The UnMuseum Curatorium Reflection: Water No Get Enemy
Written by Stuart Taylor and edited by Japheth Monzon.
Introduction
In thinking about what to write and how to begin the writing of this second reflective essay for the UnMuseum Curatorium project, I have been challenged to reflect deeply on the purpose of the project, the context of the project and my contribution to the articulation, development and framing of the UnMuseum as an original, radical act of decolonial resistance and Black creative self-efficacy. A process of envisioning, inventing, and defining a forward path into a Black-positive, Afrofuturist tomorrow. Of course, the realities of today for Black individuals and communities globally, whether in continental Africa, or in the global African diaspora are indelibly shaped by the historical impact(s) of the European Colonial and Imperial project that began in the 15th century. That project and its contemporary manifestations, continue to have profound and too frequently shockingly inhumane, cruel, and fatal resonance in all our lives in the present.
Image of Sturt Taylor facilitating the ‘Telling Stories’ Panel Discussion at the Coach House, St Pauls.
All this is true and yet, and yet there is a counter-narrative. There is a narrative of resistance, of resilience, of fugitivity of bold and creative, emancipatory and liberatory imagining and praxis. A culture of self-efficacy, of sovereignty, of reassembling and recovering of historical cultural practices, epistemologies and cosmologies that predate the catastrophic phenomenon of the European colonial project. It is with this counter-narrative that I align myself as an artist, scholar-activist, and writer. It is with this counter-narrative, that I make my humble contribution to the ongoing weaving of a different form of world-making. A form of world-making that is oriented towards recovering a sense of inclusive representation of what it is to be human. A humanity not distorted by the White supremacist mythologising of human or racialised White-European exceptionalism. A world-making that situates humanity within a deeper and wider web of life, that includes the seen and unseeable dimensions of the ancestral world and of the spirits of place. A world that has about it a reverence for life in all its expressions, human and other-than-human. A world that is poetic, in turns incapable of being expressed or represented in rational or logical forms. It is from this position of reverence, resistance, openness and wonder that I share with you some further reflections on the four UnMuseum Public Roundtable events that took place in the autumn of 2022, hosted by Black South West Network at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre and at The Coach House, in St Pauls Bristol.
These UnMuseum public events offered an opportunity for the diverse communities of Bristol and beyond to engage directly with a group of academics, activists, artists, researchers, and writers – all variously associated with the Black South West Network. All involved with the conception, development and envisioning of just what an UnMuseum might constitute. The series of roundtable events, as public dialogues were not focused on the concrete aspects of the materiality of the UnMuseum itself as a physical space as such.
Rather, they were offered as framing spaces within which, some of the concerns, issues, opportunities, and possibilities of such a material and virtual space might make it possible to actually engage with in accessible, creative, critical, generative, inclusive, restorative, and revolutionary ways. Revolutionary in that intentionally, the very conception of the UnMuseum, has been to imagine a space, an experience and a process that does not mimic or recreate the received notions of what a museum sets out to achieve from within a European frame of reference.
We here are well aware of the dark shadow of colonial conquest and extractive cultures that informs the European model of the museum as a repository of ‘dead’ artefacts from ‘exotic’ or ‘primitive’ cultures. Cultures that supposedly, have offered little contribution, or enrichment to global human civilization. Our vision then, is one of a holding space that subverts or inverts this White supremacist position. Our vision is one of a space that celebrates, champions, and praises the material and intangible cultural expressions of African heritage communities historically, in the present and imagines a future that is Afri-centric in its expression and substance. A diverse and celebratory cultural expression of the deep humanity and spiritual resonance of African culture(s) globally and their significant contribution to world culture and civilisation creatively, economically, environmentally, politically, scientifically, technologically, and socially.
The Four Public UnMuseum Roundtables
Roundtable 01: Screening of the Meaning of Zong (TMOZ) and Panel Discussion @ The Bristol Old Vic Theatre, King Street, Bristol (11/01/2022).
Discussants
Facilitated by Rob Mitchell – Co-Founder (Firstborn Creatives)
Desmond Brown – Founder (Growing Futures)
Miranda Grell – Barrister
Kunle Oluode – Director (Voice 4 Change)
Image of TMOZ Panel, left to right, Desmond Brown, Kunle Oluode, and Rob Mitchell.
Reckoning with History
The discussion begins with a profound request to:
“Think about the law as it is and the law as we want it to be…”
Certainly, we need to “keep pushing” to ensure that our laws are more respectful and representative of our lived experience. But, in thinking about the reality of the law, we are bound to encounter the origins of contemporary contractual law as we know it today. Contemporary contract law is based on 17th century shipping contracts, i.e., the transportation of enslaved Africans defined as ‘goods’ in transit, the property of others, a refusal to recognise these people as human beings in law. Perhaps, one way of pushing for law as we want it to be is to apply continuous pressure on British Universities, pressure to teach an honest, uncomfortable, yet necessary account of the history of law and business – a history that exposes the harsh and inhuman realities of the Atlantic Slave Trade and its contemporary repercussions.
But our collective knowledge of the actual truths of the Transatlantic Slave Trade remains shallow, focused on a specifically Anglo-American history. Kunle Oluode made further reference to the ratio of enslavement in Brazil being 3:1 in relation to North American, the Caribbean and England. Certainly, if we are to expand our knowledge:
“We need to analyse our history, understand what has happened and make choices about our shared futures.”
Desmond Brown astutely states that:
“White people and Black people will have to face the scars of the Slave Trade moving forward.”
Indeed, a barrier in the way of deeper understanding is a cognitive dissonance around colonialism and slavery for our young people. What is needed, what is necessary, as explicated by Miranda Grell, is a Truth and Reconciliation process on the role that the United Kingdom played in the Slave Trade. She contextualises this with reference to the post-World War II de-Nazification process that Germany undertook as a nation in the mid-20th century. She further references the Republic statuses of four Caribbean states: Barbados, Dominica, Guyana, and Trinidad – all former British colonies and members of the Commonwealth.
Film, Theatre, and Social Change
Rob Mitchell engages with the speakers by asking:
“What value does film or theatre serve in encouraging social change?”
In response, Kunle Oluode refers to the British Film Institute’s African Odysseys, by Tony Warner, as an example of such encouragement. Indeed, film is an accessible and popular vehicle for people to explore challenging, difficult, ordinarily inaccessible subject matters and themes:
“…Technology offers us new insights and openings in terms of how we can look at difficult material – a way to introduce more complex ideas…”
The Capitalist market-based system is brutal and brutalising, “owning our cultural heritage...” but, perhaps, “playing with [capitalist practices] in imaginative forms of new representations” could lead to liberatory outcomes.
As a board member of The Bernie Grant Arts Centre in Tottenham, London, Miranda Grell is intimately aware of world-changing “power of art to capture peoples’ imagination…” She makes reference to films such as Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Home (1996) is an example of early depictions of contemporary-era homelessness. To Grell, the arts are profoundly important in changing people’s minds and inspiring change. One of the values of our era is the extent of interconnection between countries – knowing about the urgent conversations and dialogues taking place in real time. An example of such would be Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados telling the United Nations Assembly at COP26, that the Caribbean cannot survive +1.5 °c climate rise.
International Activism
The conversation moves forward, with Kunle Oluode believing that there is a failure of campaigning groups and institutions to meaningfully engage working class people - “…you cannot create solidarity in the abstract…” In response, Rob Mitchell asks: “Do we, as the citizenry, have any power to influence these systems?” Certainly, a step that could be taken by the public is a conscious effort to decentre Europe as the pivotal hub, an internationalist approach, as coined by Miranda Grell, who states: “I am hopeful that this interconnectedness will lead to progress.” Even within the United Kingdom, the decentring of the United States as the only litmus in the issue of racial justice is a forward step, for the tragic phenomenon of murders of Black people at the hands of the Police can be traced back decades in Britain’s past. These systemic issues of institutionalised racism and continuing acts of violence against Black people in Britain are clear indicators of anti-Black and neo-colonial White supremacist cultures, evident even in the David Lammy review (2017), which Desmond Brown notes:
“…The official statistics representing Black men’s hugely disproportionate showing in the criminal justice system are horrendous. In 2022, it’s terrible. We need to keep campaigning and fighting…”
But actions can only go so far to remedy racial injustice, what should be aimed for are tangible outcomes.
Tangible Outcomes and the ‘Master Plan’
With the panel discussion coming to an end, the collective attendees erupt into enlivened discussions after an audience member posits the following:
“What is the master plan – how are we going to bring all this knowledge together?”
Fellow audience members chime in with their concerns that racialised British youths are being overly influenced by US narratives, with an insufficient awareness and engagement with the United Kingdom’s historical-political narratives. Therefore, how to re-centre our own African diasporic narratives?
In response to this thought-provoking question, Desmond Brown situates the school system as the safest public space. We need to lobby more assertively for re-evaluating how our children are treated and taught. Through the school system, we can recentre and localise/regionalise our knowledge, acting as a barrier to social media and US-centric media channels and narratives. But, at the same time, schools are spaces where injustice is normalised towards children, so how do we tackle with this issue before utilising the school system as a space for localised conversations? To Miranda Grell, the answer is straightforward: become activists, become school governors, get involved in the Academic Councils and the Pupil Referral Unit Trusts, run to become a local councillor. For when “it comes down to people power… if not us then who?”
Roundtable 02: Digitisation and Disruption @ The Coach House, St Paul’s, Bristol (02/11/2022)
Discussants:
Facilitated by Anasia Sen Gupta – Founder (Whose Knowledge), Activist, Author, and Poet
Mutanu Kyany’a – Outreach Manager (African Digital Heritage, Nairobi)
Drew Ellery – Collections Engagement Officer (The National Archives, Kew)
Kelly Foster – Founding Organiser (AfroCROWD UK)
Andrea Wallace PhD – Senior Lecturer in Law (University of Exeter)
Image of ‘Digitisation & Disruption’ panel, left to right, Andrea Wallace, Kelly Foster, Drew Ellery, Anasuya Sengupta, and, Angelique Retief. On the screen, Matuna Kyanya who joined virtually.
Power
Anasia Sen Gupta commences the conversation with a question: How does (or might) a grassroots peoples-led museum project manifest and how does a digital museum experience disrupt a physical museum? Answers to such questions naturally lead into dialogue surrounding national history, nationhood, and identity. It is possible for grassroots community organisations to engage with these processes of archival curation. Drew Ellery himself has worked with community groups in Manchester, exploring pride in being first generation migrant communities, preserving heritage and culture. Such groups positively benefit from the free and open access culture of larger state-funded archives / cultural institutions. You can access them on your own terms for resources and resourcing, taking what you need as you go along. But it is important to remain cognisant that marginalised communities have a different relationship to institutions than those who have historically enjoyed power and privilege. For example, it was acknowledged that barriers to access of archival or museum holdings is reduced in community-based collections. With this lack of access also comes less curatorial direction or mediated views of collected materials. Therefore, when thinking about how we can begin re-imagining and re-designing (or completely subvert) notions of ownership or copyright through digitisation, one must remember that power is an inevitable conversation.
Andrea Wallace astutely notes that digital and other forms of objects, images, artefacts, and reproductions have long been a revenue stream for cultural institutions. The ‘digital’ is an ever-present potential of knowledge and wealth creation/extraction – the digital holds power. For instance, the digital can create ‘hyper canonisation’, when curated collections of mass-produced images represents an amplification of a narrow representation of a much broader and more diverse society. But to combat these narrow representations, what is required? What steps? Does the journey towards epistemic justice, as Anasia Sen Gupta states, begin with:
“The acknowledgement of power being an element in the cultural dynamic”
of curatorial/archivist practices? The prospect of handing over all rights and permissions to dispossessed cultures and communities with limited licenses that specify how / when the digital imagery might be used by a given cultural institution could be considered a part of the movement toward epistemic justice. This practice of ‘withdrawal of access’ could very well increase the likelihood and scope of cultures that have regained possession to truly ‘own’ the narrative around their culture going forward.
Mutanu Kyanya provides a detailed account of how a shift in ownership could play out in the real world. Within Kenya, traditional museums were established by European colonisers who, in turn, determined the scope and perspective of exhibitions. Kenya’s European colonisers played a significant role in the destruction of significant amounts of documentation. Now, with newly independent, post-colonial governments enacting ‘Forgive & Forget’ policies, there comes a crucial question. With such scant documentation surrounding the European colonisation of Kenya, the younger generation wonder: how can they ‘forgive & forget’ something that they were neither present for nor hold knowledge about? In light of this, there arose a movement around remembering and documenting the colonial history of Kenya – a systemic reframing. New historians and groups are trying to recreate colonial narratives form scant physical records and oral histories. African Digital Heritage are developing a 3D simulation project of the British concentration camps from the colonial era. There is also a sense of time-urgency, a rush to document as many oral narratives as possible before the generation(s) that lived through colonialism pass away. This digitisation process enables Kenyans to have their voices heard in regard to their point of view on recent history and the colonial era of occupation. To decolonise the new museum, it must speak directly to the local population(s). Inviting and encouraging dialogue with local communities is very important.
Copyright Laws
The conversation moves towards a discussion surrounding fundamental assumptions of technology formats and legal frameworks such as copyright law. Indeed, can copyright and licensing be reimagined to sufficiently enable access as community resources? Firstly, it must be noted that copyright is based on individual ownership and enforcement and, therefore, a reconsideration of ownership as communal would create very interesting discussions. The power of access and exclusion is still a significant part of the emerging ideas of new, interesting licence forms, but these remain based on the traditional copyright system, a system that is inherently colonial. This leads to the second point, that “copyright is a colonial invention, spread by conquest and imperialism.” Colonial narratives may perceive disruption and intentional ill-discipline as taboo. Kelly Foster notes that ‘memory institutions’ such as academia exert intellectual control through the inclusion / exclusion of knowledge types, with racialisation and racial hierarchy embedded within these practices. A dismantling of these oppressive systems will have to tackle colonialism, racism, and oppression of many different kinds of head on, it is the “unpack[ing] and unpick[ing of these] limiting imposing narratives… it is about acts of resistance…” So, in having this conversation, we look towards the re-designing of spaces – physical or virtual – in order to tell our stories in ways that we want to tell them, as racialised and minoritised peoples. Therefore, a decolonised copyright in Africa should, in turn, take a distinctly African form, with African culture being very much community centred.
Disconnections, Solidarity-in-Action, and Care
A member of the audience asked the panel discussants:
“What inspires you to do the work you are doing?”
In answering this question, a journey into motivations of the speakers is unveiled, with a distinct theme of disconnection flourishing throughout. Drew Ellery discusses the disconnection he felt when learning about histories taught within schools, dedicating his work at the Archives to Black figures that haven’t been shared or talked about in education – figures like Robert Wedderburn in the 19th century. Continuing the conversation, Kelly Foster notes that Rosanna Wedderburn – Robert Wedderburn’s mother, is often ‘written out’ of his narrative. The names of Rosanna and other women and men, those names that we say we don’t remember, played a crucial role in Foster’s inspiration. Feeling similarly disconnected, Andrea Wallace recalls her childhood in southern USA, where she learned “that there are multi-layered constructs, seeking to protect the privilege of a very small, white elite…” Taking this source of inspiration, this anger, drives Wallace to expose these harms and create spaces for people with great ideas to develop new systems. Anasia Sen Gupta highlights that conversations such as these often go overlooked and underestimated. But, in reality, these conversations go to the deeply intimate parts of political life. These are deeply intimate processes that define how we live our lives, and talking about it is solidarity-in-action.
In outlining her own inspirations, Mutanu Kyanya shares her experience with disconnection. Growing up she understood that storytelling was a major aspect of her culture and folklore. But she always wondered where these stories are. Between what she learned in school, what she learned from history, and what she learned from her grandparents, why are these stories remaining excluded from archives? This disconnection between different aspects of her lived reality spurred Kyany’a to begin fusing these traditions with technology, to find ways to tell our own stories from our own perspectives. But it is also important to remember that the process of digitisation, whilst not specialist, carries with it a duty of care on the part of the institution or person creating new digital artefacts. These artefacts, whilst digital, carry with them “the weight of centuries worth of struggle and resistance…” Yet in exercising careful intention with digitisation, the process of recording itself could be an extraordinarily joyful and empowering process, as long as one remembers that there exists “a continuum around, care, digitisation, testimony and reparation”, a continuum between deep memories of pain and deep possibilities of joy as well.
Roundtable 03: Telling Stories @ The Coach House, St Paul’s, Bristol (22/11/2022)
Discussants:
Facilitated by Stuart Taylor – Artist, Decolonial Scholar-Activist and Writer
Arathi Sriprakash – Professor of Education (University of Bristol) and Writer
Michael Jenkins – Director, Producer, Writer & Co-Founder of Blak Wave
Orsod Malik – UK-based Sudanese Writer, Archivist, Strategist & Curator
Image taken at ‘Telling Stories’ panel, left to right, Stuart Taylor, Orsod Malik, Michael Jenkins, and Arathi Sriprakash.
The Power of Storytelling
The story of this roundtable begins with the idea of ‘stories’ itself as a loose dialogical framework, as light, glue, and web that guides conversation. Michael Jenkins outlines the importance of stories in his life. He didn’t grow up ‘in love’ with mainstream media, which he felt was responsible for creating or perpetuating racism – some of which he experienced directly. Instead, he grew up with reggae, soul music, and poetry. He grew up with these forms of storytelling alongside the Bible. Therefore, storytelling remained important to him, just not from mainstream media. Pursuing this passion, Jenkins received funding from the Princes Trust, discovering that documentaries area\ good medium for storytelling. To him, stories are lights that foster better understanding. Through drama and film, he found that they are incredible mediums to “encourage change and understanding.” Stories like Jasmine Coe’s, explained Arathi Sriprakash, are stories of “indigenous sovereignty, resistance and survival” that have been “diminished, denied or distorted across cultural, academic and media spaces.” Once again, one can see the role that mainstream media has in the misconstruction of histories (such as that of British settle colonialism). Sriprakash explains that her work with Coe (a Wiradjuri-British artist) in creating spaces for aboriginal storytelling in the UK recognises that British settle colonialism still continues to shape everyday life in Australia – an active historical legacy.
Similarly, the storytelling of scholars of yesteryear can continue to answer burgeoning questions held by people today: Orsod Malik recalls his experience encountering the work of Martinican psychologist Frantz Fanon, whose work developed ways of thinking about racism and its effect on the psyche. Even writing in the 1950s, Malik believes that “he provided answers to some questions I didn’t even know that I had.” Learning about anti-colonial struggles across the African continent, learning about his own history as a Sudanese person, helped him gain a better understanding of British history, providing him a ”sense of agency.” Sense of agency, that which provides us with a cogent identity, shows that stories can act as glue:
“Our mythologies are the glue that holds us together.”
Mythologies and the ways stories have been told through generations is really the glue that holds a society together, that holds people together. Michael Jenkins argues that a part of the reason that problems in the Black Caribbean community exists the way they do is due to a distinct lack of storytelling. This could be attributed to gatekeeping. An audience member relates this with their experience working with Black Pyramid Films. They noticed that, historically, Black films didn’t make any money, Black films were not being resourced as a result with such decisions being made by white executives.
What is clear here is a dual power of storytelling: storytelling as a means of regaining agency and storytelling as a narrative that sustains itself and suppresses Othered folk, Othered communities, Othered narratives, and Othered stories. Yet there are ways to combat the negative. Michael Jenkin’s documentarian work aims to take power back from those who use it to misrepresent communities. Whilst a welcome addition to the fight for racial justice, examples like Jenkins are a relatively recent phenomenon. He explains that this is something that has happened only in the last 10 to 15 years. Information, now, is more freely available, and with it comes a distinct shift in power dynamics. As resources become cheaper, marginalised communities can begin regaining autonomy in the telling of their own stories. But the issue of gatekeepers remains, gatekeepers that maintain “monopolies over history,” only allowing for the storytelling of narratives that adheres with the ‘legitimising’ measure of the Market.
Indigenous Storytelling and Ethics of Care
“Storytelling is deeply and intrinsically a part of community. The stories we tell in our families aren’t things that need to be marketized.” These are stories that are powerful enough to be able to speak back to established power structures. These are stories that hold currency that isn’t monetary per se, but contain a cultural currency “necessary for survival, for the survival of memory, [and] for understanding who you are in the world.” The conversations we have with our families revolve around the retrieval of facts and stories in order to understand who we are in relation to others. Who are my grandparents? Where are they from? What is their story? What is my relationship with the distant land whose language I cannot speak? Storytelling, as you can see, is more than just entertainment, it is about being alive as well. Arathi Sriprakash notes that indigenous communities, similarly, gear their storytelling towards a familial audience – not for the ears of non-indigenous people.
So, “stories are glue, but they don’t necessarily glue us all together.” To say that would be too simplistic. When it comes to indigenous stories, they are alive, much how indigenous cultures and sovereignty are living. Engaging with these living stories, as non-indigenous listeners, requires deep listening. Indeed, “there is an ethics of care involved in listening.” In listening deeply, with care, one can begin to realise that “stories and storytelling are so powerful because they are the stories of humanity, not necessarily identity.” So, whilst non-indigenous people may not truly understand the importance of indigenous stories to indigenous people, we all share a common humanity. Stories give us access to shared symbols, possibilities to recognise our own experience in someone else’s. This is why we read books. This is why we go to the theatre. We might see that we have certain identities within us but, fundamentally, there’s a humanity that we share.
Memories as Sites of Struggle and Trauma
Going into archives can open up wounds in unexpected ways. In finding the truth, in digging deep, there will be wounds and there will be things uncovered that will cause discomfort. But as a writer – as a storyteller and story-uncoverer – one must learn to separate oneself emotionally, otherwise it would be all-consuming. This is something that must be understood when learning sensitive histories about another culture. You have to be ready to be shocked or upset and figure out your ways of self-care. This is necessary. A lot of our stories, explains Michael Jenkins, are traumatic, and this is a reason why a lot of elders don’t necessarily share them – because of the trauma. However, the recalling of memories does not purely resurface trauma. At other times, we can discover beautiful moments of people resisting violence in spite of the trauma. Orson Malik urge the audience to begin adopting the understanding of “memory as [a] site of struggle.” We, Malik explains, are always being told what to remember every single day. We’re being told to remember Russia’s war in Ukraine, but don’t pay heed to Israel’s war in Palestine. Make sure to remember the crimes of the Soviet Union, but absolutely do not remember the crimes of the British empire. We are told every single day what to remember and what to forget. The beauty about archival work, something often seen as a solitary experience, is that it allows you to commune with the stories of people who have resisted violence. Who have tried to fight for a world that is a better place than what we found it. Looking into your family’s albums, for instance, can bear examples of small moments of resistance. Looking at the dreams of those that came before us can similarly uncover how resistance is conducted.
Indeed, “there are dreams in anticolonial work. Unfulfilled dreams, people’s notions of building up their communities, their societies, to be better, to be self-determining. To create a world that’s more equitable.” Reading these stories can certainly be difficult; it can be upsetting, even, when we see that thing’s don’t quite come into fruition the way we want them to be. But this is a necessary wound to uncover, for it makes one realise that working towards that ‘dream’ is ongoing. The materials we, as archivists and storytellers, are not inert. They are living messages. Therefore, in uncovering these stories, these wounds, traumas, and acts of resistance, we are picking up the baton and continuing the work towards our dream.
Roundtable 04: I am Witness: The Role of Testimony in the Reparatory Justice Process @ The Coach House, St Paul’s, Bristol (07/12/2022)
Discussants:
Facilitated by Jendayi Serwah – Community and Reparations Activist, Consultant and Trainer
Esther Stanford-Xosei – Organiser and Reparations Activist, Africa / America / UK
Kobina Amokwandoh – Organiser and Reparations Activist, Africa / America / UK
Madu Ellis – Afrikan Connexions Consortium and Ujima Radio
Image of ‘I AM WITNESS’ panel, left to right, Kobina Amokwandoh, Esther Stanford-Xosei, and Madu Ellis.
The Reparatory Process
The conversation begins with Esther Stanford-Xosei explaining that international law is contested, though recognised by the United Nations as a mechanism to address remedy and reparations in the context of anti-Black racism or anti-African discrimination. Stanford-Xosei references a sequence of procedural steps that are utilised in standard cases of repair, beginning with ‘cessation/assurance of non-repetition’, which is the ending of enacted harm(s) or historically perpetuated harms against an identified community, group, or people. Following is ‘Restitution and Reparation’, which is a return of communities and peoples to the position they can reasonable have been expected to have enjoyed prior to the advent of harm(s) or violation of their human rights. This may also include a right to return to known homelands or rights to citizenships. Alongside it can come ‘Compensation’, or the measuring of financial benefit not as an end in itself but as an enabling factor across a matrix of remedies. ‘Satisfaction’ is also a step in the process; this step is to facilitate the healing of communities that suffered harm through the restoration of agency and power. Finally, the step of ‘Rehabilitation’ concerns the re-establishment of cultural, economic, and social standing to equivalent levels experienced prior to the enacted harms against a community of people.
In parallel to such a formal process grounded in international law, “there is the ambition and vision to build a pan-African Union of States based on a different paradigm to that of Western models of statehood or federation.” What this could be build off of is a process of association based on African models of what constitutes a good society. These principles are derived from ancient Kemet (Egypt) and consists of the following: Truth, Justice, Harmony, Balance, Order, Reciprocity, and Propriety. This vision encompasses world-making as a process of renewal beyond existing capitalist paradigms. It sees reparative justice as balanced with environmental justice and epistemic justice, each part of an equitable reframing of neo-colonial systems and ideology. In international law and legal processes, to be recognised as a victim is an acknowledgement that one has suffered a harm. With such recognition one has the right to a remedy and reparations for the harm(s) caused to you. But what is the role of testimony in this macrocosm?
Testimony
Kobina Amokwandoh powerfully states that testimony is a question of power. Testimony is a measure of truth-telling in the revolutionary, liberatory process. Truth-telling is also truth-seeking, and testimony is a process of embodying one’s lived experience. Jendayi Serwah feeds into Amokwandoh’s stream of thought, highlighting the important role of testimony in the context of the International Social Movement for African Reparations (ISMAR). There are other manners which reparations, remedies and settlements can be arrived, explains Stanford-Xosei, such as direct revolutions (e.g., the Haitian Revolution and the Cuban Revolutions), liberal democracy, and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. In regard to Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, Stanford-Xosei points towards the current engagement with the All-Party Parliamentary Commission Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice (APPCITARJ). The approach of the APPCITARJ is informed by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission – foregrounding the testimony and voice of survivors and witnesses. This accumulation of testimony as evidence is in response to the British state and many other European former colonial-imperial states’ claims of not being responsible for the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the historic atrocities that were part of it. In accumulating testimony “and presenting it publicly is to disrupt [this] insane state narrative that everything is okay now” and that they hold no responsibility for the atrocities they committed in the past. So, there is a role for testimony in identifying perpetrators, be they the State, institutions, organisation, or individual entities. They can be challenged around a reparatory justice framework. There is also the dimension of communities acting in self-determined ways, campaigning, and mobilising for restorative justice.
A crucial step towards the fulfilment of this ambition is the creation of new legal mechanisms. Esther Stanford-Xosei points towards the Jewish people’s tribulations as an example of how new legal mechanisms can be utilised for reparations and repair after World War II (see the Nuremberg Trials). Stanford-Xosei explains that in the contemporary era, the International Criminal Court (ICC) draws upon what was created at the Nuremberg Trials as a way of having authority and legitimacy.
“…It is possible for a people to physically remain after the experience of genocide, but they become much more susceptible or vulnerable to Epistemicide. This sequence disrupts or destroys the capacity of the oppressed group(s) to regenerate and perpetuate their sovereign cultures…”
Testimony, therefore, is a double-faced process. As much as it is about the recovering and restoration of what was lost, it is also about hearing the stories of those around you, your community, your friends, and yourself. When the moment arises concerning recognition of us as a people having grievances, the repair journey includes being witnesses to ourselves. With testimony, what is being done is the influencing of people’s hearts and minds: across the United Kingdom, Europe, and the African diaspora (in continental Africa and Caribbean homelands, too). The media, as well as digitisation, plays a significant role in this process, the connection between peoples with one another, with history, and the ongoing phenomenon of the Maangamizi (neo-colonialism) today. Indeed, Kobina Amokwandoh powerfully states to the audience: “If we as Black people of African heritage acknowledge that we are facing a genocide, then we have to recover our sovereign knowledge and culture to the extent that we can. Testimony won’t work without the ability to recognise that we are part of a bigger family, over 1.75 billion people strong.” Within this context, “digitisation only starts to make sense if you consider us a global African family.” Digitisation is important due to its contemporaneous nature. The question of digitisation is a tactical one. The praxis of digitisation needs to come from within communities that are thinking about organisation, from communities that are activist in their orientation. When hearing testimonies, it creates a scope for us to question locally, regionally, or internationally, what is happening to our communities? Digitisation has huge potential in repairing harms made against the African global village – both past, present, and ongoing.
Indeed, “this isn’t just about what happened to our forebears and our ancestors. It’s about the continuum of that violence, structural, epistemic, spatial, and direct physical interpersonal violence. How we’re resisting that, but also seeking to restore and rebuild ourselves. When we hear these testimonies, they become sources of empowerment and inspiration.” Testimony can’t just be what we say. Testimony means acting and heaving as witnesses to the multiple crimes against us, against humanity. There are liberation and campaigning African heritage groups in the Caribbean and the UK that are challenging neo-colonial states through the existing legal system. This is happening now and “all of the questions about testimony require us to build and create our own institutions through which we can educate ourselves and advocate on our own behalf.”
(UN)Conclusion
This work is complex. This work is deep. This work is visceral. This work has systemic dimensions that span continents, centuries, and generations. We are engaged. We are moving forward, together with multiple partners, to address this shared history, envisioning the Afrofuturist spaces and practices that will enable us to shine in our own light. We are remaking, retelling, and inventing the stories and cultures that will nurture us and sustain us. Join us on this adventure into creative invention, recovery and honouring of our diverse cultures and experiences. Let us imagine and build together cohesive, integrated, powerful sovereign expressions of African diaspora cultural presence. Let us in community embody the spirit of Ubuntu and forge unapologetic, energetic, and assertive cultures of Black beauty and resilience. Together we can continue the process of individual and collective healing. Together we can express entrepreneurial flair. Together we can create the world anew, informed by our deeply shared heritage and the momentum evidenced by a global African diaspora of over 1.75 billion souls.
Bristol is a node in a network that spans the old world and the new, the Global North and the Global South. The UnMuseum will become a fluid and mercurial locus for transcultural encounters, reflection, healing, creation, dialogue, community-building and radical decolonial praxis. All informed by the unfathomable depth of African culture in its irrepressible, kaleidoscopically diverse manifestations. We celebrate and embrace pleasure and joy; the sensual delight of being in communion with one another as a community and global family. The world is our home. We are richer for our humble acceptance of the gifts bestowed on us, by all our ancestors and our other-than-human kith and kin. We will prevail. The future is bright, the future is Afrofuturist!
“And here is what I have to say, finally: Let’s invite one another in. Maybe then we can begin to fear less, to make fewer wrong assumptions, to let go of the biases and stereotypes that unnecessarily divide us. Maybe we can better embrace the ways we are the same. It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about being where you get yourself in the end. There’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.”