Archived Jewishness: material practices of diaspora in Danzy Senna’s Caucasia

Abstract

ABSTRACT Both Black and Jewish studies theorize archival memory, as well as archival gaps and silences, in regard to slavery and the Holocaust, respectively. Yet, these modes of theorizing the archiving have not been put into conversation. This article examines Danzy Senna’s 1998 novel Caucasia as a staging ground for a dialogue between archival theory in Black and Jewish studies. In considering archival imagery and themes in the novel, I argue that collecting, rearranging, and reassembling physical objects is Birdie’s primary way of negotiating not only her Blackness but also her imagined Jewishness as a way beyond racial performance.