Feeding the Ghosts as a Revisionist Historical Novel

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature grade: 17 University of Wuppertal course: The Representation of Slavery from Aphra Behn to Bernadine Evaristo language: English abstract: Regarding his third novel Feeding the Ghosts the British-Guyanese poet playwright and novelist Fred D'Aguiar states in an interview for the Caribbean Studies Journal that it was a piece of history that then grew out of an absence of facts about it (Hyppolite). Apparently the author does not intend to convey a coherent continuous historical account of the infamous 'Zong-Massacre' which took place in 1781 but rather the ruins of history in a manner of an as-if-testimony (Bröck 29). Thus the novel belongs to the genre of historical fiction which combines in a postcolonial context imaginative elements and historical facts with regard to the historiographical document of the death of 131 Africans at the hands of profit-hungry British slave traders and investors on board the slave ship Zong (Pichler 7).Sailing from the west coast of Africa to Jamaica the slave ship carried 442 slaves more than it could safely transport and was therefore overloaded and lacked sufficient provisions for its 'cargo'. Together with malnutrition and disease this overcrowding led to Captain Luke Collingwood's decision to throw the sick overboard in order to claim money from the insurers who covered £39 compensation a head as long as the action was taken to safeguard the ship's safety. The resulting court trial caused much attention as the case of the Zong outnumbered the known fashion and consequently lead to abolitionist support as the legal status of slaves as 'cargo' was confirmed by the concluding verdict. Finally in 1790 a preliminary bill was passed which ruled out insurances claims resulting from slave mortality through natural death or ill treatment or against loss by throwing overboard of slaves on any account whatsoever