Slavery and the Culture of Taste by Gikandi Simon;

Author:Gikandi, Simon;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press

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To understand the role of punishment as perversely desirable, it is important to rehearse the spectacle of punishment and its inscription in the European text and to turn, like others have done before, to the works of John Gabriel Stedman, whose Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam and the illustrations accompanying it provide an unrivaled witness to the use of violence as a part of an exhibitionary order.109

Early during his expedition in Suriname, Stedman was struck by the role played by torture in the management of rebellious slaves: “In 1730, a most shocking and barbarous execution of eleven of the unhappy negro captives was resolved upon, in the expectation that it might terrify their companions and induce them to submit. One man was hanged alive upon a gibbet by an iron hook stuck through his ribs; two others were chained to stakes and burnt to death by a slow fire. Six women were broken alive upon the rack, and two girls were decapitated. Such was their resolution under these tortures, that they endured them without even uttering a sigh.”110 Writing from a generally pro-abolitionist position after his tour of duty in Suriname, Stedman was fascinated by scenes of barbarity because of the powerful impression they had left on him—”the gloom which the infernal furnace had left upon my mind,” as he put it.111 William Blake's illustrations for Stedman's book were to become powerful visual testimonies to the economy of terror at the end of the long eighteenth century (figs. 4.12 and 4.13).

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