Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 10:36:12 -0600
From: Wail Hassan <w-hassan-AT-wiu.edu>
Subject: Re: middle passage


The interpretation of eyes and feet is intersting because it gives
historical depth to Friday's "attempts" at communication. I would stress to
the students, however, that it is only one possible gloss because
ultimately, I think (and I read a similar argument somewhere I can't
remember), the undecipherability of Friday's drawings (the endless, closely
packed "O's," for instance) is an important theme. He is muted literally
and symbolicaly by the violence of slavery and is, therefore, entirely
beyond comprehension--which drives Susan crazy. She can't interpret (or
appropriate) him; he is the Other who will survive all such attempts. In
the three final scenes, he survives Susan and Foe and is found
communicating (telling his story? to whom? in what language?), but remains
beyond the reach of all discourses that try to represent him, including
that of the novel itself. Even a novel that so consciously stages the act,
politics, and techniques of representation. I don't think that means that
all representation is ultimately impossible, but that certain conditions
(extreme oppresion under horrific historical, physical, epistemic,
emotional violence) make representation almost impossible--especially when,
and so long as, an imbalance of power persists. That was how I approached
the novel. Dramatic enactment sounds interesting and would perhaps make
this difficult text more accessible to students. I'd like to know how it
goes. Good luck!

>thanks so much; it just seems to me that the heart of foe is the slave
>ship that Friday was on; i'm going to focus on an article (i don't have it
>with me right now) that suggests that the foot/eye imagery in foe has to
>do with the way slaves were positioned on the middle passage, rigidly side
>by side with faces up, so that that image is what we should be thinking
>about in the fourth section of foe when the diver goes down in to the
>sunken ship and that image is what we should partly be thinking about when
>friday drops the petals on the water.  also this image of the sunken slave
>ship and its horror as a burial site for the slaves on board contrasts
>with RC's view of the ship of state of england and of the voyage/ship as
>progress and allowing the movement of trade (all important to England) and
>that what is of greatest disaster for an englishman is not to be able to
>part of that trade route--i'd like to do some performance of that fourth
>section of foe and include some actual first hand accounts from slaves who
>experienced the middle passage,  what do you think?  gail houston
>
>

Wa=EFl Hassan
Assistant Professor
Department of English and Journalism
Western Illinois University

Tel 309 298-1112
=46ax 309 298-2974




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