Blackbirding, Cannibalism, and the Demands of Appetite in John Cameronâs Odyssey

Audrey Murfin

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Chapter 10 Blackbirding, Cannibalism, and the Demands of Appetite in John Cameronâs Odyssey

In: Scottish Literature of the South Seas

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Audrey Murfin

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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 154â168

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004682177_012

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John Cameronâs 1928 memoir of his time sailing the Pacific employs a contradictory rhetoric of imperialism. Borrowing from Robert Louis Stevensonâs defense of cannibalism and Stevensonâs perspective on depopulation in the region, Cameron endorses a model of the white man as real or metaphorical cannibal, consuming the people and cultures of the Pacific. First, this chapter considersCameronâs identification with the psychopathic serial killer Adolph Jorgensen, a castaway Cameron had met on Midway Island, who comes to embody Cameronâs conception of violent white domination in the Pacific.Second, drawing on Cameronâs memoir as well as secondary historical accounts, it considers Cameronâs actions as first mate onboard the Hawaiianlabour ship the Pomareâactions that his text justifies as the inevitable results of his own racialized appetite for domination.

Stevenson met Highlander John Cameron in June of 1890. At that time, Cameronâs experience as one of the castaways from the mysterious wreck of The Wandering Minstrel was well known. At the time of their meeting, Stevenson was becoming increasingly sensitive to many colonial abuses in the Pacific, but especially to the labour trade, which displaced and, in some cases, enslaved Pacific Islanders in order to promote plantation and agricultural interests. Cameronâs autobiography, in quite an opposite manner, rationalizes the violent abuses he perpetrated over his career. Nevertheless, Cameronâs memoir ironically draws upon progressive arguments that Stevenson put forth in In the South Seas (1896) as both texts engage the rhetoric of race in the nineteenth-century Pacific.

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Scottish Literature of the South Seas

Critical Studies of Scotland and the Pacific

Series:Â SCROLL: Scottish Cultural Review of Language and Literature, Volume: 35Â andÂ SCROLL: Scottish Cultural Review of Language and Literature Online, Volume: 35

Cover Scottish Literature of the South Seas

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004682177

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 25 Dec 2024

Subjects
- Literature and Cultural Studies

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Chapter 10 Blackbirding, Cannibalism, and the Demands of Appetite in John Cameronâs Odyssey

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Scottish Literature of the South Seas

Critical Studies of Scotland and the Pacific

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Chapter 10 Blackbirding, Cannibalism, and the Demands of Appetite in John Cameronâs Odyssey