Racialized rooms and technologies of stardom in Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter

Abstract

Drawing on recent theories of race from critical race theory, this article examines Michael Ondaatje’s 1976 novel Coming Through Slaughter to assess the involvement, or lack, of technologies of stardom such as photography and radio in the celebrity of the fictionalized jazz musician Charles “Buddy” Bolden. This essay builds on established postcolonial and aesthetic readings, and offers an alternative to the often-held view that Ondaatje is not concerned by race, or the suggestion that he is only preoccupied by art and artists. Its textual focus is an interpretation of the counterfactual (put differently, anachronistic) scene involving a radio and scenes related to the darkroom and the racial significance of its black and white negatives. It argues that these technologies “colour” the rooms in which they are found and thereby complicate ideas of domestic privacy and opposing publicity.