Remembering American Slavery:
Refashioning a Cultural Trauma Through Representation
MA ThesisTom Bakker
Film Studies: Professional Track Supervisor E. Masson
04-04-2015
Table of Contents
Chapter Page
1. Introduction 3
2. Trauma: Individual, Collective, Cultural 6
2.1. Individual Trauma 6
2.2. Collective Trauma 9
2.3. Cultural Trauma 11
3. The Role of Slavery in the Formation of an African American Identity 16 3.1. Representation and Mediation of Slavery as a Traumatic Event 21
4. The Representation of Slavery In Roots 24
4.1. Establishing a Collective African American Identity 27 4.2. Articulating Cultural Trauma Through Narrative 29
5. The Representation of Slavery In 12 Years a Slave 33
5.1. Representing Violence as Part of a Trauma Claim 34
5.2. Creating a New Narrative Through Violence 37
5.3. Renewing the Claim of Cultural Trauma 40
6. Conclusion 41
7. Reference List 45
1. Introduction
In 2015 it will be 150 years since the United States of America abolished slavery. After the end of the Civil War in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed, which prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude. Although there is no one still alive today to have experienced slavery on the plantations in the United States, the memory of this slavery very much still exists today, particularly within the African American community. It is safe to say this memory can be seen as a collective traumatic memory and a cultural trauma. A cultural trauma occurs when ‘members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways' (Alexander 1). The memory of slavery and its traumatic qualities is something that forms and informs the collective identity of this group, even though interestingly its members haven't experienced the trauma directly themselves. One of the ways through which trauma forms identity, is through media: books, news, art, etc. All of these media are tools to (re)construct this trauma and the memory of this trauma as an experience shared by many, something which binds people together as a community with a strong shared history.
Film is an important medium in (re)constructing this trauma. There are many films, television series and documentaries dealing with the subject of slavery. One of the most impactful is the 1977 miniseries Roots, which was watched by an estimated total of 140 million viewers and which received 37 Emmy Award nominations (Behrmann 3). The series is an adaptation, based on the book Roots: The Saga of An American Family (1976) written by Alex Haley. Roots deals with the story of Haley's maternal ancestors, from them being captured near the Gambia river in Africa in the eighteenth century to their enslavement in America and their eventual freedom. Although its claims of genealogical accuracy were quickly disputed by critics, Roots did provide many African Americans with the fundamentally positive idea they had a long history that is not necessarily lost, as was widely believed (Wright 206). For them, watching Roots with its narrative of survival, perseverance and eventually redemption offered a new perspective on themselves, their history and thus their memories (Taylor 47).
Another story about slavery is the recent feature film 12 Years a Slave (McQueen, 2013; henceforth 12YAS), which received critical acclaim and won three Academy Awards. Like Roots, this film was also an adaptation, based on the slave narrative memoir Twelve Years a Slave (1853) by Solomon Northup, a free African-American man living in the state of New York who was kidnapped and forced to work as a slave in the South for twelve years. Reception of the film was
overall very positive, with many reviewers commenting on the visceral experience of watching the horrors of slavery unfold. One commenter said that 'it marks the first time in history that our entertainment industry, albeit with international creative input, has managed to stare directly at slavery and maintain that gaze (Simon 1).
While both Roots and 12YAS deal with the subject of slavery and its traumatic qualities, they do so in very different ways. It is precisely these differences that I want to research in this thesis, since they have a profound impact on the articulation of the cultural trauma of slavery and the ways in which the subject is perceived by the public, both black and white. It is important to note here that I will look at these media products as being products that originate from, or are perceived by the public to originate from, black authors. As will become clear during my thesis, slavery and race cannot be dissociated from each other. The traumatic memory of slavery is a fundamental part of African American identity. I will thus position both Roots and 12YAS as part of black culture, which as a minority culture in Western society is restricted in its movement by the dominant white culture. This means that the claims these “black” products make, are always in some way related to the position and status of African American collective identity within mainstream Western society. This position must also be placed in a historical perspective, since this has changed significantly over the course of history. By analyzing the different representations of Roots and 12YAS, I hope to gain insights into how the cultural trauma of slavery has been articulated. These insights can subsequently give valuable information about the status of African American collective identity in the United States in relation to the mainstream society and the positioning of the cultural trauma of slavery in that society. Therefore, my research question is: in what ways does the specific representation of slavery in these case studies refashion the cultural trauma of slavery?
I will begin this thesis by researching and analyzing the concept of trauma. First I will discuss individual trauma from a psychological perspective and then subsequently link it to collective and cultural trauma. The effects of trauma on a community can range from dividing people to connecting them to each other. The representation of the trauma plays a key role in this process. I will discuss the current debate on the theorization of trauma and choose my own position within this debate. Subsequently, I will discuss the effects of a collective trauma such as slavery on the collective identity formation of a group, in this case the African American community and how this relates to the larger American society. This chapter is based on secondary sources, but here I will lay a basis for my arguments during my case studies. Once I have established these effects, I can look at the relationship between the representation of black people and the (traumatic) memory of slavery. Discussing this relationship is necessary since mediation and representation play a
hugely important role in the formation of collective identities. Of course there is not enough space in this thesis to give an enormously detailed account when it comes to this relationship, but my admittedly broad sketch should give a sufficient indication of the ways in which the representation of black people and slavery connects with the construction of African American identity and subsequently with a dominant white identity and culture. The theories discussed in this party of the thesis, again based on secondary sources, I will subsequently develop further based on the findings of my case studies. They are also fundamental to the analysis of my case studies, since the context provided here is necessary for historical perspective. Only with knowledge of this context, I will be able to discuss my case studies. Next, I will start my media analysis of Roots and 12YAS and research the differing ways in which they portray slavery and its traumatic qualities. I would argue that it is precisely these differences which give insight into how the cultural trauma of slavery has been articulated and refashioned and how this has been used in the always ongoing reformation of African American collective identity and its position within American society.
By comparing Roots and 12YAS from a socio-historical perspective that combines trauma theory, theories of media representation and minority identity formation, this thesis places these case studies in a new context and adds to the theorization of the development of the cultural trauma of slavery and the ways in which representation contributes to it. By tracing the positioning of the trauma of slavery and its treatment in popular culture, this thesis gives new and valuable insights into the status of the African American collective identity in relation to the larger American society. Slavery as a cultural trauma plays a fundamental part in the construction and positioning of this collective African American identity and the representation of slavery is extremely important in articulating and reworking societal attitudes regarding race and racism. Through analysis of these two popular culture products in relation to each other, it is subsequently possible to develop new theories or rework existing ones and trace future strategies for a minority’s struggle to be treated equally in Western society.
Although slavery and its aftermath have had effects in many parts of the world, in this thesis I want to focus on slavery in the United States of America, since that is where questions of race, identity and memory have been most visible, at least in the Western world. After the end of slavery, the African American Civil Rights movement and the fight for equality for black Americans have been well documented, which is extremely helpful for the research and arguments of this thesis.
2. Trauma: individual, collective, cultural
In this chapter, I will first explore briefly the notion of individual trauma and the difficult ways trauma is linked to memory and remembering. Here I shall draw on a psychoanalytic framework. Subsequently, I will move on to the concepts of 'collective' and 'cultural' trauma, which are also formed on the basis of memory. These traumas are experienced by larger groups and the mediation of the traumatic events plays a fundamental role in the experience of traumatic feelings. I will discuss these concepts first in more general and abstract terms from a sociological perspective, but in the next chapter I shall link them specifically to slavery and the ways in which this collective trauma has been used to form a collective identity. The reason I start with a short exploration of the concept of individual trauma is that I would argue this concept is very useful in understanding the intricacies of the origins of collective and cultural trauma and the specific difficulties in narrating traumatic events. This chapter has been divided into three subchapters: individual trauma, collective trauma and cultural trauma.
2.1. Individual Trauma
In the field of psychoanalysis, trauma is usually defined along the lines of an 'overwhelming experience of sudden, or catastrophic events, in which the response to the events occurs in the often delayed, and uncontrolled repetitive occurrence of hallucinations and other intrusive phenomena' (Caruth 181). Paramount in this definition is the fact that the response to a traumatic event is often delayed. Importantly, this response is very much part of the traumatic experience. Literary scholar Cathy Caruth, who started writing about trauma in the 1990's and is now one of the foremost and most influential scholars when it comes to psychoanalysis-inspired theories of trauma, writes that a general element of all traumatic experience is the inability to completely witness it as it is happening. The traumatic experience has such an immediate and forceful impact that it is impossible to attach simple knowledge and memory to it as it is happening, as one would do with any normal experience (7). It is only after a period of time that a victim of trauma starts to remember or perhaps realize what has happened, which suggests the victim was never completely conscious during the traumatic event. This fact of latency, as Caruth calls this phenomenon, is very striking, since it seems to consist not in the forgetting of a real experience that can from there on never be known completely, but in an innate latency within the experience itself. 'The historical power of trauma is not just that the experience is repeated after its forgetting, but that it is only in and through its inherent forgetting that it is first experienced at all' (8).
The traumatic experience is thus not only a record of the past, but registers the power of an event that is not yet fully owned by the victim. As Caruth says, a somewhat peculiar contradiction has formed the basis of a lot of the definitions and descriptions within the work on trauma. While a victim's images of a traumatic experience are very accurate and precise, for the most part they cannot be consciously recalled and controlled. Quite often these images come in the form of nightmares or hallucinations which are not distorted by conscious repression or unconscious wish. At this point Caruth cites Freud, who has extensively researched war neuroses resulting from the experiences of the First World War. He suggests these traumatic nightmares directly point to an event, thus the trauma, but paradoxically at the same time occupy a space to which conscious access is denied. 'The ability to recover the past is thus closely and paradoxically tied up […] with the inability to have access to it' (151-2).
For survivors of the trauma the truth of the event may not only be in the horrible facts, but also in the way that the trauma opposes clear understanding. Here Caruth comes to an important point, namely that this opposition 'creates a dilemma for historical understanding' (153). On the one hand, a trauma needs to be integrated, meaning to become a functioning part of the psyche, both in the interest of testimony and in the interest of the healing process of the victim. But on the other hand, the conversion of the traumatic event into a narrative that makes it possible to verbalize and communicate it to others, to make it part of the knowledge of the past, might diminish or even erase the force and precision that characterizes the recollection of the trauma. And beyond the loss of this precision an even more profound loss takes place: the loss of the incomprehensibility of the event, which is, as Caruth writes, an important part of the truth of the trauma (153-4). If one loses the incomprehensibility of the event, it might, somehow, feel less truthful. This is because the incomprehensibility has a distinct and noticeable emotional impact on the victim. In other words, by making a trauma into a story, from a victim's perspective one might actually lose, partially or completely, the importance of the trauma. This is because through a story, one can make sense of the event and is able to narrate it along clearly understandable lines, which lessens the visceral emotion. Narrating a trauma is thus a very careful and complex pursuit, if ones wishes to balance emotional impact and understanding.
Suffering from trauma does invariably mean one has survived it, at least in a literal sense. The body is still here, victims are survivors. Psychiatrist Robert Lifton has written extensively about how people survive trauma. According to him, a survivor of a traumatic event is 'one who has been exposed to the possibility of dying or has witnessed the death of others yet remained alive' (Lifton 2263). To him, an encounter with death is a fundamental element of being a survivor.
The responses of survivors to their survival are mostly individual and different, but Lifton does describe some broader psychological patterns that seem to be relatively consistent and concurrent with Caruth's 'occurrence of hallucinations and other intrusive phenomena'. The first is what Lifton calls a "death imprint", or the struggle of a survivor with images of death and dying. Secondly, survivors feel an incredible sense of debt to those who have died, 'a need to placate them or carry out their wishes in order to justify their own survival' (2263). Survivors also feel a need to search for meaning and form, but as Caruth describes as well, this search is complicated and filled with conflicting needs (2263). I would argue this sense of debt is very important for a survivor and something which can be linked to Caruth, especially when she talks about not wanting to lose the impact of the trauma by casting it in a comprehensible narrative form.
Perhaps another reason why survivors have so much trouble telling their stories, is exactly that they are survivors. Survival of trauma is the ultimately positive outcome of a very negative experience and it can be accompanied by incredible feelings of guilt. Why did I survive and they did not? Am I allowed to feel glad about my survival when so many others have died? Following Lifton, I think telling a story about a trauma is indeed perceived as a way of justifying one's survival and easing feelings not only of incomprehensibility but also of guilt. This makes it difficult to freely tell one's story, since there is a feeling of debt to the people who have died during the traumatic event.
There are, however, different types of survivors. While talking about recent traumas such as the Vietnam War and 9/11, Lifton distinguishes two: immediate and distant survivors. Immediate survivors are those who have been exposed directly to death. Their responses are instinctive. They have lost their sense of self because of the trauma and must struggle painfully to reestablish this. Distant survivors have less visceral reactions to the trauma. For example, when talking about the 9/11 attacks, Lifton identifies Americans in general as distant survivors, people who were not directly exposed to the attacks. Their psychological wounds are lesser, but they may feel a 'sense of individual and collective fear and vulnerability and feelings of national pride and humiliation' (2263). I find this distinction between immediate and distant survivors very interesting, but I would like to use this is a different way than Lifton. While Lifton seems to be talking mostly about distance in terms of space, meaning the proximity to a traumatic event, I would argue that distance in time is perhaps even more paramount. Once again, this ties in with the work of Caruth, for example when she talks about for example latency and delayed responses, which I have discussed above. It is only after some time a survivor may truly be able to examine the traumatic event and try to make sense of it. One has to gain distance in order to get closer (of course, this is
something every trauma survivor necessarily goes through). Time passes by, so there is always an increasing amount of distance. But what I argue here, which is something that is also indicative of the collective and cultural trauma I'll discuss in a moment, is that perhaps even multiple generations have to pass before the central meaning and effect of some traumatic events such as slavery can be established. Could it be, paradoxically, that the central meaning in terms of cultural impact of such traumas can only be established by people who haven't experienced the trauma themselves? I thus think here of distance in terms of transgenerational memory and trauma as memory, not direct experience. Sufferers from a trauma are no longer traumatized in the most direct sense of having experienced the event themselves, but they do still have a memory of it that lives on in the community in various ways. It is important to note that here trauma as a concept evolves into something past individual psychological trauma. It is perhaps less visceral and personal, but far more impactful in society. This is crucial in the definitions of collective and cultural trauma I will discuss now.
2.2. Collective Trauma
Collective trauma is defined by Kai Erikson as representing ‘a blow to the basic tissues of social life that damages the bonds attaching people together and impairs the prevailing sense of communality’ (Erikson 187). In its most basic form, collective trauma is shared by people who have experienced the same traumatic event. The social dimension of trauma is extremely important in this definition. Collective trauma does not have the quality of suddenness so often associated with (individual) trauma. It arises slowly into the awareness of individuals who suffer from it. This means that collective trauma does not so much refer to the traumatic event, but instead to its aftermath, the process of slowly realizing a community can no longer effectively offer support and also that a fundamental part of the self has been lost. The 'texture' of the community has been damaged. Moreover, according to Erikson, the collective trauma often seems to uncover hitherto silent or barely visible fault lines that run through the structure of the community as a whole. The disaster lays these lines bare and divides the community into 'divisive fragments'. Usually, the divide runs between people who have been affected by the disaster - they have lost family, friends, gotten injured, etc.- and those who have not been touched by the disaster (185-89). When something like this happens, traumatic experience integrates itself into the grain of the affected community, so much so that 'they come to supply its prevailing mood and temper, dominate its imagery and its sense of self, govern the way its members relate to one another' (190). The point Erikson wants to make here is not that disaster strengthens communal feelings -it almost never
does, according to him- but that the shared experience of such an event becomes 'almost like a common culture, a source of kinship' (190).
Here, Erikson makes two interesting and useful points. The first is that trauma weakens the texture of the community as a whole and breaks the community into fragments, along lines that were previously silent. But, while this event weakens the community as a whole, I propose it actually strengthens the bonds within the fragmented groups, since members of the group can relate to each other through shared experience. Erikson does not expressly mention this, but he does leave some room for this possibility. Experiencing a traumatic event is so fundamental, victims can indeed get the feeling that they are different from others. It is, then, an understandable step to form a bond with people who have experienced the same trauma, who feel the same pain and suffering (186). It becomes an us versus them, separated along very clearly delineated lines a traumatic event and its aftermath have made visible. So while this collective trauma weakens the community as a whole, it actually strengthens the bonds within the fragmented groups.
The second point Erikson makes is that having undergone a traumatic experience becomes almost like a common culture. It influences the consciousness and imagery of the affected group. It creates social climates an communal moods that dominate 'the group's spirit' (190), which in turn can change the personality and identity of a person that is part of that particular group. People who have experience trauma often have the sense they can no longer fully control the circumstances of their own lives. They feel vulnerable. They are aware of what misfortune can do to them and even more aware that it can happen again. According to Erikson, one of the most important tasks of culture is to 'help people camouflage the actual risks of the world around them - to help them edit reality in such a way that it seems manageable' (190). This is fundamental, since I would argue that through specific choices in subject matter and manner of representation by authors of popular culture products, reality can be edited and risks can be camouflaged. However, as will become evident during my analysis of 12YAS, this is only one side of it. I would namely also argue that instead of camouflaging, popular culture products can actually place a spotlight on the risks of the world. I will further elucidate this during my media analysis. For now it is important to note that the fact that a community has undergone a trauma informs their consciousness, their expectations for the future and, importantly, their cultural expressions. The ways in which this happens in the specific case of the trauma of slavery, I will discuss while analyzing my case studies.
2.3. Cultural Trauma
To adequately deal with the intricacies of a group's communal cultural identity being affected by a trauma, the concept of cultural trauma has been created. I have quoted Jeffrey C. Alexander's definition of cultural trauma in my introduction. According to Alexander, a cultural trauma occurs when ‘members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways' (Alexander 1). In his text, Alexander also discusses the work of Cathy Caruth. He does not agree with her approach, which he calls 'psychoanalytic lay trauma theory' (3). Interestingly, Alexander seems to gloss over the fact that Caruth is not speaking about cultural trauma, but instead about individual trauma. According to Alexander, Caruth's perspective has a 'naturalistic fallacy'. He says that no event is inherently traumatic. In and of themselves, events do not create collective trauma. According to Alexander, trauma is a socially mediated attribution. This attribution may occur in real time, as the event happens, but it also may be made before the event occurs or after the event is over (8). By this Alexander means that a collective event only becomes traumatic once the collectivity decides it is traumatic. The collectivity can even attribute trauma to events that have not happened yet, but that one can see coming.
I find Alexander's position very interesting and do agree with it, but only when it comes to cultural trauma. Caruth, however, is thus talking about individual trauma. In my opinion, this makes all the difference. A lot of trauma is indeed socially mediated attribution, but not all trauma. I think there also exists a very personal and individual type of trauma that develops regardless of social mediation. I am mostly thinking here of bodily harm that shocks the psyche on an extremely basic and instinctual level, as a direct consequence of Lifton's encounter with death or the possibility of dying. So when it comes to individual trauma, I would still argue Caruth makes fair points that will be very valuable in this thesis, especially because of the traumatic atrocities committed during the period of slavery. I will expand on this later during the analysis of my case studies, since individual trauma plays an important role in both Roots and 12YAS.
However, when it comes to cultural trauma, I agree with Alexander. The individuals in a group that suffers from cultural trauma have not all experienced the exact same thing, but they have all been affected. So while a cultural trauma such as slavery or 9/11 has impacted a lot of people individually, it has impacted each of them differently, also in terms of distance. The cultural trauma may not exactly match an individual's experience of that trauma, but is indeed a socially mediated attribution that, I would argue, could bond survivors, immediate and especially distant, together. So
while a collective trauma is also trauma that affects a larger group of people, cultural trauma has a layer of cultural impact and social mediation to it, ultimately affecting a large part of a society. This cultural impact and social mediation when it comes to slavery is something which I will analyze through my case studies. To integrate the element of social mediation fundamental for this thesis, I will from this point on speak of cultural trauma instead of collective trauma.
So what makes a cultural trauma? According to Alexander, traumatic status is attributed to events not because they are actually harmful or objectively sudden, but because these events are believed to have 'abruptly, and harmfully, affected collective identity' (10). What is at stake in a cultural trauma is the stability of the collective identity in terms of meaning, not action. Meaning is what eventually provides feelings of trauma, not the event in itself. So whether or not the structures of meaning are traumatized is not the result of an event, but the effect of what Alexander calls a sociocultural process, a process which is profoundly impacted by power structures in our society. A cultural trauma is 'the result of [an] acute discomfort entering into the core of the collectivity's sense of its own identity' (10). This takes time. Alexander calls the space between the traumatic event and representation the 'trauma process'. It is in this process that a traumatic event becomes a cultural trauma. But it is not the collectivity as a whole that decides a cultural trauma, it is agents who do. These are the persons that 'compose collectivities, broadcast symbolic representations -characterizations- of ongoing social events, past, present and future' (11). These persons do so as members of a social group. Their decisions can be seen as 'claims' about the state of social reality, what has caused it and what are proper ways to react to it. These are claims about a fundamental disruption, an experience of pain, a destruction of a value perceived as sacred and a 'demand for emotional, institutional and symbolic reparation and reconstitution'. A claim is always the start of the cultural construction of trauma (11).
At this point in his essay, Alexander quotes sociologist and political economist Max Weber. Weber discusses by whom these claims are made and, importantly, what motives may be behind it. Claims are made by what Max Weber called 'carrier groups', the collective agents of the trauma process. Carrier groups have 'both ideal and material interests, they are situated in particular places in the social structure, and they have particular discursive talents for articulating their claims […] in the public sphere' (11) . Carrier groups vary greatly. According to Weber they may be the elites, but 1 they may also be lower and marginalized classes. They may be renowned religious leaders or groups who the majority has deemed to be spiritual untouchables. A carrier group can also be
Weber, Max. The sociology of religion. Beacon Press, 1993: 468-517 as paraphrased by Alexander, 2004:
1
generational. When this is the case, the carrier group represents ‘the perspectives and interests of a younger generation against an older one'. Additionally, carrier groups can be national, carefully positioning their own nation against a supposedly evil 'other'. Finally, carrier groups may be institutional, speaking for one particular social sector or organization against others in a 'fragmented and polarized social order' (11). What becomes clear here is that groups make their claims to defend an existing order that is under pressure or might have been lost already. A claim is a defensive act that opposes the change the trauma has brought about, an attempt to return as closely as possible to a prior state perceived as ideal, or at least better than after the traumatic event. This is what one might call the goal of the cultural trauma process. Of course, as learned from the above definitions, this is an impossible goal. One might not be able to accurately remember the traumatic event, but one also, paradoxically, is not able to forget it. The experience of trauma is so fundamental, it changes one's future and one's future identity in irrevocable ways. Yet, this yearning for a past perceived as better than the present continues to inform the representation of the event.
The goal of a speaker of the carrier group is to convince the audience of the claim of trauma. This is done by using the intricacies of the historical situation, symbolic resources and the limits and possibilities provided by structures in the society. One has to use the prevailing social attitudes and representations in popular culture and subtly bend them to one's advantage. The first listeners of the speaker are members of the carrier group itself. Only if the speaker is successful in convincing the original collectivity they have been traumatized by a singular event, the audience for the traumatic claim can be widened to include other audiences within the larger society. In the case of slavery, for example, that would be the white community. Representation of trauma 'depends on constructing a compelling framework of cultural classification' (12). The white audience has to be convinced a trauma has taken place by an articulation of that trauma's influences. This is the telling of a new story, a new master narrative, but this is not a simple process. According to Alexander, it is a 'complex and multivalent symbolic process that is contingent, highly contested, and sometimes highly polarizing' (12). To adequately convince the audience outside the original collectivity they are part of the trauma, the carrier group needs to be persuasive in its making of meaning (12). It is through these claims that carrier groups try to reunite the groups that were separated after the traumatic event. By convincing separate groups they share traumatic experience, such trauma claims try to envelop as many people as possible. The larger the group, the more successful the claim and the trauma process. Successful claims of cultural traumas thus bind people together, it is a process of integration, but this process is intricate and time-consuming.
Alexander identifies four critical representations that are fundamental to the creation of a new master narrative after a traumatic event. These representations are essential to any claim of trauma. It is important to note here that these representations interact continuously with each other, they are interlaced and cross-reference at all times. The first representation identified by Alexander concerns the nature of the pain. This representation deals with what actually happened to both the particular group and the wider collectivity. Alexander gives the example of slavery. Was slavery traumatic for African Americans or was it, as claimed by some revisionist historians, a highly coercive but profitable economic system? The second representation concerns the nature of the
victim, which defines what group of people was affected by the traumatizing events. Were particular
individuals or groups singled out or did it happen to the people in general? And, asks Alexander, was a demarcated group singled out or were several groups involved? The third representation concerns the relation of the trauma to the wider audience. It is important to discover to what extent the audience-public of the carrier groups' claim identifies with the group that was immediately victimized. According to Alexander, this is a long and difficult process. Usually at the beginning of this process, the audience-public sees very little to no relation between the victims and themselves. Gradually and only if the victimized group is 'represented in terms of valued qualities shared by the larger collective identity will the audience be able to symbolically participate in the experience of the original trauma' (14). The fourth and final representation concerns the attribution of
responsibility. When it comes to creating a compelling and convincing new master narrative, there
is a fundamental need to establish the identity of the perpetrator. It is important to find answers to questions such as: who injured the victim(s) and who caused the trauma? According to Alexander, this issue is always greatly a symbolic and social construction (13-5).
The approach of Neil Smelser, a scholar who has written extensively about psychological and cultural trauma and their relationship, clarifies the creation of a new master narrative further. According to him, three definitional accomplishments must be made before any event can be qualified as cultural trauma. Firstly and most obviously, the event must be remembered or be made to remember. Secondly, the memory must be made culturally relevant, meaning represented as 'obliterating, damaging, or rendering problematic something sacred' (36). Normally this pertains to a value or norm that is thought to be essential for the affected society's integrity. And thirdly, the memory of the event must be associated with great negative affect, such as disgust, shame or guilt (36). Important here as well is that these memories must be made traumatic, meaning that they must be made so by the deliberate efforts of the carrier groups. That means in turn that the reasons why they are made traumatic can be highly subjective and laden with personal motives, such as financial
interests. That is why such claims are often contested by other groups in society. The making of a cultural trauma is thus a highly complex battlefield of meaning and different interests.
Experiencing cultural trauma is thus defined as a 'sociological process that defines a painful injury to the collectivity, establishes the victim, attributes responsibility, and distributes the material consequences' (Alexander 22). When traumatic events are experienced and thus imagined and represented as traumatic, the collective identity will be refashioned very significantly. This refashioning of the identity involves a 're-remembering' of the collective past. Alexander says that memory is not only 'social and fluid, but also connected to the contemporary sense of the self' (22). Identities are constructed and secured not just by confronting the present, but also by a reexamining and reconstructing of the earlier life of the collectivity (22).
According to Alexander, once a collective identity has been constructed, there will eventually be a calming down period. What he calls the 'spiral of signification' will flatten out and 'affect and emotion become less inflamed, preoccupation with sacrality and pollution fades' (22). The discourse of trauma, which was up to this point heightened and greatly affecting society, disappears and what the community has 'learned' from the trauma becomes fixed in monuments, school books and museums. 'The new collective identity will be rooted in sacred places and structured in ritual routines' (23). This routinization process, the triumph of the mundane, is often looked at with regret by the audience which had been assembled by the trauma process. Carrier groups can also greatly oppose this routinization. Just like sufferers from individual trauma who have difficulty with simultaneously narrating their story and retaining the emotional impact, carrier groups who have successfully claimed a cultural trauma, feel this triumph of the mundane lessens the force of the traumatic event and therefore its importance. For them, heightened emotion thus equals importance (23).
The general public, however, often welcomes this fading of emotion with relief. Both experiencing a trauma and encountering and remembering it in the subsequent trauma process takes an emotional toll. Once a trauma is institutionalized in memorials and museums, it can no longer 'evoke the strong emotions, the sentiments of betrayal, and the affirmations of sacrality that once were so powerfully associated with it' (23). However, while this reconstructed collective identity no longer fundamentally occupies the collectivity's conscience, it still is an extremely important resource for settling future social problems and 'disturbances of collective consciousness' (23). According to Alexander, such routinization processes are inevitable and normal, but they certainly do not neutralize the fundamental social significance of cultural traumas. On the contrary, they actually have incredible normative implications for the way social life in the society is conducted.
Once members from the larger society are allowed to participate in the pain of others, 'cultural traumas broaden the realm of social understanding and sympathy, and they provide powerful avenues for new forms of social incorporation' (23). So while traumatic experience in the first instance divides groups in a community, I posit that the social mediation element of it, if successful, ultimately can bring separate groups together through a shared experience of trauma processing. As they saying goes: a misery shared is a misery halved.
Now that I have discussed the current debate concerning trauma theory and its difficulties and positioned myself within this debate, in the next chapter I will specify this further in relation to the traumatic experience of slavery and its influence on the formation of identity in the African American community as a whole. Since the position of the African American community has differed throughout history, this must be viewed in a historical perspective.
3. The Role of Slavery in the Formation of an African American Identity
In this chapter I will discuss how the slavery as a traumatic experience was fundamental in the formation of the African American identity. Slavery has become a cultural trauma and continues to inform and shape collective memory and culture. I will also look at what it means for a community to be so formed by a traumatic past of being oppressed and how this community's history of slavery pertains to American society as a whole. A subchapter will sketch out the historic representation of black people in American popular culture, which is important to be aware of in order to position
Roots and 12YAS within this history. The findings in this chapter are based on the accounts of others
in scientific literature. It is necessary to discuss them here, since the theories below will be useful either as context or will be directly dealt with in my case studies.
In his seminal 2001 book Cultural Trauma, Slavery and the Formation of African American
Identity, sociologist Ron Eyerman traces, as is evident from the title, the construction of the African
American identity in relation to slavery. In concurrence with my approach to trauma in this thesis, Eyerman discusses the trauma of slavery not as 'an institution or even experience, but as a collective memory, a form of remembrance that grounded the identity-formation of a people' (Eyerman 1). As a cultural process, Eyerman says, trauma is mediated through a lot of different forms of representation and connects to the 'reformation of collective identity and the reworking of collective memory' (1).
The notion of a unique identity for African Americans originated after the Civil War, thus after slavery was abolished. It is important to note here that the emergence of a unique identity through the trauma of slavery came at a time when this trauma was not necessarily something that
had been directly experienced by everyone in the community. Slavery was now a memory, even though it was still very much alive. In this sense, Eyerman posits, slavery was traumatic in retrospect. It of course was traumatic at the time as well, but more so individually. The label of collective trauma was attributed to the event after it had happened. It was thought to be a 'primal scene' which had the potential to unite all the African Americans in the United States. Slavery thus 'formed the root of an emergent collective identity through an equally emergent collective memory, one that signified and distinguished a race, a people, or a community […]' (1).
The notion of an African American identity was first articulated by black intellectuals in the last decades of the 19th century. ‘Intellectual’ refers here to a socially constructed, historically conditioned role, not a personality type or a structurally determined position (3). The African American identity was grounded by the memory of slavery and the way it was represented verbally and through art. If slavery was traumatic to this carrier group, it was only in retrospect, 'mediated through recollection and reflection, and, for some, tinged with some strategic, practical, and political interest' (2). Mass-mediated representations play a decisive role in the discourse of cultural trauma, especially since the experience of slavery was in the past and not the present (2).
Slavery thus became a fundamental part of black American's collective identity. There are several ways of thinking about collective identity. Cultural theorist Stuart Hall, speaking from a Cultural Studies and post-colonial perspective, distinguishes two positions in his influential 1990 text about cultural identity and diaspora. Hall terms it cultural identity, while I have termed it collective identity. In this context, they mean the same thing. While Hall is not talking about the African American people specifically, I would argue his theorizations are very relevant to what I have discussed above. Hall's first position defines cultural identity in terms of a shared culture, a collective 'one true self', which can be found beneath other 'superficial or artificially imposed selves'. This way of thinking about cultural identity holds that all people with a shared history and ancestry have a collective one true self in common. The cultural identities of members of a group reflect the 'common historical experiences and shared cultural codes' which provide the members of the community with 'stable, unchanging and continuous frames of reference and meaning, beneath the shifting divisions and vicissitudes of our actual history' (223). In this position, the 'oneness' is the truth and the essence of the black experience, which must subsequently be discovered, unearthed, brought to the attention and 'expressed through cinematic representation' (223).
Hall subsequently examines the nature of this process of discovering, unearthing and expressing. He asks if the truth and essence can be recovered by simply removing the suppression of the colonial oppressor that has buried actual experience. Or could this process be something else
altogether? Not a re(dis)covery, but the production of identity, a re-telling of the past? While hidden fragments of history can of course be recovered and/or rediscovered, such fragments are always positioned through underlying strategic motives, used for the production of (cultural) identity. These fragments offer ways of 'of imposing an imaginary coherence on the experience of dispersal and fragmentation' (224). When it comes to black experience and black diaspora, the image that represents coherence is Africa. Africa is seen as the mother of all black civilizations, it lies at the center of their cultural identity and can be used to give meaning to that identity. The repairing of this 'forgotten' connection with Africa through images and texts is, according to Hall, a resource of resistance and identity. They can be used to 'confront the fragmented and pathological ways in which that experience has been reconstructed within the dominant regimes of cinematic and visual representation of the West' (225). The representation of black people in American popular culture I will discuss in the following subchapter. I will also revisit Hall's arguments during my analysis, as
Roots uses Africa and the connection to Africa as a way of unification, by trying to repair the black
community's 'forgotten' connection to Africa.
The second position from which Hall claims on can discuss cultural identity, holds that while there are many similarities, they are also 'critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute what we really are' (225). This is the position Hall favors. Looking from this position, cultural identity is not only a matter of being, but one of becoming as well. Cultural identities indeed have histories, meaning shared historical experiences, but they are also subject to constant transformation, or what Hall calls 'the continuous play of history, culture and power' (225). Hall posits that it is only from this position the traumatic character of 'the colonial experience' can truly be understood. How black people and their experiences were positioned and subjected in the dominant 'regimes of representation’, was the effect of 'a critical exercise of cultural power and normalization' (225). Here, Hall reaches an important point. He says that black people not only were fashioned as distinct and 'other' within the regimes of representation, but these regimes are so powerful they also had the strength to make black people see and experience themselves as 'others'. They were subjected to that knowledge by the dominant discourse, through 'the power of inner compulsion and subjective conformation to the norm' (226).
According to Hall, this idea of 'otherness as an inner compulsion' has a profound effect on our conception of cultural identity. Cultural identity is indeed not a fixed essence, no one true self for eternity waiting to be discovered, even though it does have histories. But instead cultural identities are 'the unstable points of identification […], which are made, within the discourses of history and culture' (226). Identity is a positioning. With this positioning come politics of identity
and of position, none of which are able to give any guarantee of an unproblematic, transcendental history of origin (226). The paradox here, according to Hall, is that the capturing and transporting of slaves and inserting them into the plantation system of the Americas unified these African people across their many different gods, beliefs, rituals and practices, while at the same time it disabled them from directly accessing their past (227).
Politics of identity are always at play in the construction of cultural identity and always linked to memory. Eyerman posits that because of their submissive position in American society, black people had no to few means to influence public memory. They had to form and maintain their own collective memory. Slavery was an always-changing reconstructed reference point in this process. As generations come and go, memories change and perspectives change. Slavery has thus meant various things for different generations of black Americans, but it was always a hugely important referent, a primal scene. However, according to Eyerman, it was not until the 1950s and 1960s that slavery 'moved outside group memory to challenge the borders, the rituals and sites of public memory' (18). It was actually with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s as a carrier group that the painful wound of slavery was openend and transformed it into a cultural memory, as it moved beyond the members of the African American community and into a greater (white) audience. It was from this point onwards that slavery became part of American collective memory, not just African American, but it remains an issue that continues to evoke highly charged responses (18).
After the failure of integration and emancipation during the late nineteenth century, the process of the construction of cultural trauma began, as this failure created an incentive for African Americans to renegotiate their collective identity. After being promised equal rights, but instead being officially relegated to 'separate but equal' social status, which in reality meant unequal social standing and opportunities, the identity of the group and its relation to the dominant society had to be negotiated again. As discussed above, intellectuals and the leaders of the social movements were instrumental in the 'discursive process of forming a collective identity' (221). The memory of slavery was fundamental in this, as it was thought of as the primal scene in the process of the identity formation of a collectivity subject to changing social conditions.
Eyerman identifies two narrative frames, which were formed by intellectuals in the context of the changing social conditions of the 1920s. In this decade an 'urban black public sphere' with an increasingly strong black voice emerged, as large numbers of African Americans migrated from the South to the Northern cities. These narrative frames continued all the way through the great social changes of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, but their dominance over each other
continually shifted (221). The first is the progressive narrative framework. This narrative looks at the history of slavery as a possibility for 'scientific excavation, for ethnological and archeological expeditions looking for traces and remnants, which could be collected and perhaps even used by those looking back from a higher plane of social development' (91). In this narrative, the past should be treated with respect, something that could be used as evidence and as a resource by a collective that has evolved and grown. The second narrative is the redemptive narrative. This narrative is much more aggressive and tragic in nature, 'with the aim to restore and renew lost glory' (91). Slavery was not only seen as depriving the enslaved people of their freedom, but also as a theft of their dreams and a taking away of their civilization. Adherents to this narrative felt this lost generation had to be redeemed by their descendants. Slavery as an event thus 'created a duty to the memory of the enslaved' (91).
At the time of their emergence in the 1920s and in the subsequent decades, these narratives opposed each other vehemently because of their differing interpretation of the past. While they had the event of slavery and the previous generation's unfulfilled expectations of equality in common, they had different ways of grounding the construction of a collective identity. Both narratives did this by linking individual identity to the collective through the concept of racial pride. Popular culture played an important part in this process. However, with their differing relation to the past, they also had different views of the future and how to get there. The progressive narrative with its evolutionary standpoint had eventual full integration into American society as a goal. This was based on 'racial regeneration made possible through sifting the past for present use' (92). The redemptive narrative had something different in mind for the future, namely a return to Africa, a racial nation in a revitalized mother land (92). With the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement of significant strides were taken in the establishment of equal rights. As a result these narratives became less inflamed and less opposed, since some of the goals of both narrative frames were attained.
Today these narrative frames actually blend together, 'allowing the possibility that social mobility, a form of inclusion and a measure of progress and redemption, are not mutually exclusive projects' (221). Whereas, as seen above, Alexander posits that the spiral of signification of a cultural trauma eventually flattens out, I would argue this has still not definitively happened with the cultural trauma of slavery and it is unclear if it ever will. As Eyerman says, the meaning and memory of slavery is still unresolved, and so is the cultural trauma. The collective identity of African Americans is 'filtered through cultural trauma, which means that slavery, the primal scene of the collective, will be recalled every time the collective is questioned' (221). During the twentieth
century, the status of the collective has been questioned numerous times and with varying force. On occasion the signification seems to become less prominent, only to flare up again at a later time. As will become clear during my case studies, I argue that Roots and 12YAS must be seen in light of this fluctuating spiral of signification.
Questions about the status of the collective African American community are continually asked in part because the specific American history of slavery is inextricably bound to race and racism. Ira Berlin, a historian who has written extensively about slavery and culture, posits that for most of the twentieth century slavery was 'excluded from public presentation of American history and played no visible role in American politics' (1257). However, since the beginning of the 21st century, an upsurge of interest in the history of slavery is noticeable for Berlin, with films, television series, exhibitions and books reaching a wide audience. According to him, this renewed interest in the issue of slavery signals a crisis in American race relations, just like it did in the 1960s (1251). Behind this interest is a recognition that racism, the biggest social problem facing the United States, is 'founded on the institution of slavery' (1258).
That the politics of race and the history of slavery have become so intimately intertwined, suggests, according to Berlin, that slavery has become a language, 'a way to talk about race in a society in which race is difficult to discuss' (1259). Through slavery and its representation in books, film and television, Americans are trying to address their deepest feelings of hurt, guilt and anger and simultaneously are looking at the reality that so much of American life - Berlin names access to jobs, housing, schools, medical care, justice - is unfortunately still controlled by race. The representation of slavery and the renewed interest in its history have become a metaphor for the American failure to directly face questions of race, racism and slavery (1259).
3.1. Representation and Mediation of Slavery as a Traumatic Event
At this point it is important to discuss the relation between representation of black people and the memory of slavery and how this has affected the construction and subsequent refashioning of collective memory and collective identity by the generations after the abolishment of slavery. Only after having sufficient knowledge about the influence of representation on the articulation and the refashioning of a cultural trauma, it is possible to analyze and position Roots and 12YAS within this context.
As I have discussed in the previous chapter about cultural trauma, it is not necessary to have directly experienced the traumatic event in order to feel included in the trauma process. In fact, a cultural trauma and its process may only reach its greatest impact several generations after the
traumatic events took place. It is, then, through 'time-delayed and negotiated recollection that cultural trauma is experienced, a process which places representation in a key role' (Eyerman 12). That means that the ways in which an event is remembered, is inseparably connected with the ways in which the event is represented. Through which kind of media and how the event is represented is fundamentally important, since the representation closes the gap both between individuals, thereby forming a collective, and between occurrence and its recollection (12). Collective identity is formed by a process of 'we formation', which takes its material from a perceived common past. According to Eyerman, while 'this reconstructed common and collective past may have its origins in direct experience, its recollection is mediated through narratives that are modified with the passage of time, filtered through cultural artifacts and other materializations, which represent the past in the present' (14).
The traumatic memory of slavery plays an important part in in the representation of black people. According to W.E.B. Du Bois, (1868-1963), a noted African American civil rights activist, sociologist and historian, this memory is important on three main points. The first is that it can be part of a moral appeal to a sympathetic white audience, the plight of the black American who has suffered through slavery. The second point is that the memory of slavery is 'central to the formation and collective representation of an African American identity' (Eyerman 70). Thirdly, this memory is fundamental in explaining both the behavior and the ways in which black Americans were perceived and received in contemporary America after the emancipation of the slaves (70). The traumatic memory of slavery is thus inseparably connected to the formation and positioning of the collective African American identity. Through representation, a mainstream collective image of the African American was established, but because of the dominant white narrative it was an image African Americans themselves had little control over. This relates to what Du Bois (1868-1963), a noted African American civil rights activist, sociologist and historian, termed 'double consciousness'. By this he means the sensation of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, a dominant culture by which your worth is measured. This dualism is signified in the term African American (Krasner 317). One way of challenging this image is through the articulation of the process of slavery as a cultural trauma. By repositioning the memory of slavery, blacks could thus also challenge the way they were represented.
For example, challenging these representations became fundamental immediately after the Civil War, during the reconstruction era. This was a revisionist-counter revolution that aimed to reunite North and South. Part of this was an attempt to recast slavery as a benign and good-natured institution. In order to do so, slaves were represented in the media as happy slaves, content with
their servitude. Popular culture filtered this idea to audiences for example through so called 'minstrel shows', in which white actors in black face parodied black people and the way they acted. The view of the happy slave became pervasive during the first three decades of the twentieth century. American culture was 'permeated with words, sounds, and images which "took-for-granted" that slavery was both justified and necessary, beneficial to all concerned' (Eyerman 15-16).
Black artists, indeed, could use the memory of slavery to counter this notion. Making this memory into a collective memory and subsequently into a collective African American identity was important, as this provided opposition to the dominant white narrative. Through the making of a claim during the trauma process, discussed during a previous chapter, it is demarcated who is the victim and who is the perpetrator, thereby creating an us versus them. In this case, the claim was a defensive strategy, a counter-offensive, countering a rewriting of history in which slavery was seen as benign and beneficial. By writing, painting or filming, black artists could produce significant works that could 'prove the worthiness of the race' simply by their existence. The most important contribution, however, was thought to come from deliberate social movements, in which intellectuals would play and important role. One of the main functions of such a social movement would be the collecting and connecting of individual biographies to other biographies, thereby making them part of a collective biography and thus identity. In this way, individuals would be connected to each other through collective representation and would themselves be representative of the collective (70).
The ways in which popular culture represents slavery, black culture and black people obviously differs over time and cannot be disconnected from history and society. They are intimately entwined with each other. The memory of slavery is thus something that is continually refashioned in relation to contemporary context. And how such an event is remembered is closely linked to how this event is represented. In social psychology, studies have been made that form a basis for a theory of 'generational cycles in the reconstruction of collective memory and the role of media in that process' (12). This means that with every generation the collective memory of an event is revisited and repurposed to fit that particular generation’s interests and needs. The collective memory of such an event is thus fluent instead of fixed, with its meaning changing constantly over time.
Eyerman recognizes identifiable generational aspects in the cultural trauma of slavery and the subsequent traumatic failure of integration and equality for African Americans. Generation here goes beyond date of birth and age. In this case, generation is defined more as a 'collective memory that serves to integrate an age-group' (20). Eyerman identifies the first generation as one formed at
the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, a generation fundamentally shaped by the failure of reconstruction. This generation first established the cultural trauma of slavery and started to figure out how to respond to it. The second generation, formed after the end of the First World War, was shaped by mass migration to the northern cities. During this generation, the now dominant narrative frames discussed above started to take form through popular culture expressions such as minstrel shows and collective memory of slavery was fundamentally refashioned. The third and final generation Eyerman identifies is one that took shape during and after the Second World War. Influenced by new urban migration, the beginning of the consumer society and of course the Civil Rights Movement, collective memory was again significantly refashioned (20).
The central aspect in the formulation of a generation is thus not date of birth, but instead 'the convergence of social forces and the emergence of social movements which are key to the formation of a collective consciousness' (20). However, a generation is not simply a group of people that feel connected to each other because of a shared experience of historical events; it requires significant collective action as well. This collective action verbalizes the collective consciousness and puts it into practice. It is then through this action that collective memory is reformulated. It is also in the context of this action that 'the past is reinterpreted to provide a map for the present/ future' (20).
In my next chapters I will analyze Roots and 12YAS, which have both to different degrees and in different ways been influential in American popular culture and society in general. In what ways will become clear below. By analyzing their differing representations of slavery and black people and placing this in a historical perspective, both of these media products can give valuable insights into the articulation of the cultural trauma of slavery and thereby also the construction and status of African American collective identity in American culture and society.
4. The Representation of Slavery in Roots
When watching a miniseries such as Roots, it immediately becomes clear just how conscious this series is of itself and the way it represents black people, white people, memory and slavery as a traumatic event. It is precisely this fact that makes Roots such an interesting case study, especially when juxtaposed with the recent film 12 Years a Slave. They have a lot in common in terms of subject matter, themes and even specific images, but their tone of voice could not be more different. Through these differences it is possible to further theorize the development and articulation of slavery as a cultural trauma and its position within American society.
When the series was released in 1977, Roots was an immediate succes. Its eight episodes were watched by an estimated total of 140 million viewers and the series received 37 Emmy Award nominations, winning nine (Behrmann 3). The series was adapted from a book by the African American Alex Haley, called Roots: The Saga of An American Family (1976). In eight episodes broadcast over eight successive nights, Roots tells the multigenerational story of Haley's ancestors. Episode one starts with the introduction of the protagonist of the first two episodes: Kunta Kinte, a young boy from a village in Western Africa in the year 1750. The viewer is introduced to Kunta’s live in this African village, before he is captured by white men and brought aboard a slave ship. On the ship, he and the other slaves try to rebel, but their act of defiance is quickly repressed. When Kunta Kinte arrives in North America, he is sold to a farmer. At first, he is aggressive and uncooperative, but after a period of punishment he starts to behave according to his master's wishes. He is given the Christian name of Toby, but in secret he remembers his own name. In the third episode, Kunta Kinte is an adult. He still has not lost his fighting spirit, but when his owner cuts off half of Kunta's foot after another attempt to escape, Kunta can no longer run away. His spirit is broken, but then he meets the house slave Belle and eventually marries her. They have a daughter called Kizzy. As Kizzy grows up, the series' point of view shifts to her. She starts to form a close friendship with white planter's daughter Missy Anne, who teaches her to read and write. Since at the time the story is set it was strictly forbidden to teach slaves how to read and write, both Missy Anne and Belle often warn Kizzy not to let anyone know about this. But, after Kizzy gets caught forging a traveling pass for a young slave she has fallen in love with, the plantation owner finds out. He is forced to sell Kizzy, leaving Belle and Kunta Kinte in a state of sorrow.
Roots then follows Kizzy as she is introduced to her new owner Tom Moore. It does not take
long for Moore to become attracted to the beautiful Kizzy and he soon rapes her. Afterwards, Kizzy finds out she is pregnant. She eventually gives birth to a son, named George. After a time jump the viewer sees a middle-aged Kizzy with her teenage son George, who has become a skilled cockfighter, much to the delight of his father and owner Tom Moore. On a trip to her old plantation, Kizzy learns that her father Kunta Kinte has died and her mother has been sold away. In the meantime, George en Moore have developed a friendly relationship, but George is not aware of his father's identity. As tensions in the area rise because of a nearby slave rebellion, Moore grows increasingly unstable, often threatening the slaves. The now adult George, his wife Tildy and sons Tom and Lewis want to buy their freedom with the money George earns from the cockfighting. Because of his skills, George is now known as Chicken George throughout the area. However, before George and his family can raise the money, Moore loses a bet and has to loan Chicken
