False Gifts/Exotic Fictions: Epistemologies of Sovereignty and Assent in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko

Abstract

Reading Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688) as a creative intervention into philosophical debates about political obligation allows us to understand its critical contribution to the acute crisis confronting English subjects during the Glorious Revolution. Moving beyond previous scholarship that has debated Behn's political affiliations, this paper locates Oroonoko in the midst of ongoing conversations about the unstable character of sovereignty and political subjectivity. It argues that, rather than taking the fictions of sovereignty to a neat theoretical conclusion (à la Thomas Hobbes and John Milton), Behn uses the Atlantic stage to interrogate the epistemological and moral uncertainties that haunted all forms of political obligation. In doing so, she offers a model for how the female poet-playwright could navigate social and political unrest.

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