"If you go there - you who was never there:" On Contemporary Uses of the Memory of Slavery
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2016.i8.576Keywords:
American literature, slaveryAbstract
Kenneth Warren, in his controversial What Was African American Literature? (2011), argues that while African American literature was once “prospective,” contemporary black writing is “retrospective” and its obsessive preoccupation with the past is the result of nostalgia for the supposedly unified and cohesive black community of Jim Crow times and unwillingness to accept the disappearance of racial particularity after the end of legally sanctioned racial segregation. While some of his points are well taken, nostalgia for the past is not behind the current rememory of slavery in literature, the arts and popular culture. “I know I can’t change the future but I can change the past. It is the past, not the future, which is infinite,” replied Toni Morrison to a question about the genesis of Beloved. By changing the past, however, she aims at changing the future. Neo-slave narratives are works that rewrite the past in order not only to set the historical records straight, but also to heal the collective memory through narrative so that an authentically post-racial community can come into existence. They challenge the divide between past and present, to counter Western amnesia of the traumas of colonization and slavery.References
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Araujo, Ana Lucia, ed. Politics of Memory: Making Slavery Visible in the Public Space. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Ana Lucia Araujo. Shadows of the Slave Past: Memory, Heritage, and Slavery. New York: Routledge, 2014.
Beller, Thomas, “Angola Prison and the Shadow of Slavery.” The New Yorker August 19, 2015. URL: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/angola-prison-louisiana-photos. Last visited June, 30, 2016.
Berlin, Ira. “Coming to Terms with Slavery in Twenty-First-Century America.” Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory. Eds. James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. 1-17.
Best, Stephen. “On Failing to Make the Past Present.” Modern Language Quarterly 73.3 (September 2012): 453-474.
Brown, Vincent. “Social Death and Political Life in the Study of Slavery.” American Historical Review 114.5 (December 2009): 1231-1249.
Byrne, Bridget. “Post-race? Nation, Inheritance and the Contradictory Performativity of Race in Barack Obama’s ‘A More Perfect Union’ Speech.” Thirdspace: A Journal of Feminist Theory & Culture 10.1 (2011): 1-18.
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. “The Case for Reparations.” The Atlantic, June 2014. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/. Last visited July 2, 2016.
Cottom, Tressie McMillan. “Georgetown’s Slavery Announcement Is Remarkable. But It’s Not Reparations.” Vox September 2, 2016. http://www.vox.com/2016/9/2/12773110/georgetown-slavery admissionreparations. Last visited September 12, 2016
Ebron, Paulla A. “Which Memory?” Transatlantic Memories of Slavery: Reimagining the Past, Changing the
Future. Eds. Elisa Bordin and Anna Scacchi. Amherst: Cambria Press, 2015. 133-159.
Foner, Eric. Who Owns History?: Rethinking the Past in a Changing World. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003.
Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso, 1993.
Hamilton, Douglas. “Representing Slavery in the British Museums: The Challenges of 2007.” Imagining Transatlantic Slavery. Eds. Cora Kaplan and John Oldfield. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 127-144.
Hartman, Saidiya. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007.
Herzing, Rachel. “What Is the Prison Industrial Complex?” Defending Justice: An Activist Tool Kit. URL: http://www.publiceye.org/defendingjustice/overview/herzing_pic.html. Last visited August 11, 2016.
Hirsch, Marianne. “The Generation of Postmemory.” Poetics Today 29.1 (Spring 2008): 103-128.
Horton, James Oliver and Lois E. Horton, eds. Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory. New York: The New Press, 2006.
Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
Martin, Reginald. “A Conversation with Ishmael Reed.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 4.2 (Summer 1984): 176-187.
Mbembe, Achille. “Necropolitics.” Public Culture 15.1 (Winter 2003): 11-40.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1987.
Osel, Joseph. “Black Out: Michelle Alexander’s Operational Whitewash.” International Journal of Radical Critique 1.1 (2012). http://philpapers.org/archive/OSEBOM. Last visited June 26, 2016.
Otele, Olivette. “Re-branding the Trauma of Slavery, or How to Pacify the Masses with Sites of Memory.” June 3, 2015. http://discoversociety.org/2015/06/03/re-branding-the-trauma-of-slavery-or-how-to-pacifythe-masses-with-sites-of-memory/. Last visited July 10, 2016.
Palmié, Stephan. “Slavery, Historicism, and the Poverty of Memorialization.” Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates. Eds. Susannah Radstone and Bill Schwarz. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010. 363-375.
“Protection of Human Rights.” Yearbook of the United Nations 2006 60. United Nations Publications, 2009.
Samuels, Allison. “How 2013 Became the Year of the Slavery Film.” The Daily Beast, March 15th, 2013. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/15/how-2013-became-the-year-of-the-slaveryfilm.html. Last visited June 4, 2016.
Sexton, Jared. “Afro-Pessimism: The Unclear Word.” Rhyzomes 29 (2016). http://www.rhizomes.net/issue29/sexton.html. Last visited May 3, 2016.
---. “The Social Life of Social Death: On Afro-Pessimism and Black Optimism.” InTensions 5 (2011): 1-37.
Taylor-Guthrie, Danille, ed. Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994.
Thomas, Greg. “Why Some Like the New Jim Crow So Much.” IMWIL! Emancipatory Journalism & the Media, April 26th, 2012. https://imixwhatilike.org/2012/04/26/whysomelikethenewjimcrowsomuch/. Last visited May 13, 2016.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
Vivian, Bradford. “The Paradox of Regret: Remembering and Forgetting the History of Slavery in George W. Bush’s Gorée Island Address.” History and Memory 24.1 (2012): 5-38.
Wilder, Craig Steven. Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013.
Wagner, Bryan. Disturbing the Peace: Black Culture and the Police Power after Slavery. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.
Wallace, Elizabeth Kowaleski. The British Slave Trade and Public Memory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
Warren, Kenneth, What Was African American Literature? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
Wilderson, Frank B., III. Red, White, and Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
Williams, Eric, Capitalism and Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944.
Williams, Sherley Ann, Dessa Rose. New York: Harper Collins, 1986.
Wood, Marcus. “Significant Silence: Where Was Slave Agency in the Popular Imagery of 2007?” Imagining Transatlantic Slavery. Eds. Cora Kaplan and John Oldfield. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 162-190.
Wood, Marcus. “Refurbishment, Responsibility, and Historical Memory in Monticello’s Slave ‘Dependencies’.”
Bonded Labor in the Cultural Contact Zone: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Slavery and Its Discourses. Eds. Raphael Hormann and Gesa Mackenthun. New York: Waxman, 2010. 187-207.
Araujo, Ana Lucia, ed. Politics of Memory: Making Slavery Visible in the Public Space. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Ana Lucia Araujo. Shadows of the Slave Past: Memory, Heritage, and Slavery. New York: Routledge, 2014.
Beller, Thomas, “Angola Prison and the Shadow of Slavery.” The New Yorker August 19, 2015. URL: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/angola-prison-louisiana-photos. Last visited June, 30, 2016.
Berlin, Ira. “Coming to Terms with Slavery in Twenty-First-Century America.” Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory. Eds. James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. 1-17.
Best, Stephen. “On Failing to Make the Past Present.” Modern Language Quarterly 73.3 (September 2012): 453-474.
Brown, Vincent. “Social Death and Political Life in the Study of Slavery.” American Historical Review 114.5 (December 2009): 1231-1249.
Byrne, Bridget. “Post-race? Nation, Inheritance and the Contradictory Performativity of Race in Barack Obama’s ‘A More Perfect Union’ Speech.” Thirdspace: A Journal of Feminist Theory & Culture 10.1 (2011): 1-18.
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. “The Case for Reparations.” The Atlantic, June 2014. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/. Last visited July 2, 2016.
Cottom, Tressie McMillan. “Georgetown’s Slavery Announcement Is Remarkable. But It’s Not Reparations.” Vox September 2, 2016. http://www.vox.com/2016/9/2/12773110/georgetown-slavery admissionreparations. Last visited September 12, 2016
Ebron, Paulla A. “Which Memory?” Transatlantic Memories of Slavery: Reimagining the Past, Changing the
Future. Eds. Elisa Bordin and Anna Scacchi. Amherst: Cambria Press, 2015. 133-159.
Foner, Eric. Who Owns History?: Rethinking the Past in a Changing World. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003.
Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso, 1993.
Hamilton, Douglas. “Representing Slavery in the British Museums: The Challenges of 2007.” Imagining Transatlantic Slavery. Eds. Cora Kaplan and John Oldfield. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 127-144.
Hartman, Saidiya. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007.
Herzing, Rachel. “What Is the Prison Industrial Complex?” Defending Justice: An Activist Tool Kit. URL: http://www.publiceye.org/defendingjustice/overview/herzing_pic.html. Last visited August 11, 2016.
Hirsch, Marianne. “The Generation of Postmemory.” Poetics Today 29.1 (Spring 2008): 103-128.
Horton, James Oliver and Lois E. Horton, eds. Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory. New York: The New Press, 2006.
Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
Martin, Reginald. “A Conversation with Ishmael Reed.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 4.2 (Summer 1984): 176-187.
Mbembe, Achille. “Necropolitics.” Public Culture 15.1 (Winter 2003): 11-40.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1987.
Osel, Joseph. “Black Out: Michelle Alexander’s Operational Whitewash.” International Journal of Radical Critique 1.1 (2012). http://philpapers.org/archive/OSEBOM. Last visited June 26, 2016.
Otele, Olivette. “Re-branding the Trauma of Slavery, or How to Pacify the Masses with Sites of Memory.” June 3, 2015. http://discoversociety.org/2015/06/03/re-branding-the-trauma-of-slavery-or-how-to-pacifythe-masses-with-sites-of-memory/. Last visited July 10, 2016.
Palmié, Stephan. “Slavery, Historicism, and the Poverty of Memorialization.” Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates. Eds. Susannah Radstone and Bill Schwarz. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010. 363-375.
“Protection of Human Rights.” Yearbook of the United Nations 2006 60. United Nations Publications, 2009.
Samuels, Allison. “How 2013 Became the Year of the Slavery Film.” The Daily Beast, March 15th, 2013. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/15/how-2013-became-the-year-of-the-slaveryfilm.html. Last visited June 4, 2016.
Sexton, Jared. “Afro-Pessimism: The Unclear Word.” Rhyzomes 29 (2016). http://www.rhizomes.net/issue29/sexton.html. Last visited May 3, 2016.
---. “The Social Life of Social Death: On Afro-Pessimism and Black Optimism.” InTensions 5 (2011): 1-37.
Taylor-Guthrie, Danille, ed. Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994.
Thomas, Greg. “Why Some Like the New Jim Crow So Much.” IMWIL! Emancipatory Journalism & the Media, April 26th, 2012. https://imixwhatilike.org/2012/04/26/whysomelikethenewjimcrowsomuch/. Last visited May 13, 2016.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
Vivian, Bradford. “The Paradox of Regret: Remembering and Forgetting the History of Slavery in George W. Bush’s Gorée Island Address.” History and Memory 24.1 (2012): 5-38.
Wilder, Craig Steven. Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013.
Wagner, Bryan. Disturbing the Peace: Black Culture and the Police Power after Slavery. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.
Wallace, Elizabeth Kowaleski. The British Slave Trade and Public Memory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
Warren, Kenneth, What Was African American Literature? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
Wilderson, Frank B., III. Red, White, and Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
Williams, Eric, Capitalism and Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944.
Williams, Sherley Ann, Dessa Rose. New York: Harper Collins, 1986.
Wood, Marcus. “Significant Silence: Where Was Slave Agency in the Popular Imagery of 2007?” Imagining Transatlantic Slavery. Eds. Cora Kaplan and John Oldfield. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 162-190.
Wood, Marcus. “Refurbishment, Responsibility, and Historical Memory in Monticello’s Slave ‘Dependencies’.”
Bonded Labor in the Cultural Contact Zone: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Slavery and Its Discourses. Eds. Raphael Hormann and Gesa Mackenthun. New York: Waxman, 2010. 187-207.
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