Exploring Healing and Epistemic Resources Embedded within Slavery Heritage Sites Toward Social Justice Research That Is Reparative

Background

This paper, rooted in the Akan proverb, Sankofa, which means knowledge of the past is needed to understand the present and envision the future explores the theoretical and practical usefulness of slavery heritage sites for constructing epistemic materials toward reparative future. That is, a future that repairs colonial mindset and activates community’s capacity to reimagine positively transformative future. Historical injustices of the past accumulate into the present and are projected into the future through societal structures, systems, institutions and processes. Although the effects of such structural injustice (e.g., slavery, colonial, and racial oppression) may be embodied and activated through interpersonal relations, the individual actors may be implicated subjects playing differentiated mediational roles. Historical and structural competencies in the colonial racial construction of our shared humanity on a hierarchy-based design for exploitation in the service of colonial and racial capital state can enhance an understanding of our collective but differentiated implications in the (re)production of injustice. This understanding in turn provides us with lessons and pathways to imagine a reconstructive future that is reparative. Slavery heritage sites are geography of memory constitutive of both individual and collective culture and identity that can help us understand how the past is reproduced. In Ghana, the edifices and the experiential nature of the slave dungeons can enhance the generation of epistemic and affective materials towards critical and transformative skills and social justice orientation.

Method:

The current study analyzes pilot data exploring the reparative possibilities of two slave heritage sites in Ghana (Elmina and Cape Coast slave dungeons) which are known as the UNESCO heritage sites. Participants (N=11, mean age, 22.3, 55% male, 45% female) were undergraduate, Ghanaian students at a local university in Ghana. Focus group discussions centered on how slavery heritage fosters an understanding of the past in the present to position us toward a reparative future.

Findings: Critical and experiential engagement with slavery heritage sites provide access to narratives that enhance an understanding of the present conditions which are marked by persistent inequalities. Secondly, slavery heritage sites are generative of social justice ideas to direct healing and repair toward a reparative future. Thirdly, from a social identity standpoint, slavery heritage sites are embedded with contents and materials that can facilitate identity (re)configuration, which is important to engender repair from traumatic memories that implicate us in the (re)production of culturally harmful practices and inequalities.

Conclusion/Implication: Education that exposes students in colonized contexts to the structural factors of their lived experiences fosters reparative identity and provides them with the epistemic and affective resources for reimagining a just future. Such education also provides tools to empower youth, strengthen political efficacy toward civic engagement, advocacy, and demand for accountability. Social justice research methods that synergize historical consciousness with social science approaches to community engaged research hold promises for activating youth’s epistemic agency toward community social change.