Time: 1:00 - 2:00pm Speaker: Prof. Miles OgbornVenue: City Centre Seminar Room (Bancroft 2.07)
Prof. Miles Ogborn, Professor of Geography, School of Geography, QMUL
The Freedom of Speech: Talk and Slavery in the Anglo-Caribbean World
What were the conditions of speech within the slave societies of the Anglo-Caribbean in the long eighteenth century, and how did they shape freedom and enslavement? Developing an historical geography of speech practices which both differentiates between categories of speech acts and elaborates the variety of situated and embodied oral interactions, this research demonstrates how questions of who could speak and what could be said were at the heart of racialized slavery’s simultaneous and contradictory dependence upon and denial of the humanity of the enslaved. It argues that studying slavery by starting from the spaces of speech moves beyond dichotomies of power and resistance and enables an examination of the radically asymmetrical common ground created and occupied by both the enslavers and the enslaved.