Diving into the Slave Wreck: The São José Paquete d’Africa and Yvette Christiansë’s Imprendehora

Abstract

and researcher on the Oceanic Humanities for the Global South project based at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), University of the Witwatersrand (www.oceanichumanities.com). She explores literary and cultural representations of the deep ocean, the Indian Ocean, and the Southern Ocean and Antarctic seas, researching oceanic underworlds of the global South from a postcolonial-ecological perspective. She is the South African Humanities and Social Sciences delegate to the international Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), co-editor of the Palgrave series Maritime Literature and Culture, and has recently published articles on 'The Oceanic South' and 'Antarctica and Africa'.

Water/colour/bead

“…An exoskeleton of tropical sea snails, cowries were harvested in Indian Ocean settings – particularly the Maldives – before being circulated as currency in the Atlantic world where they were used for aesthetic adornment (at times as beads) and for more brutal purposes, namely as currency for trading enslaved people. Charne Lavery (2020) further explores submersion as method, drawing together an 18th century slave shipwreck excavated by marine archaeologists off Cape Town in 2015 and a poetry collection by Yvette Christiansë, Imprendehora , which traces enslaved and indentured experience across the Indian Ocean and South Atlantic. In this ‘meeting between literary and maritime archaeology’, Lavery explores the ‘methodological possibilities of submersion’, demonstrating how to ‘read for, or under water’ (Lavery, 2020: 271).…”

“…Charne Lavery (2020) further explores submersion as method, drawing together an 18th century slave shipwreck excavated by marine archaeologists off Cape Town in 2015 and a poetry collection by Yvette Christiansë, Imprendehora , which traces enslaved and indentured experience across the Indian Ocean and South Atlantic. In this ‘meeting between literary and maritime archaeology’, Lavery explores the ‘methodological possibilities of submersion’, demonstrating how to ‘read for, or under water’ (Lavery, 2020: 271).…”