ABSTRACT

This article presents a comparative analysis of works of Caribbean art and literature that engage in a mutual project of addressing the paradox of the colonial archive. Trinidadian-Canadian writer M. NourbeSe Philip crafted her long poem Zong! from an eighteenth-century legal document about the murder of 132 enslaved Africans onboard the slave ship of the same name. Exposing the dehumanizing language of historical record from which she nonetheless extracts affective and poetic scraps of human experience, Philip shows the power and necessity of artistic intervention in the colonial archive. The similarities between Philip’s literary strategies and Belle’s artistic interventions in the archive of the Danish (now U.S.) Virgin Islands are striking, and the two illuminate one another. Focusing on Belle’s series entitled Chaney (We Live in the Fragments), the analysis delves into her work with “chaney,” a Creole term for the colonial-era shards of china that wash out of the soil of the Virgin Islands as a reminder of the centuries-long Danish presence there. Belle’s art is both counter-archival and counter-canonical in her direct address to the national Danish institution of the Kongelige Porcelainsfabrik, or Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Factory. Both the poem and the artwork focus on the aesthetic of the fragment, whether in terms of the fragmented nature of the colonial archive with its many blind spots, the fragments of lost narrative that Philip scatters across the page, or the fragments of pottery that Belle transforms into paintings and ceramics that evoke the disjointed nature of Caribbean identity. Framing Zong! and Chaney with the notion of “comparative relativism,” the article draws on literary and art historical methodologies to reveal an important transdisciplinary approach to Caribbean archives and to the creation of cultural memory.

摘要

本文对参与解决殖民档案悖论的共同项目的加勒比艺术和文学作品进行了比较分析。特立尼达-加拿大作家 M. NourbeSe Philip 创作了她的长诗Zong！来自 18 世纪的法律文件，该文件涉及在同名奴隶船上谋杀 132 名被奴役的非洲人。菲利普揭露了历史记录的非人性语言，但她从中提取了人类经验的情感和诗意片段，展示了艺术干预殖民档案的力量和必要性。菲利普的文学策略与贝儿对丹麦（现为美国）维尔京群岛档案的艺术干预之间的相似之处是惊人的，两者相互辉映。关注 Belle 的名为Chaney (We Live in the Fragments) 的系列，分析深入研究了她与“chaney”的作品，这是一个克里奥尔语，指的是从维尔京群岛的土壤中冲刷出来的殖民时代瓷器碎片，提醒人们丹麦在那里的存在已达数百年之久。Belle 的艺术既反档案又反规范，她直接向丹麦国家机构 Kongelige Porcelainsfabrik 或皇家哥本哈根瓷器厂发表讲话。诗歌和艺术作品都着眼于碎片的美学，无论是殖民地档案的碎片化性质及其许多盲点，菲利普散布在页面上的失落叙事碎片，还是贝勒的陶器碎片。转变为绘画和陶瓷，唤起了加勒比身份的脱节性质。陷害宗！和钱尼 文章以“比较相对主义”为概念，借鉴文学和艺术史的方法论，揭示了加勒比档案和文化记忆创造的重要跨学科方法。