Response to Lovejoy, Burnard, and Sensbach

14 Historically Speaking · January/February 2006 Response to Lovejoy, Burnard, and Sensbach Vincent Carretta The three responses elicited by my initial essay fall into two distinct categories . Burnard and Sensbach, coming to opposite conclusions, consider possible implications of the recently discovered evidence in baptismal and naval records that suggest that Equiano may have invented an African birth. Lovejoy, however, challenges the validity of the evidence by mocking the sincerity ofthe baptismal record and ignoring the questions raised by the muster lists in 1773. Since Lovejoy also says that my "analysis of the available data is seriously flawed and does not withstand the test of historical methodology," I feel a bit like Equiano, who believed that some of his critics wrote "with a view to hurt [his] character, and to discredit and prevent the sale of [his] book." And like Equiano, I feel compelled to issue an apologia in my own defense. I am grateful to Lovejoy for citing my recently published biography: Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man (University of Georgia Press, 2005). Lovejoy acknowledges that "[p]erhaps we are pursuing historical understanding in different ways." I agree completely, and would add that we argue "in different ways" as well. Assuming that the historian's role is to reconstruct and interpret the past in the light of the available evidence and that speculation (like faith) should begin when the evidence runs out, as an editor, biographer, and historian I began with the working hypothesis that Equiano was being as truthful as possible in writing his autobiography. I also assume that my hypothesis must be falsifiable, subject to possible revision or rejection in the face of new evidence . And I assume that conclusions drawn from the evidence, as well as speculation beyond the evidence, should be located on a spectrum ranging from the impossible, through the improbable, and probable, to the certain. I am obligated to give my readers the evidence they need to appreciate my assessment of it, and to be able to assess it for themselves . If we can identify the tree by the fruit it bears, Lovejoy's methodology is more supple and liberating than my own. So, too, is his understanding of argument. He appears to subscribe to a school of literary critics who believe that a writer's intentions cannot be derived from his or her writings. Consequently, the critic bears the responsibility for determining meaning in a text, which may be "read against the grain," allowing the critic to divine that the writer means something different from, even opposite to, what he or she actually says. Lovejoy exercises his powers of divination on my own writings. Thus, although he initially accurately quotes me as saying that "the author of The Interesting Narrative may have invented rather than reclaimed an African identity," two paragraphs later we learn that "[d]espite some qualifications, Carretta essentially claims that the first part of The Interesting Narrative is a fictionalized account." The argumentative slope rapidly becomes slipperier. Several lines later we learn that "Carretta wants us to believe that he manufactured an account ofhis early life." And within a few more paragraphs we are in free fall: "Carretta believes him to have been born in South Carolina," and we discover that "Carretta has concluded" that "he had been born in 1747." Understandably, once we get on the slippery slope of this line ofreasoning, the quotations from my writings disappear. Although I confess that I find it interesting to be told what I mean, I might have been more convinced had Lovejoy devoted more space to quoting what I actually say. Readers of this forum can judge for themselves the extent to which I qualify my analysis of the likelihood that Equiano may have fabricated an African birth to achieve the dual and complementary ends of serving the abolitionist cause and making money. Look at the number oftimes the words may, might, if, and whether appear in my initial forum essay and other writings on the subject. If I have foreclosed the possibility that Equiano's account of an African birth and upbringing is accurate, why have I spent so much energy trying to identify the ships that...