Materializing Identity through History: Representations of Slavery in the Museums of Zanzibar (2012)

Undergraduate: Kari Dahlgren

Faculty Advisor: Eunice Sahle
Department: Anthropology

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Zanzibar has a long history of interaction with the broader world through the intersection of Arab, Asian, African, and European commercial interests. The influences and interactions between these regions created a unique culture but also a contested history, especially over the slave trade. This history was employed in the articulation of political identities, primarily in the lead up to independence, culminating in the 1964 Zanzibar revolution. The history of tensions over identity has lead to continued eruptions of violence after 1995, 2000, and 2005 elections. This research reveals that struggles over contemporary identities can be traced back to contrasting understandings of the nature of slavery, as narratives crafted around slavery were utilized—with the coming of democracy—as political strategies to craft identities as antagonisms, drawing from the theoretical insights of Laclau and Mouffe (1985). Although identities are in constant historical construction and contestation, they have material consequences, and as discursive formations involve the structural and symbolic, they manifest and are manifested through structural configurations such as the museum. This research focuses on the representations of slavery in three museums on the islands of Zanzibar. Through comparing the narratives of slavery in the museums, it becomes possible to recognize how identities are discursively reproduced in and through the material structures of heritage.