Abstract
This essay explores the ways in which contemporary postcolonial writers like Caryl Phillips, David Dabydeen and Beryl Gilroy engage with the archive of slavery, focusing in particular on Gilroy’s novel Stedman and Joanna (1991). Borrowing from Michel Foucault’s work The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), I argue that the reliance of authors on the narratives of slave captains and plantation owners may be troubling because of the possibility of turning these documents into monuments, creating what I call “docu/monuments”. Gilroy’s close reliance on John Gabriel Stedman’s writing and reluctance to provide her female protagonist Joanna with narrative agency ensure that her text, and Joanna in particular, remain in bondage to the archive. However, if Gilroy’s novel confirms the status of Stedman’s work as a docu/monument, Stedman and Joanna performs another important memorializing function as a flawed monument to the slave trade; one that, though unable to free itself from Stedman’s original narrative, nevertheless makes an attempt to think creatively about the past of slavery.