Items related to Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in...
Synopsis
A study of Atlantic slavery generated by the visual arts. It considers in detail four "sites" which have generated particularly influential imagery: the middle passage; flight/escape; slave torture/punishment; and the popular imagery which evolved around Stowe's classic abolition text, "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Abolition exploded in the 1780s as an international propaganda movement. From then on until the end of the Civil War the slavery debate generated a deluge of materials. Every conceivable visual resource was drawn upon, including paintings, sculptures, prints, textiles, maps, ceramics, jewellery, needlework, "tableaux vivantes", and theatrical performance. Different forms require different ways of reading and this text is, of necessity, theoretically experimental and essentially interdisciplinary. Developments in trauma theory, Holocaust studies, Diaspora studies, even cartography, are drawn upon. The book thinks about how the West has remembered slavery through its visual art, but beyond this it demands that we reconsider how slavery is culturally constructed in the West now. The study consequently ends by asking what institutions, rituals, narratives and images we have decided are the "right" way of remembering slavery.
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Review
Wood has produced a text grounded in impressive research and driven forward by provocative and convincing theoretical interpretations. . Wood's argument is developed with an unwavering sense of purpose. Not only does he yield an exciting and readable text, but his success indicates how any number of different studies might contribute to the understanding of slavery and its representation in equally rich and distinct ways.
About the Author
Marcus Wood is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Sussex. His previous works include Radical Satire and Print Culture 1790-1820.
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