Martin R. Delany, the antebellum black separatist, is becoming increasingly important within the historical-cultural canon of American Studies. His impassioned effort to envision theoretically and implement practically a black nation-state intersects with ongoing discussions of the relations between subaltern communities and geographical spaces as well as debate about the dynamics of black leadership.
In my talk, I will address how Delany's Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party (1861) complexly, albeit problematically, attempts to remedy the scandal he highlighted in his earlier The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States (1852)--that Northern blacks seemed to be "mere nonentities among the citizens," little more than abject "excrescences on the body politic." Delany hoped to establish a black nation-state in the Yoruba region of West Africa that would not only prove the capacity of U.S. blacks to govern themselves but also commercially compete with (and thereby undermine) the cotton economy of the South. I suggest that Delany's emphasis on his own mental ingenuity and aspirations--what he calls his "self-projected scheme" of resettlement--at once causes and solves the dilemma that many scholars have observed: that Delany's belief that expatriated Africa-Americans, rather than indigenous Africans, would need to lead Africa into national embodiment is tantamount to imperialism.
Delany, I propose, rhetorically overcomes the problem of asserting his own non-indigenous body into the foreign terrain of Africa by using a number of psycho-physiological tropes. At key junctures, he deploys organic images of the relations of head to body or a medicalized discourse to suggest the propriety of Africa being ruled by himself and a cadre of African-Americans. The Liberian colony (which Delany scorned for being white sponsored) lacks sufficient "public" spirit and centralized authority; it seems, according to Delany, as if it had "no head at all." By contrast, after listing a number of original medical remedies that he had devised for fever and other African diseases, Delany emphasizes via medicalized diction that vital "social relations and organizations, without which enlightened communities cannot exist ... must be carried out by proper agencies, and these agencies must be a new element introduced into their midst," an element that turns out to be U.S. born "descendants of Africa."
I will briefly contextualize my discussion by referring to other key works of the period, such as Arnold Guyot's immensely popular geography The Earth and Man (1849), which, following Hegel, described the African continent as a self-incarcerated body ("[Africa] is far the most simple [of continents] in its forms.... It seems to close itself against every influence from without"). But my main intent is to show how body-politic tropes inform Delany's own travel report.
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