Dusky comments of silence: language, race, and Herman Melville's 'Benito cereno'

Abstract

Eric J. Sundquist's discussion of Benito Cereno (1855) in To Wake Nations (1993) places Melville's tale convincingly within context of debate over slavery and fear of slave rebellion in American 1850s. Sundquist suggests that governing figure of Melville's narrative method as well as his historical vision is a type of tautology that, through its power to assert the virtual equivalence of potentially different authorities or meanings (155), effectively collapses proslavery and antislavery arguments, thereby replicating paralysis, paranoia and political stagecraft by which slavery was maintained in immediate antebellum years (143-53). Yet Sundquist's analysis of tautology, paradox, and ambiguity in Benito Cereno flounders in one important respect. Despite his recognition of fragmentary, mysterious, and enigmatic quality of African community on board San Dominick (168), Sundquist's reading of Melville's tale posits a unified African of assistance (172) as vehicle of revolt on ship. According to Sundquist, Benito Cereno depicts a community of African slaves enacting its rebellion through an exclusive mode of cultural expression beyond perception of colonial power. Thus, clashing together of hatchets of six who overlook mutinous slave-ship represents the language in which Africans' communication occurs during suspended duration of Delano's presence. Such sounds are nothing less than a kind of speech - in this respect an elaboration of drumming in African tradition as a mode of synthetic vocalism based on pitch and rhythm (166). While not wishing to discount importance of tonal drum-languages within African societies, nor wishing to doubt central role of Africanisms within slave rebellions in New World and elsewhere, it is my intention in this paper to question evidence for homogeneity and efficacy of African language as presented in Melville's tale. The linguistic situation on San Dominick is defined - as with most aspects of tale - by equivocation: a peculiar technique whereby apparent opposites are equally voiced. Thus, alongside employment of African languages in tale, there is equal evidence for African manipulation of a European language: a manipulation that has even more terrifying implications for whites on board ship. Of course it would be difficult to argue that African languages are not in use on San Dominick. At one point narrator describes use of African word, equivalent to pshaw (76), and it is beyond doubt that low, monotonous chant (50), queer cry (71), and unknown syllable (79) of oakum-pickers all correspond to a misheard African language. It would be equally difficult to argue that hatchet-polishers do not have at least some role in maintaining mechanism of rebellion on ship, a fact that becomes obvious toward end of tale when they ring tocsin, or signal bell, for violent rebellion (98). Yet real question must surely be, not whether there are African languages in use on ship, but whether an African language is shown to be effective as a lingua franca, a pan-tribal means of rebellious talk, in particular context of Melville's tale. In other words, hatchet-polishers might be talking to each other in language of drums, but are they talking to anybody else? For Sundquist's reading of communication in Benito Cereno to work, we must assume that drum-script of Africans is a common language, that slaves on board San Dominick are part of a homogeneous drum-speech-community. This necessity leads Sundquist to assume that, in addition to six hatchet-polishers, four oakum-pickers who act as monitorial constables to their countrymen (54) are also native Ashanti (Sundquist 168). The story itself, along with its source-text, Amasa Delano's Narrative of Voyages and Travels in Northern and Southern Hemispheres (1817), seems to offer little justification for this point of view. …