Genealogical Journeys, Geographical Imagination, and (Popular) Geopolitics in Who Do You Think You Are?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Genealogy is now a global industry, accounting for $3 billion every year in the US market alone. Enhanced via public record digitisation, crowd-sourced data input, and consumer genetics testing, interest in one’s ancestral roots has never been higher. Recognising the public interest in personal lineages, the BBC launched the docuseries Who Do You Think You Are? in 2004. Focusing on celebrities’ family backgrounds and how their hitherto-unknown forebears’ experiences shaped their lives and careers, the format was quickly adapted for other national audiences with nearly 20 versions around the world. This article examines the phenomenon of mediated genealogical research through the twinned prisms of race and postcolonialism. Employing close readings of episodes from the American (Emmitt Smith) and South African (Jabulani Tsambo/HHP) adaptations, as well as the original British series (Naomie Harris), this intervention interrogates the ways in which power and privilege in white settler colonies are unpacked through carefully-curated spatial narrations of private pasts meant for popular consumption. Using approaches drawn from more-than-representational geography, I view these seemingly ‘individual’ performances of genealogy as instead affect-inducing ‘collective’ journeys to sites of pain, prejudice, and power(lessness), which in turn serve to shape transnational perceptions of place and space.