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Humanizing The Empire And De-Humanizing The Colonies: Tropicality And An Indigenous Feminist Rereading Of British Colonization And Slave Trade In George Colman’S Inkle And Yarico, Samia Al-Shaiban

Journal of the Faculty of Arts (JFA)

George Colman’s Inkle and Yarico 1787 is regarded as an integral part of the eighteenth century anti-slavery literary discourse. This paper challenges the dominant critical perception of Colman’s Inkle and Yarico as an anti-slavery work and re-reads it as a dramatic attempt to defend slavery and by extension colonization. Colman achieves his goal through three calculated elements: dehumanization of the Indians, humanization of the English, distancing the English from slave trade. By applying the theory of tropicality, it becomes clear that the environment and population of the West Indies emerge as inferior (Other) to those of England (Self). Indigenous feminism …