Mirroring Zambo in an Atlantic context: the open wound of slavery in Gottfried Keller's Don Correa (1881)
Abstract This article analyzes Gottfried Keller's story Don Correa from the classic German novella-cycle Das Sinngedicht (The Epigram, 1881) in an Atlantic context. Using Walter Benjamin's concept of “mirroring” as a theoretical framework, the article “mirrors” Don Correa's Angolan slave Zambo in three different cultural and political settings: “Where Africa Mirrors Latin America” focuses on the prominent role of the Jesuits in Don Correa and connects the fate of African slaves with that of Amerindians, “Where Female Mirrors Male” focuses on the topic of transvestitism and connects the legendary Queen Nzinga to Keller's predilection for gender crossing, and “Where Black Mirrors White” focuses on the debate on slavery in Keller's native Switzerland during the time when the novel was written. These three “mirrors” provide new insights into the cultural and historical context to which Don Correa refers and the debate on transatlantic slavery during Keller's lifetime. This approach challenges the general assumption that Das Sinngedicht is one of the few works by Keller without reflection on concrete historical and/or political problems. By interpreting the story alongside research and debates on cultural and historical issues in the Atlantic world, it reveals a series of connections that have remained unnoticed in the existing scholarship. It shows how Atlantic studies allows new perspectives on classic literary works, even if those works originated in a cultural context that does not seem to have a direct relationship to slavery and colonialism.
Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam
Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam. JOHN GABRIEL STEDMAN. Edited, and with an Introduction and Notes, by Richard Price and Sally Price. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988. 808 pp. $95.00 (cloth). ISBN 0–8018–3416–3.
PLEASURE, POWER, AND THE PURSUIT OF COMMUNISM: SOVIET YOUTH AND STATE-SPONSORED POPULAR CULTURE DURING THE EARLY COLD WAR, 1945-1968
art, with certain students accused of “showing political immaturity, failing to understand the Party’s positions on art.” This episode constituted part of a broader crackdown on abstract art by the Khrushchev administration from late 1962, precipitated the the Soviet leader’s derision of such art forms in December 1962 at the Manege exhibit. Such instances demonstrate the limitations of the top-level promotion of youth grassroots initiative, as the Khrushchev leadership reigned in youth autonomy when it threatened to go beyond the boundaries of the permissible. The dates cited above have particular resonance, since both 1957-58 and 1962-63 represent two periods when those at the top of the Party hierarchy moved away from pursuing a more pluralistic, tolerant policy course, due to anxiety inspired by both sharpening Cold War hostilities and domestic developments. In these periods, official rhetoric censured what it labeled as 639 TsAOPIM, f. 635, op. 13, d. 546, ll. 56-57. This is likely related to criticism of the Party associated with the fallout from the Secret Speech and the Hungary invasion. For more, see Polly Jones, “From the Secret Speech to the Burial of Stalin: Real and Ideal Responses to De-Stalinization,” in Jones ed., The Dilemmas, 41-63. 640 TsAOPIM, f. 6083, op. 1, d. 52, ll. 166-67. 641 Susan E. Reid, “In the Name of the People: The Manege Affair Revisited,” Kritika 6.4 (Fall 2005): 673716. 642 On these anxieties, see Dobson, Khrushchev’s Cold Summer, 156-88.