ABSTRACT
The discovery of the remains of the São José, a Portuguese slave ship that sank at Clifton beach, Cape Town, with 212 slaves on board in 1794 made headlines in 2015. As a part of the ongoing excavation, Jaco Boshoff—one of its principal archaeological investigators—is of the opinion that there is a possibility of a mass grave of the drowned slaves at the beach. What would that mean for the memory of slavery in the city that has a relationship of denial with its historic past? What if, in other words, the dead come to demand justice in a space occupied by privileged whites sunbathing and relaxing on the beach? As a part of the ECHOES project (European Colonial Heritage Modalities in Entangled Cities) and inspired by Avery Gordon’s work on hauntings (1997) together with her more recent writings in which she draws a parallel between racial slavery and modern capitalism in the United States, this chapter contributes to the space of ‘Key Interventions’ by presenting Container, an immersive multimedia installation, which comments on historical slavery by linking it to modern-day servitude.
