Narrating the Slave Trade, Theorizing Community

Book excerpt: In Narrating the Slave Trade, Theorizing Community, Raphaël Lambert explores the notion of community in conjunction with literary works concerned with the transatlantic slave trade. The recent surge of interest in both slave trade and community studies concurs with the return of free-market ideology, which once justified and facilitated the exponential growth of the slave trade. The motif of unbridled capitalism recurs in all the works discussed herein; however, community, whether racial, political, utopian, or conceptual, emerges as a fitting frame of reference to reveal unsuspected facets of the relationships between all involved parties, and expose the ramifications of the trade across time and space. Ultimately, this book calls for a complete reevaluation of what it means to live together.