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At the close of Margaret Atwoodʼs The Handmaidʼs Tale (1985), a novel which exploits the conventions of slave narrative to dramatize gendered rather than racial oppressions, a set of “Historical Notes,” the partial transcript of a lecture in 2195 by Professor Pieixoto, the editor of the text, provides a wicked satire on academic commodification. Professor Pieixoto, a major scholar from Cambridge, who is slumming it at the University of Denay, Nunavit, is introduced obsequiously by the fawning Professor Maryann Crescent Moon, and proceeds to patronize his chairperson, his audience and his eponymous subject, demonstrating that patriarchal prejudice remains almost unchanged over the centuries. Pieixoto analyses the technology of the tapes on which a story was recorded, considers the possibility of forgery, earnestly discusses the possibility of using musical traces as dating devices, attempts to trace the history of the house where the tapes were found and offers a great deal of information about each of the two men who might have been the handmaidʼs master, but discovers absolutely nothing about the handmaid herself: not her name, not her origins, not even whether she escaped from bondage. Pieixoto is sharing the conference podium with Professor Sieglinda Van Buren from the Department of Military History at the University of San Antonio, Republic of Texas. Clearly, despite the presence at the conference of women professors and ethnic minority speakers (Professor Johnny Running Dog, for example), not much has changed, and the supposed admission of women and minorities to the academic mainstream is merely a smokescreen for their continued domination. |
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The Bondwomanʼs Narrative: Text, Paratext, Intertext and HypertextThe authors are grateful for the opportunity to deliver a pilot version of this essay on 13 September 2002, at the Third International Conference of the Institute for the Study of Slavery, “5000 years of Slavery,” University of Nottingham, and for the comments at the Roundtable, particularly from fellow speaker Sarah Meer. |
