Rhetoric from the Margins: Juan Francisco Manzano’s Autobiografía de un esclavo

Abstract

This article examines Juan Francisco Manzano’s Autobiografía de un esclavo, the only extant Spanish-language narrative written by a slave, to illuminate Manzano’s reception of rhetoric, or rather his rejection of it. This reception is briefly situated in the context of contemporary receptions of belletristic rhetoric within the Cuban literary circle that solicited Manzano’s life story. Additionally, the article brings rhetorical terminology to what critics have observed as Manzano’s developing agency through the process of writing his narrative and selecting its content. Providing a view of rhetoric from the margins, Manzano’s narrative offers a critique of the complex relationship between oral and written discourse and the slave’s ability to be seen as truthful.

Notes

¹ Translations from the Spanish are mine. Unfortunately, space does not allow for reproduction of the original text. Two manuscript versions of the autobiography exist, one a handwritten copy of the corrected version and the other the original manuscript bearing Manzano’s own editorial marks. Both are presented in William Luis’ careful edition. I cite from the latter, ignoring Manzano’s deletions and retaining his lack of punctuation. For a dual-language version, see Ivan A. Schulman.

² For a survey of such work, see René Agustín De los Santos; Romano, “Rhetoric in Latin America.”

³ The timeline for emancipation was staggered in Latin America, with various republics adopting laws that freed the offspring of slaves as early as the second decade of the nineteenth century. Cuba and Brazil were outliers in that the institution of slavery remained in place throughout most of the century. Free-birth laws in these two areas were not adopted until the 1870s.

⁴ Margaret Olsen discusses Manzano’s play Zafira, written after his manumission, a text she says diverges from white Creole calls for independence through its veiled references to Haiti (135).

⁵ Like many of the textbooks at the time produced in Spain (as documented by Rosá María Aradra-Sanchez), Hermosilla’s text focused on both rhetoric and poetry. Few of the other Spanish-language rhetorics were as successful as Hermosilla’s, with its official support from the crown.

⁶ William Luis observes that Del Monte wrote this after Plácido had denounced him and Manzano, leading to Manzano’s imprisonment and Del Monte’s exile, so there may have been political reasons for his preference as well.

⁷ Sander Gilman’s classic essay on the nineteenth-century representation of the black body as an icon of “deviant sexuality” (209) has situated Saartjie Baartman as an important figure in scholarship on race and sexuality. After her death, Baartman’s dissected remains continued to be displayed, particularly her preserved genitalia and buttocks. Her remains were returned to South Africa in 2002. For a current discussion of Baartman as a “transnational postcolonial icon,” see Lydie Moudileno.

⁸ Interestingly, this metacritical language was removed in the version edited by Suarez and Romero and sent to Madden for translation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Abraham Romney

Abraham Romney is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition and Director of the Multiliteracies Center in the Department of Humanities at Michigan Technological University, 1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, MI 49931-1295, USA.