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Flat Equiano: A Transatlantic Approach to Teaching The Interesting Narrative
- The University of Tennessee Press
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Flat Equiano: A Transatlantic Approach to Teaching The Interesting Narrative Jessica L. Hollis in a 2001 forum on teaching The Interesting Narrative, roxann Wheeler emphasizes the need to contextualize Equiano’s work within its historical and political milieus. Arguing against approaches to the narrative that focus exclusively on eighteenth-century investments in oration and spiritual autobiography, Wheeler reminds us that such readings restrict our understanding of not only The Interesting Narrative but the eighteenth century as well. in her words, these latter analyses lead to the “flattest version of Equiano,” while those that place the work within a broader range of period texts provide “a depth that we have not explored as fully as the narrative structure and style” (622; emphases added). The language of horizontality and verticality employed here (“flattest” and “depth”) is, of course, intended to convey disparate degrees of interpretation, and i call attention to it not to disagree with Wheeler’s point, which i affirm. rather, i want to use it, though somewhat differently, as a starting point for reconsidering some of the ways scholars and teachers have spatially understood The Interesting Narrative and, more generally, have conceptualized relationships between the different geographical areas and peoples of the eighteenth-century Atlantic World. Spatial and spatializing concepts have become almost a given in the way we introduce the eighteenth-century Atlantic World to our students: empire-colony, center-periphery, metropole-province. Certainly, these couplings have provided a useful framework for highlighting the often exploitive and unequal power relations between European nations and other parts of the Atlantic that became more solidified during this period. likewise, they have helped critics explicate the efforts of those subjugated to resist the systems that restricted them. further, given they were used by eighteenth-century Europeans to describe how different 70 Jessica l. hollis sides of the Atlantic were connected, they have also been a fruitful means of recovering how individuals understood and experienced these connections in this period. however, as scholars have argued recently, eighteenth-century usages of these terms did not always carry the same connotations as they do within much recent criticism—particularly a certain, influential strain of postcolonial studies. They did not, that is, always convey a hierarchal relationship between Europe and the rest of the Atlantic.1 indeed, the vertical power structure implied by the critical usage of these binaries too often fails to recognize adequately the much more complex power dynamics that defined eighteenth-century Atlantic relations . Their continual usage, likewise, risks reemphasizing a reductive verticality because dichotomous implications of dominance/subjugation continue to obtain to them. in this sense, i concur with Adam Potkay’s caveat about reading Equiano’s narrative (and the eighteenth-century Atlantic World) singularly in terms of postcolonial critique (though i disagree with him on other points, which i discuss below). But i also agree with roxann Wheeler that the “most challenging versions of postcolonial theory have aimed to restore historical complexity to our understanding of the colonial world on both sides of the Atlantic” (621). Nonetheless, vertical resonances of spatial concepts employed within postcolonial studies indicate that this is one area in need of redirection. Not surprisingly, Wheeler asserts that “the most suggestive colonial theory has . . . emanated from . . . cultural geographers,” among others, for it is, indeed, these geographers who are currently engaged in redressing the spatialities of postcolonial studies (621).2 A decidedly horizontal conceptualization of—or a “flat” approach to—the eighteenth-century Atlantic, then, potentially offers a counter-framework for teaching The Interesting Narrative, and, i argue, one that allows for a richer exploration of Equiano’s experiences. As some readers may discern, the title for this article is a play on “flat Stanley,” an international literacy tool that takes the form of a cut-out, paper doll–like boy that is mailed by elementary-school students to places around the world. The flat Stanley project, while very diverse in its ultimate manifestations,3 is basically designed to help children learn geography and about different places by way of this virtual traveler-visitor who can be mailed in an envelope to distant family members, friends, or even strangers. The task of these hosts is to continue a journal begun by Stanley’s sender, which describes her or his “home life.” The host family’s portion of the journal records the places he [34.238.138.162] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:05 GMT) flat Equiano 71 sees, people he meets, foods he eats, and anything he learns...