Cannibals in the Postcolony: Sierra Leone's Intersecting Hegemonies in Charlie Haffner's Slave Revolt Drama "Amistad Kata-Kata"

Through an examination of publications by Sierra Leone's president, the United States Information Service, and Sierra Leonean playwright Charlie Haffner, this article explores how the narrative of the 1839 "Amistad" slave revolt emerged in the late 1980s as a key modality through whic...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Research in African literatures 2005-03, Vol.36 (1), p.1-19
Main Author: Christensen, Matthew J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
African literature
African nationalism
Anthropophagy
Capitalism
Consumption
Criticism and interpretation
Drama
Economic elites
Emancipation of slaves
Haffner, Charlie
Heroes
History of slavery
Leone, Sierra
Literary tropes
Literature
Metaphor
Modality (Semantic)
Mutiny
Narratives
Postcolonialism
Rebellion
Revolt
Sierra Leone
Slave revolts
Slavery
Theater
Theatre
Translation
United States history
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Summary:Through an examination of publications by Sierra Leone's president, the United States Information Service, and Sierra Leonean playwright Charlie Haffner, this article explores how the narrative of the 1839 "Amistad" slave revolt emerged in the late 1980s as a key modality through which meanings of Sierra Leonean nationalism and claims to state power were contested. The article argues that in its dialogic engagement with the two governmental texts, Haffner's play "Amistad Kata-Kata" transforms the fear of cannibalism that sparked the slave rebellion into a politically charged trope whereby it couples cannibalism as a name for the excesses carried out by local authorities with cannibalism as a description of the dehumanizing consumption of enslaved African labor within the Atlantic slave system. The trope thus forms a key for translating the slave revolt into a discrediting, disrupting critique of the complex interrelationships between global capitalism and excessive elite accumulation in the postcolony.
ISSN:0034-5210
1527-2044
1527-2044
DOI:10.1353/ral.2005.0001