Plantation Memories, Labor Identities, and the Celebration of Heritage

Cristiana Bastos

doi:10.3167/armw.2020.080104

Abstract

Plantation museums and memorials play different roles in coming to terms with a past of racialized violence. In this article, I briefly review the academic literature on plantations, refer to the plantation–race nexus, address the critical and acritical uses of plantation memories, discuss modes of musealizing plantations and memorializing labor, and present a community-based museum structure: Hawaii’s Plantation Village. This museum project is consistent with a multiethnic narrative of Hawai‘i, in that it provides both an overview of the plantation experience and a detailed account of the cultural heritage of each national group recruited for the sugar plantations. By providing a sense of historical belonging, a chronology of arrival, and a materialized representation of a lived experience, this museum plays an active and interactive role in the shaping of a collective memory of the plantation era, selecting the more egalitarian aspects of a parallel coexistence rather than the hierarchies, violence, tensions and land appropriation upon which the plantations rested.

Highlights

Cristiana Bastos n ABSTRACT: Plantation museums and memorials play different roles in coming to terms with a past of racialized violence
I start with a brief review of the literature on plantation societies, discuss the plantation–race nexus, and highlight the renewed interest in plantations raised by contemporary approaches to the environment, the Anthropocene, cropscapes, and nonhuman agencies
I present in detail Hawai‘i’s Plantation Village in Waipahu, O‘ahu. This community-based museum is designed in accordance with the prevailing narrative of a multiethnic Hawai‘i. While it provides visitors with an overview of the plantation experience in general, not excluding the discipline and violence endured by laborers, its main focus is on the specific cultural heritage of each one of the nationalities that arrived in Hawai‘i to work in sugar

Summary

Introduction

Cristiana Bastos n ABSTRACT: Plantation museums and memorials play different roles in coming to terms with a past of racialized violence. While it provides visitors with an overview of the plantation experience in general, not excluding the discipline and violence endured by laborers, its main focus is on the specific cultural heritage of each one of the nationalities that arrived in Hawai‘i to work in sugar.

Results

Conclusion