Black Heterotopic Space in M. NourbeSe Philip's Zong!

Abstract

This article examines M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! in relation to the system of equivalencies that the poem enacts in order to challenge the legal and linguistic underpinnings of the transatlantic slave trade. The challenges that Zong! offers both create and require the type of heterotopic alternative spaces theorized by Michel Foucault in his Preface to The Order of Things. These heterotopic spaces require that the reader maintain an attitude of experiential engagement with the text rather than a desire to know—and master—it. The article ends by arguing that Philip’s poem also illustrates that Foucault unwittingly maintained a problematically naïve, colonial attitude towards heterotopias.