Abstract
The term Afrophobia that refers to a series of negative behaviours, is the starting point to investigate how these attitudes influence the way knowledge and memory are produced and consumed at twenty-first-century sites of memory in Britain. These attitudes go from unease in the presence of people racialised as black to overt and covert acts of discrimination against these populations
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Afrophobia is defined as negative attitudes towards people of African descent racialised as black.
- 2.
For the purpose of this article, we will be looking at the experiences of Afro-Europeans in Britain but Afrophobia is present in other places.
- 3.
My work on memory led me to reassess Pierre Nora’s term and to attempt to apply it in various settings relating to the history of the slave trade and slavery. Out of that assessment was born a 19-month AHRC funded project entitled, People of African Descent in the 21st Century: Knowledge and Cultural Production in Reluctant Sites of Memory.
- 4.
They focus instead on the Civil Rights movements in the 1960s in the United States.
- 5.
In 2020, following the killing of African American George Floyd in the United States and demonstrations organised by the Black Lives Matter movement across Britain, local groups sent letters of complaints to the Welsh Government about the lack of inclusion of Black history into the Welsh school curriculum. First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford, responded by setting up a Task and Finish Group whose aim was to undertake an audit about Welsh memorials related to slavery. A report was published in November 2020 the-slave-trade-and-the-british-empire-an-audit-of-commemoration-in-wales.pdf (http://www.gov.wales). Another group was set up to work on ways to integrate Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic histories into the curriculum.
- 6.
While this volume is going through its final phase of editing, a debate about the National Trust’s decision to examine the links between its properties and colonial history has provoked outrage in various quarters. Colonialism and historic slavery report | National Trust and Minister summons heritage charities to meeting over empire row (http://www.civilsociety.co.uk).
- 7.
Many Welsh people see the region as first and foremost white and working class Otele (2008).
References
Adamson, L. D. (1991). Class, Ideology and the Nation: A Theory of Welsh Nationalism. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Agulhon, M., Chaunu, P., Duby, G., Girardet, R., Le Goff, J., Perrot, M., Rémond, R., & compiled by Nora, P. (1987). Essais d’Ego-histoire. Paris: Gallimard.
Assmann, J. (2011). Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bal, M., Crewe, J., & Spitzer, L. (Eds.). (1999). Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present. Hanover: University Press of New England.
BBC News. (2007, March 25). Welsh Links to Slavery Abolition. Accessed Oct 2017. Via: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_east/6491737.stm.
Behenke, A. E. (2012). Enduring: A Phenomenological Investigation. In S. C. Koch, T. Fuchs, M. Summa, & C. Müller (Eds.), Body Memory, Metaphor and Movement (pp. 83–104). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Bressey, C. (2009). Cultural Archaeology and Historical Geographies of the Black Presence in Rural England. Journal of Rural Studies, 25(4), 386–395.
Colonial Countryside: Youth-Led History. (2017). Accessed Jan 2019, https://colonialcountryside.wordpress.com/.
Cubitt, G. (2007). History and Memory. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Dann, G. M. S., & Seaton, A. V. (2002). Slavery, Contested Heritage and Thanatourism. London: Routledge.
De Certeau, M. (1975). L’Ecriture de l’Histoire. Paris: Gallimard.
Dresser, M., & Hann, A. (Eds.). (2013). Slavery and the British Country House. Swindon: English Heritage.
Evans, C. (2007). BBC, Wales and Slavery: The Untold Story. Last accessed Oct 2020. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007hzkt/wales-and-slavery-the-untold-story.
Evans, C. (2010). Slave Wales: The Welsh and Atlantic Slavery, 1660–1850. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Evans, J. (2002). Nathaniel Wells of Monmouthshire and St. Kitts: From Slave to Sheriff. Black and Asian Studies Association Newsletter 33.
Evans, R. P. (2003). A GCSE History for WJEC Specification: In-Depth and Outline Studies of Aspects of Welsh/English and World History (WJEC GCSE History COMET). New Hampshire, NH: Heinemann.
Gur-Ze’ev, I. (2003). Destroying the Other’s Collective Memory. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Hirsch, M. (1996). Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile. Poetics Today, 17(4), 659–686.
Hirsch, M., & Miller, K. N. (2011). Rites of Returns. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
History Specimen Assessment Material. (2013). Accessed Sept 2017. Via: http://www.wjec.co.uk/uploads/publications/15788.pdf.
Johnes, M. (2015). History and the Making and Remaking of Wales. Journal of Historical Association, 100(343), 667–684.
Kamma, S. (2009). A Mobile Technology Framework for the Dissemination of Cultural Memory. Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology (TOJET), 8(3), 6–13.
Konopatsch, I., & Payne, H. (2012). The Emergence of Body Memory in Authentic Movement. In C. Koch, T. Fuchs, M. Summa, & S. C. Müller (Eds.), Body Memory, Metaphor and Movement (pp. 341–352). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Lavabre, M.-C. (2007). ‘Paradigmes de la Mémoire’. Transcontinentales: Société Idéologie, Système Mondial, 9, 139–147.
Lavabre, M.-C. (2012). Circulation, Internationalization, Globalization of the Question of Memory. Journal of Historical Sociology, 25(2), 261–274.
Llwyd, A., & Jordan, G. (2005). Cymru Ddu / Black Wales: A History: A History of Black Welsh People. Wrexham: Hughes and Son.
Morgan, O. K. (1981). Rebirth of a Nation: Wales 1880–1980. Clarendon and Cardiff: Oxford and University of Wales Press.
Nora, P. (1997). Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past (Vol. 1, 2, 3). New York, NY: Colombia University Press.
Otele, O. (2008). Multiculturalisme et Régionalisme: Les Apories d’une Identité Britannique au Pays de Galles. In T. Whitton (Ed.), Le New Labour et l’Identité Britannique. Clermont-Ferrand: Observatoire De La Société Britannique.
Otele, O. (2016, November 2016). Black History: Challenges and Opportunities. Royal Historical Society Newsletter. Accessed Nov 2016. Via: http://royalhistsoc.org/publications/newsletter/.
Pollock, D. (2006). Marking New Directions in Performance Ethnography. Text and Performance Quarterly, 26(4), 325–329.
The National Trust. (n.d.) Accessed Oct 2017. Via: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/about-the-national-trust.
The National Trust. (2009). Penrhyn Castle. Bangor, UK: The National Trust.
Turner, S. (2011). Home-grown Slaves: Women, Reproduction, and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, Jamaica 1788–1807. Journal of Women’s History, 23(3), 39–62.
Todorov, Tzvetan. (1998). Les abus de la mémoire. Paris: Arléa.
Violi, P. (2012). Trauma Site Museums and Politics of Memory: Tuol Sleng, Villa Grimaldi and the Bologna Ustica Museum. Theory, Culture and Society, 29(1), 36–75.
YouGov. (2016). What Makes a Person Welsh Survey. Accessed Jan 2017. Via: https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ovugfu4tor/What%20makes%20a%20person%20Welsh_W.pdf.
Williams, C. (2002). Sugar and Slate. Aberystwyth: Planet.
Williams, C., Evans, N., & O’Leary, P. (2015). A Tolerant Nation? Revisiting Ethnic Diversity in a Devolved Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Williams, D. (2012). Black Skin, Blue Book: African Americans and Wales, 1845–1945. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Wong, J. L. (1999). Multi-Cultural Interpretation and Access to Heritage. Paper produced for Whose Heritage Conference, Manchester. Ethnic Environmental Participation (Vol. 3, pp. 1–9).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Otele, O. (2021). Mourning in Reluctant Sites of Memory: From Afrophobia to Cultural Productivity. In: Otele, O., Gandolfo, L., Galai, Y. (eds) Post-Conflict Memorialization. Memory Politics and Transitional Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54887-2_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54887-2_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-54886-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-54887-2
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)