ABSTRACT

Herder’s ‘Neger-Idyllen’, Kleist’s Die Verlobung in St. Domingo, and Caroline Auguste Fischer’s William der Neger offer an exploration of the intersection between race and colonialism in the Atlantic World and in Europe around 1800. Teaching students to read depictions of race, violence, and struggles for emancipation does not only engage with the fraught legacies of the Enlightenment, but, practically speaking, it is also an exercise in suspicious reading. Herder’s anti-imperialist and antislavery poems end with an uneasy negotiation of paternalism. Kleist’s novella provides a racially biased narrator, who limits access to the thought processes of non-white characters. Fischer’s short story moves towards upholding an ideal of emancipation, but recoils from its corollary of revolutionary violence, and crafts two images of its protagonist that cannot be reconciled: one of internalized self-hatred, based on racial identity, the other, of a Christ-like saviour for oppressed peoples.

摘要

Herder 的《Neger-Idyllen》、Kleist在 St. Domingo 的 Die Verlobung和 Caroline Auguste Fischer 的William der Neger探索 1800 年左右大西洋世界和欧洲的种族和殖民主义之间的交集。教学生阅读对种族、暴力和解放斗争的描述，不仅涉及启蒙运动的令人担忧的遗产，而且实际上，这也是一个可疑阅读的练习。赫尔德的反帝国主义和反奴隶制诗歌以对家长式作风的不安谈判结束。克莱斯特的中篇小说提供了一个带有种族偏见的叙述者，他限制了对非白人角色思维过程的访问。菲舍尔的短篇小说朝着支持解放的理想迈进，但又从革命暴力的必然结果中退缩，并塑造了两种无法调和的主人公形象：一种是基于种族身份的内在自我仇恨，另一种是，