Competing Memories focuses on the politics of remembering enslavement, emancipation and indentureship in Caribbean contexts. The contributions explore constructions and representations of plural and divergent memories across academic disciplines. As understandings of ‘history’ and ‘memory’ may vary, the volume addresses the different and strategic ways these concepts are used within and in relation to the Caribbean. It highlights how historical narratives and cultures of memory are implemented, removed, contested and remodeled in monuments, art, historical archives, literature, film and other kinds of representation all over the Caribbean, its diasporas and in former colonizing countries. With its focus on cultural memory studies, it provides new impulses to slavery and dependency studies. It also contributes to a global debate aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics of memory formation in the context of colonial violence and trauma. It invites readers to reflect on the power dynamics involved in the processes of remembering, forgetting, memorizing, recollecting and commemorating.
