SLAVE RESISTANCE AND DECOLONIZING CARIBBEAN HISTORY IN ANDREA LEVY’S THE LONG SONG

Tia Byer

doi:10.46827/ejlll.v5i1.260

Abstract

Set during the final days of Slavery on the island of Jamaica, Andrea Levy’s 2010 novel, The Long Song is a neo-slave narrative that explores the nature of slave resistance and colonial historiographical control. When read through a postcolonial lens, The Long Song takes the form of a counter-discourse, where the main character of Miss July offers a corrective to the dominant white narratives of Caribbean history. This essay argues that the experience of resistance in Levy’s narrative is one of literary mimicry, analysing July’s written resistance as it answers back to and confronts the colonial narratives that disregard the oppressed individual experience from history. Levy, in reanimating the history of Jamaican slavery by aligning her text with the unheard ‘History From Below’ perspective, demonstrates and replicates the unreliable narratives orchestrated by those ‘From Above’. As such, both Levy and her fictional July employ a method of historiographic metafiction to reclaim the previously silenced voice of the Jamaican slaves that the hegemonic White Planter class seek to oppress and obliterate from historical record.   Article visualizations:<img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0751/a.php" alt="Hit counter" />

Highlights

Self-consciously reveals her intent to resist the totalising narratives from history through unveiling the falsity with which they exist and promote. She employs a deliberately artificial narrative that is an act of historiographic metafiction- the term Lynda Hutcheon uses to describe literature demonstrating “theoretical self-awareness of history and fiction as human constructs” (1988, 5)
Replicates the unreliability of historic narrative to undermine colonial logic
Communication becomes an act of subordination in the foreword to July’s fictional narrative where July’s son and her “publisher-editor”, Thomas Kinsman contextualises July’s ‘will’ and authorial intent as a counter-discourse (Levy, 4)

Summary

Introduction

Slave resistance in Levy’s text The Long Song is one of literary counter-discourse (2010). Communication becomes a weapon in The Long Song when Levy’s fictional narrator writes back to the white colonial historical narratives about the Caribbean. The postcolonial experience in the text reveals how former slaves are marginalized victims of historical narratives that deny them accurate representation and the ability to voice their own “story” (Levy, 1).

Results

Conclusion