Content Details | NUML Online Research Repository

Title Phantasm and haunting in Neo-Slave Narratives: A study of Natashia Deon’s Grace and Latanya McQueen’s When the Reckoning Comes

Author(s) Maryam Iftikhar

Abstract From the late 20th to the early 21st century, neo-slave narratives have emerged as an African American literary genre that foregrounds Afrocentric heritage to narrate the stories of slavery, resistance, and emancipation. Two Afro-American neo-slave narratives, Natashia Deon’s Grace (2016) and LaTanya McQueen’s When the Reckoning Comes (2021), have been selected for this study. Guided by Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology and Stella Setka’s theorization of the phantasmic ethnic narratives, this research attempts to study the role and significance of vengeful ghosts and ancestral spirits of enslaved blacks represented in the selected narratives who, in the post-slavery period in American history, haunt their offenders and protect their descendants from racial oppression. This research seeks to decode the ancestral spirits as‘ndiichie’—revered spirits in Igbo cosmology—that can qualify as Igbo-specific phantasmic figures. Using Catherine Belsey’s textual analysis method, it is examined how these ancestral spirits change their subject position as well as that of post-slavery black characters. The interrelationship of enslaved and post-slavery black characters is studied through communal memory embodied in these ancestral spirits. In addition, this research examines how reconnecting with the Igbo heritage enables the selected narratives to represent Igbo-specific phantasm as part of a legitimate worldview, thereby challenging Enlightenment skepticism towards the supernatural. This research also makes a theoretical intervention by adding the aspect of retributive justice to Stella Setka’s theory that contributes to the ongoing discussions in Afro-American neo-slave narratives.

Type Thesis/Dissertation

Faculty Languages

Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2024-08-22

Subject Literature

Publisher

Contributor(s)

Format

Identifier

Source

Relation

Coverage

Rights