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Part of
A Comparative Literary History of Modern Slavery: The Atlantic world and beyond
Edited by Karen-Margrethe Simonsen, Madeleine Dobie and Mads Anders Baggesgaard
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXVII] 2025
► pp. 254–269

Chapter 14
Carrying memory and making meaning

Black identity and the slave past

African American oral testimonies can profitably be considered as texts which complement information drawn from archival materials. This chapter discusses orally transmitted memories of enslavement, and how slave descendants make meaning of inherited tales of the slave experience. It is also argued that recently emerging popular interest in genetics and ideas of bio-histories challenge historians of Atlantic slavery in new ways, as everyday folk explore ideas ofblood instead of culture. This raises critical debates regarding the morality of bio-social assertions of ‘truth.’ At the same time, the possibility of the body as mnemonic device is addressed, as African descendants read their bodies as embodiments of historical processes that recall diverse geographies.
Keywords: slavery, African-Americans, memory, history, genetics, landscape, identity, diaspora, material determinism, mnemonic record
Article outline
  • Orality in conversation with the archives
  • The sailor, the mad woman, and the imagined diaspora
  • The sailor
  • The mad woman
  • The imagined diaspora
  • Written sources and oral histories
  • The body as material evidence
    • As mnemonic object
  • As archetype: The case of the “Mandingo”
  • The genetic record: History and memory meet material determinism
  • Conclusion
  • Author queries
  • Notes
  • References
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