Decolonizing Heritage

Ferdinand De Jong is Associate Professor at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of Masquerades of Modernity: Power and Secrecy in Casamance, Senegal (2007), and, with Michael Rowlands, editor of Reclaiming Heritage: Alternative Imaginaries of Memory in West Africa (2007). He has published widely on the colonial archive and the need for its decolonization.

• Introduction: Temporalities of repair; 1. History and testimony at the house of slaves; 2. The door of no return: Framing race and reconciliation; 3. Shining lights and their shadows; 4. Prayer of emergency: Black subjects and sufi spirituality; 5. Recycling recognition: The monument as Objet Trouvé; 6. Ruins of utopia: 'Ponty' and the university of the African future; 7. The museum of black civilisations: Race, restitution, repair; Coda: Untimely Utopia; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

'This is a timely and fascinating book. De Jong understands the political urgency of connecting the contemporary debates around persistent racism and decolonisation represented by the Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall movements with a deep historical understanding of the nuances of how these same debates have resurfaced in Senegal. Through a meticulous analysis of the complex allegiances, identifications and resistances to French colonialism, De Jong tracks the re-emergence of forms of Négritude and Pan-Africanism in contemporary heritage developments in Senegal while arguing convincingly, that museums and memorial sites are a form of repair against the damage engendered through the trauma of colonialism.' Annie E. Coombes, Birkbeck College, University of London