La perpetuación de la problemática racial con el uso del romance interracial como intertexto metafórico entre la novela Sab y la telenovela La esclava blanca

Abstract

Abstract:This article compares the interracial romance between a mulato man and a white woman that is central to the plot of the 2016 Colombian telenovela La esclava blanca with the one present in Sab (1841), written by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda and usually considered the first antislavery novel written in Spanish. It argues that La esclava seeks to create collective imaginaries in which viewers recognize themselves and their aspirations. Furthermore, borrowing from Doris Sommer's proposal that literary romances can serve as metaphors for nations, the article makes a case that La esclava repeats some of the romance elements of Sab in order to denounce slavery, establish a parallel between the condition of enslavement of Afrodescendants and women, and propose the need for a more inclusive family/nation. The telenovela also incorporates new messages of racial equality in an effort to allow modern-day national and international Afro audiences to recognize themselves in the telenovela. However, ultimately the telenovela neutralizes the racial messages that could be perceived as threatening to white audiences in order to attract the widest audience possible and, in doing so, proposes a problematic reconstruction that privileges white people in the historical memory of abolition in Colombia.