Staging Slavery, Re-Centering, and Re-Spotlighting Blackened People 1

Using Black feminist thought as a pillar, this chapter attempts to distill the contributions in this volume. This process occurs using an unrefined comb but one that is able to present lenses which not only address the staging of slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but also attempt to position the understanding of them within a contemporary context. Pointing to popular culture and films like 12 Years a Slave in the United States and Les Intouchables/The Intouchables in France, it illustrates how the remnants and legacies of staging slavery in Europe and the United States still are present in societal representations of racialized people. The chapter ends, in essence, where it began, drawing on intellectual descendants of Audre Lorde like Saidiya V. Hartman to propose other ways of seeing Blackness and “blackened” people without centering whiteness alone.