Abstract

Imagery produced to support the abolition of the slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries accorded with a European tradition of Romanticism which both achored race in the spaces of the natural environment and materialised it in the human body. Race as an embodied phenomenon can be re-created and made contestable. This paper will consider histories of the slave trade mediated through film, television and the heritage industry during the bi-centenary of its abolition in Britain. Examples include the film, ‘Amazing Grace’, the TV series and book, ‘Rough Crossings’, the Equiano exhibition and the international Slavery Museum in Liverpool. Drawing on the theme of landscape, it will consider, following on from Bhabba, whether motifs of the past create a visual language in the present or whether they rescript social memory to fit existing narratives.