Anne McClintockÕs
book, Imperial Leather makes the insightful observation that Ò[A]s European men
crossed the dangerous thresholds of their known worlds, they ritualistically
feminized borders and boundaries.
Female figures were planted like fetishes at the ambiguous points of
contact, at the borders and orifices of the contest zone.Ó[1] McClintockÕs words find strong
resonance in Paesi Nouamente Retrovati.
In the opening letter of Alvise Cadamosto, he speaks of a young woman of the Kingdom of Senega
(what we now call Senegal). The
exchange is between Cadamosto and the King of Senega, and the object of
exchange is a young woman. His
letter reads:
He besought me to go inland to his
house, about two hundred and fifty miles from the shore.[2] There he would reward me richly,
and I might remain for some days, for he had promised me one hundred slaves in
return for what he had received. I
gave him the horses with their harness and other goods, which together had cost
me originally about three hundred ducats.
I therefore decided to go with him, but before I left he gave me a
handsome young negro girl, twelve years of age, saying that he gave her to me for the
service of my chamber. I accepted
her and sent her to my ship. My
journey inland was indeed more to see interesting sights and obtain
information, than to receive my dues.[3]
The reference to the young woman
to be Òin the service ofÓ CadamostoÕs chamber situates her nameless body as the
boundary port-of-entry, through which Cadamosto will see interesting sights and
obtain information. Her agency and
subjectivity is displaced as a representation of the passive land upon which he
will Òjourney inland.Ó The
affectation in mentioning the girlÕs young age suggests her virginity, invoking
the land as female and virginal, awaiting the arrival of a (European) Man. Through the enunciation of this passage
Cadamosto verbally positions himself as an agent of power in relation to the
Kingdom of Senega all while the young, virginal, black woman serves as the
border entryway that will be transgressed for his pleasure and enrichment.
Sexuality and subjugation are
deeply entwined in the face-to-face relations narrated by Cadamosto. In the first pages of his narrative, he
speaks of how he has gained information about the sexuality of Canarians from
slave raiders who have captured men and women from the islands.[4] A few pages later, CadamostoÕs fantasy
of sexual promiscuity and incest among West Africans works in tandem with his
descriptions of idolatry, heathenism, skin color, and inferior intelligence and
character. These representations
serve to construct the emerging black subject in contrast to what is presented
deceptively as a presumably natural European norm. The European norm is in contrast defined as Christian,
patriarchal, monogamous, masculinist and of superior human stock. Cadamosto narrates:
In this place Budomel had nine
wives: and likewise in his other dwellings, according to his will and
pleasure. Each of these wives has
five or six young black girls in attendance upon her, and it is as lawful for
the lord to sleep with these attendants as with his wives, to whom this does
not appear an injury, for it is customary. In this way the lord changes frequently. These negros, both men and women, are
exceedingly lascivious: Budomel demanded of me importunately, having been given
to understand that Christians knew how to do many things, whether by chance I
could give him the means by which he could satisfy many women, for which he
offered me a great reward. They
are also very jealous, and allow no one to enter the huts where their wives
live—not even trusting their own sons.[5]
In CadamostoÕs narrative, one of
the central characteristics that define Western Africans as not-Portuguese is
their sexual practices, which include the possibility of sexual intimacy
between mother and son. We can see
here the establishment of a myth of perversity in Western African social life
by suggesting they are incestuous, implicitly establishing chastity as a
European norm.
[1] Anne McClintock, Imperial
Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Conquest (New York: Routledge, 1995), 24.
[2] The community was actually 25
miles inwards, not 250 miles.
[3] G.R. Crone, Ed. The voyages of Cadamosto and other documents on Western Africa in the second half of the fifteenth century (London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1937), 36.
[4] Ibid., 13.
[5] Ibid., 38.