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African Slaveries: Silent or silenced Memories?

Info about event

Time

Friday 22 June 2018,  at 14:00 - 15:45

Location

Dokk1, Aarhus

Organizer

LiteratureXchange

OVER the past ten years there has been much attention for (commemorating) the transatlantic slave trade, especially in the Western world. What has not been remembered as well – some would say forgotten – is internal African slavery. Why is this the case? Have the memories of internal African slaveries been silent or silenced?

Dr. L. Pelckmans from Copenhagen/Aarhus University will present a contrasting overview of the lacking attention of these specific slaveries in feature films (e.g. '12 years a slave', 'Django', 'Lincoln', etc), museum exhibits as well as successful novels and digitised databases, such as http://www.slavenarratives.org.

After this contrasting overview, a 30 minutes documentary movie entitled ‘Yesterday’s slaves: democracy and citizenship in Benin’ by Camilla Strandbjerg and Eric Hahonou will give insight in contemporary legacies of internal African slave trade in today's Benin (West-Africa).

The talk and movie is a collaboration with the research project 'Reading Slavery' at Aarhus University. The talk will be followed up by Q&A in an open discussion.

The talk and movie are in English. Questions can be asked in Danish.