Locating Marginalized Historical Narratives at Kingsley Plantation

Autor: Ayana Omilade Flewellen
Rok vydání: 2017
Předmět:
Zdroj: Historical Archaeology. 51:71-87
ISSN: 2328-1103
0440-9213
DOI: 10.1007/s41636-017-0005-7
Popis: I am interested in locating marginalized historical narratives at Kingsley Plantation, searching the landscape for what McKittrick (2006:133) calls “demonic grounds,” the grounds that locate “the complex position and potentiality of black women’s sense of place” and are understood not as erased, but disavowed. Complexity is disavowed at Kingsley Plantation, and in its place is the implementation of truncated historical narratives reaching for unobtainable cohesion. Historical narratives are left in their bounded spaces, with Ann Kingsley, the Black plantation mistress, being spoken of mainly in a domestic setting. Zephaniah Kingsley, the planter/enslaver, maintains his omnipotent positionality, being discussed everywhere, while the enslaved are referenced in domestic and labor spaces. What I argue is that, for the sake of cohesion, plantation sites present historical narratives of the enslaved, the plantation mistress, and the planter/enslaver in spaces that do not offer complexity and do not challenge plantation spatial dynamics, but instead orient visitors to the White male planter’s perspective of the past.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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