How do we narrate colonial entanglements – of voices, places, archives – from a Nordic perspective today? This seminar explores formats of narrating colonial history, from travelogues and historiography, to new materialist approaches that might harbor a multi-perspectival and multi-voiced opening up of the colonial heritage. Can we imagine new agencies by emphasizing the entangled media ecologies and environments in which we are all still culturally brought together across distances in the vast global afterlife of slavery and colonialization?

Program

10.15: Introduction and welcome by Lene Asp

10.30-11.15: “Bio-graphies in the broad sense: Narrating the lives and genomes of the enslaved,” Gísli Pálsson, University of Iceland

11.15-12.00: “Wilhelm Johann Müller on the Gold Coast and Thorkild Hansen in Ghana,” Kari Dako, University of Ghana

12.00-13.00: Lunch

13.15-14.00: “From silence to “hot topic”: the history of Swedish Caribbean slavery,” Fredrik Thomasson, University of Uppsala

14.00-15.00: Discussion of Nordic positions and perspectives in the entanglement of colonial environments