Calling attention to inclusion and exclusion in the “Black Atlantic”: M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! and Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard as historiographical interventions

This article focuses on how two female poets from the Black Atlantic re-write historiographic discourse about the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and the Civil War. By targeting two moments which have been amply examined and discussed by historians, both Philip and Trethewey render the disembodiment operated by such narratives in the name of objectivity. The use of lyrical voices, of sensitive perception, and of performative practices creates an alternative narration which calls attention to how such events might have been perceived, and can be received retroactively. Universal claims find themselves shifted from apparently neutral exteriority to forms of intellectual inclusion and experimental understanding.