They have no names and no stories, but they are beloved

the writing of the history of slavery in Lose Your Mother, by Saidiya Hartman

Abstract

The article aims to think of Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, by Saidiya Hartman, in dialogue with “Time of Slavery” and “Venus in Two Acts” as a writing of the history of slavery that considers slaves as her ancestors inasmuch as she claims to be a descendant of slaves who lives the afterlife of slavery. Situating her work in the new social history of slavery and in the debate about the narrative and fictional character of history, we argue that Hartman, based on a black radical tradition, elaborates a historical writing that tries to account for the millions of dead people who have no names and no stories throughout the slave trade years. In this sense, not only forgetfulness but also the impossibility to remember in face of the scarcity of documentary sources, or to avoid the violence of the archive challenges the work of mourning these lost lives, leading her to create the method of critical fabulation, which dialogues with the thoughts of Toni Morrison on the novel Beloved. In the end, this text concludes that the writing of the history of slavery must be accompanied by an ethical gesture of care for the dead, seeking not redemption, but the narration of these lost lives.