Decolonizing Heritage
Time to Repair in Senegal

An exploration of how Senegal has decolonised its cultural heritage sites since independence, many of which are remnants of the French empire.

Ferdinand De Jong (Author)

9781316514535, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 March 2022

310 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.3 cm, 0.589 kg

'The book asks important questions about the meaning and politics of cultural heritage, and I found the introduction particularly strong and insightful. The work is well-referenced, building on a diversity of publications in history and anthropology, in French and English, and by African and North-Atlantic authors.' Mayke Kaag, Anthropos

Senegal features prominently on the UNESCO World Heritage List. As many of its cultural heritage sites are remnants of the French empire, how does an independent nation care for the heritage of colonialism? How does it reinterpret slave barracks, colonial museums, and monuments to empire to imagine its own national future? This book examines Senegal's decolonization of its cultural heritage. Revealing how Léopold Sédar Senghor's philosophy of Négritude inflects the interpretation of its colonial heritage, Ferdinand de Jong demonstrates how Senegal's reinterpretation of heritage sites enables it to overcome the legacies of the slave trade, colonialism, and empire. Remembering and reclaiming a Pan-African future, De Jong shows how World Heritage sites are conceived as the archive of an Afrotopia to come, and, in a move towards decolonization, how they repair colonial time.

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.

Subject Areas: African history [HBJH]