Middle Passages

Abstract

This chapter analyzes uses of Greek and Roman classical texts as mediating passages in anglophone Caribbean literature of the Middle Passage. In Derek Walcott’s Omeros and Marlene NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!, the classics are remediated and reclaimed as part of the project of framing the ineffable epic of the bones of those killed in the crossing. Walcott’s and Philip’s use of multilayered Latin etymologies and their subversive signifying of classical texts exemplify a subversive, anagrammatic philology explored in the radical black aesthetic theories of Fred Moten and Christina Sharpe. In the process, both authors explore the potential of Greek and Roman classical texts as a source for mediating modern historical memory in the Caribbean.