TUZLU SU SALTWATER

58 Elvan Zabunyan
Denemeler / Essays
59
Seven Seas bears the name of a sage who takes a benevolent and varied view on the
possibilities of transforming (oneself) through the changing of epochs and contexts. As
pointed out by Paul Gilroy in The Black Atlantic, Turner’s canvas was in John Ruskin’s possession
for twenty-seven years until he decided he could not keep the representation of
a subject so disturbing and thus sought to sell it. The work was retitled The Slave Ship
and, relieved of its overly charged title, incorporated into the collection of a rich American
in 1872, who loaned it to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Paul Gilroy underlines the
fact that ‘a concern with the Atlantic as a cultural and political system has been forced
on black historiography and intellectual history by the economic and historical matrix in
which plantation slavery – “capitalism with its clothes off” — was one special moment’. (7)
The slave trade within this account of a system of economic exploitation also involves the
form of transactions. Historical records from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
document how the slavers’ actions on the sea are akin to piracy. Stealing souls and spirits,
initiating deportation and deracination, subjecting individuals to the worst atrocities,
denying the truths but ultimately failing to extinguish the fire from the memory.
In July 2007, the daily Jamaica Gleaner published an article titled ‘Abolition Watch, Massacre
on the Zong, outrage against humanity’, announcing a commemoration in December
2007 of the massacre in December 1781. (8) At the exact same time as this event in
December 2007, Charles Beeker, a professor of underwater archaeology at the University
of Indiana, and his research team, unveiled the discovery of the Armenian vessel Quedagh
Merchant, taken by the British pirate Captain William Kidd near the coasts of India in
the seventeenth century. The ship was sunk by Kidd’s associates in order to destroy the
evidence when Kidd was arrested in 1699 for piracy and murder. Three centuries later, in
the waters of the Caribbean Sea, near the Dominican Republic, the team of archaeologists
found the remains of the ship and its canons at a depth of 70 meters. (9) Watching
the images of the redeeming of this ancestral object from the coral reefs produces strong
emotion: they move in deep green waves; their silence is audible and one knows that
their hearts are beating hard under the water. At the end of Omeros, Walcott writes, ‘An
immense lilac emptiness settled the sea.’ (10) The void is coloured; the poet creates an
image that connects to an infinite story as vast and abyssal as the expanse of the oceans.
Jameson is right to insist on the necessity of thinking of the present historically. (11)
Translated by Kerem Kabadayı
Notlar / Notes
(1) Jack London, Martin Eden, çev. Erhun Yücesoy (İstanbul: Can Yayınları, 2014), s. 493-494.
Jack London, Martin Eden (Toronto/New York, Bantam Books, 1986), p. 343.
(2) Andrew Lewis, “Martin Dockray and the Zong: A Tribute in the Form of a Chronology” [Martin
Dockray ve Zong: Kronoloji Formunda Bir Övgü], Journal of Legal History, vol. 28, no.3 (Aralık
2007), s. 357-370. Ayrıntılı ve eleştirel bir inceleme için bkz: Christopher Leslie Brown, “Specters
of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History by Ian Baucom” [Atlas
Okyanusu'nun Hortlakları: Finans Kapitali, Kölelik ve Ian Baucom'un Tarih Felsefesi], The
William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, vol. 66, no. 4, Abolishing the Slave Trades: Ironies and
Reverberations [Köle Ticaretini Feshetmek: İroniler ve Yankılar] (Ekim, 2009), s. 1007-1010. Ian
Baucom’ın kitabı Duke University Press tarafından 2005’te yayımlandı.
Andrew Lewis, ‘Martin Dockray and the Zong: A Tribute in the Form of a Chronology’, in Journal of Legal
History, vol. 28, no. 3 (December 2007), pp.357-70. See also, Christopher Leslie Brown, ‘Specters
of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History by Ian Baucom’, in The William
and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, vol. 66, no. 4, Abolishing the Slave Trades: Ironies and Reverberations
(October 2009), pp.1007-10. Ian Baucom’s book was published in 2005 by Duke University Press.
(3) Belge referansı koleksiyon içinde: REC/19, bkz. Melvin K. Hendrix, “Africana Resources in the
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England” [İngiltere, Greenwich'teki Ulusal Denizcilik
Müzesi'nde Yer Alan Afrika'ya Dair Kaynaklar], History in Africa, vol. 14 (1984), s. 396.
The reference for the document in the collection is REC/19. See Melvin K. Hendrix, ‘Africana Resources in the
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England’ in History in Africa, vol. 14 (1984), p. 396.
(4) Derek Walcott, “The Sea Is History” [Deniz Tarihtir], Collected Poems 1948-1984 (New York: Farrar,
Straus & Giroux, 1986), s. 364-365.
Derek Walcott, ‘The Sea is History’, in Collected Poems 1948-1984 (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
1986), pp.364-5.
(5) Jules Verne, Denizler Altında Yirmi bin Fersah, c. 1, çev. Mehveş Sorgun (İstanbul: İthaki Yayınları, 2007).
Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1869), Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.
org/files/164/164-h/164-h.htm, p.319 (accessed July 2015).
(6) Oliver Taplin, “Derek Walcott’s ‘Omeros’ and Derek Walcott’s Homer” [Derek Walcott'un 'Omeros'ın
ve Derek Walcott'ın Homeros'u], Arion içinde, Third Series, c. 1, no.2, İlkbahar 1991, s. 215.
Oliver Taplin, ‘Derek Walcott’s “Omeros” and Derek Walcott’s Homer’, in Arion, Third Series, vol. 1, no.
2 (Spring 1991), p.215.
(7) Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, Modernity and Double-Consciousness [Siyah Atlantik, Modernite ve
Çifte-Bilinç], (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1993), s. 15.
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness (Cambridge, MA, Harvard
University Press, 1993), p. 15.
(8) www.old.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20070701/arts/arts5.html
www.old.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20070701/arts/arts5.html
(9) www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxmSHK3YuRU (Erişim tarihi: Nisan 2015).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxmSHK3YuRU (accessed April 2015).
(10) Derek Walcott, Omeros (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990), s. 325.
Derek Walcott, Omeros (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1990), p. 325.
(11) Bu metnin yazımından 14 gün sonra 56. Venedik Bienali’nde Uluslararası Pavyon’da gösterilen
John Akomfarah’ın Vertigo Sea (2015) filminin keşfi bu hikâyenin güncelliğini ve şaşırtıcı bir şekilde
zaman sınırı tanımadığını ispatladı.
Fourteen days after the writing of this text, the authors’ discovery of the film Vertigo Sea (2015) by John
Akomfrah presented at the International Pavilion of the 56th Venice Biennale confirmed at once the
contemporaneousness and capsizing of temporalities.