Benito Cerreno And The Zong Massacre

The legal system has played a significant role in perpetuating systematic oppression or control over marginalized group, such as Native people and Black people. Literary works such as Benito Cereno and Zong! exposes the limitations of the legal framework in recognizing, addressing, and acknowledging the brutality, oppression, and murder faced by Black people. The use of law in these works illustrates how enslaved Black people were dehumanized and oppressed “legally” due to the law. Even today, as M.NourbeSe Philip argues in “Defending the Dead,” Black people are often outside the law (and yet trapped by it) in the way the law is used to police and confine black bodies in the new prison industrial complex. Hence, we can still find instances

The Zong! Massacre serves as an example of the legal system’s failure to provide justice and equity to enslaved individuals. The crew was lawfully allowed to throw their “properties” (enslaved people) overboard and get away with the murders without any consequences. However, in the legal case of Zong!, the primary focus was on insurance compensation for the ship owner’s lost “goods,” which referred to the murdered enslaved individuals. The murder of these enslaved individuals was merely a footnote in the legal text, and the word “murder” was not even mentioned once. Due to the lack of acknowledgement of the murders in the legal text, NourbeSe philip depicted these murders in the Zong poems by intentionally avoiding (not acknowledging) English writing norms, structures and grammatical format, thereby murdering the English language. The poems use random words from the legal text, just like how enslaved people were chosen randomly to be thrown overboard(murder), as if each of them had the same

As a result, injustice suffered by enslaved people was just a footnote in the whole legal text. That is why, NourbeSe Philips compared the Zong! legal text to a gravestone that silenced the voices of enslaved individuals, which needs to be shattered to free the voices of oppressed enslaved. Zong! did this by fragmenting and mutilating the legal text in Zong poem. The usage of fragmented text in the poem is supposed to be hard to find meaning or coherence of, to portray readers how confusing and irrational the laws might have been in enslaved people view. Today, legal texts such as the Zong! case represents slavery as a “memory of heroic and inevitable abolition” (The story that cannot be told), a redemption story. However, this legal text can’t capture the emotions of pain and suffering endured by enslaved individuals. This is why most people focus on heroic moments and sacrifices of enslaved people fighting against slavery. But can we consider it a happy ending? NO, this narrative has caused people to forget about the atrocities and suffering endured by enslaved individuals. It is crucial to acknowledge the brutal oppression and suffering that enslaved people experienced to move toward true reconciliation and