Literacy, hegemonic mediation, and “spiritual” liberation in colonial Jamaica

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay discusses the presence and performance of Arabic literacy, its use, and emancipatory dimension among Muslim slaves on colonial plantations in Jamaica as well as the complex and ambivalent position of the Irish abolitionist R.R. Madden in the translation, interpretation, and dissemination of some of their writings. Overall, Madden’s texts suggest a sense of agency granted to his literate Muslim interlocutors from West Africa due to his commitment to abolition. However, a careful analysis of his responses suggests that colonial subjects remain “untranslatable” to the Western mind without the active intervention of Madden, a process that echoes his collaborative translation of Manzano’s poetry in Cuba. As a translator, a proponent of the value of literacy for emancipation, Madden not only occupies a contentious mediatory site but also embraces a conflicted sense and advocacy of emancipation which he later connects to Christian spiritual liberation when faced with “critical literacy.”