After Abolition: Metaphors of Slavery in the Political History of the Gambia
After Abolition: Metaphors of Slavery in the Political History of the Gambia
This chapter explores how internal historical slavery is almost entirely silenced in the Gambia and how this ‘silencing’ parallels slavery's metaphorical extension to the experience of poverty and continuing exploitation in contemporary Gambian society. Gambian struggles for national independence in the 1950s and against poverty in the 1990s were expressed in the metaphor of slavery. Afrocentric discourses of slavery were introduced from the United States to the Gambia, where it is manipulated according to particular interests. The chapter first provides a historical overview of subjection and freedom in the Gambia during the late colonial period before turning to the ‘Roots Home Coming’ festival and the public reappraisal of the Atlantic slave trade in the country during the 1990s. It then looks at how the image of the Babylon has been adopted by Gambian youth and their coevals from other West African anglophone countries as the privileged destination of their attempted migrations.
Keywords: Gambia, slavery, poverty, metaphor, United States, Babylon, Roots Home Coming, slave trade, freedom, youth
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