Representations of Slavery

Since the mid-1990s, issues of slave trades, slavery, and abolitions have been represented in museums and monuments and on film, television, radio, and countless websites. They have become central to developments in education curricula and pedagogical resources. This “breaking the silence” on slavery has been a remarkable global phenomenon: displays and memorials in Europe and North America have been matched by contemporaneous equivalents in Brazil and western and southern Africa. In part, this efflorescence has been inspired by developments since the 1990s in relation to restorative justice, reparations debates, and ideas of truth and reconciliation. This surge has been highly politicized, therefore, and many public representations of slavery remain in a national register and speak to local concerns. Scholarly studies often follow suit. In this national mode, representations remain highly controversial. In individual states, particularly in Europe, a series of important anniversaries prompted widespread commemorations, notably in France (1998) and Britain (2007). Yet, it is important to recognize that the representation of slavery has not just been about commemorating abolitions, such as the 2007 bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade, but also about the importance of slavery in societies generally. In this context, monuments and memorials, such as Le Morne in Mauritius or the installation at Anse Cafard in Martinique, speak as loudly and movingly to the place of slavery in society as any major exhibition in Europe or North America. The scholarship outlined below has been inspired by the multifarious forms of representation and it attempts to explore and explain their many meanings. Across the world, representations of slavery have been motivated and appropriated by different groups intent on highlighting either brutal maltreatment and continuing injustice or timely attempts to eradicate it. Some seek to emphasize the relatively “benign” nature of their own brands of enslavement. Increasingly, however, scholars are trying to develop explanations for the global nature of this phenomenon; a number of volumes now seek to compare the experiences of different nations and continents.