MEMORIES OF THE SLAVE TRADE - 1000 Words

MEMORIES OF THE SLAVE TRADE (Rosalind Shaw) â€Å"Memories of Slave Trade† challenges recurring claims that Africans felt and still feel no sense of moral obligation concerning the sale of slaves, Shaw traces memories of the slave trade in Temne-speaking communities in Sierra Leone. While the slave-trading past is infrequently recollected in explicit verbal accounts, it is frequently made vividly present in such structures as rogue spirits, ritual specialists visions, and the symbolism of divination procedures. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and archival exploration the author further contends that memories of the slave trade have molded experiences of colonialism and postcolonialism, and additionally the countrys ten-year rebel war.†¦show more content†¦Diverse historical encounters are subsequently sedimented in what she calls â€Å"palimpsest memories†. Since what happened later is inevitably molded by what happened before and understandings of what happened earlier in history are shaped by what happened thereafter, Shaw contends that memory pushes both advance and counter directionally in time (ibid.: 15). Shaw makes the point that social and cultural practices that show up as â€Å"indigenous† and â€Å"bonafide† were actually forged in the long experience with Europe. Taking her prompt from prior deal with witchcraft (Geschiere 1997), she contends that from the earliest starting point capitalist modernity took plural forms in distinctive parts of the Atla ntic world. In this entrepreneur framework depicted by the trade of human life for wealth and power divination is a manifestation of practical memory that reviews these exchanges. To illustrate this point, regular vignette is put forth: As a white British woman in a former British colony, she anticipated that will be connected with colonialism. At the point when speaking with a diviner who was to reveal to her cowrie shell divination, the seer let her know that she had an association with these articles and their forces: You individuals are the managers of cowries, she said. There is no compelling reason to show you (ibid.: 43).Of