Earth-Eating, Addiction, Nostalgia: Charles Chesnutt's Diasporic Regionalism (Essay‪)‬

WHAT MAKES A MAN EAT DIRT? IN THE SLAVEHOLDING NEW WORLD during the early to mid-1800s, the question took on an unexpected urgency. Slaves were dying, and the cause, it appeared, lay in an "ungovernable determination" to consume the earth of the plantation. (1) Planters ought to beware, warned the considerable body of medical writings on the subject; such consumption might well be taking place without their knowledge, for it was typically carried out in secret, and denied most strenuously by those involved. (2) The stakes could not be higher, however. On one Dominican estate, nearly half the slaves were "carried off in a few years" from earth-eating, while more than one Louisiana plantation was purportedly abandoned altogether due to the "extensive mortality, resulting ... from this habit" (Imray 309, Carpenter 148). As a result, masters often resorted to extreme measures, forcing the men and women under their rule to wear iron face masks secured in the back with a lock, as the only means of keeping the "invincible craving" at bay (Cragin 359, Carpenter 149). What is happening when a person is rendered "ungovernable" because of his appetite? Such a formulation does not pit the slave's will against his master's so much as it pits the "irresistible dominion" of the desire for earth against the dominion of the slaveowner (Cragin 359). Some writers, of course, saw greater intent at work in the practice--a deliberate attempt to escape the conditions of enslavement, through death if need be. For others, however, this view ascribed too great a purposiveness to sufferers seen as driven by a "propensity"--indeed, an "addiction"--over which they showed little control (Carpenter 166, Imray 307). In fact, insisted one observer of Jamaican earth-eaters, the slaves actively enjoyed their strange repast--not just any kind of earth was deemed appealing--and "'express as much satisfaction from it as the greatest lover of tobacco could do'" (qtd. in Carpenter 149).