EXPERIENCE, NARRATIVE AND TESTIMONIAL

NOTES ON BARRACOON, BY ZORA N. HURSTON, AND LOSE YOUR MOTHER, BY SAIDIYA HARTMAN

Abstract

Considering Barracoon – the story of the last black cargo, by Zora N. Hurston (2018 [1931]), and Lose your mother – a journey along the Atlantic slave route, by Saidiya V. Hartman, I discuss the relationship between experience, narrative and testimonial – concepts present in the Literary Studies and in the ones focused on the historical knowledge. As a hypothesis, I argue that those works testify an impasse of two moments of the testimonial turn in the historical knowledge between the 20th and the 21st centuries in the context of the debate on the distinction of what is fictional and what is non-fictional and the questioning of the validity of a “universal history”. While, in Hurston, there is a tensioning between the constitution of a non-Western voice and the search for an inclusion in that exclusionary Western tradition, in Hartman, the starting point is the non-belonging and the narrator’s belief in her
incapacity of understanding the world (of hers). As theoretical references, I highlight Seligmann-Silva’s work on the testimonials (2005) and the concept of history according to Benjamin (2020). I conclude stressing the female testimonial perspective in the constitution of a new space of images that, in its turn, asks the reader an active attitude both in the reading practice and in the political agency.