• "Exhibiting Slavery makes a comprehensive and convincingly
argued linkage between recent developments in the museum culture
of the transatlantic slave trade and the plethora of literary production
on slavery. Halloran's is the best book to date on this important
topic."—Natasha Barnes, author of Cultural Conundrums: Gender,
Race, Nation and the Making of Caribbean Cultural Politics
|
Exhibiting Slavery:
The Caribbean Postmodern Novel as Museum |
| |
| Vivian Nun Halloran |
| 224 pages, 6 x 9 |
| Cloth ISBN 978-0-8139-2865-4 • $55.00 |
| Paper ISBN 978-0-8139-2866-1 • $21.50 |
| New World
Studies
|
| November 2009 |
 |
Exhibiting Slavery examines the ways in which Caribbean
postmodern historical novels about slavery written in Spanish,
English, and French function as virtual museums, simultaneously
showcasing and curating a collection of "primary documents"
within their pages. As Vivian Nun Halloran attests, these novels
highlight narrative "objects" extraneous to their plot—such
as excerpts from the work of earlier writers, allusions to specific
works of art, the uniforms of maroon armies assembled in preparation
of a military offensive, and accounts of slavery's negative impact
on the traditional family unit in Africa or the United States.
In doing so, they demand that their readers go beyond the pages
of the books to sort out fact from fiction and consider what relationship
these featured "objects" have to slavery and to contemporary
life. The self-referential function of these texts produces a
"museum effect" that simultaneously teaches and entertains
their readers, prompting them to continue their own research beyond
and outside the text.
New World Studies
American Literatures Initiative
Vivian Nun Halloran is Associate
Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at Indiana
University.
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