Specters of the Atlantic

Baucom, Ian

doi:10.1215/00382876-100-1-61

Cited by 78 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…He evokes an ocean that is truly global, even singular, but only thinkable through these traces of extreme violence and loss: “the entire ocean, the entire sea gently collapsing in the end into the pleasures of sand, make one vast beginning, but a beginning whose time is marked by these balls and chains gone green” (Glissant , p.6). Indeed, Baucom points out the degree to which the drowned slave body, with, we might add, its potential or realised material traces, “has come to function in black Atlantic narrative, aesthetic, and commemorative practices much as the entombed body of the unknown soldier functions in Benedict Anderson's account of nationalism” (, p.68).…”

Section: Marine Cultural Heritage and Frontiers Of Ocean Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marine cultural heritage: frontier or centre?

Lehman¹

2018

Int Social Sci J

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Marine cultural heritage is an area of emerging international interest among different sectors of society. Drawing together a diverse set of literatures on marine cultural heritage, maritime archaeology, the development of the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, and ocean politics more broadly, this paper examines the ways in which marine cultural heritage might be understood as a frontier in terms not only of spatial territory, but also for knowledge, governance, and politics. As such, marine cultural heritage may bring the disciplinary practices of maritime archaeology into contact with more radical marine politics of postcolonial, subaltern, and Black scholarship. This analysis thus suggests stakes of marine cultural heritage for different communities, reaching far beyond the sites and objects themselves, and shows why marine cultural heritage is emerging as an urgent and dynamic concern at the present moment. Yet ultimately, whether or not marine cultural heritage is truly a frontier is a question that has different meanings depending on the perspective from which it is asked. These differing perspectives illuminate the changing meaning of ocean space as well as struggles over material and immaterial marine resources, and suggest that the frontier is itself a contested concept.

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Section: Marine Cultural Heritage and Frontiers Of Ocean Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marine cultural heritage: frontier or centre?

Lehman¹

2018

Int Social Sci J

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“…Here too, as Ian Baucom notes, "[w]e stand as spectators before it, not as witnesses in it." 31 After the prologue, the tone and perspective shift as the narrative focalizes on the crew of the Zong. Starting in medias res, as the captain is pondering how to expose to the sailors his plan to throw the sick but living cargo overboard in order to secure profit from the voyage, the first chapter introduces the Africans in terms reminiscent not only of the rhetoric and iconography of "Description of a Slave Ship" but also of Patterson's definition of slavery as social death.…”

Section: Taken Alive and Treated Like Deadmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Voyage through death/to life upon these shores”: the living dead of the Middle Passage

Chassot¹

2015

Atlantic Studies

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“…The placement of this figure in the context of a map made to translate the economic value of the colonial landscape resonates with Ian Baucom's contention that the commodification of black bodies was integral to the establishment of financial insurance capital. 27 The humanity of the woman and child is undermined by Oxholm's insistence on the enslaved body's role in the reproduction of slavery as not-yet-fully capitalised promise of profits.…”

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confidence: 99%

Cutting the Contact Zone: Race, Temporality and History in Peter Lotharius Oxholm’s Map of St. Croix (1799)

2019

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I n 1778, a 25-year-old lieutenant named Peter Lotharius Oxholm arrived on the Caribbean island of St. Croix. He was tasked with surveying the Danish-Norwegian West Indies, as well as proposing the improvement of their fortifications. 1 The survey of the three islands proved so difficult and laborious, however, that Oxholm nearly gave up, noting that '[t]hese islands are nothing but mountains and cliffs, where it is almost impossible to survey or prepare a geographic large scale map before one has first cut lines and ways through the bush to get on'. 2 'One' here notably refers mostly to enslaved workers that accompanied Oxholm, six of whom were required for the survey of St Croix. Suggested is also the centrality of enslaved knowledge in the mapmaking process, as he further informs us that the enslaved used the 'necessary instruments' [triangulation] to complete the task. 3 Following the completion of the survey, Oxholm eventually drew a large-scale map of St Croix which was engraved and printed in 1799. This essay focuses on the accompanying figurative cartouche that identifies the map (figure 1). I argue that the cartouche is a material manifestation of the ideology of slavery as an opposition between black and white. Reading the cartouche and Oxholm's writing on sugar production against the grain, I also propose that it reveals an anxiety about the economic and social instability of slave society. The cartouche comprises a sign displaying the title 'St Croix', represented as a sheet hung over two hollowed poles jutting out from each side, suggesting a cross. The sign is positioned in a landscape firmly marked as a West Indian plantation society, both an imaginary and a 'real' site of labour. In front of the sign, on either side, are black figures. On the right is a seated woman holding two children. The woman's head is in profile and all look up in the same direction. To the right of this group is a small tent-like structure, within which are two low containers or mattresses, conceivably containing infants.

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Specters of the Atlantic

Cited by 78 publications

References 9 publications

Marine cultural heritage: frontier or centre?

Marine cultural heritage: frontier or centre?

“Voyage through death/to life upon these shores”: the living dead of the Middle Passage

Cutting the Contact Zone: Race, Temporality and History in Peter Lotharius Oxholm’s Map of St. Croix (1799)

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