Abstract
In this chapter, I engage with the unaligned insurrectionist ethics of Marlon James’ The Book of Night Women (2009), a novel that shows the many modes of insurrection—linguistic, physical, psychological, and spiritual—as necessary, complicated, and inevitable responses to racism, enslavement, matriarchy, and patriarchy. I use Leonard Harris and Jacoby Carter’s explication of insurrectionism—a philosophy aimed at the complete eradication of systems of oppression and the achievement of universal liberation—and Lee McBride III’s core tenets of the ethics to analyze the novel. Ultimately, I conclude that no society can overcome past or present oppressive systems without first fully exploring and, yes, reimagining the events, subjectivities, and voices of the past, especially, perhaps, those of insurrectionist ethicists to imagine, shape, and achieve a better society for all.
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Notes
- 1.
See Valethia Watkins. “Contested Memories: A Critical Analysis of the Black Feminist Revisionist History Project.” Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies 9, no. 4 (2016): 271–288.
- 2.
Raci(al/st) reflects the interconnectedness of that which is perceived to be racial and that which is racist. Racism includes the belief in the separation of humans into more than one “race” and the practice of racialization.
- 3.
See Wilson Harris. The Womb of Space: The Cross-Cultural Imagination. Westport: Praeger, 1983. In The Womb of Space: The Cross-Cultural Imagination, Harris calls the “womb of space” a generative region where inclusive and universally liberated communities can develop. I view the cellar as James’ womb of space where Lilith witnesses and embodies a seemingly paradoxical subjectivity. She emerges from the cellar a young woman toeing the boundaries society attempts to place on her.
- 4.
See Édouard Glissant. 1997. Poetics of Relation. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P.
- 5.
The woman that lives in the bush smells like mint and lemongrass. The only other person in the novel that uses mint and lemongrass to scent herself is Homer.
- 6.
See Junot Díaz. 2007. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Riverhead Books.
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Mason, S.M. (2023). Revisioning Unalignment and Freedom: Insurrectionist Ethics in Marlon James’ The Book of Night Women. In: Carter, J.A., Scriven, D. (eds) Insurrectionist Ethics. African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16741-6_2
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