Laura Linder-Scholer

Transatlantic English Literature

May 2011

When Fiction Fills the Silence:

Implications of Speaking for the Subaltern in Christiansë’s Unconfessed

In a convoluted archive of historical records, author Yvette Christiansë searches for any

trace of Sila van de Kaap, a convicted slave woman from the 19th century. As she finds only

limited and partial records of Sila’s existence, Christiansë comes to realize that Sila’s life has

been forgotten—and effectively silenced—in the historical march of postcolonialism and

abolitionism in South Africa. In all likelihood, Christiansë figures, Sila was undocumented to

begin with, due to her identity as a black, female, non-landowning slave (Christiansë,

“Heartsore” 1). These very identity characteristics lead Christiansë to identify Sila as

“subaltern,” a term used by literary critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to refer to a person or

group defined by their deviation from an ideal, their refusal to fully adopt the vocabulary of the

institutionally powerful, and their inability to participate in hegemonic structures and discourses

(Spivak 2118). Intrigued by the absence of Sila’s voice in the narrative of South Africa’s past,

Christiansë took on the task of “tracing Sila’s story and seeking the echoes of her own words,”

(“Heartsore” 1). Her project ultimately resulted in the creation of the novel Unconfessed.

In Unconfessed, the protagonist is clearly a fictionalized representation of Sila.

Christiansë’s protagonist is alternatively silenced and able to speak—ambiguous in her identity

as a possible subaltern figure—depending on her relational position to others. To make sense of

Christiansë’s fictionalized but historically based representation of Sila, it is essential to reference

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s analysis of the subaltern and “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in

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particular. Based on Spivak’s critical explications of “the subaltern,” it is clear that Christiansë

attempts to portray the fictionalized Sila as subaltern within the context of the story, but

ultimately negates Sila’s subaltern status by introducing Unconfessed as a published work within

an established literary discourse. The institutional power that Christiansë holds as a free, literate,

English-speaking, and well-published author ultimately renders her incapable of accurately

representing Sila’s subaltern status. Christiansë is also unable to give authentic voice to the real,

historical figure of Sila van de Kaap.

In the character descriptions, dialogue, and plotline of Unconfessed, Christiansë

consistently attempts to portray the fictional protagonist of Sila as subaltern, in accordance with

the defining qualities outlined in Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Sila represents the most

basic level of identification as subaltern, occuping a marginalized and subordinate position in

society because she is black, female, and a slave—three factors that distinguish her as a lesser

“other” in relation to the institutionally powerful, free, white man. Indeed, it is powerful and free

white men that force Sila to reject her own language and learn a new, foreign language in the

novel. Sila suffers from “epistemic violence,” the type of violence that Spivak says accompanies

the forced replacement of one vocabulary and set of values with another (Spivak 2115). Sila

recounts this hardship in the novel, saying, “I moved from day to day, stumbling through all the

things they wanted me to learn, all the new words I had to listen to. I had to keep to myself those

words I was never to say. And all the new laws that lived in the new words!” (Christiansë,

Unconfessed 139). Sila’s native language is intentionally silenced, and as she never receives any

formal education, she is functionally illiterate, as well. Sila cannot read Oumiesies’s will or

prove her rights through Oumiesies’s last testament, for instance, and she is thus unable to speak

for her rights, her freedom, and her identity in this way (Christiansë, Unconfessed 106).

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The one person Sila is consistently able to address in the novel is her son Baro. She seeks

validation and empowerment in speaking to the ghost and memory of her son Baro about her life.

Sila recounts her history, values, actions, and beliefs to him, repeating, “I tell you and you must

listen” (Christiansë, Unconfessed 232). She urgently demands that her voice be heard, asking

Baro to share her story with Deborah, repeating “tell her” a total of sixteen times in three pages

(Christiansë, Unconfessed 274-276). Despite Sila’s desperation to be heard, she is functionally

trapped in the silence of the subaltern. Because Baro is not physically embodied, he cannot

connect Sila’s story with any institution of power or larger form of discourse. When Sila dies,

her history will be lost. Sporadic traces of Sila’s reality exist in documents like Oumiesies’s will

and the ownership records of her slaveholders, but Theron falsifies these records of Sila’s life

and identity, so Sila’s documented history remains incomplete, inaccurate and inaccessible.

On occasion, Sila tries to adopt the vocabulary of the dominant social class, but is unable

to speak in a manner powerful enough to change her circumstances. At times, Oumiesies listens

to Sila, but Sila does not gain any power, freedom, or means of speaking for herself outside of

her relationship with Oumiesies. Sila critically lacks the advantage and power associated with

being a man. As Spivak points out, “within the effaced itinerary of the subaltern subject, the

track of sexual difference is doubly effaced […] the subaltern has no history and cannot speak,

[but] the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow” (Spivak 2120). When Sila reflects

on her time in court, she notes, “Being a woman, I was not man enough to be heard. I needed a

man who would speak man to man in that language that would save me” (Christiansë,

Unconfessed 308). As a subaltern and once again as a woman, Sila is unwillingly silenced.

Although Sila understands the complex relationship between power and language, she

routinely rejects the vocabulary of the socially dominant. In one example, Sila refuses to speak to

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her judge in court, explaining, “I could not make one sound he or the others would understand.

They told me to speak. Their waiting was a silence filled with noise” (Christiansë, Unconfessed

231). Sila realizes there is nothing she could say to make anyone at court truly listen to her,

because she does not have the necessary vocabulary to be heard (Christiansë, Unconfessed 255).

In another part of the text, Sila rejects the religious vocabulary of the minister and his wife, the

very people who have the power to give her agency and freedom. Sila refuses to embrace a

Christian identity or to speak of the Christian heaven or hell at all. Instead, she muses, “Perhaps

the hell they speak of is the loss of oneself and the knowledge of this. I do not even have the

language for that loss or that self anymore” (Christiansë, Unconfessed 336). The minister’s wife

expresses disgust at Sila’s silence and indifference; Sila resents being asked to speak in a

language she cannot identify with or necessarily access.

Sila desires to be recognized by social institutions of power and to have her voice be

heard, but she is never able to achieve these aims. The very aspects of Sila’s life that characterize

her as subaltern—her fractured reality, her identity-in-difference as an isolated other, and the

treatment she receives as rejected and valueless object—dishearten Sila. In Sila’s words:

I think there can be nothing as a life lived in the halfway of things […] You begin to feel

the dust of loneliness settle on your face and hands […] Everyone can see. They see the

dust of loneliness and failure all over you and it is like a disease to them, and to you, and

they keep away […] And then they pity you and that pity accuses you and punishes you.

(Christiansë, Unconfessed 127).

In her position as a silenced, black, and female slave, Sila experiences immense difference from

the people around her with power and influence. As a fictional protagonist, Sila is thus clearly

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characterized as subaltern. The definition of subaltern centers on a fundamental “difference from

the elite,” according to Spivak’s text “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (Spivak 2119).

Within the novel Unconfessed, Christiansë attempts to portray Sila as subaltern. Sila’s

subaltern identity is subsequently and finally negated, though, by Christiansë’s own creative

writing and publishing process. According to Spivak, the subaltern by definition does not exist in

the narratives of literature, is absent from any form of larger discourse. It is helpful here to

qualify Spivak’s notion of discourse: “Speaking” always occurs within the nexus of actions that

include listening, responding, interpreting, and qualifying” (“Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak”

2113). So the very fact that Christiansë interprets, qualifies, and imagines the voice and history

of Sila means that the fictional character of Sila cannot be considered as subaltern. Through

Christiansë’s process, Sila is able to speak, and the subaltern is not allowed to speak. Christiansë

begins Unconfessed by recounting Sila’s story in the third person, which draws attention away

from the fact that Christiansë has given Sila both a voice and an audience. Spivak asserts that this

tactic “is, in other words, at once a gesture of control and an acknowledgement of limits” (Spivak

2122). In spite of the limitations on this style of writing, though, Christiansë still has control over

both Sila’s voice and how the novel’s audience receives her voice.

Even when Christiansë writes in the first person, directly conveying Sila’s point of view,

the point of view is still a fictionalized account interpreted and mediated through the form of

popular literary discourse. As Spivak points out, “all speaking, even the most immediate, entails

a distanced decipherment by another, which is, at best, an interception” (Spivak 2123). With

Christiansë’s interception, the character of Sila can speak and is understood by an audience of

people in power. Unconfessed is directed at an educated, literate, English-speaking audience, and

the novel was published internationally through large, corporate publishing agencies. Through

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Christiansë’s writing, the novel’s fictional protagonist enters formal literary and cultural

discourse. Therefore the character of Sila cannot be subaltern.

Unconfessed is a fictional work, yet Christiansë was inspired by a real historical figure

named Sila. The real figure of Sila is subaltern. Christiansë was only able to collect a handful of

(unreliable) hints about Sila van de Kaap’s history, through various (uncertain) external records

of the slave woman. Possible traces of Sila van de Kaap survive in wills, court documents,

written accounts of law enforcement, sale and property deeds, but Christiansë could not locate

any written accounts of a more personal nature or greater detail (Christiansë, “Heartsore” 2).

Although Christiansë tries to interpret and relay the story of Sila van de Kaap from these

historical traces, she cannot accurately speak for the real Sila through literature. Christiansë is

limited to extrapolation and interpellation of the nature of Sila’s life from documented facts.

Christiansë is limited in her understanding of Sila’s life in other ways as well, beyond her

access to historical archives. Christiansë necessarily interprets the historical facts of the real

slave-woman’s life through her own postcolonial perspective as an educated English-speaker

living in the West, with the means and influence to write and publish her own work. With her

institutional power and well-established authorial voice, Christiansë is incapable of accurately

giving voice to Sila, a woman who never had enough power to be receive formal documentation

or remembrance. In fact, while Christiansë can speak, read, listen, and write, “the subaltern as

female cannot be heard or read” at all, according to “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (Spivak 2123).

The real historical figure and true subaltern named Sila van de Kaap never entered official

literary discourse at all, because Unconfessed is a wholly fictional work according to the

publisher’s note and Christiansë’s own confession in the book.

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Christiansë admits in her essay “Heartsore: The Melancholy Archive of Cape Colony

Slavery,” that the real figure of Sila van de Kaap is functionally stuck in a historical position of

silence, because “there is no discursive arena in which Sila speaks or could speak for and by

herself” (9). If Christiansë were able to establish some line of communication with Sila van de

Kaap in order to obtain more personal accounts of her life or greater details on her perspective,

Sila would then be able to speak in an institutionally meaningful way. Sila would in this case

stop being subaltern, as she could move into any number of meaningful discourses on race,

gender, slavery, or nationality, for example. In Spivak’s view, this movement of the subaltern in

the direction of hegemony is “absolutely to be desired” (Spivak 2125). Yet since Christiansë was

unable to gain any more access to the life or record of Sila van de Kaap, she chose to elaborate

upon the details of Sila’s life through the fictional novel Unconfessed. Christiansë is aware of the

fact she cannot assist or allow the historical figure of Sila van de Kaap to speak “for or by

herself” in any way, but settles for representing the basic characteristics of the subaltern through

the fictional character Sila in Unconfessed. In this project, she creates a compelling novel.

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Works Cited

Christiansë, Yvette. ""Heartsore": The Melancholy Archive of Cape Colony Slavery." Ed.

Christine Cynn and Kim F. Hall. Scholar and Feminist Online 7.2 (2009): 1-12. Barnard

Center for Research on Women. Web. 12 May 2011.

Christiansë, Yvette. Unconfessed. New York: Other, 2006. Print.

"Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak." Introduction. Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed.

Vincent B. Leitch. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. 2110-114. Print.

Spivak, Gayatri C. "From A Critique of Postcolonial Reason [Can the Subaltern Speak?]."

Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. 2nd ed. New York:

W.W. Norton, 2010. 2114-126. Print.