Autobiography as weaponized memory: A critique of Olaudah Equiano’s Equiano’s Travels

Abstract

The notion of "memory" and "weapons" occupy such opposed dimensions in the human mind that it is safe to assume they exist in binary opposition. While "weapons" evoke the aura of sanguineous concreteness, "memory", on the other hand, emits the effluvia of nebulous helplessness to the average man. Consequently, the title of this paper is a contradiction in terms as it asserts that autobiography is both harmless and (potentially) destructive. That is precisely what this paper sets out to investigate: the seeming contradiction embedded in autobiography. The paper's thesis is that in its ordinary, typical manifestation, memory, recalling or remembering something from the past may be innocent. However, its deployment as a narrative strategy in autobiography is not. The argument the paper pursues is that Olaudah Equiano uses memory as a powerful weapon to objectify his anti-slavery agenda in his book. The ensuing analysis demonstrates the ex-slave’s adroit launching of memory as an intellectual missile against the fact and legality of the institution of slavery in Europe in bygone eras, as well as Equiano’s adoption of his remembrances as a defensive weapon in his Negridutist portrayal of the supposed pristine African societies which the advent of the white man incrementally eroded and polluted until things fell apart. By using Michel Foucault's concept of the circularity of power, which deconstructs the normative monolithic notion of power as flowing from top to bottom, this paper interrogates the techniques of weaponizing memory in Equiano’s Travels to empower the enslaved and subjugated while assaulting the intellectual western academe that served as the invisible base which propped up the superstructure of slavery.