imaginary concerning the former colonies? One commentator on a debate about the
78 D. Hamilton Jackson is moreover celebrated in the USVI and is commemorated on 1 November every year.
79 The African-Caribbean Reparations and Resettlement Alliance (ACRRA) has worked on retrieving
‘reparations’ from Denmark since 2005. In 2008, the founder of the alliance and the president for the Caribbean Institute for a New Humanity Inc., Shelly Moorhead, initiated a hunger strike to attract attention to the issue. At the time of producing this dissertation no mention of this event had occurred in the Danish press. See for instance www.acrra.org,
http://www.onepaper.com/stcroixvi/?v=d&s=News;Local&p=1212901647, and http://www.virginislandsdailynews.com/index/article_home?id=17627572
80 Alex Frank Larsen: Slavernes Slægt (Descendants of Slaves) (Medialex Film & TV 2005), television documentary series in four episodes.
Danes and the other (Madsen 2006) finds that ‘the Danes do not feel guilt towards Africans because they are white or because they are European simply because other white people or other Europeans abused African slaves’ (Madsen, 2006).81 This is, of course, only one man’s deluded opinion based on a highly selective memory of the Danish colonial past and history, but it is not an uncommon opinion among Danes, I would claim82. ‘“Race” and “racism” have simply not been seen as relevant in the Nordic countries. This might be due to national self-conceptions of the Nordic countries as not having the “burden of guilt”, which is often associated with
“whiteness” in other contexts’, writes Randi Marselis (Marselis forthcoming: 13).
This is also the claim of Slavernes Slægt, which in every introductory voice-over repeats that the colonial history is unknown to the Danes, but the stories are now being uncovered for the first time. The opinion which Madsen and Marselis discuss above underlines the necessity to rethink – rather than abolish – the historical narrative so as to include Danes and Scandinavians as a whole in the categories of
‘white people’ and ‘colonisers’. The historical literature reiterated in the preceding section of this case study reflects the general Danish disinterest (then and now) in the colonial legacy and the consequences borne by the people who were ‘sold’ along with the islands in 1917. The documentary series Slavernes Slægt (2005) seems to attempt to make visible the white hegemonic power that is now invisible to the populations of the Nordic countries. It ‘uncovers’ stories of the Danish colonial past and it emphasises the Danish role in the slave trade and slavery. It does this through the narratives of private lives.
1.4.1 Slavernes Slægt
Slavernes Slægt (2005) was produced and directed by Alex Frank Larsen and distributed through his own production company, Medialex Film & TV. The documentary is divided into four episodes83 presenting a number of protagonists –
81 My translation from: ‘Danskerne føler sig ikke skyldige som hvide eller europæere over for afrikanere, bare fordi andre hvide mennesker eller andre europæere har mishandlet afrikanske slaver.’
82 Significantly, Anders Ellebæk Madsen’s opinion was published in a Christian debate forum. The role of the Lutheran Protestant religion in the Nordic countries and its connection to the notion of whiteness in a European context is another point of discussion, which I will embark on in case study 3.
83 The first documentary series, Slavernes Slaegt, was based on personal accounts of genealogical research. It was followed by a sequel of another four shorter episodes, which were not based on the same sort of personal accounts. This latter documentary series, titled Slavernes Spor (Traces of Slaves) (2005, see note 69 above) presents artifacts, people, performances and places pivotal to the
understanding of the Danish role in the slave trade and transport. Slavernes Spor is pedagogically
amateur genealogists – looking for or simply narrating their ancestral lines in the Danish National Archives in Copenhagen and elsewhere. Through their personal narratives a certain cultural memory emerges, which is supported by the journalistic editorial choices of voice-over narration, music and cover-shots and so on. The documentary can therefore be said to be employing what in chapter 2 I called journalistic cultural memories in order to explain the Danish relation to the USVI. On an over-arching journalistic level, the macro level, the documentary is telling the story of one aspect of the history of the Danish national state while on the micro level this journalistic intention is being supported, and sometimes challenged, through the narratives of individual Danes and other Scandinavians. Both the journalistic and the personal narratives are largely supported by archival documentation. I present the discursive narrative and audiovisual line in the documentary’s four episodes while focusing on the discourses and motifs supporting the genealogical lines claimed in the personal narratives based on a number of themes. I focus on the protagonists’
narratives about themselves and the journalistic narratives about the relation between former colonised and coloniser – both in words and visually.
The documentary bases the protagonists’ search in the origins and genealogies of enslaved Africans, which are recorded in Danish merchants’ records of the importation of slaves. Their names84 and familial relations while enslaved were meticulously written down by the Danish administration on the islands and on the slave transporting ships and they are now available in long lists of documents in Copenhagen and Washington DC. In the documentary Slavernes Slægt the idea of origin and genealogy is unfolded in themes related to visibility, geography, musicality and voice, which I introduce and follow in my analysis below.
1.4.2 On racial visibility
In a discursive analysis of the television documentary Slavernes Slægt (Descendants of Slaves), Randi Marselis (forthcoming) identifies two main strands of representation. Firstly she examines how ‘mixed race ancestry’ is narrated by the documentary’s protagonists in discursive-performative terms. Secondly she identifies
narrated and presented. It is not subjected to analysis here, but it affirms Larsen’s political and professional engagement in telling the story of Danish colonialism.
84 Mainly the European given names – the African names were largely ignored.
the difference between US and Nordic relations to ‘race’. The documentary, Marselis concludes, bases otherness on the claimed visual difference between the stereotypical Danish look (blond hair and blue eyes) and the descendants’ ‘darker’ looks. The viewer is constantly invited to scan the descendants’ faces for phenotypical differences by, for instance, superimposing family portraits of enslaved relatives onto contemporary portraits or television stills of the protagonists. This visual emphasis is underlined by the protagonists’ own narratives. In the case of the charismatic protagonist of the first episode, Camilla Marlene Jensen, Jensen has spent the past year and a half looking for her ancestry line in Danish archives. Her search is prompted by several people’s inquisitive questions about the possibility of ‘dark blood’ in her veins. In episode 3, another Danish protagonist, Henning Palmann, also alludes to the visual prompts he has been getting due to his dark hair and eyes. To both Jensen and Palmann the use of family photographs is very important and Marselis points out that this emphasis on visibility is connected to a common-sense biological understanding of ‘race’ which is pervasive in the Nordic realm. It is ‘an awkward convergence between genealogist terminologies and racist notions of “black blood” [which is] used to thematize visible difference both by off-screen narrator and by the descendants’, Marselis asserts (forthcoming: 13).85
Additionally Marselis discusses the dissimilarities between the US and the Nordic expression and experience of ‘race’. As I noted in chapter 1, the ideas of biologically based ‘races’, eugenics, and by extension the notion of ‘race’ in the Nordic countries was subdued after the Second World War. This means that though racial stereotypes have been transposed into an everyday racism (Essed 2002) in which African descent is matter-of-factly connected to stereotypes about rhythmic abilities, musicality, sexuality and physical strength etc. ‘race’ as such is not recognised as a factor of power differentiation in the Nordic countries. I will return to some of these structures and how they reflect a preoccupation with liberal democratic ideals of tolerance and equality in case study 3. In contrast to the Nordic silence on ‘race’, the US context is focused on the colour-line and the ‘one-drop-rule’ in which ‘blackness’ as a minority group identity is underscored (Chapter 1, and see Marselis forthcoming).
85 The awkward connection is furthermore discussed in depth in case study 2 in relation to Blood of the Vikings and the genealogical searches for ‘Viking blood’ in contemporary Britons’ veins.
Parallel to the protagonists’ investigative narrative, the episodes follow a visual discourse re-enacting historical moments of capture into slavery, ship transportation, and close-ups of foot chains and scared, screaming African faces. This visual discourse represents Copenhagen through architectural gems from the Golden Age or the Florissant period in Danish history accompanied by classical music. This audio-visual representation enables a binary between the European, wealthy and ‘civilised’
Denmark and the oppressed, chained and powerless enslaved Africans. While Jensen and Palmann and the other micro level narratives embody a merger of Danish and African lineage, Larsen’s macro level audio-visuals emphasise insurmountable differences and asymmetrical relations. The schism between the discourses could be seen as a division between respectively a private and a public realm of colonialism. It presents a tension between the anti-racist intention of the programme and the commonsensical Danish discourse on inherent racial differences. This tension is elaborated in the following themes as well.
1.4.3 On geographical belonging:
Another strong motif supporting the genealogical lines claimed in the personal narratives is based on the notion of geographical belonging. In the first episode, Jensen researches archives in Copenhagen, Washington and London to find her ancestors, and the camera follows her search as well as portraying her through her job as a schoolteacher and through interviews conducted in St Croix about her research.
Jensen’s narrative is one of investigation – detective work – and one of connections to be found, dots to be connected. The connections she is following in her investigation are geographical, her first breakthrough comes when she discovers that her great grandfather, who was born in the colonies, lived most of his life in the same part of Copenhagen as Jensen grew up in. As a matter of fact, he and his adoptive family lived in the same street as Jensen, which makes her exclaim: ‘There is a meaning to all of this – there is somebody – I had to begin this [investigation]’.86 The geographical closeness is foundational for the more speculative and emotional connection to her ancestors. This leads to the connection which is indefinably genetic or relational. Jensen feels she ‘owes’ it to her relatives to dig up the ancestral line and make visible what has been hidden in Danish history for so long. She tells Larsen that
86 My translation of: ‘…Der er en mening med det her nu – der er nogen – jeg skulle i gang med det her’.
the tales of slavery and the Atlantic slave transport always impressed themselves on her and she could not forget them. It is, as Larsen states late in the first episode, ‘a blood relation’ and this blood relation infuses her with an inherent sense of connectivity. ‘I am really proud of my heritage and finding out about it. I can understand why I took certain directions in life, why I went to South Africa for five years. I see a connection now,’ she tells the audience at a university on Tortola where she speaks on her journey to the Caribbean, where her ancestors were enslaved. In the second episode the geographical connection is truncated by the protagonist Besiakov who finds that being in St Croix and meeting all his extended family relations is like
‘coming home’ and performing in Frederiksted with local musicians makes him understand where he is ‘coming from’. Like the ‘blood relation’, the ‘land’ or the
‘soil’ of their ancestors awakens a feeling of obligation and connection.
So far, there are two kinds of geographies at play; one is the connection Jensen feels to the place in Copenhagen and both she and Besiakov feel later in St Croix which they share with their ancestors. The second is the trajectory in particular Jensen’s life is taking and its connection to her ancestral past. It is ‘calling’ her to a faraway place which is linked to a blood relation – an inherent longing or yearning. A third geographical notion is underlined in the complicated family journeys which are rehearsed in the documentary. The many long journeys the protagonists and their ancestors have taken are exemplified in the fourth episode. One family portrayed in this episode is the Munis family. This family contains two stories. One is about Alex Munis, who is originally from Nigeria and who found out that he may in fact be related to a Danish official stationed at the slave fort in southern Ghana. Alex Munis tells his family’s history of slavery in Brazil and their return to Nigeria after the end of slavery. He also tells the story of how he went to Britain to work in cinemas, but was unable to work due to his skin colour. Seeing a famous tourist poster87 advertising
‘Wonderful Copenhagen’, he decided to go to Denmark. He met his future wife there and they had a child as well as Alex adopting his wife’s daughter from a previous relationship, Marianne. The adopted daughter’s story makes up the second half of the family story. She has found her biological family in Sierra Leone with the help of letters her father sent to her mother and which her mother gave to Marianne. Marianne
87 The poster is from the 1950s and shows a police officer holding back the traffic in order to allow a duck and her ducklings to cross the street.
Munis is a teacher in a school which focuses on global issues and she makes a point of teaching the students about colonial times and the slavery that went on. The Munis’
stories point to the deterritorial trajectories of transversal subjectivities.
I want to dwell a bit on these terms, which I introduced in chapter 3. Transversal subjectivities go beyond the colonial binary and allow subjects to identify and move across boundaries of colour, geographical belonging and family ‘blood’ relations. The Munis family narrative does not define them by one historical trajectory but rather it continuously defines them through intertwining histories and transnational power relations. However, the Munis family and the other families portrayed alongside them in episode 4 are divided by cover-shots and musical arrangements of a particularly binary constructing character. I will come back to these identity-generating and fixating cover-shots in the next section. It should be noted at this point that the connotations of this editorial decision to divide the personal narratives with the binary representations fixes the personal protagonists in roles defining them as other due to their skin colour and due to their geographical sense of belonging and trajectories.
1.4.4 On black musicality
The protagonist in the second episode, Besiakov, is the grandson of a young boy of African descent, who in 1905 was taken from St Croix to Copenhagen to be exhibited as part of the national exhibition about the Danish colonial possessions. Though the boy, whose name was Victor Cornelins, was supposed to return to his mother and the rest of his family after the exhibition was over, the plans were changed and he was placed in foster-care.88 As he later in life achieved fame, this episode of the documentary consists partly of an old televised interview with Cornelins himself conducted in the 1970s and partly of the investigations into his family relations in the Caribbean sought out by two of his grandchildren. This way Cornelins plays a big role in the telling of his own story. I will return to the issue of voice below.
Cornelins makes a point about connecting himself to the Danish cultural and social imaginary through his narrative about the USVI which he describes in exotic terms,
88 Victor Cornelins has authored books about his life as well as having been the subject of other authors’ work. See website for more information:
http://www.lokalarkiver.dk/nakskov/text/lokal/cornelins/ and http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Cornelins.
adding monkeys and colourful birds to the islands’ fauna. He also emphasises his love of classical music, which is the same kind of music that Larsen uses to connote European ‘civilisation’ in the audio-visual side to the documentary commented on above. This stereotypical use of music goes a step further in this second episode: the grandchildren, Ben Besiakov and Lotte Cornelins, are cousins, but it is mostly Ben who carries the narrative. This is underlined in his connection to music. Cornelins senior was a music teacher and conductor of classical choirs. As mentioned, his favoured music was classical and ‘spirituals’. He did not enjoy jazz, which is the music favoured and performed by his grandson. At the end of the episode, Besiakov performs in Tivoli where his grandfather was once exhibited and so the narrative comes full circle with Besiakov rather than with Lotte Cornelins, who is a tailor by trade. Besiakov also performs in Frederiksted, St Croix, with local musicians and speaks on a local radio show about his connection to music and to St Croix. His music is thus tied in with the music of the Crucians in opposition to the music of his grandfather.
The connections which are sought in this episode are connections of music and musicality as well as relational and cultural connections that spring from this talent.
The point is furthermore made through the narrative voice-over, which states that during slavery music was prohibited and so, the voice-over concludes, music means more than entertainment. What exactly music meant to the enslaved Africans is not elaborated. Within the civilising project of white supremacy in the colonies, Gilroy (2004a) believes that ‘[m]usic expressed and confirmed unfreedom while evolving in complex patterns that pointed beyond misery toward reciprocity and prefigured the democracy yet to come in their antiphonic forms’ (Gilroy 2004a: 200). Similarly, dancing, Gilroy states, was a way of claiming back the body which was the property of the ‘white’ slave owners. African musicality and traditional dance is also sustained in the interludes between different protagonists in episode 3 and 4 in particular. The third episode tells the story of four individual and otherwise unconnected families (one of which is the aforementioned Munis family), whose journalistic narratives are intersected by an audio-visual presentation which shows parts of an African dance group performing a dance theatrical rendition of the slave trade from the ‘Gold Coast’
in southern Ghana to the Caribbean. Again, the connection between African culture and physical and bodily expression go hand in hand. However, the exoticism which
presents itself through commoditisation of black culture in the ‘western’ world (Gilroy 2004a: 214) and through turning the African dancers into unexplained spectacles, is lurking under the surface of Larsen’s narrative about the importance of
presents itself through commoditisation of black culture in the ‘western’ world (Gilroy 2004a: 214) and through turning the African dancers into unexplained spectacles, is lurking under the surface of Larsen’s narrative about the importance of