A NOVA PLANTATION: NEONARRATIVAS DE ESCRAVOS E NECROPOLÍTICA EM O REFORMATÓRIO NICKEL

Abstract

In The Nickel Boys (2019), Colson Whitehead fictionalizes the discovery of mass graves at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, a reform school located in Florida, historically associated with decades of institutional abuse and racial violence. Inspired by historical events, the novel centers on the Black bodies buried there, constructing a narrative of resistance against the erasure of historical memory. The novel’s narrative structure assumes a palimpsestic character by merging the prison novel with structural and thematic elements characteristic of the neo-slave narrative genre, as defined by Bernard W. Bell (1987) and later developed by Ashraf H. A. Rushdy (1999). Furthermore, drawing on Achille Mbembe’s concept of the “third place,” I contend that Whitehead represents the reform school as a new plantation. Finally, I conclude that by superimposing past and present, Whitehead exposes the workings of the penal state as an extension of the plantation economy, illuminating the continuities of systemic racial violence in contemporary American society.