Rewriting

Polytropic Identities

in the Postmodern African American Novel

Chapter III

“A Cultural Mongrel”

Transatlantic Mediations in Charles Johnson’s

Middle Passage

Apart from constituting the physical displacement of Africans from their homelands… [the Middle Passage] effectively transformed the cultures of Europeans and Africans alike, binding them in an uneven, yet symbiotic relationship. In other words, something new was created not only in the New World, but in Europe and Asia as well (Pedersen 1993, 225).

The experience of the Black body becomes, not merely a Self-Other conflict, nor simply Hegel’s torturous master-slave dialectic, but a variation on both these conditions (Johnson 1993 a, 605).

Pretexts: “Decalcifying Perception”

“A Gentleman of Color:” Equiano’s Reversed Travelogue

Toward “Heart of Darkness:” The Double-Sighted Narration

“Don Benito’s Harlequin Ensign:” The Slave Mutiny

Mediating Visions: “Oneself as Another”

Fictional Self-Reconstruction: “Our Futures Blended”