Symbolic Excavation and the Artifact Politics of Remembering Slavery in the American South: Observations from Walterboro, South Carolina

Abstract

While historic sites in the American South have tended not to engage visitors in critical discussions of slavery, there are indications that this pattern is changing. In understanding how the history of slavery is resurrected and narrated through memorials, museums, and other public places of memory, it is perhaps useful to think about it as a process of "symbolic excavation." The metaphor of excavation prompts us to realize that the unearthing of difficult and long suppressed (and repressed) historical narratives can only happen through memory work, the construction and representation of the past. This excavation calls for developing an "artifact politics" that involves active participation with the material traces of slavery as well as the appropriation and reinterpretation of artifacts previously associated with the white planter class. To explore the ongoing symbolic excavation of slave history in the South, we focus on a recent addition to the region's tourism landscape—the Slave Relic Museum in Walterboro, South Carolina—and its African American owner and curator, Danny Drain. Drain provides visitors with the opportunity to see and touch some of the artifacts of slavery, including chains and shackles. Establishing this tactile relationship between museum visitor and historical object does more than simply assist Drain in vividly narrating the history of the slave trade. It is also involves the visitor in the excavation and memory recovery process as a bodily performance. Physically engaging these chains forces museum visitors to participate in the memory work of not forgetting or trivializing the enslaved and their experiences.