Session Abstract

Images of the Middle Passage are among the most iconic representations of the Atlantic slave trade. By focusing on visual representations of slave resistance and slave rebellions, this panel addresses the general questions proposed by the multi-session workshop "Representing the Irrepresentable: Narratives and Visual Images of Slavery, Forced Labor, and Genocide." The three papers combine the study of images, written narratives, and other artifacts, in order to understand  the multiple dimensions of the traumatic experiences of enslavement and slavery. Melanie Ulz explores the iconic painting by William Turner, Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying - Typhon Coming on (1840), which became internationally known as The Slave Ship. By analyzing the painting which represents enslaved being throwing overboard by slavers during the Middle Passage, the paper discusses the peculiar way through which the experience of the victims of the Atlantic slave trade is conveyed, by arguing that the disturbing cruelty of the painting does not lie on what is represented, but rather on what remains unseen. Jeffrey Kerr-Ritchie rather examines an understudied topic: images depicting slave revolts on board of slave ships. In order to do so, he explores the elements that were traditionally oversought in these images, including the participation of women in the slave revolts represented. In addition, the paper looks at the ways these images were appropriated in recent studies and electronic representations. In the third paper Matthew Rarey explores the problems of representing slavery and slave resistance in Brazil. Relying on different kinds of sources, including travelogues, illustrations of travel accounts, the Koranic papers seized from the participants of the Malê rebellion of 1835 (Salvador, Bahia), and a statue of a flogged Christ sculpted by an enslaved man, Rarey shows how these various forms of representation critique, subvert or reinforce power structures. The panel shows that although in several cases physical traces of rebellion and punishment are no longer available to the ordinary spectator, violence, resistance, and rebellion still populate the imagination of the individuals living in societies deeply marked by the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade.