The Masters and the Slaves: Plantation Relations and Mestizaje in American Imaginaries

167 Pages·2005·0.93 MB·English

by  Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond (eds.)

The Masters and the Slaves
New Directions in Latino American Cultures
A series edited by Licia Fiol-Matta and José Quiroga
Published in 2004:
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by Rubén Gallo
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by Idelber Avelar
The Masters and the Slaves
Plantation Relations and Mestizaje in
American Imaginaries
Edited by
Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond
THEMASTERSANDTHESLAVES
© Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond,2005.
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2005 by
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ISBN 978-1-4039-6708-4 ISBN 978-1-4039-8162-2 (eBook)
DOI10.1007/978-1-4039-8162-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The masters and the slaves :plantation relations and mestizaje in
American imaginaries / edited by Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4039-6563-9 (cl :alk.paper)—ISBN 978-1-4039-6708-4
(pbk.:alk.paper)
1.Miscegenation—America.2.Hybridity (Social sciences)—
Caribbean area.3.Postcolonialism—Caribbean area.4.Mestizaje.
5.Racially mixed people—America.6.Slavery—America.7.United
States—Race relations.I.Isfahani-Hammond,Alexandra.
GN254.M37 2004
306.3(cid:2)62(cid:2)097—dc22 2004053373
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd.,Chennai,India.
First edition:January 2005
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Contributors ix
1 Introduction: Who Were the Masters in the Americas? 1
Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond
2 The Sugar Daddy: Gilberto Freyre and the White
Man’s Love for Blacks 19
César Braga-Pinto
3 Writing Brazilian Culture 35
Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond
4 Authority’s Shadowy Double: Thomas Jefferson and the
Architecture of Illegitimacy 51
Helena Holgersson-Shorter
5 Race, Nation, and the Symbolics of Servitude in
Haitian Noirisme 67
Valerie Kaussen
6 Fanon as “Metrocolonial” Flaneur in the Caribbean
Post-Plantation/Algerian Colonial City 89
Nalini Natarajan
7 From the Tropics: Cultural Subjectivity and Politics in
Gilberto Freyre 103
Jossianna Arroyo
8 Hybridity and Mestizaje: Sincretism or Subversive
Complicity? Subalternity from the Perspective of the
Coloniality of Power 115
Ramón Grosfoguel
vi CONTENTS
9 The Rhythm of Macumba: Lívio Abramo’s Engagement
with Afro-Brazilian Culture 131
Luiza Franco Moreira
10 Blood, Memory, and Nation: Massacre and Mourning
in Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones 149
Shreerekha Subramanian
Acknowledgments
The idea for this collection evolved in conversations with Susan
Meltzer, Leon Honoré, Lydie Moudileno, Moneera al-Ghadeer, and
César Braga-Pinto, to whom I am especially grateful for his feedback
on my introduction. I am indebted to my students in Letras at the
Federal University of Pernambuco—Elio Ferreira, Tânia Lima, Sandra
Correia, and Lepê—for their insights into Recifean and global race pol-
itics. I want to thank the contributors to this volume for their humor
and grace in pulling the anthology together, and Licia Fiol-Matta and
Gabriella Pearce for their enthusiasm, encouragement, and extraordi-
nary patience. My special thanks go to Azar Isfahani-Hammond for her
energy and awareness of “translated experience,” Peter Hammond for
introducing me to questions of identity politics and authenticity in the
first place and Eric Johnson for his presence and for playing devil’s
advocate. Finally, I am grateful to the Fulbright Foundation and the
University of Puerto Rico for funding me, the Federal University of
Pernambuco for hosting me, and Antônio Pankino and Alexandre
Aranha for housing me as I edited this anthology.
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Contributors
JOSSIANA ARROYO is Associate Professor of Latin American and
Caribbean Literatures and Cultures at the University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor. Her interests are literatures and cultures of the African
diaspora, and the politics of identity, race, gender, and sexuality. She
is the author of Travestismos Culturales: Literatura y Etnografia en
Cuba y Brasil(Editorial Iberoamericana, 2003). Arroyo has also pub-
lished articles on Brazilian and Caribbean literatures and cultures in
Revista Iberoamericana, Revista de Estudios Hispanicos, and in the
anthologies LusoSex (University of Minnesota) and The State of
Latino Theater (Routledge).
CÉSAR BRAGA-PINTO is Assistant Professor of Portuguese and
Comparative Literature at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.
He is the author of Promessas de História: Assimilação e Discurso Profético
no Brasil Colonial(EDUSP 2004). His research centers on Brazilian cul-
tural studies and colonialism, and on Lusophone African literatures.
RAMÓN GROSFOGUEL is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the
University of California, Berkeley and Senior Research Associate of
the Maison des Science de l’Homme, in Paris. He has published
numerous articles on Caribbean migrations to Western Europe and
the United States, and on the political economy of the world-system.
Grosfoguel is the author of Colonial Subjects(University of California
Press, 2003), and coeditor of The Modern/Colonial/Capitalist
World-System in the Twentieth Century (Greenwood Press, 2002),
Migration, Transnationalization and Race in a Changing New York
(2001), and Puerto Rican Jam (1997).
HELENA HOLGERSSON-SHORTER is currently teaching twelfth-grade
English at the Hudson School, a private, college-preparatory school
in Hoboken, New Jersey. In 2001, she completed her Ph.D. in
Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, con-
centrating on African American literature and postcolonial literatures
of the Caribbean. Her dissertation, Illegible Bodies and Illegitimate