• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.1123-1137
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• 2009

Revisiting the horror of slave mutiny in nineteenth century America via Julia Kristeva's concept of abject, this essay examines abject fear in Amasa Delano and Babo's subversive act to deceive Delano in Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno." Babo, the slave, exercises subversive power, thereby reversing racial hierarchy aboard the slave ship-the San Dominick. Babo's ability to mimic and control racial stereotypes exposes how nineteenth-century racial hierarchy was only a social fiction, which becomes the very source of Delano's fear. Delano's dread belies upon the possible disruption of social order triggered by Babo'sblack rebellion. In order to repress his fear, Delano consciously and unconsciously attempts to re-inscribe white dominion and reaffirm black inferiority and stereotypes by means of rationalizing the disturbing signs he witnesses on the San Dominick. When Delano discovers the realsituation of the ship, he must relinquish the abject resonance that disturbs the previous racial order. Employing a legal document, Delano re-inscribes the official position of the blacks as slaves, defining them as violent savages, and thereby silences Babo. However, Melville's text is not a testament to white power. "Benito Cereno" actually endorses abject instability to challenge racial hierarchies through the poignant image of Babo's dead gaze in the last scene of the novella. Thus, "Benito Cereno" exemplifies the recurring power of abject as a threat to social hierarchy and as a constant reminder of the falsity and insecurity of a social order.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.65-102
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• 2018

This paper focuses on "The Story of $Bras-Coup{\acute{e}}$" in George Washington Cable's The Grandissimes (1880), a story to and around which Cable claimed the larger work was built. It tells of an African candio sold into slavery who, to the dismay of his white purchasers, refuses to work, strikes his master, and runs away to lead a life of a fugitive in the swamps. He is finally captured, whipped, and maimed, but not before he casts a powerful voodoo curse at his master and his plantation. He dies a heroic death, with the last words that he goes "To--Africa." Cable once said that he "meant The Grandissimes as truly a political work as it ever has been called." It is a political work in that $Bras-Coup{\acute{e}}^{\prime}s$ personal rebellion is associated with much-feared slave revolts, especially the black revolution in San Domingue/Haiti. There is also $Honor{\acute{e}}$ f.m.c. (free man of color), one of the narrators of "The Story of $Bras-Coup{\acute{e}}$" and a stand-in for the Freedmen in the postbellum United States, who nurses his own insurrectionary flame. Through these figures Cable makes a "terrible suggestion" that a black revolution is on the horizon unless whites would not mend their ways soon.