Seeing Blackness: Found Footage and the Archive as Modes of Investigation in the Hanging of Marie-Josèphe Angélique

Victor Arroyo

doi:10.25038/am.v0i15.238

Abstract

Marie-Josèphe Angélique was a black slave in New France (Montreal, Canada) tried for setting a fire, burning down much of what is now known as Old Montreal. She was brutally tortured and hanged, her body eventually burned to ash in 1734. Over the last years, there has been an increased national interest in the figure of Marie-Josèphe Angélique, however, scholars and authorities have not come to an agreement about her hanging. Some speculate that the authorities, under pressure from an enraged population seeking a scapegoat, took the easy way out and condemned Angélique. Others believe that Angélique was determined to undermine the slave system and started the fire as revenge against her owner. I decided to explore these racial anxieties through my experimental documentary Anna O and the Case of Displaced Memory (2017), in which I used the hanging of Marie-Josèphe Angélique as an entry point to explore the relationship between the constitution of a racialized self, racial representation and the construction of collective memory, employing found footage as a mode of inquiry and aesthetic exploration into notions of appropriation, documentation and intertextuality.  Article received: December 28, 2017; Article accepted: January 10, 2018; Published online: April 15, 2018; Original scholarly paper  How to cite this article: Arroyo, Victor. "Seeing Blackness: Found Footage and the Archive as Modes of Investigation in the Hanging of Marie-Josèphe Angélique." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 15 (2018): 147–158. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i15.238

Highlights

Marie-Josèphe Angélique was a black slave in New France (Montreal, Canada) tried for setting a fire, burning down much of what is known as Old Montreal
Some speculate that the authorities, under pressure from an enraged population seeking a scapegoat, took the easy way out and condemned Angélique
I decided to explore these racial anxieties through my experimental documentary Anna O and the Case of Displaced Memory (2017), in which I used the hanging of Marie-Josèphe Angélique as an entry point to explore the relationship between the constitution of a racialized self, racial representation and the construction of collective memory, employing found footage as a mode of inquiry and aesthetic exploration into notions of appropriation, documentation and intertextuality

Summary

Introduction

In 2017, as Canada celebrates the 150th anniversary of the enactment of the Constitution Act, 1867, which united separate colonies into a single British Dominion – later known as Canada – we have an opportunity to revisit official narratives of reconciliation and to consider racialized histories that have been silenced in the context of settler colonialism. The hanging of Marie-Josèphe Angélique is a story about the ways in which racialized thought, victimization, and differentiation became circulated as surreptitious cultural values by those who define class, gender, and race, both in the past and the present.

Results

Conclusion