ABSTRACT
David Dabydeen’s 1984 collection Slave Song exemplifies how Caribbean neo-slave narratives uncover hidden histories of interspecies violence through a complex interplay of body, territory, and ‘brokenness’. Central to this interplay is the systemic nature of oppression, where the fragmentation of bodies and ecosystems alike serve as poignant testimony to interspecies violence during slavery. This chapter argues that the neo-slave narrative provides a platform to examine how bodily violations were not just a form of territorial control over Black humanity but the nonhuman world. Reading the neo-slave narrative within this dual framework allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the elusive concept of white bodily ‘wholeness’ that has been maintained through racial and species hierarchies. In its consideration of how Slave Song addresses the interplay of body, territory and ‘brokenness’ across interspecies lines, this chapter responds to critical scholarship on Caribbean neo-slave narratives which has failed to historicise Black dehumanisation and white supremacy as an implication of racism and speciesism. Ultimately, decolonial-ecocritical readings of Slave Song demonstrate how the neo-slave narrative can be used to mend and resuscitate bodies by calling attention to their imposed ‘brokenness’. This reading may also be useful for understanding bodily and territorial conflicts in the contemporary world such as racial injustice, animal cruelty and the climate crisis.
