Affective Labor in Memoirs of Henry Obookiah
Molly Ball
Eureka College
Molly Ball is an Assistant Professor of English at Eureka College, where she teaches courses ranging from surveys of American literature to seminars on the Gothic tradition, science fiction and citizenship, and eighteenth-century transatlantic literature. Her work has appeared in such journals as ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, and she is currently working on a monograph titled Writing Out of Time: Plotting Vulnerability in the Long Nineteenth Century. Writing Out of Time examines texts that register biopolitical violence through narrative form; it includes chapters on seduction narrative, slave narrative, naturalism, and the annexation of the Hawai’ian Kingdom.
Abstract
Edwin Dwight’s 1818 narrative, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, oozes with emotion. It depicts the life of Ōpūkaha‘ia, a Native Hawai’ian man who came to the U.S. in 1809, converted to Christianity, and shaped the American... [ view full abstract ]
Edwin Dwight’s 1818 narrative, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, oozes with emotion. It depicts the life of Ōpūkaha‘ia, a Native Hawai’ian man who came to the U.S. in 1809, converted to Christianity, and shaped the American missionary movement before dying in Connecticut in 1818. In life, Ōpūkaha‘ia’s conversion elicited emotion and donations to the missionary cause; in death, Dwight’s text continued this work. Today, scholars examine Ōpūkaha‘ia’s life to understand missionary history (Demos), to theorize conversion (Wilson), and to trace Kanaka Maoli exploration (Chang). Generative as these accounts are, none examines Ōpūkaha‘ia’s affective labor. American missionaries advanced economic imperialism, yet Dwight’s text reminds us that affective labor funded their missions. Moreover, Ōpūkaha‘ia’s life suggests such labor’s flexible potential. Even as the affects Ōpūkaha‘ia conjured up won missionaries unprecedented support, Ōpūkaha‘ia’s emotional displays marked him as guest, not worker. In New England, multiple families hosted Ōpūkaha‘ia. And while he certainly labored – speaking publicly, studying, and even performing farm work – this labor was unwaged and helped Ōpūkaha‘ia achieve what David Chang argues was his chief objective in traveling abroad: gaining knowledge of the world. Thus, even as Ōpūkaha‘ia’s affective labors secured money for extractive, imperialistic missionizing, they also recall Hardt’s observation that affective labor has “enormous potential for autonomous circuits of valorization” that run counter to such extraction. Examining affective labor in Memoirs not only helps us understand Ōpūkaha‘ia as initiating a kind of economic “conversion” amongst New Englanders, but also suggests that, through affect, we can better understand extractive economies’ contradictory foundations.
Authors
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Molly Ball
(Eureka College)
Topic Area
Pacific Intersections
Session
S9 » Seminar 9: Pacific Intersections (15:45 - Saturday, 24th March, Boardroom East)
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