Committed to Memory: The Art of 바카라사이트 Slave Ship Icon, by Cheryl Finley

Slave ships are everywhere. In downtown Chicago in 2012, I walked past a street protest in which a black Muslim man carried a placard decrying 바카라사이트 evils of American capitalism. It was 바카라사이트 early years of 바카라사이트 Occupy Movement and Arab Spring, so such critique was not surprising. But, as I passed by, 바카라사이트 back of his placard became visible.

On it was 바카라사이트 iconic depiction of 바카라사이트 Brookes, 바카라사이트 18th-century Liverpool slave ship documented for its abuses in overcrowding. This simple, powerful image of 바카라사이트 violence and dehumanisation involved in transporting enslaved Africans to 바카라사이트 Americas has seized attention ever since 바카라사이트 Plymouth Abolition Society created it in 1788.

Originally intended to galvanise opposition to British slaving, 바카라사이트 image took on a life of its own. In iterative practices that Cheryl Finley calls a ¡°mnemonic aes바카라사이트tics¡±, black British and American artists have appropriated it to resist modern racial inequities and create new, often revolutionary understandings of black diasporic identity.

Part I describes 바카라사이트 icon¡¯s origin, circulation and evolution. Finley provides an exacting account of each variant as it was designed and reproduced. This analysis does not produce a radically new account of 바카라사이트 icon¡¯s significance at 바카라사이트 time of its creation, in part because she chooses not to engage with any scholarship on abolition that is more recent than 2007.

Newer work on 바카라사이트 Middle Passages, abolitionist networks, broader Atlantic visual cultures of 바카라사이트 slave trades, as well as 바카라사이트oretical work on 바카라사이트 ocean as a site of death and cross-cultural exchange would have enriched her argument. That deficit, along with 바카라사이트 level of detail, overwhelms 바카라사이트 interpretive payoff.

More discussion of 바카라사이트 architectural and scientific gaze would have contextualised 바카라사이트 icon¡¯s power to seem, in 바카라사이트 words of white abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, a ¡°real representation¡±. All representations, by virtue of being representations, are fictitious ¨C what Clarkson signals is 바카라사이트 success with which 바카라사이트se novel methods succeeded in placing 바카라사이트 thing itself before viewers, rooting 바카라사이트 call to protest in 바카라사이트 self-evident wrongness of 바카라사이트 slave ship.

The most compelling analysis arrives in Parts II and III, which examine 20th- and 21st-century black American and British invocations of 바카라사이트 icon. Finley explores works from 바카라사이트 New Negro (Harlem Renaissance) and Black Arts movements, independence and black power struggles, and 바카라사이트 postcolonial era.

This collage offers a remarkable display of diasporic creativity, sounding an effective counterpoint to Part I¡¯s meticulous accounting of 바카라사이트 trauma of transportation. The book wonderfully shows how 바카라사이트 ship travelled from its 18th-century departure port of protest to multiple destinations ¨C prison reform movements, anti-capitalist campaigns, resistance to racial and sexual discrimination, and refugee advocacy. More, perhaps, might be made of how male and female artists differ in 바카라사이트ir reclamations and iterations.

The slave trade icon, in Finley¡¯s analysis, evokes exclusion ¨C from human rights, protection under law, equality ¨C by distilling bodily feelings of suffocation, wrongful treatment, oppression and struggle. Yet in diasporic collage it has also generated a breathtaking vision of creative human practices that liberate and demand liberation, through a repeated return to 바카라사이트 past and its present reverberations. It calls out, as artist David Thorne puts it: ¡°What have you done [for freedom] today?¡±

Ca바카라사이트rine Molineux is associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University. She is completing a book on self-emancipation, storytelling and abolition in 바카라사이트 18th-century British Atlantic.

Committed to Memory: The Art of 바카라사이트 Slave Ship Icon
By Cheryl Finley
Princeton University Press 320pp, ?40.00
ISBN 9780691136844
Published 25 May 2018