The Journal of the Civil War Era

Ana Lucia Araujo argues that modern struggles over memories of slavery are not just about coming to terms with societies' past histories with enslavement. Rather, they are defined by their present association with persistent issues of racism that remain ingrained in the fabric of countries and societies where slavery existed. Racism, in this case, is defined as "a belief naturalizing individuals racialized as nonwhite to be inferior" that further "engenders actions and practices that systematically discriminate against nonwhite individuals in various societal spheres" (6).

Slavery in the Age of Memory speaks to scholarship on memory and how memory is created and sustained within broader society. As Araujo explains, history and memory are "two modalities of discourse" about "people, things, situations, and events that actually occurred or allegedly happened in the past" (3). Slavery in the Age of Memory, as the title suggests, is concerned with various forms of memory, and Araujo defines memory as accounts of human experience, in contrast with history, which is defined in this framework as an attempt to establish and interpret facts. However, Araujo also incorporates such multivalent spaces as state-sponsored museums and historic homes. Araujo's investigation takes a transatlantic comparative perspective rather than focusing on a single site of memory or a single society's efforts to interpret its slave past. This broad focus allows her to convincingly demonstrate the durability of racism as created and sustained during slavery across social and geographic boundaries.

For example, Araujo investigates issues of collective memory and the methods through which individuals transmit the history of their association with slavery. Despite the fact that descendants of both enslavers and enslaved people live in many of the same societies today, their present social positions "determine how they collectively represent the slave past for themselves and to others" (38). In the case of the DeWolf family of Rhode Island, the family's participation with the Atlantic slave trade is well documented. Today, however, members of the DeWolf family avoid "publicly emphasizing this controversial dimension of the economic activities [End Page 422] of their ancestors" (33). Araujo notes similar tendencies in elite families descended from enslavers beyond the United States, such as in West Africa.

Araujo's own diverse research background enables Slavery in the Age of Memory to take a broad-ranging approach, as the author is already well versed in the specific histories of memorialization in many of the places that the book explores. As Araujo notes, the book draws on a variety of case studies from the United States, France, and England, as well as from Brazil and the Republic of Benin. Araujo chooses which examples to place in conversation with one another in each chapter based on the extent to which they relate to one another and how visible they are nationally and internationally. This broad accounting allows her to reveal how racism, as created and sustained in slave societies, manifests in predictable ways when societies choose to represent their history of enslavement.

Enduring and persistent racism not only defines how societies and individuals remember and represent their histories of slavery, but it also restricts it. Even attempts to acknowledge enslavement or humanize enslaved people tend to reflect racist attitudes. For example, Araujo explores the popular use of a "wall of names" in slavery exhibits that list the names of every known enslaved person at a particular site. At places such as Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and even the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the United States, representations of Jefferson are centered while the names of enslaved people remain a supporting background to an exhibit. Rather than affirming the individual identities of the people listed, the exhibitions reaffirm "the slaveholder's centrality" and maintain "the invisibility of enslaved men, women, and children" (62).

Araujo also shows how many modern attempts to publicly acknowledge a slavery past originate with present struggles against inequalities that endure from slavery. When marginalized...