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What role does Equiano's African identity play in the exploration of self in Interesting Narrative?

Module: HST5407 The Making of the Modern Self

By: Saramarie Harvey


Over centuries of human history, Europeans have taken advantage of African people and their possessions. During the eighteenth century, slavery was still in operation, and the British Empire was prospering under the respective guises of the slave master and the coloniser. Olaudah Equiano was a victim of the transatlantic slave trade who, after his displacement from Africa, purchased his freedom and became a slave abolitionist. His African identity suffered because the master-slave complex subjugated him into Otherness. Where scholarship on the Enlightenment closely discusses the baseless reasons used to justify slavery, Equiano’s autobiography, The Interesting Narrative, is an in-depth criticism of slavery from the Enlightenment itself, which is informed by his personal experiences as an enslaved person. He not only confronts the way that slavery psychologically compromises his African identity but subverts the biblical and pseudoscientific theories the Europeans use against their African ‘Other’. As Equiano uses his autobiography to advocate for abolitionism, his reflections on Christianity, his treatment as a commodity and his sabotaged assimilation into European society expose the dehumanising maltreatment of enslaved African people. Equiano’s identity as a free slave is substantial in impelling the British Slave Trade Act in 1807.[1] His autobiography marks his status as a significant, leading abolitionist. Equiano’s exploration of selfhood is radically different from his white, European contemporaries in literature.

Christianity is a defining part of Equiano’s identity, and its prominence in The Interesting Narrative illustrates the solace he finds in practising his faith. Equiano immediately begins his autobiography contemplating how he ‘regard[s] [him]self as a particular favourite of heaven and acknowledge[s] the mercies of Providence’.[2] He cites moments where God’s providence protects him, including ‘when the ballast was out; and all who saw [him] fall out [thought he] was killed’.[3] Equiano believes that God’s providence saved him from slavery’s hardships and allowed him to expose these very hardships to his European readers. Equiano recognises the importance of his role and believes that God has made it his destiny to campaign for the end of the slave trade.

Equiano’s evidence of God’s providence protecting him shows to his European, Christian readers that God looks after everybody, regardless of their racial identity. This subverts the biblical theory referring to Noah’s sons Ham and Japheth – where Ham’s son, Canaan, becomes a slave to Japheth – which Europeans twisted and racialised to justify slavery.[4] Europeans argued that after the flood, Japheth’s descendants repopulated Europe, and Dorinda Outram adds that ‘punishment [was] meted out to the descendants of Ham’, who repopulated Africa.[5] This punishment turned into generations of colonisation. Europeans testified that the Old Testament gave them the right to enslave African descendants, just as their European ancestor, Japheth, became Canaan’s master. Equiano’s gratitude towards Christianity counters this reasoning. According to Sylvester Johnson, Equiano ‘circumnavigate[s] entirely the Hamitic myth of African origins’.[6] His unwavering faith in Christianity demonstrates that the contorted biblical theory supporting transatlantic slavery was unreasonable. Christianity defines Equiano’s faith, which plays a significant role in his exploration of selfhood, but Genesis genealogy does not define his history or identity. It should not, therefore, excuse the slave trade.

Whilst implementing Christianity into his account of his exploration of self, Equiano simultaneously uses it to hold a mirror to the flaws of European Christians who treat him as inferior. He rhetorically asks his engaged, European readers ‘O, ye nominal Christians! Might not an African ask you, learned you this from your God?’.[7] To begin with ‘Might not an African ask you’ gives Equiano the power to speak out against his European master. This direct confrontation impels European readers to think about how the immorality of the slave trade contradicts God’s omnibenevolence. Readers are captivated as Equiano momentarily dismantles the master-slave relationship. Equiano, whose identity is shaped by his slave experience, makes the superior European Self reconsider their position as master, and whether God would condone their cruelty. Like Equiano, Phillis Wheatley, his enslaved contemporary in the United States, remains steadfast in her Christian beliefs. She exercises these beliefs in her poetry. In ‘An Address to the Atheist’, she condemns those without faith, asking ‘Darest thou deny the Essence of a God?’.[8] Her rhetorical question suggests that challenging God’s ‘Essence’ is damning whilst reinforcing her embracement of Christianity. Similarly, Equiano consistently affirms God’s ‘Essence’ in his writing, but rather than denouncing Atheists, he condemns European Christians. He shows that his relationship with Christianity – an aspect of his selfhood – is conflicted because the Europeans who rule him and follow Christianity do not follow its teachings of ‘[loving] thy neighbour’ and treating all of humanity equally.[9] Thus, ‘dejected, and [unsure of] where to seek relief’, Equiano criticises the Europeans who refuse to accept him into the faith.[10] He instead contests the superiority of Europe’s imperial status, claiming that he ‘find[s] those, who in general termed themselves Christians, not […] so good in their morals as the Turks’.[11] Equiano indicates that the Turks – the leaders of the Ottoman Empire – are superior in their morals and good faith. Equiano subverts the idea that Islam should be vilified to the shock and dismay of the European readers. He upholds the Muslim Turks who would welcome him into Islam, whilst criticising the European Christians for doing the exact opposite: they prevent him from entering the church and from exploring his Christian selfhood.

Equiano is exploited and his identity becomes a commodity for the Europeans’ economic gain. Equiano describes the slave ships, detailing how ‘This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains […] filth of the necessary tubs […] The shrieks of the women and the groans of the dying […] a scene of horror’.[12] The emotive language highlights the distressful, cage-like conditions which overturn Equiano’s humanity and determine his identity as an inhuman Other. The turbulence of the slave ship at sea concurs with the turbulence in Equiano’s navigation of selfhood as he is torn from his Igbo community, the root of his identity. Equiano includes the cries of other African captives to depict the collectiveness of the experience. In doing so, he advocates for the liberation of all slaves. Contrastingly, Robert Constantine states that to defend slavery, Europeans ‘demonstrated that Negroes in Africa lived in an environment indefinitely more degrading and brutal’.[13] The Europeans claimed the ’ignoble savages’ were primitives uncorrupted by commercial society. They used Africa to compare their lack of stadial progress to Europe’s civilisation, justifying their barbaric treatment of the ‘barbaric’ Africans. This merciless violation of Africans, as though they are objects, is ironic: Equiano eloquently and civilly expresses that the abuse on the slave ship disrupted his exploration of self, whilst magnifying the true barbarity lying in the actions of the oppressive Europeans, who forced Africans into slavery.

Equiano was European property, bought and sold by slave masters who claimed his selfhood. They stripped his personal history down to his Black skin, renaming him ‘Jacob’, ‘Michael’ and eventually ‘Gustavus Vasa’.[14] These deviate from his birth name, ‘Olaudah […which] signifies vicissitude, or fortunate’.[15] Equiano’s Igbo name holds sentiment and meanings which ironically reflect God’s providential protection over him. As Achille Mbembe argues, ‘narrative about Africa is always pretext for a comment about something else’.[16] Equiano’s Black skin and falsely construed ‘ignoble savagery’ acted as the unjust ‘pretext’ for his enslavement. His masters dismiss the complexities of his selfhood and identity, reducing him to his slave labour. Equiano rejects their ‘pretext’ by retelling his narrative in his autobiography, countering the Europeans’ demeaning interpretation of his narrative and African selfhood.

Equiano’s exploration of selfhood is hindered further once he becomes aware that Europeans, unlike Africans, are not commoditised. He ‘see[s] [that] these white people did not sell one another […and] thought they were much happier than we Africans’.[17] Equiano reflects on his unhappiness and envies that European identities are not impeded by the slave system. Pseudoscience reasons that ‘degeneration theory’ creates this difference. French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon blames Africa’s hot climate for degenerating the continent’s faculties, and negatively affecting Africans’ minds and bodies. He claims it was ‘the cause of finding […] the blackest man, on the western territories of Africa’, where most slaves originated.[18] His Enlightenment scholarship advocates for the unconscionable, racist violence directed at Black people. Like the idea of the ‘ignoble savage’, this propagation of ‘degeneration theory’ rationalises slavery and reaffirms the Africans’ inferiority. Equiano challenges the principles of ‘degeneration theory’, asking ‘Is it not enough that we are torn from our country and friends to toil for your luxury and lust of gain?’.[19] He opposes the pseudoscientific excuses used to compromise and ruin his life, take him from Africa, and disrupt his exploration of selfhood. Equiano also criticises the movement of African artefacts and materials without the permission of the African people: Europeans considered Africans too subhuman and degenerated to negotiate fair labour and mutual trade. Vincent Caretta asserts that slavery was part of ‘the social and economic structure that formed the hierarchies of most societies’.[20] This persisting hegemonic structure, governed by white supremacy, could not exist without the pseudoscientific, racially discriminative bias of ‘degeneration theory’ as its foundation. By publishing The Interesting Narrative to dismantle the rationale behind the slave trade and to discredit pseudoscientific theories, Equiano reveals the difficulties of exploring his selfhood in unfamiliar territories and his self’s degradation at the expense of being the European’s designated Other.

Equiano desires to reshape his identity through assimilation into European society. Equiano confides that he ‘had the stronger desire to resemble [the Europeans] and imitate their manners’.[21] This inclination is motivated by the horrors of enslavement and the idealised acceptance of having equal rights to his master, rather than being a savage in shackles. Equiano wants the Europeans to recognise the character underlying his Blackness. He intends to remove himself from the limitations of his identity as a bestial slave with Black skin who exists for their strenuous labour. Frantz Fanon recognises the burdens of differences in skin tone which precipitate European society’s rejection of Africans. He claims that Africans are ‘confronted by the dilemma, turn white or disappear’.[22] This dilemma pressures Equiano’s selfhood into aligning with stadial history’s progressive, ‘civilised’ standards of European society. The psychological effects of this begin to interfere with Equiano’s African identity from an early age. He is ‘mortified at the difference in […] complexions’ between himself and a European girl, whose face ‘looked very rosy’ when washed.[23] No matter how much he tried to assimilate and flush the colour from his skin, he could never ‘turn white’ and belong. European society inhibited any exploration of selfhood beyond his skin tone to limit him and make him ‘disappear’.

Equiano resolves to purchase his freedom to assimilate into British society and explore his selfhood as a liberated person.[24] Despite this, ‘the racist who creates his inferior’ is determined to continue suppressing him, whether chained or unchained, into still identifying as their Other.[25] The third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, repressed Africans whilst he was in a position of power. Although he originally drafted a clause banning slavery in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, Jefferson argued that ‘The slave, when made free, might mix with the blood of his master’.[26] This contradictory statement and removal of the clause suggest that Jefferson was disingenuous and still believed in incredulous racial hierarchies. Deporting the African diaspora is to still treat them as European property. It implies that even if slavery ends, the African will remain subhuman and ‘is to be removed’ before tainting the European bloodline.[27] Thus, Equiano can desire to be like the Europeans, but cannot truly become their equal. His only option is to cover his Black skin with a white mask so he can explore his selfhood through assimilation, but the Europeans determine that African selfhoods should remain belittled because their complexions are not the same.

Equiano is plagued by the fear that his freedom – the necessary foundation for his attempt to assimilate – will be taken by the Europeans who reinforce the systemic, racist structure. He recounts that after his first emancipation, his ‘heart [was] ready to burst with sorrow and anguish’ after his subsequent recapture.[28] Equiano’s humanity and feelings physically move him to devastation and distress. With his recapture, his chance to explore his self is stolen and his identity is again restricted to being the European’s Black slave. Equiano’s observations show the European reader his experiences are not exclusive: he sees a European tell another man ‘he was not free […] although he shewed a certificate of his being born free’.[29] This highlights slavery’s precariousness to the European reader. The African’s proof of freedom is dismissed, and they are negligently forced into the clockwork of slavery. This contrasts the European, who is free without proof and never suffers the threat of having their freedom – and exploration of self – revoked. Even after purchasing his freedom, Equiano’s white mask cannot stop his Black skin and fear of re-enslavement protruding from underneath. Ronald Paul argues that his metaphorical mask ‘could be torn away by his masters’, that the ‘privilege’ of liberation could be stripped without warning.[30] This is part of Paul’s overall stance, that Equiano is in ‘denial of [his] Black self’, which misunderstands Equiano’s reasons for assimilating into white British society.[31] Equiano does not wear his white mask to look like the white man. He wears it to have the same rights and humanity as the white man. This requires washing away his Blackness so he can look like the European. His freedom would not be questioned, and he could assimilate and belong in their world of white-domination. His African origins prevent this and ‘socially disqualif[y]’ him from blending into European society.[32] Thus, Equiano, in his own words, ‘melt[s] the pride of [the European reader’s] superiority into sympathy’ by exposing to them the unfairness of the racist power system they constructed.[33] He also reveals the system’s psychologically damaging effects on the African exploration of self. Slavery’s damage to Equiano’s identity is exhibited through signs of emotional torment. The physicality of his heart-wrenching ‘burst [of] sorrow and anguish’ blatantly depicts his upset. Equiano desires to explore his selfhood beyond the remit of slavery, but the Europeans maintain that he cannot assimilate into their construction of civilisation. This demonstrates the stark difference between Equiano’s ambivalent selfhood, defined by racial inferiority, and his European superiors’ blasé construction of their selfhoods, which is untethered to the fear of enslavement.

Equiano uses The Interesting Narrative to illustrate that slavery’s repressive nature concurs with the repressed exploration of his selfhood. By using his autobiography as a space to speak truth to power, Equiano reclaims his narrative which Europeans dominated and altered for hegemonic power. As Equiano brings together the collective narratives of African slaves in captivity to justify slavery’s abolishment, he takes down the biblical and pseudoscientific theories which rationalise the abuse and undermining of African selfhoods and narratives. Equiano represents himself as a devout Christian protected by God, rather than the ‘ignoble savage’ and ‘degenerated’ commodity Europeans regard him as in order to defeat his attempts to assimilate. He uses these issues to expose the detrimental effects of slavery on the African selfhood. Although Equiano’s identity was limited whilst he was enslaved, his freedom and subsequent exploration of selfhood eventually deliver him to vindicate for enslaved Africans and their rights. Equiano’s address to his captivated European readers, who benefit from the transatlantic slave trade, is instrumental in compelling them to agree with the fight for abolitionism.


 

Footnotes

[1] Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 68.

[2] Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative (London: Penguin, 1995), p. 31.

[3] Equiano, p. 88.

[4] King James Version Bible, Genesis 9:18-27.

[5] Outram, p. 63.

[6] Sylvester A. Johnson, ‘Colonialism, Biblical World-Making, and Temporalities in Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative’, Church History, 77 (2008), 1003-1024 (p. 1010).

[7] Equiano, p. 61.

[8] Phillis Wheatley, ‘An Address to the Atheist’, in Phillis Wheatley: Complete Writings (London: Penguin, 2001), pp. 69-70 (p. 60).

[9] KJV Bible, Matthew 22:39.

[10] Equiano, p. 178.

[11] Equiano, p. 179.

[12] Equiano, p. 58.

[13] J. Robert Constantine, ‘The Ignoble Savage, an Eighteenth Century Literary Stereotype’, Phylon, 27 (1966), 171-179 (p. 171).

[14] Equiano, pp. 63-4.

[15] Equiano, p. 41.

[16] Achille Mbembe, ‘Introduction: Time on the Move’, in On the Postcolony (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 1-23 (p. 3).

[17] Equiano, p. 68.

[18] Georges-Louis Lerclerc, Comte de Buffon, ‘The Geographical and Cultural Distribution of Mankind’, in Race and the Enlightenment, ed. by Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (Blackwell: Oxford, 1997), pp. 15-28 (p. 22).

[19] Equiano, p. 61.

[20] Vincent Caretta, Equiano, the African (London: Penguin, 2005), p. 20.

[21] Equiano, p. 78.

[22] Frantz Fanon, ‘The So-Called Dependency Complex of Colonized People’, in Black Skin, White Masks, trans. by Charles Lam Markmann (London: Pluto Press, 1986), pp. 83-108 (p. 100).

[23] Equiano, p. 69.

[24] Equiano, p. 137.

[25] Fanon, p. 93.

[26] Outram, p. 78.

[27] Outram, p. 78.

[28] Equiano, p. 94.

[29] Equiano, p. 121.

[30] Ronald Paul, ‘”I Whitened My Face, That They Might Not Know Me”’; Race and Identity in Equiano’s Slave Narrative’, Journal of Black Studies, 39 (2009), 848-864, (pp. 861-2). [31] Paul, p. 849.

[32] Paul, p. 853.

[33] Equiano, p. 45.


 

Bibliography

Caretta, Vincent, Equiano, the African (London: Penguin, 2005)

Comte de Buffon, Georges-Louis Lerclerc, ‘The Geographical and Cultural Distribution of Mankind’, in Race and the Enlightenment, ed. by Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (Blackwell: Oxford, 1997)

Constantine, J. Robert, ‘The Ignoble Savage, an Eighteenth Century Literary Stereotype’, Phylon, 27 (1966)

Equiano, Olaudah, The Interesting Narrative (London: Penguin, 1995)

Fanon, Frantz, ‘The So-Called Dependency Complex of Colonized People’, in Black Skin, White Masks, trans. by Charles Lam Markmann (London: Pluto Press, 1986)

Johnson, Sylvester A., ‘Colonialism, Biblical World-Making, and Temporalities in Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative’, Church History, 77 (2008)

Mbembe, Achille, ‘Introduction: Time on the Move’, in On the Postcolony (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001)

Outram, Dorinda, The Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)

Paul, Ronald, ‘”I Whitened My Face, That They Might Not Know Me”’; Race and Identity in Equiano’s Slave Narrative’, Journal of Black Studies, 39 (2009)

Wheatley, Phillis, ‘An Address to the Atheist’, in Phillis Wheatley: Complete Writings (London: Penguin, 2001)

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