Stolen Life’s Poetic Revolt
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Author | Louiza Odysseos |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829819860199 |
| Subject Matter | Opening Address |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829819860199
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2019, Vol. 47(3) 341 –372
© The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0305829819860199
journals.sagepub.com/home/mil
Stolen Life’s Poetic Revolt
Louiza Odysseos
University of Sussex, UK
Abstract
Joining the discussion of revolution and resistance in world politics, this article puts forward the
idea of poetic revolt as a necessary companion to these terms, one which centres attention on
the ongoing reverberations of transatlantic slavery – what have been called its ‘afterlives’ (Saidiya
Hartman, Édouard Glissant). Engaging with contributions to poetics, black studies and black feminist
thought, it first develops a theoretical orientation of the ongoingness of slavery as a ‘grammar of
captivity’ (Hortense Spillers) that ‘wake work’, a term proposed by Christina Sharpe, aims to disrupt.
The article calls for methodological attention to the fugitive and wayward arts and acts of living,
that is, what Sylvia Wynter and Fred Moten call the ‘sociopoetic’ practices of enslaved and legally-
emancipated populations to illuminate the simultaneity and entanglement of structuring violence and
poetic revolt. Second, drawing on Spillers’ scholarship on homiletics – the study of and participation
in sermons – in particular United States contexts, it identifies and discusses three aspects of poetic
revolt: ‘fabulation’, world-making otherwise and resignification, through which such communities
developed a critical and insurgent posture aimed at rupturing this grammar of captivity and at forging
critical, futurally-oriented sociabilities. Third, in conclusion, it discusses the links of poetic revolt, in
its specificity in Atlantic slavery, to wider systemic critique. Pluralising our thinking on revolution and
resistance, poetic revolt, it argues, is best seen as a critical meditation on futurity.
Keywords
poetics, poetic revolt, slavery, resistance, homiletics, sociopoetics, modern-colonial episteme,
modernity
Revuelta poética de una vida robada
Resumen
Este artículo se suma al debate sobre revolución y resistencia en la política mundial y plantea
la idea de revuelta poética como compañera imprescindible de estos términos; una revuelta
centrada específicamente en las reverberaciones actuales de la esclavitud transatlántica —lo que
se ha dado en llamar sus «vidas posteriores» (Saidiya Hartman, Édouard Glissant). Desde el
compromiso con contribuciones a la poética, los estudios negros (afrocentristas) y el pensamiento
Corresponding author:
Louiza Odysseos, Department of International Relations, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9SJ, UK.
Email: L.Odysseos@sussex.ac.uk
860199MIL0010.1177/0305829819860199Millennium: Journal of International StudiesOdysseos
research-article2019
Opening Address
342 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 47(3)
feminista negro, el artículo desarrolla en primer lugar una orientación teórica de la continuidad
de la esclavitud como una «gramática de la cautividad» (Hortense Spillers) que el «wake work»,
término propuesto por Christina Sharpe, pretende quebrar. El artículo pide que se preste
atención metodológica a artes y actos de vida fugitivos y rebeldes, es decir, lo que Sylvia Wynter
y Fred Moten denominan las prácticas sociopoéticas de las poblaciones esclavizadas y legalmente
emancipadas para esclarecer la simultaneidad e imbricación de la violencia estructurante y la
revuelta poética. En segundo lugar, inspirándose en el estudio académico de Spillers sobre la
homilética —el estudio de los sermones y la participación en los mismos— específicamente en
los contextos de los Estados Unidos de América, identifica y examina tres aspectos de la revuelta
poética: la “fabulación”, la creación de mundos diferentes y la resignificación, con las que estas
comunidades desarrollaron una postura crítica e insurgente enfocada a quebrar esta gramática del
cautiverio y a forjar sociabilidades críticas y orientadas al futuro. En tercer lugar y en conclusión,
analiza los nexos de la revuelta poética, concretamente en la esclavitud atlántica, con una crítica
sistémica más amplia. Argumenta que si pluralizamos nuestro pensamiento sobre revolución y
resistencia, la revuelta poética se concibe mejor como una meditación crítica sobre la futuridad.
Palabras clave
poética, revuelta poética, esclavitud, resistencia, homilética, sociopoética, episteme moderno-
colonial, modernidad
La révolte poétique de la vie volée
Résumé
Dans le cadre du débat sur la révolution et la résistance dans la politique mondiale, cet article
présente l’idée de la révolte poétique comme l’un des prolongements nécessaires à ces deux
termes clés, une révolte qui met l’accent sur les réverbérations continues de l’esclavage
transatlantique — nommées les « après-vie » (Saidiya Hartman, Édouard Glissant). Faisant appel
à des contributions à la poétique, aux études noires et à la pensée féministe noire, cet article
approfondit premièrement une orientation théorique de la persévérance de l’esclavage comme
« grammaire de la captivité » (Hortense Spillers) que le « travail d’éveil » (wake work), un terme
proposé par Christina Sharpe, vise à bouleverser. L’article appelle à l’attention méthodologique
sur les arts et les actes de vie fugitifs et rebelles, à savoir ce que Sylvia Wynter et Fred Moten
appellent les pratiques sociopoétiques des populations asservies et juridiquement émancipées
pour éclairer la simultanéité et l’enchevêtrement d’une violence structurante et d’une révolte
poétique. Deuxièmement, en s’appuyant sur les travaux de Spillers sur l’homilétique — l’étude et
la participation aux sermons — en particulier dans les contextes des États-Unis, l’article identifie
et examine trois aspects de la révolte poétique : La « fabulation », la création du monde autrement
et la réinterprétation, à travers lesquelles ces communautés ont développé une posture critique
et insurrectionnelle visant à rompre cette grammaire de la captivité et à forger des sociabilités
critiques et tournées vers l’avenir. Troisièmement, en conclusion, cet article examine les liens
entre la révolte poétique, dans sa spécificité dans l’esclavage atlantique, et la critique systémique
au sens plus large. En diversifiant notre pensée sur la révolution et la résistance, la révolte
poétique, affirme-t-il, est mieux perçue comme une méditation critique sur la futurité.
Mots clés
poétique, révolte poétique, esclavage, résistance, homilétique, sociopoétique, épistémé
moderne-colonial, modernité
Odysseos 343
1. Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, trans. Betsy Wing (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1997), 5, asterisked note.
2. Slavery imposed by European empires emerged and intensified at a time that forms of slavery and
coerced labour diminished within the ‘metropoles’. See David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery
in the Americas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 4–13. On ‘New World’ slav-
ery, see Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern,
1492–1800, 2nd Edition (London and New York: Verso, 2010); Stephanie E. Smallwood,
Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2008); David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in
the New World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
3. Glissant, Poetics, 7. On ‘afterlives’, see Saidiya V. Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey
Along the Atlantic Slave Route (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 6; Saidiya
V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century
America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); cf. Jared Sexton, ‘People-of-Color-
Blindness: Notes on the Afterlife of Slavery’, Social Text 28, no. 2 (2010): 31–56.
4. First quote from John E. Drabinski, Glissant and the Middle Passage: Philosophy, Beginning,
Abyss (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019), ix. Second quote from Diva
Barbaro Damato, ‘The Poetics of the Dispossessed’, trans. Leila Cristina Darin and Leonina
C. Menezes de Souza, World Literature Today 63, no. 4 (1989): 606; cf. Glissant, Poetics,
5–12. Dispossession of family, history and community was compounded by, for example,
the slaves’ renaming in the plantations, see Robin D.G. Kelley, ‘The Rest of Us: Rethinking
Settler and Native’, American Quarterly 69, no. 2 (2017): 268.
The Slave Trade came through the cramped doorway of the slave ship, leaving a wake like that
of crawling desert caravans. It might be drawn like this: ∋
----
∈ African countries to the east;
the lands of America to the West. This creature is in the image of the fibril. African languages
became deterritorialized, thus contributing to creolization in the West. This is the most
completely known confrontation between the powers of the written word and the impulses of
orality. The only written thing on slave ships was the account book listing the exchange value
of slaves. Within the ship’s space the cry of those deported was stifled, as it would be in the
realm of the Plantations. This confrontation still reverberates to this day.1
Édouard Glissant – poet, novelist, philosopher – begins his monumental Poetics of
Relation with a meditation entitled the ‘Open Boat’. The above epigraph, an aster-
isked note in the text itself, marks his search for a new dissident and relational poetics
and centres our attention onto the historical ‘ongoingness’ of the circum-Atlantic
slave trade, the system of chattel and racial slavery that it made possible, and the
broader colonial experience in which it is situated.2 Highlighting the entangled tem-
porality of their past and present, he intimates that the ‘ordeal’ of the enslaved ‘did not
die; it quickened into this continuous/discontinuous thing…’, a dis/continuity that
may be said to mark the ‘afterlives’ of slavery.3 Through the prism of the ‘abyss’ – the
innumerable social, cultural, economic, indeed, dehumanising and humanising (of
some lives) effects of ‘New World’ slavery – Glissant reads the ‘material histories and
memories of the archipelago’ as a ‘threefold dispossession: of place, of history, of
language’.4 These intersecting dispossessions coalesce in the aftermath of African
enslavement, that ‘theft of the body’ that ‘turned personality into property’, into
To continue reading
Request your trial