Committed to memory : the art of the slave ship icon / Cheryl Finley.
Finley, Cheryl, author.
2018
N8243.S576 F56 2018 (Mapit)
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Title Committed to memory : the art of the slave ship icon / Cheryl Finley.
Author Finley, Cheryl, author.
ISBN 9780691136844 (hardcover)
069113684X (hardcover)
Published Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2018]
Language English
Description xi, 306 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 28 cm
Call Number N8243.S576 F56 2018
Dewey Decimal Classification 709.04
Summary One of the most iconic images of slavery is a schematic wood engraving depicting the human cargo hold of a slave ship. First published by British abolitionists in 1788, it exposed this widespread commercial practice for what it really was - shocking, immoral, barbaric, unimaginable. Printed as handbills and broadsides, the image Cheryl Finley has termed the "slave ship icon" was easily reproduced, and by the end of the eighteenth century it was circulating by the tens of thousands around the Atlantic rim. Committed to Memory provides the first in-depth look at how this artifact of the fight against slavery became an enduring symbol of black resistance, identity, and remembrance. Finley traces how the slave ship icon became a powerful tool in the hands of British and American abolitionists, and how its radical potential was rediscovered in the twentieth century by black artists, activists, writers, filmmakers, and curators. Finley offers provocative new insights into the works of Amiri Baraka, Romare Bearden, Betye Saar, and many others. She demonstrates how the icon was transformed into poetry, literature, visual art, sculpture, performance, and film-and became a medium through which diasporic Africans have reasserted their common identity and memorialized their ancestors. Beautifully illustrated, Committed to Memory features works from around the world, taking readers from the United States and England to West Africa and the Caribbean. It shows how contemporary black artists and their allies have used this iconic eighteenth-century engraving to reflect on the trauma of slavery and come to terms with its legacy.
Note One of the most iconic images of slavery is a schematic wood engraving depicting the human cargo hold of a slave ship. First published by British abolitionists in 1788, it exposed this widespread commercial practice for what it really was - shocking, immoral, barbaric, unimaginable. Printed as handbills and broadsides, the image Cheryl Finley has termed the "slave ship icon" was easily reproduced, and by the end of the eighteenth century it was circulating by the tens of thousands around the Atlantic rim. Committed to Memory provides the first in-depth look at how this artifact of the fight against slavery became an enduring symbol of black resistance, identity, and remembrance. Finley traces how the slave ship icon became a powerful tool in the hands of British and American abolitionists, and how its radical potential was rediscovered in the twentieth century by black artists, activists, writers, filmmakers, and curators. Finley offers provocative new insights into the works of Amiri Baraka, Romare Bearden, Betye Saar, and many others. She demonstrates how the icon was transformed into poetry, literature, visual art, sculpture, performance, and film-and became a medium through which diasporic Africans have reasserted their common identity and memorialized their ancestors. Beautifully illustrated, Committed to Memory features works from around the world, taking readers from the United States and England to West Africa and the Caribbean. It shows how contemporary black artists and their allies have used this iconic eighteenth-century engraving to reflect on the trauma of slavery and come to terms with its legacy.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references and index.
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The practice of mnemonic aethetics
I.Sources/Roots (1788
1900)
1.Idea: Image and Text
2.Form: Essential Elements
3.Circulation: Politics and Publicity
II.Meanings/Routes (1900-present)
4.Negroes: Old and New
5.1969: Activism, Art, and Performance in the United States
6.Art and Activism in Britain: 1960s
1990s
7.Bodies: Commoditization and Branding
III.Rites/Reinventions (1990s-present)
8.Pattern: Behind the Face of an Iron
9.Spirits: From Chango to Iconoclasm
10.Roots Tourism and the Slave Ship Icon
11.Museums, Monuments, and Memorials
The shape of things...doesn't always appear as it seems.

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