Facing the Other: Ethical Disruption and the American Mind

4 FUGITIVE POSEURS: The Native Eloquence of Frederick Douglass and Sarah Winnemucca

4 Fugitive Poseurs The Native Eloquence of Frederick Douglass and Sarah Winnemucca In the opening paragraphs of Frederick Douglass’s sole novella, “The Heroic Slave,” Douglass focuses our gaze upon the impressive figure of Madison Washington, standing concealed in the midst of a “dark pine forest.” In the presence of God and under the protective grace of Nature, Washington utters a series of “scathing denunciations of the cruelty and injustice of slavery ,” which is soon followed by painful testimony, first of his own suffering and then that of his people—each story culminating in an impassioned and “emphatic declaration of his purpose to be free.” Not far away, but sequestered from Washington’s view, Mr. Listwell, the northern traveler, is the reluctant and cautious witness to Washington’s moving soliloquy. In the presence of Washington’s voice, riveted by the emotional intensity of his words of despair and declaration, Listwell is called towards an experience of recognition in which Washington’s true humanity is revealed to him: “‘Here indeed is a man,’ thought he, ‘of rare endowments,—a child of God,—guilty of no crime but the color of his skin.’”1 In that scene in the forest, Washington’s speaking, his vocal and dramatic presence, is not merely rhetorical. Even as the words of the fictionalized fugitive slave fulfill the sentimental expectations of Douglass’s abolitionist audience, through the dramatic activity of speech he becomes more than mere “slave.” Indeed, Washington’s speaking disrupts the categories of his nonpersonhood to become both transformative and inherently performative . When one reads this artistic moment as a self-reflexive gesture in Douglass’s literary oeuvre, “The Heroic Slave” begins to suggest something 1. Frederick Douglass, “The Heroic Slave,” in Violence in the Black Imagination, ed. Ronald Takaki (New York: Putnam, 1972), 40–1. 124 f u gi t ive p o se u r s 125 important about Douglass’s faith in the poetics of the performative to alter the political relations between human beings and, more specifically, in the power of language to change the world. In the context of Douglass’s fictional world, the presence of the voice and the performativity of language distinguish themselves in a profound manner . In “The Heroic Slave,” Washington’s speech overwhelms the spheres of rhetoric and mere confession to create a performative context through which transformation ensues. Listwell eventually emerges to acknowledge Washington ’s authentic humanity—for Washington’s speaking lifts him beyond the racial and categorical designation as slave. Listwell sees him as a man and, more importantly, as a “child of God.” Washington’s speech thus initiates a conversion, both existentially and dramatically radical. In the performative presence of this African stranger, Listwell is propelled towards the realm of action and its possibility for the crafting of justice. In the aftermath of Washington ’s departure, the previously indifferent Listwell offers his own version of a liberatory declaration: “‘From this hour I am an abolitionist. I have seen enough and heard enough, and I shall go to my home in Ohio resolved to atone for my past indifference to this ill-starred race, by making such exertions as I shall be able to do, for the speedy emancipation of every slave in the land.’”2 By investing Washington’s words with this power of transformation, Douglass suggests the profound respect that he accords the human voice, particularly in its service to the call of justice. In that moment in the woods, Washington “exists in and achieves essential being” in language.3 His speaking is the performance of a freedom wholly prior to and perfectly independent of Listwell’s knowledge or experience. Washington’s words possess the power to affirm the reality and authenticity of his own existence, as well as to call into being a catalytic change in the legitimate American observer, who suddenly becomes a participant in Washington’s mission of freedom. From the moment Washington is heard and his face is seen, he is revealed as the Other whose alterity is absolute, whose authenticity of being both defies and exceeds whatever ideas the northerner Listwell may have harbored regarding 2. Ibid., 41–2. 3. This is an idea that characterizes the relationship between language and being in the work of N. Scott Momaday. See, for example, The Man Made of Words (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997). 126 f a ci n g...