SOURCE: "Problematizing American Dissent: The Subject of Phillis Wheatley," in Cohesion and Dissent in America, edited by Carol Colatrella and Joseph Alkana, State University of New York Press, 1994, pp. 193-209

In the essay that follows, Burke challenges the idea that Wheatley's success as a poet reflects her escape from the oppressive situation of slavery.

In his History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault argues that our conceptual model of power has not changed very much since the Middle Ages. "At bottom, despite the differences in epoch and objectives," Foucault writes, "the representation of power has remained under the spell of monarchy. In political thought and analysis, we still have not cut off the head of the king."¹ This critique may not at first seem relevant to America, a political entity that originated in a struggle against kings and that defined itself in the apparently very antimonarchical discourse of pluralism, a...