As Saidiya Hartman argues, when we write about the enslaved, we stand "at the limit of the unspeakable and the unknown". To redress the violence of American and Caribbean archives, we need to recover richer "African narratives of captivity and enslavement". Figueiredo argues that historians of forced labor in Africa face a similar problem, aggravated by the "tribing" of the colonial archives (Hamilton/Leibhammer). Not only do we face a shortage of narratives of the daily life of Africans trapped in relations of asymmetrical dependency, but often the materials that could be of help are classified as ethnographic, which precludes their use as historical sources. Figueiredo will make a case for the use of "ethnographic objects" as historical sources capable of providing valuable insights on the lives of the enslaved.
João Figueiredo was trained as an anthropologist and has a PhD in History from the University of Coimbra (2016), Portugal. His work focuses on Portuguese colonialism in Angola during the long 19th century from a historical and anthropological perspective. He has written several book chapters and peer-reviewed articles for journals such as South African Historical Journal, Postcolonial Studies, Social Sciences and Missions, or the Nordic Journal of African Studies. Currently he is a fellow at the Käte-Hamburger-Kolleg "Einheit und Vielfalt im Recht" (EViR) of the University of Münster, where he is preparing his first monograph ("The Shadow Judiciary: Witchcraft Accusations, Politics and Law in Angola, 18th-19th centuries") and a research article about the first passports issued in Angola.
The workshop is open to all members of the BCDSS, including Ph.D. candidates and M.A. students.
This workshop series is organised by the Research Group "The Concept of Slavery in African History".
Mary Afolabi
Boluwatife Akinro
Ricardo Márquez García
Jutta Wimmler
Lukas Wissel