Museums developed and funded by European colonization often grapple with the morally blurry lines between public education and neocolonial exploitation. Elephant tusk — otherwise known as ivory — is embedded in these politics of historical display.
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Tag: memory
Waste, Material Memory, and Diasporic Possibility in the Slave Fort
When Saidiya Hartman visits the slave fort for the first time, she confronts the sight and smell of waste and dirt in the dungeon cells. She travels to Ghana to experience a diasporic connection with her ancestors, but there is no sign of the enslaved within the grimy walls of the fort. Considering the emptiness of this archive, the slave fort is a site of heritage tourism that fails in its purpose of commemorating the dead.
![‘Boeri Lake’ [Acrylic on Canvas] painting by Rose Wark](https://i0.wp.com/envhistnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/image_2021-03-12_180427.png?fit=551%2C459&ssl=1)
Naming ‘Paradise’: The Adamic Imagination, Colonial Toponyms, and Remembering the Indigenous Caribbean
My name, Renée, means ‘re-born’. It bears a distinct irony considering the power of naming, re-naming, un-naming, and misnaming which are all constituted in a process of birthing or rebirthing.