Book contents
- Decolonizing Heritage
- The International African Library
- Decolonizing Heritage
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- Introduction
- 1 History and Testimony at the House of Slaves
- 2 The Door of Return
- 3 Shining Lights and Their Shadows
- 4 Prayer of Emergency
- 5 Recycling Recognition
- 6 Ruins of Utopia
- 7 The Museum of Black Civilizations
- Coda
- Bibliography
- Index
- The International African Library
1 - History and Testimony at the House of Slaves
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2022
- Decolonizing Heritage
- The International African Library
- Decolonizing Heritage
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- Introduction
- 1 History and Testimony at the House of Slaves
- 2 The Door of Return
- 3 Shining Lights and Their Shadows
- 4 Prayer of Emergency
- 5 Recycling Recognition
- 6 Ruins of Utopia
- 7 The Museum of Black Civilizations
- Coda
- Bibliography
- Index
- The International African Library
Summary
The House of Slaves at Gorée Island was listed as a World Heritage site in 1978, one year before Auschwitz concentration camp. This chapter examines the process of heritagization of the House of Slaves as one of the African sites for the commemoration of the slave trade. Adopting Michael Rothberg’s perspective on multidirectional memory, it demonstrates how the project of the House of Slaves was indebted to the recognition of the Holocaust as a global trauma: the commemoration of the slave trade is in several ways entangled with the commemoration of the Holocaust. But from Senegal’s independence onwards, the House of Slaves was also inflected by a vision of Negritude. The first curator of the House of Slaves, Joseph Ndiaye, gave it a global significance through his performances as ‘witness’ to the slave trade. By giving testimony, Joseph Ndiaye claimed an epistemic space for the articulation of Blackness. He simultaneously introduced the figure of the witness to the genre of the memorial museum and reclaimed the African legacy of orality against the Occidental epistemology of history. As embodiment of a legacy of the project for human rights, Joseph Ndiaye also claimed this museum as an African project of emancipation.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Decolonizing HeritageTime to Repair in Senegal, pp. 39 - 72Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022