Caryl Phillips’in Crossing the River Romanında Siyah Atlantik’in Transkültürel Belleği

Abstract

Bu çalışmada Caryl Phillips’in Crossing the River romanında siyahi toplulukların Atlantik’teki yolculukları aracılığıyla transkültürel belleğin oluşum süreci incelenmekte ve bu sayede romanın kimlik ve siyah Atlantik deneyimi gibi kavramların tek unsurlu yapılaşmasını sorunsallaştırdığı öne sürülmektedir. Bellek, romanda çeşitli zaman dilimleri, mekânlar ve halklar arasındaki sürekliliği ören bir zemin işlevi görmektedir. Romanın parçalı yapısı ve çok sesli anlatımı, siyah diasporanın Atlantik'teki yolculuğunu yansıtmaktadır. Bu bağlamda bu çalışmada önce romanın siyahi Atlantik deneyimini Paul Gilroy tarafından kavramsallaştırıldığı şekliyle nasıl yansıttığı incelenecektir. Bunu, romanda günümüz siyahi diasporasının olası kökenlerini oluşturan kültürler arası hareketlerin ve bağlantıların nasıl şekillendiğinin ve romanın belleğin hareketini taklit eden biçimsel özelliklerinin kapsamlı bir analizi izleyecektir.

Keywords

• Caryl Phillips
• Crossing the River
• transkültürel bellek
• siyah Atlantik
• kölelik

Transcultural Memory of the Black Atlantic in Caryl Phillips’s Crossing the River

Abstract

This paper argues that Caryl Phillips’s Crossing the River illustrates how the transcultural memory of the black Atlantic is constituted by the movement of black populations across the Atlantic challenging the insular approaches to identity and the totalizing accounts of the black Atlantic history. Memory serves as a ground of identity formation, which weaves continuity between various time spans, locations, and peoples in the novel. Fragmented structure and polyphonic narrative of the novel mirror the movement of the black diaspora across the Atlantic. First, the setting of the novel will be explored in the light of roots and routes of the black peoples as conceptualized by Paul Gilroy. This will be followed by a thorough analysis of the mnemonic structure of the novel to discuss the ways in which the novel illustrates transcultural movements and connections that constitute the possible origins of the present black diaspora.

Keywords

• Caryl Phillips
• Crossing the River
• transcultural memory
• the Black Atlantic
• slavery

References

1. Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (2000). Key concepts in post-colonial studies. London: Routledge.
2. Bellamy, M. R. (2014). Haunting the African diaspora: Responsibility and remaining in Caryl Phillips’s Crossing the river.” African American Review, 47(1), 129-144. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24589800.
3. Bewes, T. (2006). Shame, ventriloquy, and the problem of the cliche in Caryl Phillips. Cultural Critique, 63, 33-60. doi: 10.1353/cul.2006.0014.
4. Bond, L. and Rapson, J. (Eds). (2014). Introduction. The Transcultural Turn: Interrogating Memory Between and Beyond Borders, 1-26. Berlin: De Gruyter.
5. Bonnici, T. (2005). Diaspora in Caryl Phillips’s Crossing the river (1993) and a distant shore (2003). Gragoatá, 17(2), 63–86. ISSN 2358-4114.
6. Boutros, F. (2012). Bidirectional revision: The connection between past and present in Caryl Phillips’s Crossing the River. In B. Ledent and D. Tunca (Eds), Caryl Phillips: Writing in the key of life, 175-90. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
7. Carby, H. V. (2009). Becoming modern racialized subjects’ detours through our pasts to produce ourselves anew. Cultural Studies, 23(4), 624-657. doi.org/10.1080/09502380902950948
8. Erll, A. (2011). Travelling memory. Parallax, 17(4), 4–18. doi: 10.1080/13534645.2011.605570.

9. Erll, A. (2017). Travelling memory in European film: Towards a morphology of mnemonic relationality. Image and Narrative, 18, 5–19. Retrieved from http://www.imageandnarrative.be.
10. Gilroy, P. (1993). The black Atlantic: Modernity and double consciousness. London: Verso.
11. Goyal, Y. (2003). Theorizing Africa in black diaspora studies: Caryl Phillips’ Crossing the river.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 12(1), 5-38. doi: 10.1353/dsp.2011.0033.
12. Guignery, V. (2018). Pastiche, collage, and bricolage: Caryl Phillips’ hybrid journal and letters of a slave trader in Crossing the river. A Review of International English Literature, 49(2-3), 119-148. doi: 10.1353/ari.2018.00.
13. Halbwachs, M. (1980). The collective memory (F. J. Ditter, Jr., V. Y. Ditter Trans.). New York: Harper & Row.
14. Ledent, B. (2002). Caryl Phillips. Manchester: Manchester UP.
15. Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les lieux de mémoire. Representations, 26, 7–24. www.jstor.org/stable/2928520.
16. Phillips, C. (1994). Crossing the river: Caryl Phillips talks to Maya Jaggi.” Interview by Maya Jaggi. Wasafiri, 10(20), 25-29. doi: 10.1080/02690059408574360.
17. Phillips, C. (2004). Other voices: An interview with Caryl Phillips. Interview by Stephen Clingman. Salmagundi, 143, 112–140. www.jstor.org/stable/40549574.
18. Phillips, C. (2006). Crossing the river. New York: Vintage.
19. Phillips, C. (2009). Crisscrossing the river: An interview with Caryl Phillips. Interview by Carol Margaret Davison. In R. T. Schatteman (Ed.), Conversations with Caryl Phillips, 19–26. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
20. Phillips, C. (2011). Color me English: Migration and belonging before and after 9/11. New York: The New Press.
21. Phillips, C. (2012). A home for ourselves in the world: Caryl Phillips on slave forts and manillas as African Atlantic sites of memory. Interview by Alan Rice. Atlantic Studies, 9(3), 363-372. doi: 10.1080/14788810.2012.688630
22. Rothberg, M. (2016). The witness as ‘world’ traveler: Multidirectional memory and Holocaust internationalism before human rights. In C. Fogu (Ed.), Probing the Ethics of Holocaust Culture, 355-372. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 2016.
23. Ward, A. (2007). An outstretched hand: Connection and affiliation in Crossing the river. Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings, 7(1), 20-32. ISSN 1474-4600.
24. Ward, A. (2010). Postcolonial interventions into the archive of slavery: Transforming documents into monuments in Beryl Gilroy’s Stedman and Joanna.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 45(2), 245–258. doi:10.1177/0021989410366893
25. Welsch, W. (1999). Transculturality – the puzzling form of cultures today. In M. Featherstone & S. Lash (Eds.), Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World, 194–213. London: Sage P.