Catene di memoria : per non dimenticare la schiavit\uf9 e la tratta

This essay, which introduces the dossier \u201cEnslaved bodies, enslaved languages\u201d, addresses the discursive practices and political debate which characterized the celebrations for the Bicentenary of the British Abolition of the Slave Trade in 2007. Building on a rich crop of newspaper articles, speeches by politicians, museum exhibitions, commemorative pamphlets and websites, it attempts to open a window onto current understandings of the impact of the Slave Trade on the last two centuries of British history, and its legacy of discrimination and disadvantage, against the backcloth of today\u2019s still problematic multicultural consensus. In this light, the government\u2019s choice to project the moment of the Abolition as a historic divide underlining the humanitarian primacy of Wilberforce and Britain has been interpreted also as a process of collective amnesia which seems to be in line with Paul Gilroy\u2019s idea of postcolonial melancholia