Fred D'Aguiar's The longest Memory as a counter-history.

A Foucault-inspired perspective on so called post-modern histories

Author: Nicolas Lamoure 302603048056 Frankfurter Strae 81 63500 Seligenstadt Nicolas.lamoure@live.de

Seminar: Remembering Slavery Dr. Elfi Bettinger Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main

Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 About this paper: .............................................................................................................. 2 1.1.1 Free and simple ......................................................................................................... 2 1.1.2 Gendering .................................................................................................................. 3 2 Power in Foucault................................................................................................................ 3 2.1 Power ............................................................................................................................ 4 2.2 Power and Freedom ...................................................................................................... 6 2.3 Violence ....................................................................................................................... 6 2.4 Resistance ..................................................................................................................... 6 2.5 Counter-History ............................................................................................................ 8 2.6 Preparing for a literary analysis ................................................................................. 10 3. The principle of heterogeneity ......................................................................................... 11 3.1 Polyphone heterogeneity ............................................................................................ 11 3.2 Heterogeneity in power relations ............................................................................... 13 3.2.2 Power and Resistance .............................................................................................. 15 3.2.3 Dreams of Transgression ......................................................................................... 19 4 Discontinuity ..................................................................................................................... 19 4.1Polyphone discontinuity .............................................................................................. 20 5 The Shift of Perspective .................................................................................................... 20 6 The Biblical Principle........................................................................................................ 28 7. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 28 8. Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 28 9 Eidesstattliche Verischerung ............................................................................................. 28

Introduction
"History, I have often said, is a clock that people use to tell their political time of day. It is also a compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human geography. History tells a people where they have been and what they have been. It also tells a people where they are and what they are. Most important, history tells a people where they still must go and what they still must be. The relationship of history to the people is the same as the relationship of a mother to her child." - Dr. John Henrik Clarke Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its general politics of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true -Michel Foucault The future is just more of the past waiting to happen -Fred DAguair, The longest Memory

History, following the voices of these three authors, is like any other form of knowledge not exclusively a matter of academic research and intellectual reasoning but first and foremost a mere effect and simultaneously a vehicle of power. As a vehicle history is part of the very basic paradigms human beings rely on in order to constitute themselves as persons, as subjects. When John Henrik Clarke was told he was a member of a people that had no history, that had been written out of history he discovered doing history as a political struggle for emancipation and began his admirable project of rewriting history that set out to contradict and to present a revised history that would de-mask all the lies and illusions that had distorted the image of my people. Yet Clarkes counter-discourse tells also what one could consider a tragic story. Clarke failed to think his basic assumption radically through in order to recognize that he was precisely using and thus reproducing the very mechanisms that enabled the formulation of a White History, namely dichotomist conceptions, the most famous being black/white. When Derrek Walcott writes the muse of history has produced a literature of recrimination and despair, a literature of revenge written by the descendants of slaves or a literature of remorse written by the descendants of masters (Walcott, 1996, p. 283) he illustrates and criticizes that this is not a problem exclusive to the scientific field of history but a cultural problem that thus, amongst others, also affects literature.

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I claim that it is the great merit of a new generation of postcolonial writers, including authors such as Carl Phillips and Fred DAguiar, to move beyond this problematic, creating [] a new form of historical fiction [] that [] changes our perception of the present reality. (Pichler, 2005, p. 469)1. The enterprise of the work at hand will be to investigate closer how this functions in Fred DAguiars The Longest Memory (D'Aguiar, 1995). I will therefore draw back on the notion of counter-histories by the French Philosopher Michel Foucault, attempting to show that The Longest Memory can indeed be related to be a counter-history of a new kind. I will proceed in the following manner: First I will provide a rough introduction to Foucaults conception of power, ensuring both a proper understanding of his notion of counterhistories, as well as providing the theoretical background for one of my sub-points. Subsequently I will explain Foucaults notion of counter-history. The second and certainly more interesting part of my work is then the reading of The Longest Memory. Based upon three major aspects I will attempt to prove my hypothesis that DAguiars novel indeed qualifies as a narrative going beyond previous counter-histories. The appendix of this work will include a summary of the novel in question.

1.1 About this paper:

1.1.1 Free and simple This paper will be free, meaning it will be published under creative commons, - it will be freely accessible over my website and may be reproduced in any way you like. I do not intend to promote my work in this way or make it more important but I do out of conviction that knowledge must be free (even if my contribution in this form might be small). I also have the modest hope that it might encourage a discussion off institutional tracks and animate others to do so, too. Keep in mind that free, as Richard Stallman argues, does not mean free as in cheap, but free as in FREEDOM OF SPEECH! This Paper will also be simple. Keeping knowledge free is not only a question of availability at no cost for everyone2 it does also mean that its content is available to a broad number of

In fact I have troubles agreeing with Pichler who ar gues that what she calls postmodern histories explored what the west would like to forget (Pichler, 2005, p. 469). I think nowadays, as the colonial past has arrived in schoolbooks the main problem is not anymore that of writing black people out of history, but the exploitation and interpretation of these pasts, most importantly by nationalism. 2 I am completely aware of the fact that this is not the case.
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people. This requires a particular style of writing that is clear and understandable, building up on as little prior knowledge as necessary. Simple in these terms does not mean simple as in simple-minded but as in simplicity. 1.1.2 Gendering Whenever I use a pronoun that is referring to a noun that refers to a person that might be female or male I will use the female pronoun to refer to it. The child plays a lot with her blue cars.

2 Power in Foucault
I would like my books to be a kind of tool-box which others can rummage through to find a tool which they can use however they wish in their own area... I would

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like the little volume that I want to write on disciplinary systems to be useful to an educator, a warden, a magistrate, a conscientious

objector. I don't write for an audience, I write for users, not readers.' -Michel Foucault

Before I actually begin talking about Foucaults theory itself I intend to briefly state two crucial points. First Foucault, still today, and to a slightly smaller degree his works, too represent to many scholars and philosophers a sort of red rag, polarizing persons from different disciplines and schools of thought. Although I have an own opinion in this ongoing debate, I do not intend to make a point about the actual value of Foucaults whole body of theory (at least not from a theoretical perspective). Rather I want to use Foucault such as he formulated himself in the quotation provided in the beginning of this section. Secondly I would like to make a similar point about the particular theory I am about to explain and apply. Due to Foucaults very distinct and often ambiguous style of writing reception of his ideas is very far from being unitary. Hence I wish to highlight that I am only providing one of several other possible readings.

2.1 Power Although the original purpose of this section is to outline Foucaults term of counter- history as well as to use it as an instrument of literary studies, his conception of power will have to be treated first in order to establish a more than superficial understanding of these notions. Power for Foucault is first of all transformative capacity34 (Heller, 1996, p. 104) more precisely the exercise of power is a way in which certain actions modify others (Foucault, 1982, pp. 788-89). Although this insight seems quite compatible with what is generally understood as power, its implications are not. Power defined in such a way is not something restricted to a few individuals and institutions (as for instance some Marxist thinkers would argue), but becomes a widespread feature of human interaction everybody is subject as well as object of power (Heller, 1996, p. 80) (this of course does not mean that power is
On a sidenote: The French word for power (le pouvoir) is actually derived from the homonymous verb pouvoir roughly meaning to be able to. 4 Consider that this definition allows Foucualt to understand all sorts of forms as power: police forces thus exercise power just as less obvious institutions and individuals do.
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necessarily distributed equally). Hence power is everywhere: not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere [...]. However if power is exercised by everyone and thus omnipresent there is no Power, but power relationships (Foucault, 1996). In other words there is not one basic principle that rules society top down but there are rather a number of individuals and institutions whose exercises of power form a complex relational net. Hence from a Foucaultian perspective power cannot be possessed or traded like a commodity exercising power becomes a matter of ones position within the relational net.

Where does this relational net come from? Foucault calls this the mechanisms of power (Heller argues this corresponds to the notion of the Deleuzian diagram (Heller, 1996, p. 85)) explaining that the relational net is actually a product of structurally determined differentiations political, cultural, economic and so forth features of a society which themselves are again effects of power and may be modified by power: the exercise of power continually transforms a diagram's mechanisms of power, yet is only possible through the utilization of those same pre-existing mechanisms (Heller, 1996, p. 85).For Foucault thus power relations are both intentional and non-subjective. (Foucault, 1980): as every individual exercising power aims for something (even if she doesnt know what she does actually does) power-relations are intentional, however they are non-subjective since they do not lie in one individuals hand (subjective needs to be read here as what is concerning the subject) (cf. (Heller, 1996, p. 86)) Yet power is everywhere also implies that power has no essence such as bad, repression, torture or despotism. Of course Foucault recognizes that power can have to put it even simpler negative effects yet it equally has the potential for many effects one might consider positive. Power in Foucaults terms is in fact much closer to phenomena such as language5 and must also be understood as a productive network running through the whole social body, much more than as a negative (Foucault, 1980). In fact power produces [my emphasis, NL]; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual6 and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production (Foucault, 1991, p. 194) .

Also note that Judith Butlers philosophy principally argues that crucial parts if not all of our identity are being reproduced through language. 6 This might appear as a quite abstract thesis and might need some clarification: Conceptions of gender and sex may be grasped as being discursive, meaning that the very idea that human bodies can be divided into male and female that is into a binary system is not necessarily true yet rather a conception posited on individuals. However as it is such a powerful construction the individual needs to pick her side in order to become an individual in the first place.
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2.2 Power and Freedom Yet if power is omnipresent what does freedom mean? Is freedom even possible? The problem that lies at the center of this question is one of definition. If one defines freedom of the absolute absence of power then freedom in Foucaults conception is indeed impossible. This quite simplistic finding has evoked much criticism of Foucaults body of theory, arguing that it was essentially dystopian. Quite the opposite is true if one accepts a less totalitarian definition of freedom: individual or collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in which several ways of behaving ... may be realized7 (Foucault, 1991, p. 790). In this sense, freedom is a necessary precondition of power: Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free (Foucault, 1991, p. 790). One might equally state that power, as capacity to change others behavior, can only be exercised over those who have alternative possibilities. Again as it already is the case with power such a definition of freedom does not imply that every individual is equally free or that there arent different degrees of being free. 2.3 Violence Despite his neutral definition of power, Foucault is not oblivious towards the most repressive relations between individuals, these modes of interaction where there are no alternatives. Foucault terms this relationship violence: Where the determining factors are exhaustive, there is no relationship of power: slavery is not a power relationship when a man is in chains, only when he has some possible mobility, even a chance of escape (Foucault, 2000, p. 342). At this junction it is important to read carefully not slavery a priori is a power relationship but only when a man [or woman] is in chains, whereas chains should of course be read figuratively. 2.4 Resistance Just as freedom, resistance is an integral part to Foucaults theory. However, again all in line, with what I have presented so far, resistance in Foucaults work is not to be read as an action that is a priori good or bad. To put it in the simplest terms, resistance is just a name for specific kind of power (Heller, 1996, p. 100), namely that of counter-hegemonic subject-positions. What does Foucault mean by that? In order to answer that we need to go back to the aspect of productivity of power. More precisely the way in which power constructs knowledge8 (power\knowledge):

Foucaults conception of freedom is in fact radical, in the sense that it is thought up to the very end of its meaning and quite similar to the one Jean-Paul Sartre argued for: A power can be exercised over the other only insofar as the other still has the option of killing himself, of leaping out the window, or of killing the other person (Foucault, 2000, p. 292). 8 One needs to be careful as Foucaults usage of the ter ms is essentially different from its everyday use. For Foucault there is a plurality of knowledges
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Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its general politics of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true (Foucault, 1980) Discourses produce and at the same time articulate themselves upon truths. Simultaneously, and this is crucial to this particular section, they provide subject positions - positions that are made available by the different rules provided by the grid of power. A quite simple example is the conception of sexes one finds in the western cultures: There are apparently only two options either male or female, either vagina or penis. Although these options do not appear as discursive and penis and vagina, as two perfectly natural, distinct phenomena, a very superficial look at how modern medicine works shows that these binary opposed options are in fact only products of normalization and that there are in fact clear guidelines that define how small a penis can be and how large a vagina might be in order to classify as such. A further look at phenomena of intersexuality reveals that anatomical notions of male/female genitals are not perfectly natural but in fact discursive determined and produced by the discourse of modern medicine (Lee, et al., 2006). However, if subjects were only able to constitute themselves based upon the positions that are made available by Truth/Power there would be no room for change the mechanisms of power wouldnt have to develop further, as they would work perfectly well. And in fact, in order to return to the example I provided previously one finds subcultures where alternatives are available. Foucault meets this theoretic problematic in a two-fold way. First of all existing discourses are not necessarily unitary in the way that they provide the same subject-positions, which allows individuals to play them off against each other. The other possibility Foucault shows (and which is also crucial to the thinking of Judith Butler) is the emergence of counteror reverse-discourses: "There is no question that the appearance in nineteenth-century psychiatry, jurisprudence, and literature of a whole series of discourses on the species and subspecies of homosexuality, inversion, pederasty, and "psychic

hermaphrodism" made possible a strong advance of social controls into (the)

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area of "perversity"; but it also made possible the formation of a "reverse" discourse: Homosexuality began to speak on its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or "naturality" be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified. There is not, on the one side, a discourse of power, and opposite it, another discourse that runs counter to it. Discourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations; there can exist different and even contradictory discourses within the same strategy; they can, on the contrary, circulate without changing their form from one strategy to another, opposing strategy" (Foucault, 1978, pp. 101-102) 2.5 Counter-History
"Is there nothing more to history than the praise of Rome?" -Petrarch (Foucault, 2003, p. 74)

It is precisely at the hinge of Power\Knowledge that Foucault posits the concept of counterhistory. He does so by retracing the genealogy of what he calls race-wars9 arguing that what surfaced as a racist ideology in the 20th century in the form of, for instance, the Third Reich actually started as a counter-history10. This particular counter-history originally opposed the hegemonic historical knowledge which Foucault refers to as the traditional model: Mostly centered on the sovereign, this type of discourse primarily had the purpose to legitimize sovereignty through an impartial [seemingly neutral] retelling of past events (Stone, 2004 , p. 85): History was a ritual that reinforced sovereignty (Foucault, 2003, p. 68). This was achieved by three different functions and, as Foucault claims, was valid from antiquity up to the seventeenth century or even later: The genealogical axis sought to connect the present to a glorious past, legitimizing the present through the past, glorifying the present through the past. Therefore this kind of historical discourse relies on producing continuity. Great kings found, then, the right of the sovereigns who succeed them, and they transmit their luster to the pettiness of their successors. It is mostly realized in historical narratives about ancient kingdoms and great ancestors. (Foucault, 2003)

The actual historic accuracy of Foucaults depiction is in my opinion not beyond any doubt. However this does not affect the actual concept. 10 Again with Foucault it is extremely important to sustain a neutral notion of power, even if he is referring to what is to become one of the most catastrophic developments and mindsets in at least the western hemisphere.
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The memorialization function is best to be observed through the annals and chronicles that were kept day by day [], turning the slightest deed or action of a king into a dazzling action and an exploit as well as a sort of law for his subjects and an obligation for his successors. (Foucault, 2003)

The third function of a history that intensifies power is to put examples into circulation (Foucault, 2003, p. 67)

At the end of the sixteenth century, not just a mere contradiction but a new kind of discourse, the complete antithesis of the history of sovereignty (Foucault, 2003, p. 69) was born in the concrete form of the race-wars. It is opposed to the traditional model by primarily four characteristics: The principle of heterogeneity (Medina, 2011, p. 15): While classical, sovereign history focused on unity, the counter-history sought to produce the opposite. Introducing or according to Foucault reinterpreting the concept of race11 it produced heterogeneity or disunity (Medina, 2011, p. 15). It will be discovered, or at least asserted, that the history of the Saxons after their defeat at the Battle of Hastings is not the same as the history of the Normans who were the victors in that same battle. (Foucault, 2003, p. 70). The principle of discontinuity (Medina, 2011): Initially the rupture produced in unity expands also upon the temporal dimension, as unity could only be produced by omitting certain points in time, the latter is equally disturbed. This is a direct attempt to deconstruct12 the legitimizing construction of unity (cf. the genealogical axis, above), turning the sovereign power into a divisive light that illuminates one side of the social body but leaving the other side in shadow or cast it into darkness. (Foucault, 2003, p. 70)

The shift of perspective: While the traditional model was articulated from a neutral, universal perspective, race wars is always a perspectival discourse (Foucault, 2003, p. 52). This does not imply that the defenders of this particular discourse and others were pluralists or relativists, arguing that truth itself is
11

This is actually a quite complicated statement in Foucault, since he is moving in a quite undefined time. Furthermore his claims contradict those of scholars who specialized in the field of genealogy of race such as Colette Guillaumin (1995). 12 I am using the term explicitly not referring to Derrida

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generally a construction. Truth in these terms can be deployed only from its combat position, from the perspective of the sought for victory and ultimately, so to speak, of the survival of the speaking subject himself. (Foucault, 2003, p. 52). The biblical principal of defeat: Foucault explains how the race-wars discourse and the sovereign (traditional model) discourse fundamentally differ in their motives: The latter produces an image that attempts - simply put to produce glory and is thus based upon the antique, Roman tradition of doing history. Race-wars however follows another trope it uses techniques that one may retrace to the mythico-religious discourse of the Jews (Foucault, 2003, p. 72).This implies two aspects: On the one hand, Rather than telling of the untarnished and uneclipsed glory of the sovereign, the new discourse will endeavor to formulate the misfortune of ancestors, exiles, and servitude, on the other hand we see a new history that is articulated around the great biblical form of prophecy and promise. However this prophecy is facing backwards, as Foucault explains the new discourse will steer attention to the defeats to which we have to submit during our long wait for the promised land and the fulfillment of the old promises that will of course reestablish both the rights of old and the glory that has been lost13(It is in this context that Foucault stages Petrarchs voice, cited in the beginning of this section). 2.6 Preparing for a literary analysis While Foucault explicitly makes it clear that this is one form of counter-history he does not provide further examples other than the race-wars. However it is perfectly clear already from a nonacademic reading that DAguiars work is essentially different from the race-wars discourse; while the former makes use of a binary schema of them and us, the unjust and the just, the masters and those who must obey them (Foucault, 2003, p. 74) that for the first time in history was articulated with national phenomena such as language, country of origin, ancestral customs, the density of a common past [] (Foucault, 2003, pp. 109-110), The longest Memory does not omit but refutes such a logic. The aim of my analysis will thus be to show that DAguiars novel can be classified as a counter-history, by examining the four Foucaultian principles, yet that we are dealing here with a new type namely a pluralistic counter-history14.

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Note that this element will be reused by the national socialists when they revise the circumstances and reasons for the German defeat in World War I. Foucault presents a certainly interesting analyses. 14 I initially considered the term post-modernist counter-history (In analogy with Pichlers terminology), yet post modernity is too much of a blurry term to me that would require further explanations, clarifying on the actual definition of post-modernity I am arguing for.

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3. The principle of heterogeneity

Heterogeneity is an integral part of the longest memory and functions on various dimensions. I will subsequently provide a reading of heterogeneity in four distinct aspects of the novel. 3.1 Polyphone heterogeneity The first and most obvious aspect of heterogeneity one might find when reading The Longest Memory is its preoccupation with polyphony1516 (Ledent, 2007). The novel stages narratives by nine different voices (Whitechapel, Chapel, Cook, Great granddaughter, Sanders sr., Sanders Jr., Mr. Whitechapel, Lydia and the editor of the Virginian), who provide fragments all more or less immediately connected to the flogging and subsequent manslaughter of Chapel. These narratives are in so far independent of each other as they are not talking to each other as part of a dialog (cf. (Ledent, 1997) for a different opinion) or as they are not parts of a detective puzzle, which must be pieced together in order to receive a solution to a moral mystery17: Not only do these narratives stage the other voices as characters and construct partially mutually exclusive realities, the narrators apparently tell how they want and what they want (Although I consider this a rather obvious fact consider the differences between Chapel who narrates in the form of a poem, Sanders Senior whose voice is presented through his journal entries and Plantation owners, where the narrator, focalizing through the character of Mr. Whitechapel, addresses him as you yet appears to be a heterodiegetic narrator (who I would argue is Mr. Whitechapel observing himself from a more external perspective). Thus this particular polyphony is not only heterogeneous on the surface, simply arranging different voices side by side, but equally in its narrative modes and perspectives. Just like the Foucaultian example of the race wars this produces disunity, yet in a different way. The Longest Memory does not contrast one knowledge to an other in order to elevate the latter to the status of truth and dismiss the former; rather knowledges speak for themselves and advocate themselves. The absence of a frame narrator highlights this interpretation there is no instance that metaphorically speaking- visibly moderates the polyphony. The Longest

15

Although it seems to me that the term polyphony is being predominantly associated with Michael Bakhtin, it is actually far older in the field of literary studies (Wellek, 1980). While readers familiar with Bakhtin might initially draw parallels to his theories, I do not intend to immediately refer to his definition of the term, as it seems to me that there is at least one aspect of it that is essentially incompatible with my analyses. Omitting a direct reference is thus not the poor attempt to plagiarize but to be clear without introducing further theoretic discussions. However I will come back to this issue at the end of this section. 16 Polyphony is a metaphor borrowed from music; basically meaning an ensemble of autonomous yet orchestrated, so to speak, arranged voices. 17 Cf. section 5 of this paper

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Memory thus defies the binary logic of the race wars it is not about one narration against the other but about a multitude of positions in multiple relations and oppositions to each other. Furthermore, and this is probably even more important, there is no such thing as pureness of identities or position: Voices in the longest memory are never corresponding to one axis of power or - one could even say to one identity but are themselves composed of several properties (for instance Sanders Jr. who is white yet also member of the proletariat, Whitechapel who is a slave yet has obtained a privileged status amongst the others, Mr. Whitechapel who is a slaveholder yet also a Christian or humanist positions or identities are for the most part not unitary). However18 this does not mean that The Longest Memory, or any other work in this regard, is not serving an ideological position (Wellek, 1980, p. 32) or is anywhere near objective in the sense that it depicts reality. As already argued, polyphony means, also for Bakhtin, an ensemble of orchestrated voices: Voices have been chosen, arranged, tuned and so forth in order to produce a certain pre-composed tonal impression1920. It is a composition and not reality itself2122. So even polyphony, which is in a way always connected to a certain degree of heterogeneity is not a guarantor of objectivity - it may appear more objective but is not a priori more objective (cf. (Wellek, 1980)) and may equally give rise to racist, sexist etc. representations. Considering The Longest Memory, heterogeneity is not used to cunningly cover up racist, sexist etc. attitudes, rather such an ideology appears as homogeneity, underneath heterogeneity: In this sense it is striking that heteronormativity (implying of course binary conceptions of sex/gender) is omnipresent, suppressing even the slightest thematization of what are generally considered sexually deviant practices and identities. This is actually quite interesting in two regards: Firstly this is equally the case in another polyphonic The Longest Memory, namely Carl Phillips Crossing The River. Secondly, and I think more importantly, from a diachronic perspective there is a contrast (or aconnections depending on how one prefers to interpret this finding) to two
18 19

and this is where I come back to Bakhtin and explain why I refute his position, In fact one might already refute Bakhtins position from a purely theoretical point of view. Already language is in a way impossible of representing reality thinking this from the quite simplistic Saussaurian idea of Signified and Signifier, it is obvious, that all that language can do is refer to concepts, which themselves are not ontological truths but culturally dependent concepts, which already in ver y basic aspects such as colors, shape a persons understanding of her environment (cf. (Adger, 2002, p. 36)). 20 Even if the said voices were direct transcriptions of reality, the sole fact that they have been transposed from reality into a medium, of whatever kind, makes them a mere image of the real, but not the real thing itself. 21 Which I would argue would be altogether impossible, even if an author was determined to write down reality itself (cf ceci nest pas une pipe by Ren Magritte and The medium is the message (Mc Luhan, 1964)). 22 This of course does not mean that representations in whatever media may not have a huge impact on the way reality is perceived.

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representations of the race-wars discourse: Anglo-Saxon Historians of 19th century England as well as Afrocentric Scholars of 20th century USA are quite openly colonizing this matter in the concrete form of homosexuality for their own ends: While the former usually accused the Norman invaders of having brought homosexuality into the till-then Saxon society (cf. (Frantzen 2000, 243)), the latter argued homosexuality was an unnatural behavior brought by white oppressors (cf. (Quest 1997)). 3.2 Heterogeneity in power relations Heterogeneity defying a binary logic can equally be found in the power-relations staged in The Longest Memory. Although slavery, both in reality as well as in Fred DAguiars novel, is indeed a relation in which power is very unequally distributed, a simple master-slave dialectic cannot provide the appropriate means to understand what The Longest Memory actually displays. Power relations in DAguiars novel can be understood as to defy a binary logic in three different ways: Characters are all of course to different degrees - subjects as well as objects of power. Characters are not exclusively opposed to each other along a static frontier (black\white), but are embedded in a far more heterogeneous diagram that allows them to exercise power in various ways. Finally power is exercised in various ways, covering a whole range of different techniques. 3.2.1 Management of slaves on the Whitechapel plantation The Whitechapel farm constitutes the geographical nucleus of the plot and is thus of central interest to the investigation of power relations. On a very superficial level, it appears to be fundamentally different from what Sanders Sr. recognizes as proper slave management as well as from what Mr. Whitechapels slaveholder friends practice on their plantations. And indeed there are three domains that might be identified as fundamentally deviant, at least to the understanding of Sanders Sr.: First, Slaves apparently enjoy certain privileges, such as greater amount of food and higher quality sheltering. Second, punishment is standardized and bodiless: Punishment may not be exercised by [] feet or fists, instead [] only the whip or the stick (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 48) are allowed as appropriate and measurable instruments, even and this will be important - if this means increased pain for the slaves (They would have been better off getting my boot up their rumps instead of welts on their arms and legs (D'Aguiar 1995, 49). Third and probably

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most important, slaves are not commodities that resemble people, but rather Christian subjects that happen to be traded as commodities: Their management is best exemplified by an approach that treats them first and foremost as subjects of God, though blessed with lesser faculties, and therefore suited to the trade of slavery (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 32). Should this then be regarded as an abolitionist project, a sort of humanist slave-holder guerilla? I think, although Christianity does play a great role, probably over the extent of a mere instrument, humane treatment, in the 21st century sense of the word is not a sufficient or satisfying answer. This humanism stands in rough contrast to the actual atrocities it produced (Chapels murder, Cooks rape, Cooks death, the runaways murder as well as Mr. Whitechapels polemics towards Whitechapel). Instead, I claim, Mr. Whitechapels plantation is to be regarded as a means to a more efficient kind of slavery, namely a disciplined slavery23: This inhuman display parading as discipline is a regular occurrence in these so-called tightly run operations.[] Contrary to their argument, such rough handling provides rougher responses (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 32). Spectacular, bipolar manifestations of power, through violence do not necessarily force people into submission, it might as well, provoke equally strong sentiments of direct opposition and rebellion. In order to omit such rebellions, power needs to act more covertly and diversely. Providing a subject-position to slaves bound to certain privileges gives then rise to a sort of social contract that is worth to be defended defended from disobedient subjects that, put everybodys privileges on the line. Disobedience is consequently transformed from being the sole problem of the Plantation owner, to a problem for the whole social body, the disobedient slave is transformed from being the plantation owners enemy to being the enemy of the entire social body: The runaway is back [] he restored their privileges right away. There was celebration well into the night. The standardization of corporal punishment plays into that punishment is not the unpredictable, individual action of despotism, but calculable and thus reasonable. Furthermore and maybe more importantly, the shift away from punches and kicks towards instruments such as the stick and the whip impersonalizes the process of punishment it is not the man but the whip which is being hated ((cf.Walls are terrible but man is good (Foucault, Discipline and punish 1991, 239)). Installing a subject position for slaves equally allows the system to use them as means to control other populations such as the white plantation staff: Certain actions, such as the raping of slave women and girls become breaches of law that therefore become reportable.

Of course I am indirectly referring here to Foucaults famous work Discipline and Punish (Foucault, 1991) where he explains the transformation of society from the ancient rgime to what he calls the modern, disciplined society. However due to the fact that this reference is rather a mere intellectual end in itself, I will not go further into details.
23

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Particularly rape, which in case of a heterosexual rape, always bears the thread of impregnating women and thus giving birth to individuals that are both white and black, represents a huge danger to the nonetheless constitutive racist dichotomy of black and white that must be prevented. (The stories of those indiscretions always have sad if not disastrous outcomes. (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 110)). Another example of enhanced efficiency is the old slave who is transformed to a sign of the human face of the plantation, and thus a pacifier for potential rebellions: This type of old slave is an asset to the end of his days. He is a living example to the young, of the slave who can work hard and live to a ripe old age. Keep your old slaves around the plantation and see if that does not alter the general air of good cheer for the better. (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 109). The rough architecture I have just outlined already illustrates that power is not conceivable as a binary opposition. Rather, it makes use of a cunningly organized, net-like structure (cf. Foucaults understanding of power above) that makes subjects docile and more productive by placing them into multiple oppositions that serve the purpose of keeping the plantation smoothly running. For this end the plantation does not completely abandon violence, but uses it more economically. The Whitechapel plantation is thus not a humanist version of slavery (cynicism intended!) but a new paradigm that happens to be (undoubtedly) less violent for the sake of efficiency24. 3.2.2 Power and Resistance Similar to the architecture of Power I have just outlined, Resistance in The longest Memory is occupied with heterogeneity. I have previously argued that resistance for Foucault is actually just one particular form of exercising power. However in order to analyze this more into detail, a more fine-grained distinction appears to be necessary:

As a first intuitive, distinctive feature the position of an action in relation to power (is the action legal or illegal?) or rather the law seems operable. However this differentiation is not sufficient actions that oppose the law of the Whitechapel plantation include Chapels escape as well as Cooks occasional stealing from the masters pot. On the other hand Whitechapels operationalization of the rumors as well as the treason of his son are both also to be found under a common category. In order to completely grasp the various forms of

24

In fact one can observe that Mr. Whitechapel is actually quite ambiguous about his motives: When he speaks to Sanders Jr. and his deputy he defends, in opposition to the practices of his acquaintances, a view equivalent to the one just outlined (D'Aguiar, 1995, S. 31), yet vis--vis of his friends (D'Aguiar, 1995, S. 66) he pretends to base his acts upon a purely Christian framework, highlighting his good intentions. This apparent ambiguity, I cliam is yet but a psychological effect: Mr. Whitechapel by moving into opposition to the other slave-holders attempts to create the illusion of being humanist. This is then, I argue, the intended meaning when he says: My friends are my physicians, though they do not realize it. They are t here to heal me.

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resistance one needs to take into account the role of secrecy or covertness and publicness or overtness25. Finally and - I think this is a crucial aspect of resistance - one needs to take into consideration its motivational framework. What I mean by that is whether an action is based upon ignorance or acceptance of the social realities it is acting against or respectively for. The first action of resistance I would like to discuss in greater detail is Chapels escape. Unlike most other forms of resistances in the novel it is both direct in so far as it opposes Mr. Whitechapels right to own Chapels body and overt considering that his absence will not remain unnoticed26. Finally, analyzing its legitimization, it is obvious that Chapel draws upon a framework which is itself completely outside of that of his contemporaries: Then he adds, without hesitation to draw a breath, that his love for me is such that no one, not his father, not my father, not the threat of the overseers whip, nor his mother can stop him doing what is necessary for us to be together (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 98). Chapels escape is in the original sense of the word radical, as it attacks the law where it has substantially gone wrong at its root the moment where people are turned into objects. Chapels escape is contrasted by actions that oppose the law directly yet remain hidden or unnoticed. Examples of these kinds of practices are Cook occasionally stealing from the masters pot or Chapel and Lydia meeting secretly. Moreover both practices have in common that they do not essentially challenge the truth of the law, rather they break it occasionally for temporary victories. Lydia and Chapel illustrate this very well, as they even construct a quite cunning legitimization directly derived from Lydias fathers prohibition to never see the light of day together (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 88). To do so they make use of a particular technique interpretation. Mr. Whitechapels prohibition uses figurative speech to pronounce his meaning, probably unaware that he is thus leaving open a space of interpretation which Chapel and Lydia claim and use to their end - they meet at nights omitting to see each other by sitting back to back. They employ a quite similar tactic faced by the prohibition to read and write interpreting reading not as a consumption of literature, but as the mere process of deciphering graphemes, they resort to reciting whole literary works. Both of these interpretations or one might even say readings cunningly mobilize logics against the fathers law. Yet one should be quite clear that this tactic of interpretation is not aimed at calling into question the rightfulness or even truth of the prohibition/law, neither does it oppose higher principals such as the racism that has helped

In fact De Certaus concept of tactics and strategies initially seemed promising to me. However, as we will see, the concept fails to recognize the power of certain actions displayed in the novel, which is why I decided to not make use of it. 26 Of course one might argue that there is still room for a similar action to be even more public, for instance by staging the leaving of the plantation publically. However this is actually quite difficult to realize, as such an action would certainly not result in an escape but in failure.
25

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built the system in the first place. Rather, this example illustrates that Lydia, as well as Chapel are acting and arguing from within the system of power, from their subject-positions. From this perspective interpreting the fathers prohibition is not so much an answer to an outside power, but a justification for the proper transgression of the law: He says he cannot disobey my father. He gave him his word (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 90). A different approach that is equally represented in The longest Memory are those acts of resistance that do not directly oppose the law, but at least function with its toleration. However one should not mistake the absence of direct opposition for a lack of subversion or a secure investment. Often these actions are only possible through meticulous calculations that rely on profiting from potential oppositions between at least two different axes of power. A prime example for these sort of acts of resistances is Whitechapel: Although being but a slave he succeeds to produce such pressure on Sanders Sr. that he is not only allowed to immediately marry Cook, but also to receive an excuse (and thus to ascend to the status of an inflicted party (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 47)) and receive some very moderate yet symbolically very precious reparation (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 52). Moreover Whitechapel succeeds in restricting Sanders Sr.s sexuality, when Mr. Whitechapel forces him to marry the hag (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 51). The technique Whitechapel relies on in this case is strongly associated with his gender role that allows him to refer to a certain moral code that in turn allows him to (pretend to) demand (Whitechapel it seems wants to give her up (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 47)) for annulation of the marriage with Cook. Such however would threaten to reveal the circumstances of Cooks impregnation thus disturbing the whole moral codex of the plantation and results in Mr. Whitechapel intervening against Sanders Sr. (of course Mr. Whitechapel, profits of this situation as it legitimizes him to further control and to financially exploit Sanders Sr.). Because of these particular power relations between employee and employer Whitechapel can very effectively manipulate the situation to his own ends and against Sanders. His operationalization (or invention altogether the text does not provide any further evidence) of the rumors (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 53) or his medical advice (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 51) represent other legal actions he uses to exercise further influence on the situation27. Roughly the same analysis is also true for Lydia who also draws back on her gender role to oppose the will of her parents. By systematically rejecting potential spouses who occasionally come to visit her, she may expose herself to Mr. Whitechapels suspicion, yet

One should notice that Whitechapels clever manoeuvers even permit him to perform acts of superiority vis -vis of Sanders Sr. : I am a married man again. Whitechapel came to the house to congratulate me and wis h me Gods blessing of a few girl children. I practiced his smile on him but I could feel my lips trembling. Was he laughing at me? (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 53)
27

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simultaneously lays the pretext to demand to travel to the North28. This equally enables her to persecute her goal in complete public. Finally she overcomes her mothers resistance, who is applying a quite similar, gender related tactic by pointing out that this is an affair concerning her only daughter and that she wont accept her to be sent to a strange city where the families are not known to us to risk her honor and the family name (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 100) by giving in. However, and this is the cunning aspect of Lydias tactic in this particular moment, she does not give in to her mothers demand to stay in the South altogether, but to a claim she has never even pronounced that is to accompany her daughter29. Concerning Lydias and also Whitechapels argumentative position in the discourse, it initially seems quite difficult to determine the position from which they resist. For Whitechapel I believe the answer to this question can be found in the circumstances of his sons death. Applying this reading on what seems to be an act of treason permits to perceive it as nothing else but a meticulously calculated ruse that aims at educating his son through punishment performed by others and omitting a too harsh punishment: Maybe I am wrong, to tell the master that my son is gone and say I want him back under my guidance and protection. (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 136). Whitechapels position is then outside of the discourse yet is limited by a practical approach which stems from recognizing the reality of the social constructs determining everybodys lives : What I can say can never be enough for you. I want to keep you alive, that is all. I do not care about your happiness; your live is everything to me. (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 135). In the Lydias case the situation is clearer due to her project of escaping to the North. In order to envision such a project she must have abandoned all her beliefs in predominant, contemporary axioms such as slavery and patriarchy. Thus her resistance is not just a means to temporarily gain some advantage but remain within the system, rather she seeks to fundamentally change the situation in which she and Chapel are situated. Although there are many more examples of resistance in The Longest Memory and a further analysis would certainly be interesting, I fear I have already gone beyond the primary objective resistance is, similarly to narrative structure and power relations, also heterogeneous covering a wide range of different actions.

28 29

The fact that she has quite probably not foreseen this is not significant for the point I am about to make. This can actually be seen as a reverted version of Schopenhauers Kunstgriffe, 1,2 and 3, a collection of rhetoric tricks, designed to win a debate solely by rhetoric means.

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3.2.3 Dreams of Transgression The last aspect I will focus on in terms of heterogeneity may be but a detail of DAguiars novel yet a detail that bears a strong argument against dichotomies. DAguiars novel, such as any work referring to slavery is inevitably linked to the fatal racist dichotomy of black and white. That this is neither a persistent biological nor social construct could at no point in history be completely hidden. Cases such as Sally Miller or phenomena such as Irish immigrants being classified as non-whites showcase this essential problem and prove that race is NOT just a matter of complexion. The novel attacks this dichotomy accordingly through the staging of dreams of transgression. The most obvious example is Lydia: Chapel I wish you were white or I black (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 96). But also more morally challenging characters such as Sanders Jr. (He [my father] lacked your courage, Whitechapel. If you were white I would have wanted you as my father (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 134)) and Mr. Whitechapel (He [my father] bellows at this and takes both my hands and says he is proud of my wit and intelligence and were I not his daughter and his youngest he would put me in charge of his affairs) express similar feelings. These dreams or rather desires do not attack dichotomies just by being formulated; I argue this is not about a white person liking a black person despite her being black and vice versa, not just another narrative version of Ebony and Ivory I claim this is a far more realistic and powerful critique. In analogy to my previous polemical comparison, dreams of transgression are rather about what Ebony and Ivory do to people; it is through their character of unattainability, that these dreams become powerful instruments of critique: Lydia, who is, according to her father, the most capable of his children cannot become his successor not because he doesnt want her to fill that role, but because of a framework that he feels is outside of his powers (this ties in well with the notion of the Foucaultian diagram I have presented). On the other hand, and this is where I argue the powerful moment of these desires is actually produced, they would be physically realizable and lie in close range of the characters30.

4 Discontinuity
More than heterogeneity discontinuity is not so much a property of the history Foucault describes as race-wars, as one of its effects: the history of the Saxons and Normans is not discontinuous in itself but produces discontinuities by challenging the hegemonic discourse, highlighting events in history that have been omitted so far. In analogy one might argue that the longest memory equally produces discontinuity by presenting pluralistic perspectives, disturbing hegemonic discourse that understands history as unitary.
30

This is equally expressed by Whitechapel, when he speaks of the whip, as an agent, whose actions are motivated by an independent, yet primitive logic (D'Aguiar, 1995, pp. 51, 5).

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However, I claim, discontinuity, similarly as heterogeneity, plays a far more profound role in the novel, giving rise to what I would like to call 4. Polyphone discontinuity The first aspect of discontinuity that I deem to be of higher importance to The Longest Memory is closely related to the notion of polyphony previously outlined. It surfaces through obvious anachronisms in the presentation of the plot simply put if one reads The Longest Memory from beginning to end the plot is not constructed synchronously to the reading process not even in an opposite way. Rather the plot is being developed freely, adding details seemingly at random. However these anachronisms are not just a sophisticated narrative, postmodernist trick to impress (or annoy readers), rather it is the result of a specific logic. Whereas classic novels, as for instance Carmen by Prospre Mrim, are constituted by what I would call a logic of the plot, The Longest Memory seems to follow a logic centered upon voices. The narrative is thus not centered upon a single concept but on a multitude, which is, as I think, the main difference between its discontinuity31 and that of the race-wars discourse: We may think of the race-wars discourse, as well as of the discourse of the sovereign, as total histories .A total description, that draws all phenomena around a single center, that seeks to reconstitute the overall form of a civilization, the principle material or spiritual of a society32 (Foucault, 2002, pp. 10-11) - whereas The Longest Memory from this perspective can be assigned the label of a general (hi)story a display of facts that is discontinuous at its core by presenting different objects (voices in this case) and possible types of relation (Foucault, 2002, p. 11 my accentuation NL) (the notion of power I have analyzed in the previous section can be seen as one of these possible, heterogeneous relations).

5 The Shift of Perspective

Polyphony also plays a major role considering the aspect of perspective. Comparing the longest memory to the perspectives Foucault describes for the sovereign discourse and the

31

In fact I might be a bit too imprecise here: for Foucault there is in fact a decisive difference in totality between these two discourses, which is yet not of greater importance to my argument and is thus to be found in the footnotes: It is true that this discourse about the general war, this discourse that tries to interpret the war beneath peace, is indeed an attempt to describe the battle as a whole and to reconstruct the general course of the war. But that does not make it a totalizing or neutral discourse; it is always a perspectival discourse. It is interested in the totality only to the extent that it can see it in one-sided terms, distort it and see it from its own point of view. The truth is, in other words, a truth that can be deployed only from its combat position, from the perspective of the sought for victory and ultimately, so to speak, of the survival of the speaking subject himself. (Foucault, 2003, p. 52) 32 Here of course Foucault notices a shift, away from conceptions of history that have evolved from for instance readings of Hegel.

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race-wars discourse, it is quite obvious that DAguiars novel can neither be assigned the label of the neutral perspective nor the perspectival perspective: More precisely there is no narrator that, from a superior position, could be neutral or perspectival, as I have previously argued that there is not even a totalizing principle that both of these perspectives rely on. Simultaneously, The Longest Memory is not completely detached from the presented perspectives: In fact it is perspectival in so far as we deal with a multitude of perspectives who overtly present their perspectives, who argue for something - and indeed it is neutral as the perspectives are left uncommented or rather unnarrated by a superior narrator, that embraces them, puts them into a chronological order and stages them in a story. In my opinion it would thus be nave to say that The Longest Memory does not impose a perspective on its readers. Or argued from another more practical standpoint although we might not encounter a narrator or narrating instance of any sort in The Longest Memory, it does narrate, or say something which goes beyond the single utterances of its voices33; although it does not stage a plot, it has a plot, (as can be seen on Amazon.com), although the novel does not stage a perspective, it shows its characters, and not in their totality34, but necessarily from a perspective, as can be seen from the mere fact that it stages necessarily chosen voices, who narrate prechosen things. But while this sort of reasoning can be helpful to claim that there is a perspective at work, it does only provide very limited means to determine that necessarily present perspective. My approach then builds upon the formerly expressed notion of the plot: While I have argued that the plot is not present or rather directly developed by the novel itself, at least not insofar as a voice is addressing the reader to communicate a plot, the longest memory inevitably has a plot, namely the plot that is being produced by the reader35. Given the very structure of the novel the reader has to decide how to prioritize each voice and its narration, how to set it into relation with others in order to combine them to a coherent plot36. This is a step by step process whose outcome also simultaneously influences the way in which the following pieces will be attached to the so far constructed plot. The plot thus becomes

Consider Welleck (1980, pp. 89-90) who writes in a slightly different context: Bakhtin quotes Chernyshevskij with apparent approval: "Othello says 'yes,' Iago 'no.' Shakespeare says nothing . But Shakespeare said "no" to Iago very clearly. 34 Which would, one could argue equally require a perspective. 35 Of course the following argument is completely based upon how a person reads, which itself depends on cognitive as well as cultural aspects. Lacking the required space to base my reading into a more theoretically sophisticated context I will not even attempt to hide that my reading is thus very subjective and indeed but a lose interpretation. 36 One might accuse me of paradox arguments with regard to my claim in Polyphone heterogeneity. What I meant there however is a different issue altogether: The longest Memory does not impose on its readers to piece together the plot insofar as doing so is not the solution to a mystery or riddle. Moreover and this is completely consistent to my argument in the present section the plot itself is subject to the interpretation of the reader there is not one possible so to speak mathematic solution.
33

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a product of the reading process, highlighting the very nature of the production of truth it is the silencing of voices at the expense of others. In how far does that interpretation help concerning the question for perspective? I claim that this particular reading process in fact represents the perspective of the historian, who constructs his narrative from a given set of documents or sources (in this case voices), examining as well as sorting and finally putting into multiple relations (see above) the various agents and events she identifies. This perspective is then heterogeneous in two aspects: Firstly it may vary from reader to reader and secondly it forces readers face the multitude that it presents.

6 The Biblical Principle

Just as the former principles also the biblical principle can undoubtedly be identified in The Longest Memory. Yet again it surfaces embedded in different ways. Concerning the notion of defeat, the most striking transformation is that the novel stages various defeats: The defeat of Mr. Whitechapels humanism (But you cannot live with shame (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 66)), the defeat of Whitechapels meticulously calculated attempt to save his son, the defeat of Lydias and Chapels escape plan and most tragically Whitechapels and Chapels death. Defeat thus becomes a general feature of the story itself, without being juxtaposed by the glory of an opponent (as it would for instance be the case with the Battle of Hastings). The notion of prophecy is closely related to this finding. Of course some sort of an outlook to the future, promising the abolishment of slavery (Nor can the master hope to rule the day and the night along with it forever (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 137)) can be identified. Yet this is not the promise of a total reversal of the situation: in its more concrete manifestations, it is rather outlined as a capitalist society, that may put an end to slavery but not to the reasoning that made it possible in the first place: Miss L. wondered if it would not be more profitable to pay blacks for their work instead of keeping them as slaves and having to provide for all their needs in exchange for their labor. Neither does the prophecy promise dissolution of multiplicity: A complete day needs both light and dark. The day cannot be broken in two to leave each half to itself (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 137). Another important distinction in relation to the Prophecy presented in the race-wars discourse is its relation to the past: The prophecy expressed in the longest memory is not turned backwards, in the sense that it promises the return to or of a glorious past. Rather the past becomes something which certainly influences and possibly threatens progression: The future is just more of the past waiting to happen. Finally and this might actually be a crucial modification, The Longest Memory closes 22 | P a g e

with a small but considerable notion of victory, though of course one that comes with great sacrifice. Chapel dead, the whip buried at least on the White-chapel plantation with him (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 77).

7. Conclusion
My reading has shown that Fred DAguiars The longest Memory certainly qualifies as a counter-history. It shows its three distinctive features Heterogeneity, discontinuity, the biblical principle and the shift of perspective yet transforms them and thus moves away from the dichotomist heritage of its discursive predecessor replacing them throughout by pluralist conceptions. Moreover I have shown that the novels preoccupation with these three aspects is not exclusive or restricted to one particular level but is actually observable in various regards, reaching from narratologist, structure related levels to content related aspects. From this perspective it clearly breaks with a literature of revenge written by the descendants of slaves and a literature of remorse written by the descendants of masters (Walcott, 1996); reaching out for something more namely for a general conception of slavery (in the sense of a general history), that tries to face not to dissolve - what began as a single thread and has over the generations, woven itself into a prodigious carpet that cannot be unwoven (D'Aguiar 1995, 33). Yet this multiplicity is not a relativist idea, attempting to morally cover slave holders by equating their postion with the position slaves found themselves in. The longest Memory stages a quite precisely formulated, critical and uncompromising vision of modern US American slavery and its mechanics, that penetrate even the most intimate relationships between individuals and alienate them from each other (which is ultimately embodied by Whitechapels treason). The actual constitution of the Whitechapel plantation plays into that: Instead of placing its characters into the midst of a system which draws its power from the use and display of the most degrading forms of violence, The Longest Memory chooses a rather humanist form of slavery. I claim this is precisely the opposite of what the Slovenian philosopher Slavoy iek exemplifies in a dirty joke as the laughter at the systems dirty balls (cf. (iek, The Plague of Fantasies 1997, 46) and (iek, Slavoj iek - What does it mean to be a revolutionary today? Marxism 2009 2009)). Quite contrarily The Longest Memory sets out to display and disassemble slavery in its weakest representation, (one step, so to speak, before negroes were transformed into blacks and subsequently into Afro-Americans) and reveals its evil design even in what might be commonly seen as a humane form of slavery. Simultaneously this representation along with the prophecy of a capitalist abolition allows for a subliminal yet critical blow at contemporary conceptions of liberty and slavery. 23 | P a g e

However this analysis has also provided evidence for elements within the novel that seem to contradict the novels pluralistic project by strictly homogenous representations, such as homogeneity. This homogeneous representation of sexual practices practically writes sexually deviant practices and identities out of existence37 Nonetheless if race-wars was the answer to Petrarchs question Is there nothing more to history than the praise of Rome? (Foucault, 2003, p. 74), I believe one can say that in The longest Memory one can see the beginning of an answer to Foucaults implicit question Is there nothing more to (hi)story than the praise of dichotomies?

37

There is actually one jocular mentioning of homosexuality in the novel (D'Aguiar, 1995, p. 75).

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8. Bibliography
Adger, D., 2002. Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach Core Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. D'Aguiar, F., 1995. The longest memory. London: Vintage. Foucault, M., 1978. The history of sexuality - Volume I: an introduction. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M., 1980. The Eye of Power. In: Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. New York: Harvester, p. 159. Foucault, M., 1980. Truth and Power. In: Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, p. 119. Foucault, M., 1982. The subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), pp. 777-795. Foucault, M., 1984. Truth and Power. In: The Foulcault Reader: An introduction to Foulcaults thought. London: Random House, pp. 51-76. Foucault, M., 1991. Discipline and punish. London: Penguine. Foucault, M., 1994. Prisons et asiles dans le mcansime du pouvoir. In: Dits et Ecrits. Paris: Gallimard, pp. 523-524. Foucault, M., 1996. Clarifications on the question of power. In: Foucault Live: Interviews, 1961-84. New York: Semiotext(e), pp. 179-193. Foucault, M., 2000. Different Spaces. In: Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology. Essential works of Michel Foucault.. London: Allen Lane, pp. 175-185. Foucault, M., 2000. The ethics of the concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom. In: Ethics: Essential works of Michel Foucault, 1954-1984 volume 1. London: Allen Lane, pp. 281-301.

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Walcott, D., 1996. The Muse of History. In: The Routledge Reader in Carrabean Literature. New York: Routledge, p. 282. Wellek, R., 1980. Bakhtin's view of Dostoevsky: "Polyphony" and "Carnivalesque". Dostoevsky Studies: Journal of the International Dostoevsky Society, Volume 1, pp. 31-39. iek, S., 1997. The Plague of Fantasies. London: Verso. iek, S., 2009. Slavoj iek - What does it mean to be a revolutionary today? Marxism 2009. [Online] Available [Accessed 13 10 2012]. at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GD69Cc20rw

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9 Eidesstattliche Verischerung

EIDESSTATTLICHE ERKLRUNG

Hiermit versichere ich, dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit selbststndig und nur unter Zuhilfenahme der angegebenen Quellen verfasst habe.

............................................................................................... Seligenstadt, 19.10.2011

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