Witnessing Otherwise in John Gabriel Stedman’s <i>Narrative, of a Five Years’ Expedition</i>

Abstract In 1796, John Gabriel Stedman’s Narrative, of a Five Years’ Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam was published in London, claiming new insights into the natural world of the colony. Although Stedman generated some reports of Suriname, many of his natural world descriptions were added once he returned to England. As such, this article shows how by engaging in citational practices inherent to the natural history genre, especially when discussing Kalina, Lokono, and other Indigenous peoples, the Narrative reveals the mundane violence of colonial references and archetypes. Simultaneously, it insists that readers can witness more than colonial desires. Tracing breaks and ruptures in the Narrative and contemporary publications, it demonstrates how Kalina and Lokono silences place clear limits on what Stedman and others were allowed to know. Reading these instances as refusals that contribute just as meaningfully to the Narrative’s creation as what Stedman claims to witness, this article complicates a pluralistic approach to scholarship about eighteenth-century knowledge. Instead, it uses the lack of answers from Indigenous communities to provide a case study in how witnessing otherwise can center Indigenous resurgence without demanding access to privileged knowledge.