Shackles, Whips, Pawns and Kings
Slavery is like PMS: it keeps coming back on a regular basis into the public discourse and all you can do is to acknowledge it and deal with the pain. We live in a world where it’s no longer a taboo: it’s widely discussed and dissected as a stain on the cultural legacy of countries like Spain, Portugal, France, England or Belgium. For the liberal left, it’s something they address when they’re short on designer frappucinos, kale chips and grow tired of climate change and identity politics. Due to their aggressive and irritating tactics they rarely achieve their goals of involving the ignorant masses. A woman in labor, trying to hold it together before she reaches the hospital doesn’t really have the energy to think about its carbon footprint.
A lot of work beyond the level of NGO activism has been invested into this to raise its importance in the eyes of mainstream public. Not just through the lens of the film industry and visual arts but in the academic community and investigative journalism. You don’t really need Steven Spielberg to see genocide is inexcusable, as well using humans as a living, breathing currency that’s been used in lucrative transactions throughout history. While we dwelve on the bloody trail slavery left behind all over the world, it’s equally important to remember that there’s no trade without dealers either. African slave traders turned it into a big, sustainable business.
Whether we’re talking about cotton pickers in American plantations, Roman gladiators at the Colosseum or the Middle East, it was everywhere. You can paint it any way you like, but every part of this painful chain contributed to the problem instead to the solution. The Commonwealth is merely a reformed system of former British colonies where the head of state is still far away from their shores, yet its photo is still hanging on their walls. Curiously, the British pound is the currency in Saint Helena, the island where Napoleon Bonaparte met his death. A far cry from his imperial ambitions shattered by his crippling addiction to power.
All the fashionable apologies in global politics would make you very rich if your business was baking humble pie. Showbusiness has a propensity for treating Twitter like an archaeologic dig where your own past is subjected to such a detailed research it puts the FBI to shame. So much so that there should be a department in archaeology studies dedicated to social media and character assasination. Don’t buy into the dedication to human rights in modern showbusiness regarding people of color, minorities or women. They’re in it only for a payday or damage control should they find themselves too close to Harvey Weinstein or Ghislaine Maxwell.
Speaking of Napoleon’s final destination, St Helena, a British outward territory, is currently in focus due to their own past ties to slavery. There are requests to return the remains of slaves, uncovered during construction work at the local airport, to their countries of origin in Africa. It took 14 years before they were properly reburied. The local authorities are facing the prospect of legal actions agains them if they should fail to solve the issue in a satisfying way. The repatriation initiative gained a lot of visibility due to continuing action to honor and preserve the memory of the victims of African slave trade.
I have to say that the whole obsession with ancestry is foreign to me. I live in a country where it’s little more than a pretext for wars, political instability and a staggering genocide. That was explained away as a retribution for 400 years of Ottoman rule. Essentially, we’re reduced to hostages of our ancestors weaponised as fuel for ambitions of leaders. Their need to cross every Rubicon does nothing apart from canonising ancestors while you’re reduced to canon fodder at the same time. I’ve had enough of the mythical forefathers and carrying the burden of an internalised historical grudge against whoever happens to be the enemy.
While we all wallow in someone else’s sins from the past, sinking our hands into blood-soaked pits of Napoleon’s island planted with the bones of thousands of African children, the other side of the narrative is disproportinally investigated at the root on home soil. The reckoning with the heritage of African traders isn’t nearly as much in focus as it should be, compared to kingdoms who are hailed for abolishing slavery like England. Then there are Jewish slaves in ancient Egypt. Those enslaved by African kingdoms themselves are only vaguely familiar to many of us. It’s not an overstatement the average person knows little about this particular story.
Wherever and however it occurs, the effect of slavery necessarily leaves a bitter taste and a perpetual trauma that unfortunately tends to be used as a hand grenade more than an olive branch. Don’t let your own pain turn into a knife in someone else’s hand. This triggers a domino effect dragging everything in its way into chaos which doesn’t discriminate between the culprit and the innocent. I’ve seen it happening so many times it’s puzzling how we still manage to fall for it. Yet we do. Those who left their bones on foreign soil by no fault of their own deserve our respect and commitment to prevent something like that from happening again. Commitment to learn from our mistakes. Something we’re not particularly successful at.
With the rise of liberal capitalism, a new sort of slavery emerged though. While it took a while for all of us to get our foot in the door of this game, including women and people of color, that time is always longer than it’s supposed to be. When in fact it shouldn’t be the case at all, but you can only burn one bridge to mistakes of the past at a time. Eventually we got to the ultimate one, where there’s no glass ceiling in sight, nor a sustainable solution because the very notion of it is labeled as socialism. That’s the favorite boogeyman of American Republicans used to scare you away from thinking equality should be more inclusive than what’s currently exercised.
The competitive market at the basis of this system has to evolve and increase the economic gap between us in order to flourish. If there’s no growth of spending, there’s no increase in production. Curiously, a society that depends so much on excessive production is still trying to profess their commitment to the fight against pollution and mountains of its own waste, swimming around the shores of a place very far away from their eyes. Maybe a place like St Helena, a graveyard of their guilt in more ways than one. It gives a new meaning to out of sight, out of mind. It’s true. We’re so out of our mind that we confused substance with appearance. It’s just the method that changed, but the shackles and the whip are still there.
The puppet master is no longer wearing a crown. It’s in your bank statement, inside the ATM, on utility bills, abstract numbers with very real consequences. They determine your freedom without getting their hands dirty. Try and skip two payments of your mortgage, soon there’ll be someone coming over to seize your assets. Someone told me the beauty of life is in the freedom of choise. But it comes at a price that turns it into an illusion. The required compromises can be hard to swallow. Could you endure a peace of mind if what’s out of sight is less than pretty? This is a dilemma many will face when they embark on their way to success.
In theatre, if a gun is on stage , it has to shoot. There are no coincidences in a play but life isn’t a theatre play. Shakespeare wrote all the world is a stage. Things outside our power make a difference between pawns and kings. We’re all slaves to something. Grace Jones, for example, is slave to the rhythm. Codependance is the most inclusive thing of all, by neccessity or force. If we are ever to break the shackles of capitalism, we have to be prepared for the uncertainty of what lies ahead. Let’s hope it won’t involve trading someone else’s bones for your own happiness. But if human nature is anything to go by, that’s likely too much to ask.
