SOURCE: Goudie, S. X. “‘Leavin' a Mark on the Wor(l)d’: Marksmen and Marked Men in Middle Passage.” African American Review 29, no. 1 (spring 1995): 109-22.

In the following essay, Goudie asserts that The Middle Passage expresses an African-American perspective that is influenced by Western philosophical and literary traditions.

The point is not that acts of racial violence are only words but rather that they have to have a word. … racism always betrays the perversion of a man, the “talking animal.” … A system of marks, it outlines space in order to assign forced residence or to close off borders. It does not discern, it discriminates.

(Derrida, “Racism's Last Word”)

I knew I'd have to write frankly about black fiction, which is always a dangerous thing to do, tempers being hair-trigger on this subject, and I don't much care to have anyone firing at me.

(Johnson, “Whole Sight”)

For some...