Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910

Abstract

I wonder if dis is me?By golly, I is free as a frog.But maybe I is mistaken; maybe dis ain't me.Cato, is dis you?Yes, seer.Well, now it is me, an' I em a free man.But, stop!I muss change my name, kase ole massa might foller me, and somebody might tell him dat dey see Cato; so I'll change my name, and den he won't know me ef he sees me.Now, what shall I call myself ?I'm now in a suspectable part of the country, an' I muss have a suspectable name.Ah! I'll call myself Alexander Washington Napoleon Pompey Caesar.Dar, now, dat's a good long, suspectable name, and everybody will suspect me.Let me see; I wonder ef I can't make up a song on my escape!I'll try.As he subsequently confesses in song, Cato has literally stolen the clothes o√ his ''ole massa's'' back.''I dress myself,'' he proudly proclaims, ''in his bess clothes, an' jump into de street.''Piling on an excess of ironically inflated monikers bestowed upon the enslaved, Cato inverts his own crisis in naming himself by turning that dilemma into a multi-vocal, insurrectionist act.In his soliloquy, he transmogrifies his own self-fragmentation into signifying parody.Speaking on dual frequencies as both captor and captive, gentleman and minstrel clown, Cato (re)dresses himself both in the role of the ''suspicious'' fugitive as well as the ''respectable'' master, conflating and perverting the boundaries between each role.His drag act simultaneously stages the spectacle of a fugitive asserting his subjectivity through the tools of…