Due to racism, Greer is abandoned. In this way, Greer shares the destiny of Nash, Martha, and Travis’s ancestors, who were abandoned to the slave trade. These are examples of how racism emphasizes difference as a separating factor, thus partly relying on a binary colonial discourse.

Rejection of a binary colonial discourse using diaspora

The concept of diaspora constitutes the foundation for the whole novel. For obvious reasons, Nash, Martha, and Travis are all examples of a diaspora. The diasporic experiences portrayed in different times and different locations are glued together with the parental, regretful and mystical voice that exposed his “own children” (1) to the horrors of slavery. Further, the remorseful disembodied father, describes it as “[a] desperate foolishness” and that he is “consumed with guilt” (1). He exposed his

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20 It would be an impossible task to write a novel that captures all the suffering related to slavery. It would be an enormous mission to include all the stories and diasporic experiences caused by slavery. However, Crossing the River is a historical novel that portrays different stories of hardship and suffering of a few, but by using the voice of the disembodied, mystical father, Phillips manages to encapsulate a narrative that surpasses time and place. The use of the parental voice enables Phillips, in the epilogue, to address and encompass “[his] other children” (235). They include the addicted mother in Brooklyn who has lost hope and lives beyond despair “without the comfort of religion, electricity or religion (235). He also mentions the “barefoot boy in Sao Paolo” (235) who is trapped in poverty bereft the horizon of a better future, and the child in Santo Domingo that “suffers hateful hot comb” (235). His testament reaches the present as he declares that he has listened “for two hundred and fifty years” (236) to the diasporic voices of his children that spread from the Caribbean to Stockholm (236).

To re-examine colonialism, the course of events and the consequences must be exposed, and Phillips does exactly this by giving accounts of a “common memory” (235) and the stories of his diasporic children. However, a common memory should not be interpreted as a single origin. The disembodied father refers to the chorus of his children as “many-tongued” (237). This implies a diversity of different positions. In this sense, the history of his children depends on their different ‘routes’, thus rejecting the ideas of identity and culture as static and unchangeable. Instead, Phillips portrays the African diaspora and the comprised identities in Crossing the River as changeable and in constant motion.As a result, the portrayal of the African diaspora is connected to the notion of hybridity and the critique of essentialist colonial discourse.

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21 bodies the seeds of new trees” (2). Thus, Phillips offers a sense of belonging to all the lives of the African diaspora by rejecting the colonial discourse. In Crossing the River, Phillips shows that belonging is based on experiences, and not fixed by an essential idea of ‘roots’.

In conclusion, in Crossing the River, Phillips makes use of the concept of diaspora to illustrate the consequences of the slave trade. The children of the mystical father share a history of dispersal, displacement and a collective identity importantly defined by the diasporic relationship. However, through the use of the disembodied father, Phillips also shows the diversity of the diaspora. Nevertheless, by exposing the shared diasporic experience, Phillips portrays a shared history of enslavement, racist

subordination, segregation, and exclusion, and rejects the colonialist binary discourse.

The rejection of a binary colonial discourse using hybridity

As mentioned in the theory section, postcolonial criticism celebrates and explores concepts that draws on post-structuralist ideas of identity as double, hybrid and

constantly changing. Such an approach exposes all people to a new sense of themselves and offers a new sense of belonging. In Crossing the River, the struggle of belonging, based on the binary colonial discourse, is found in Martha’s story. She is heading West to “a place where things were a little better than bad, and where you weren’t always looking over your shoulder and wondering when somebody was going to do you

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22 wants to find a place “where [she] could be part of this country without feeling like [she] wasn’t really a part” (74). She feels that she does not belong. The opportunity to enjoy life was stolen from her. Being a slave, she has been reduced to a spectator from the periphery. So, through Martha’s story, Phillips rejects the rigid frames of the

colonial identity formation that relies on essential racial and national purity, and that has caused a loss of belonging for so many people in the African diaspora. However,

Phillips also shows a new way of approaching diasporic identity, which entails an ‘in-between’ position.

Nash on the other hand has a different relation to his country and exemplifies the ‘in-between’ position. He is caught ‘in-between’ his old home in America and his new home on the West African coast, but Phillips shows how the ‘in-between’ can be a site of collaboration as Nash renegotiates his identity. He is border crossing both physically and mentally. Nash’s struggle on the African coast constitutes a good example for further analysis of a man who is restaging his past as his received knowledge is given new meaning.

The rejection of a racist colonial discourse is represented through Nash and his transformation on the African coast. At first Nash is struck by the nature’s beauty and enjoys his liberty. Nash describes Liberia as “the star in the East for the free colored man. It is truly our home” (18). At this point Nash also expresses his sadness regarding those emigrants “who won’t work and who get along by stealing are becoming

something like the natives” (18). Clearly, his view of the natives is not flattering, and it is obvious that he thinks that the natives lack the Christian ethics that he has been taught or ‘received’ in America. In his letter to Edward he writes, “Had I been permitted to run about, I would today be dwelling in the same robes of ignorance which drape the

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23 sent to Africa by Edward and the American Colonization Society. It simultaneously mirrors the racist ideology that the natives need to be rescued and ‘civilized’.

In Nash’s third letter, his attitude has slightly changed. He wants to come “home as soon as possible” (35) even though “it is his full intention to return to Liberia for it is the best country for the black man” (36). Nash also writes that Liberia stands “tall and proud with other regions of the civilized world” (36). From these quotes, Nash seems to be lost or torn between his old and new home. As much as he struggles in his new country, there is no doubt that Nash values liberty and a deeper respect and reverence for his new country is growing. This is a site of ‘in-between’. It is marked with hybridity and Nash is estranged in his relocation. Moreover, Nash also refers to methods used by the natives to administer justice and writes that “we of the so-called civilized world might learn something valuable” (31) So, at this point Nash misses America and what he still considers his home. He suffers from several challenges and financial hardship and is still mainly limited to think according to a binary colonial discourse of ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’, but he also opens for alternative ways that counter an essentialized value system.

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24 describes how “We, the colored men […] need to contend for our rights, stand our ground, and feel the love of liberty that can never be found in your America” (61).

So, a shift occurs as Nash is ‘unhomed’ but not homeless. He has come to a point where he differentiates himself from what used to be his former home and

culture. Further, Nash writes that the missionary work is a “process of persuasion” (62). Such choice of words could imply that Nash has lost hope in the missionary work orchestrated by his former master and the American Colonization Society. So, despite his own love for Christ, he no longer regards it a noble mission, but rather forced upon the natives and not part of an “African experience” (62). Thus, he does not reject the ‘received’ knowledge of Christianity, but the missionary work now represents

something else for Nash. This is an interesting turn because it can be interpreted that Nash rejects the missionary work because it disregards the African culture or

identity. Nash is not homeless, but he is ‘unhomed’ in the sense that he is at a site where differences and cultures come into contact, which disturb Nash’s traditional patterns. Instead of being corrupted, he writes that Liberia has provided him with the “opportunity to open [his] eyes and cast off the garb of ignorance which has

encompassed [him] all too securely the whole course of his life” (61, 62). Nash’s contact with difference has enlightened him and disrupted the binary oppositions of ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’. Nash’s new experience is produced from the process of hybridization. Thus, this is the process in which Nash opens up for a critical

scrutinization of his identity and the ‘received’ tradition. In the case of Nash, ‘received’ knowledge is not dismissed, but given new meaning as it is mixed with cultural

resources from his new home.

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25 of being part without being part. Martha is at the border but prisoner to ideas of

difference that are based on essential binaries of a colonial discourse. She revolts to this system by escaping, but tragically dies on her way to a better life. Through Nash’s story, Phillips exemplifies the process of hybridization. He demolishes old colonial narratives of identity or culture as fixed or pure, and by introducing a new

understanding of the notion of boundaries that not only separates but also bridges, that a new textuality can be produced.

An example of black politics of resistance

Politics can be defined as “activities that are related to getting or keeping power” (“politics”). As this essay have intended to show, power is relational and there is a relation between discourse and power. Also, as discourses not only constitute, but produce our sense of reality, the effort of rejecting the colonial binary discourse, by the use of hybrid identities and diaspora, becomes a counterforce against the power of the center. By shifting the power to the periphery, it constitutes an example of resistance.

Crossing the River is an example of black politics of resistance because it rejects a binary colonial discourse and racism. By showing that history depends on the ‘routes’ rather than ‘roots’, Phillips plots the ways in which diaspora peoples in any one location draw upon the resources and ideas of other peoples in different times and places in order to contest the continuation of colonialist, nationalist or racist discourses. Similarly, the notion of ‘routes’ implies that origin is not fixated in a nation, ethnic group or place. This is exemplified by Phillips by his use of the disembodied father who refers to his “many-tongued” (237) children of the African diaspora to imply a diversity of different positions that counters the essential colonial discourse. Also, by deploying the

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26 the novel becomes part in forming an alternative discourse of culture and identity

formation, thus constituting a correlative field of knowledge to a colonial binary discourse and racism.

As this essay has relied on the Foucauldian notion of power, the correlative field of knowledge implies the power to signify from the periphery. Nash’s story is an example of the disruption of ‘received’ totalizing narratives of individual and group identity made possible at the border. It is also an example of how holistic ideas can be challenged by those who are not included. Importantly, such interpretation

simultaneously demolishes colonial narratives of identity or culture as fixed or pure since Nash is reexamining his ‘received’ knowledge. So, Nash claims the right to signify from the periphery since tradition only partially forms his identity. In this sense, Nash’s story disturbs those discourses that hold on to and continuously feed essentialist identity formation. As a result, Nash’s right to signify from the periphery represents and unlocks a position of power for the African diaspora and other individuals and

collective groups with similar interests.However, discourses, which marginalizes others by imposing a logic of binary oppositions, is still a present issue. Gilroy expresses worries that a too eager embracing of hybrid identities tends to forget the ways that racism still operates. Similarly, Hall admits to the difficulty of building ‘solidarity through difference’. Further, the use of a binary colonial discourse paired with racism has resulted in an unequal dichotomy, not only for the historically enslaved Africans, but also for their descendants that constitute the African diaspora today. This is a problem because a more diverse and equal future depends on how difference is conceptualized.

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27 how the entirety of Crossing the River constitutes an example in shaping a new

textuality. Through the fragmentation of plot and story even time of past and present is dissolved. Also, Nash’s restaging of his past from an ‘in-between’ position serves as an example of a narrative that counters essential and totalizing claims. By not only

depicting the physical aspect of diasporic life, but also shedding light on cognitive aspects, this essay has intended to show how the novel sweeps over and shows how borders are not limited to binary colonial oppositions, not only as in the case of Nash, but also with the examples of Edward and James Hamilton.

Still, perhaps it is not enough with a rejection of a binary colonial discourse and racism, but a new radical revision is necessary in the creation of a new, different

discourse, and narrative. A paradigm shift, that moves beyond a rejection of an existing and marginalizing discourse, and offers a new paradigm of ‘solidarity through

difference’, is Caryl Phillips’s own description of a true multicultural society as “one which is composed of multicultural individuals; people who are able to synthesize different worlds in one body and to live comfortable with these different worlds” (McLeod 264). Phillips’s description is one with a prospect of a more diverse and equal future. This idea not only rejects but also contests a colonial discourse and racism, thus offering a constructive way forward. So, ‘solidarity through difference’ can be built by a transnational solidarity and the ways in which diaspora peoples draw upon the ideas of other peoples, in different times and places, and in new and unexpected ways. The parental voice speaks to his “own children” (1), “My Nash. My Martha. My Travis” (1). He is remorseful of exposing them all to a racist system that has left “their lives

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28 mainly addresses the African diaspora, thus making it an example of black politics of resistance.

Yet, through Joyce’s story, Phillips simultaneously extends a hand, beyond the African diaspora, to all humans. Joyce and Travis synthesize and live comfortably with each other despite that they live in a racist system that points out their differences. The portrayal of Joyce is one without prejudices towards Travis and his fellow people of color (216, 224). However, regardless of Joyce’s ‘openness’, Phillips’s example of ‘solidarity through difference’ is evident in the epilogue when the parental voice involves Joyce as “my Joyce, and my other children” (235). Here, Joyce is mentioned by name next to ‘his other children’. The parental voice next describes Joyce and his children as “my Nash, My Martha, My Travis. Joyce” (236). Again, Joyce is included but a difference is made between Joyce and his other children. Lastly, the parental voice refers to his own children as “[m]y Nash. My Martha. My Travis. My daughter. Joyce” (237). Again, Joyce is included as one of the parental voice’s children. However, the parental voice continuously refers to the children Nash, Martha, and Travis in a way that differs from him referring to Joyce.

The reference to Joyce differs because she does not share the history of the African diaspora and does not have enslaved ancestors. Difference is made.

Nevertheless, by showing that boundaries are porous and not static or essential, Joyce is still referred to as his child and his daughter due to that she is open for synthesizing her and Travis’s differences. So, through Joyce’s story and the use of the parental voice, Phillips shows how to synthesize difference and offers a way forward. Further, this is an example that goes beyond ‘race’ and history, and a new way of conceptualizing

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29 Phillips novel Crossing the River also takes part in creating a new discourse that is based on black politics of resistance.

In conclusion, Crossing the River is an example of black politics of resistance from two different perspectives. Phillips uses the African diaspora to exemplify the hybrid identity, and to reject a binary colonial discourse and racism that have caused tremendous suffering for the African diaspora. Also, by not only rejecting the binary colonial discourse but also contesting and taking part in shaping a discourse that synthesizes different worlds, Crossing the Rives takes part in creating a new more diverse and equal sense of the world.

Conclusion

The aim of this essay has been to show that Caryl Philips’s novel Crossing the River rejects the colonial discourse and establishes itself as an example of black politics of resistance. In Crossing the River, Caryl Phillips uses the concept of diaspora to illustrate the consequences of colonialization and racism. The novel portrays a shared history of enslavement, racist subordination, and resistance. By exposing the shared diasporic experience Phillips re-examines and rejects the binary colonial discourse. Phillips also offers a sense of belonging to all the lives of the African diaspora by

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FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND BUSINESS STUDIES Department of Humanities