Performing History, Historizing Performance in Robert Antoni’s As Flies to Whatless Boys

Abstract

This essay is a close reading of As Flies to Whatless Boys’ performative language, with a view to underscoring how Antoni privileges telling over writing in the manner spoken language format and visual aids predominate in the text. The narrative is a fictionalized history of the 1845 emigration of “The Pioneers” to Trinidad, which begins from the leadership of a bogus self-styled scientist and inventor, Mr. A. J. Etzler to the love escapades of a 15-year-old, Willy and 18-year-old Marguerite who does not have vocal cords. It is instructive how Marguerite’s performative speech is rendered in this narrative, and this essay studies that closely to show how Antoni’s first-person intertextual story is told in highly performative English generously riddled with vernacular and creole, spoken with a medley of Trinidadian and European accents.