Re-signing History and Opening Up an Ethical Space of Disclosure: Yvette Christiansë's Wyschogrodian Ethics in Unconfessed

In and through her neo-slave narrative Unconfessed (2006), Yvette Christiansë not only salvages Sila van den Kaap from the archive but she also re-signs her history. Instead of simply filling in all the gaps left in the archival material, Christiansë crafts an elliptical, fragmented novel that speaks as much through what it reveals as through what it conceals. While the untellable excess of slavery bleeds, in absentia, from every page, the author eschews the graphic depiction of the pivotal event of violence as such, instead letting it resonate from the expressionistic emphasis on sensory images.