Rewriting History

Re-viewing the past in terms of Black people’s presences in British history has produced distinctive cultural interventions. Working with and through the imprint of the imperial- colonial aftershock (and not hiding or denying its effects) can produce a variety of unsettling encounters that reconfigure the ways in which the ‘canon’ and the ‘collection’ can be reconsidered. For a number of contemporary Black British writers museums, burial places and monuments have catalysed a means of representing Black people’s lives in illuminating and imaginative ways. By creatively rendering heritages hidden in the museum space and inscribing Black presences into landmarks, they contribute to a radical revision of commemorative cultural history.