Introduction

This book examines the resurgence of the memory of slavery in the public space of various former slave societies in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The idea of public memory developed in the book is closely associated with Maurice Halbwachs's notion of collective memory, a mode of memory carried out by social groups and societies within specific social frameworks. ¹ Collective memory becomes public when it is transformed into a political instrument to build, assert, and reinforce identities of these groups. In other words, collective memory is not related to individual recollection of personal experiences and events but is about the way the past of a group is lived again in the present—the way a group associates its common remembrances with historical events or with a set of historical events. Although collective memory is characterized by continuity, it is not homogenous but conflictual, rather resembling a mosaic composed of various zones corresponding to the ways the past is remembered by individuals and groups. However, in societies marked by traumatic events like the Atlantic slave trade and in which transmission of past experiences was interrupted, collective memory gives way to historical memory that to some extent can be “crystallized” in more permanent forms, including museums, monuments, and memorials, in processes that have been defined as memorialization and heritagization. This mode of memory is no longer characterized by a continuous flow or transmission of experiences but instead is the common way societies or groups in a specific society recover, re-create, and represent their past to themselves and to others in the public sphere, regardless of whether the individuals involved in memorialization and heritagization actually lived or participated in the events they collectively remember. Engaged in recovering their common past, individuals and groups rebuild and reinforce their identities by asserting what distinguishes them from others in the same society or by stating what makes their society different from other societies.