Re-imagining the History of British Abolition: The New Historical Consciousness in Winsome Pinnock’s Rockets and Blue Lights

A post by Xiting Qiao

Introduction

Abolitionism, the movement that aimed to end the Atlantic slave trade and to free the enslaved people, was important in the historical development of countries in Western Europe and the Americas. Although the movement began earlier in France and Britain, the United States is written in the history of abolition to have played a more important role. From a historiographical perspective, the movement in the United States was more intense, as a backdrop to the American Civil War. Moreover, it operated in tandem with other social reforms, such as the Prohibition and women’s suffrage movements, thus adding the complexity. On a literary level, slave narratives, abolitionist fiction, and neo-slave narratives also constitute important genres in the African American literary canon, playing an ongoing role in opposing slavery, preserving historical memory, and documenting the progress of civil rights. In the 21st century, the neo-slave narratives produced by cultural industries (musicals, films, documentaries, etc.) have also occupied a central place in the representation of abolitionist history.

Mati Diop’s Atlantics: Towards a Border Hauntology?

A post by Nabil Ferdaoussi

Border studies have become an ever-expanding field of inquiry, integrating conceptual and theoretical frameworks from the humanities, social sciences and further afield. To pin down what Border Studies is, or gauge its epistemological scope, is thus no easy feat. In fact, a coterie of border scholars is apprehensive about the hyper-interdisciplinarity of the field—irrespective of the gains it has reaped, probing the added-value, relevance and methodological rigor of these disciplinary overlaps. Whilst a series of epistemological ‘turns’ have punctuated the field, the so-called ‘processual turn’ has been trumpeted as a tour de force, redirecting our focus from the border as an ontological object to bordering as a process of reproducing, rationalizing and sustaining exclusionary practices.

"Minny don’t burn chicken": humour, hauntology, and fried chicken stereotype

A jubilant International Women's Day post by Sheng-Hsiang Lance Peng

In the 2011 period drama film, The Help, there is a memorable scene where Celia and Minny share a meal at the same table. This scene marks the beginning of their budding friendship, as Minny teaches Celia how to cook. However, there is a humorous twist when Celia, who hired Minny as help without her husband’s knowledge (though he was actually aware), jokingly suggests that she might overcook the chicken. Minny, in a somber manner, responds with, "Minny don’t burn chicken". This engaging and witty exchange serves as a captivating starting point to explore the historical significance of fried chicken through the lens of hauntology (Derrida, 1994), looking into the persistence of past cultural phenomena in the present and uncovering hidden layers of meaning within its history.