ABSTRACT
The author quotes Barnor Hesse in full because his intervention speaks to the legacy of British cities like Lancaster and the possibilities of overcoming the straitjacket imposed by amnesia and indifference. He uses the memorial and other project activities as 'residual multicultural disruptions' in the city to help undermine what to might, following Paul Gilroy's adaption of Patrick Wright's phrase, call 'the morbidity of heritage'. In Lancaster, the community group the Slave Trade Arts Memorial Project (STAMP) established in September 2002 were instrumental in raising the issue of Lancaster's slaving past and the city's lack of acknowledgement of it. Sue Ashworth underlines the importance of the memorial doing different memory work that foregrounds the emotions as well as the intellect. The contemplative aspect of the sculpture, however, is at the service of serious political goals as Dalton-Johnson has a strong message for contemporary race relations from his engagement with this tortured history.
