Memories of the slave trade : ritual and the historical imagination in Sierra Leone / Rosalind Shaw.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shaw, Rosalind, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Witchcraft--Sierra Leone.

Witchcraft.

Slave trade--Sierra Leone.

Slave trade.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (346 pages)

Place of Publication:

University of Chicago Press 2002

Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Summary:

How is the slave trade remembered in West Africa? In a work that challenges recurring claims that Africans felt (and still feel) no sense of moral responsibility concerning the sale of slaves, Rosalind Shaw traces memories of the slave trade in Temne-speaking communities in Sierra Leone. While the slave-trading past is rarely remembered in explicit verbal accounts, it is often made vividly present in such forms as rogue spirits, ritual specialists' visions, and the imagery of divination techniques. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and archival research, Shaw argues that memories of the slave trade have shaped (and been reshaped by) experiences of colonialism, postcolonialism, and the country's ten-year rebel war. Thus money and commodities, for instance, are often linked to an invisible city of witches whose affluence was built on the theft of human lives. These ritual and visionary memories make hitherto invisible realities manifest, forming a prism through which past and present mutually configure each other.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Note on Temne Orthography

Introduction

1. The Atlanticizing of Sierra Leone

2. Spirit Memoryscape

3. Roads to Life, Roads to Death

4. Diviners’ Knowledge, Diviners’ Lives

5. A Thing under the Water

6. The Hidden Ritual Process

7. The Production of Witchcraft/Witchcraft as Production

8. Cannibal Transformations

9. The Politician and the Diviner

Conclusion. Remembering Modernity

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780226764467

022676446X

OCLC:

1180215571