Writing from the Center or the Margins? Olaudah Equiano's Writing Life Reassessed

Abstract:

This article is a literary analysis of the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. It examines Equiano's use of multiple discursive and rhetorical strategies in order to move the self of his slave narrator from "marginal" to "central" status in the international debate over slavery. The essay focuses on Equiano's understanding of morality as a multicultural framework and his application of Christian rhetoric in explaining it. The main argument is that his search for religious understanding and his experiential knowledge allowed him to move between cultural "centers" and cultural "margins" while speaking with an authoritative voice against slavery.

Résumé: Cet article propose une analyse littéraire de l'autobiographie de Olaudah Equiano, ou Gustavus Vassa, l'africain. Nous examinons l'utilisation faite par Equiano de stratégies discursives et rhétoriques multiples destinées à déplacer le moi de son narrateur esclave d'un statut "marginal" à un statut "central" dans le débat international sur l'esclavage. Cet essai se concentre sur la compréhension de la moralité chez Equiano comme phénomène multiculturel, et sur son application de la rhétorique chrétienne dans l'explication de ce phénomène. L'argument principal est que sa recherche de compréhension religieuse et sa connaissance empirique du monde lui permettent de se déplacer entre des "centres de culture" et des "marges de culture" tout en s'élevant contre l'esclavage d'une voix qui fait autorité.

Introduction

Olaudah Equiano's autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself, was a bestseller when it was published in 1789, and in the past few years it has seen a resurgence in popularity. The text has been analyzed historically by Paul Edwards (1981, 1985) and by G. I. Jones, who traces Equiano's roots back to a fairly exact location in what was the Benin Kingdom (1967).

In addition to being traced and positioned historically, Equiano's Interesting Narrative has come under the scrutiny of literary critics. His use of the generic conventions of autobiography has been examined by Angelo Costanzo (1987), and the use to which he put the self or selves created in his autobiography has been delineated by Chinosole (1982), Susan Marren (1993), Marion Rust (1996), and Carl Plasa (2000). In his critique of discursive identities in self-construction, Chinosole argues that the point-of-view shifts in the text are indicative of "marginal and multiple identities," while Marren discusses these as multiple narrating selves serving as transgressors against cultural voices that would negate Equiano's existence. Rust understands Equiano's self as the condition of a black African "passing" for a white Englishman. Carl Plasa discusses Equiano's use of British imperial discourse, arguing that Equiano appropriated the discourses of his oppressors in order to deconstruct his position as an object of colonial rule. Thus present-day scholars and critics have read Equiano's text with and against the grain of literary, postcolonial, and cultural studies. Moreover, each has had a different interpretation of Equiano's position as a writer and a narrator speaking with an authoritative voice from a cultural "center" or with a placating voice from a cultural "margin."1

To date, however, there have been very few studies of Equiano's religious conversion and his use of religious discourse in constructing himself and his slave narrator in a position of centrality and authority when speaking about issues of slavery and freedom, evil and goodness, wickedness and morality. Adam Potkay's "Olaudah Equiano and the Art of Spiritual Autobiography" (1994) is a comprehensive look at Equiano's use of the form and conventions of the spiritual autobiography as a "theological quest for origins" (678). Elizabeth Jane Wall Hinds interprets Equiano's religious conversion as "a story of fiscal growth" in which the author delves into mercantile capitalism and makes a profit; she argues that as "a former slave and African moving through a world of European and American whites, Equiano's successes, spiritual and commercial, seem to come at the cost of his identity as an African, a member of a community for whom he from time to time ventures to speak" (1998:635).

In this article, I discuss Equino's use of the conventions of Christian spiritual autobiography as one of many contexts for the creation of a narrative self. Equiano's conversion, I will argue, is central to a reader's understanding of the text-although Christianity was not the only authority with which Equiano spoke. Equiano wrote specifically about the significance of Christianity in Britain, a nation, he says, that has "exalted the dignity of human nature" ([1789] 1987:3). Thus the authoritative voice of spiritual conversion comes from Equiano the Christian, who also has situated himself at the heart of Englishness. At the same time, Equiano wrote from the position of someone who was global in his cultural references. His point of view on issues could and did vary; often it is British, but frequently it is some other, equally valid, equally centered position emerging from his own particular experiential knowledge of the world. The Christian narrative functions in a particular way, as both a strategy for constructing a narrating self and as a strategy for positioning that self at the moral center. It allowed Equiano, an African-born ex-slave living among European cultures and societies, to move himself-both literally and literarily-from the dominant Eviropean cultural "margins" to a culturally "central" position and to speak and write against slavery with an authoritative voice. An examination of The Interesting Narrative as spiritual autobiography provides insights into the role of Christianity not only in Equiano's life, but also in the lives of many of his contemporaries in the African diaspora.