BASTIRILMIŞ KİMLİK: AFRİKA KÖKENLİ AMERİKALI BİR KÖLENİN DÜNYA SEYAHATİ
SUB-SUBALTERN: SELF-FASHIONING OF AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLAVE AROUND THE WORLD

Summary/Abstract: David Dorr’s A Colored Man Around the World (1858) is a rare travel narrative written by an African-American slave and published before the Civil War. Dorr accompanied his owner in his travels and was promised to be granted his freedom on their return to the United States. When the promise was not fulfilled, Dorr fled to Ohio and published his account. Identifying himself as a patriotic American, Dorr echoes the imperialistic sentiments inherited from the British political imagination while simultaneously setting Britain against the United States with an awareness of a colonial past. Three other subaltern groups Dorr represents that are of interest to this study are women, –regardless of class, national or racial distinction- dogs, and the Oriental people as a whole, all of which I refer to as his sub-subaltern. The levels of subaltern representations in Dorr’s narrative point to manifold identity markers. He imparts with white patriarchal norms, current legality and acceptance of the institution of slavery, normalization of specieism, racial and gender discrimination as well as American political and cultural exceptionalism. Attidunal ambivalence regarding depictions of the Oriental is predominantly present in a similar vein to other contemporary American travel accounts published in the 19th century. This paper’s focal interest is on the self-fashioning of an African-American slave on a very critical transitional period in his life and on his voluntary adoption of a Anglo-American identity which he instrumentalizes to create his own sub-subaltern with diligent avoidance of an acknowledgment of his subalternity.

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