Metanarratives of Slavery

Abstract

I identify a prevalent but previously unremarked subgenre within contemporary narratives of slavery: metanarratives of slavery. Metanarratives of slavery emphasize the cultural perspectives through which slavery has been seen, thus making perception as much of a focus as slavery itself. I offer a preliminary taxonomy of metanarratives of slavery by focusing on three works in three formats: Kara Walker’s large-scale sculptural installation Fons Americanus (2019), Colson Whitehead’s novel The Underground Railroad (2016), and Robin Coste Lewis’s long poem “Voyage of the Sable Venus” (2015). While recent scholarship has underscored the tendency of contemporary narratives of slavery to trouble a sense of straightforward access to history, it has not accounted for why so many authors and visual artists dramatize that lack of access by foregrounding intervening cultural narratives. I argue that metanarratives of slavery emphasize perspective to draw audience attention to the sources of their ideas about slavery and race. In the process, these works remain in a space I call the interim-gesturing toward a freer future without entirely letting go of the past. By recognizing that space, we can also recognize how certain writers and visual artists envision a Black diasporic aesthetic present, carved out of the ongoing catastrophe of white supremacist violence but refusing to delay pleasure and beauty for a future that may never arrive.