Chapter 5 - Passivity

Summary

“Passivity: The Passion of Oroonoko and the Ethics of Narration” recovers a historical meaning of “passive obedience,” a precursor to modern theories of civil disobedience, and it uses this concept to read both the protagonist, an African prince enslaved in a new world colony, and the narrator, a colonial woman writer, of Oroonoko. It argues that the narrator of Oroonoko, and by inference novelistic narration in general, is based on assumptions about the ethics of individual detachment (or ironic distance) from political action. In recovering the idea of passive obedience and the figure of Christ’s passion as a model for novelistic narration and a conservative ethics of citizenship under liberalism, this chapter offers a critique of liberal theories of political action as well as an argument against the novel’s foundation in liberal theories of individualization and agency. It also takes up the problems of racism and slavery as central to understanding both the liberal/conservative dynamic and the development of the novel form.