Ephemerality of Performance and the Archival Traces of Early Black Enslaved Printers

In this seminar, I want to learn from Professor Mitchell and others how theories of performance, and black performance in particular, can help us think about "recovering" the physical and intellectual labor of enslaved... [ view full abstract ]

In this seminar, I want to learn from Professor Mitchell and others how theories of performance, and black performance in particular, can help us think about "recovering" the physical and intellectual labor of enslaved African Americans who worked in the print trades. In my writing about Primus Fowle, an enslaved African American who in the late 18th-century set type for and printed the "New-Hampshire Gazette" newspaper, I am interested in the traces he left of himself in the literal margins of pages. Primus Fowle does not occupy one of the privileged sites of textual production that typically occupy our attention: writer, editor, publisher, or reader. Therefore, even though we wouldn't not have the archive of early New Hampshire newspapers without his presence and craft, we do not have readily available ways to "read" him. I have been writing about "recovering" Primus Fowle's labor and craft by "reading" accidents in the type and print. I read for broken type, ink stains from the press, and over impressions as sites where Primus can be located and discussed, separate from the writers and editors of the newspaper that typically draw attention. Ephemera in the literal margins of print point to the traces of people like Primus Fowle. 

José Muñoz's "Ephemera as Evidence" has been important in this work. Taking seriously how the ephemeral and the contingent constitute evidence about queer and minoritized life, Munoz's theories of performance provide an opening into my work on print and black printers. Primus Fowle's work is performance in that it becomes invisible after the act, replaced by a print archive that is silent about its creator. Following Munoz, and other theorists of racialized performance, I hope to discuss in this seminar how black performance creates new possibilities for thinking about print, race, and power.