{"pk":43172,"title":"Narrating the Isthmus: Mobilities and Archipelagic Memory in Texts about the Panama Canal","subtitle":null,"abstract":"The essay uses an archipelagic lens to explore narratives of mobility and relationality surrounding the Panama Canal Zone. In the early twenieth century, the various projects of creating an interoceanic route culminated in the territorializing project of the Panama Canal that was organized around the colonization of land and ocean spaces and tied to the imperial expansion to the Caribbean and the Pacific, making the isthmus a crucial link in the imperial archipelago. After briefly discussing Willis J. Abbot’s popular history of the canal, \nPanama and the Canal in Picture and Prose\n (1913), the essay explores two texts by Black writers that question dominant representations of the canal and of the migrant Caribbean workers who built it: Eric Walrond’s collection of stories, \nTropic Death\n (1926), and the bilingual prose–poetry history of Black West Indians in Panama, \nAn Old Woman Remembers \n(1995), by Carlos E. Russell. I argue that these texts practice “archipelagic memory” by evoking an archive of submerged historical experiences that relates the Canal Zone to other spaces, and by making visible spectral presences and the sediments of imperial history submerged in the waters of the canal.","language":"en","license":{"name":"Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives  4.0","short_name":"CC BY-NC-ND 4.0","text":"Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\n\nNonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.\n\nNoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.\n\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0"},"keywords":[{"word":"panama canal zone"},{"word":"race and imperial space"},{"word":"territorialization"},{"word":"Willis Abbot"},{"word":"Eric Walrond"},{"word":"Carlos E. Russell"},{"word":"Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose"},{"word":"Tropic Death"},{"word":"An Old Woman Remembers"}],"section":"Special Forum: Archipelagic Spaces and Im/Mobilities","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3s37421w","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Gabriele","middle_name":"","last_name":"Pisarz-Ramirez","name_suffix":"","institution":"Universität Leipzig","department":"None"}],"date_submitted":"2023-04-18T13:17:56Z","date_accepted":"2023-04-18T13:17:56Z","date_published":"2023-05-28T07:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/jtas/article/43172/galley/32167/download/"}]}