Legacies

How has 'being English' been narrated? How has the legacy of colonial enslavement been denied or forgotten? How are 'we' to become more cognizant of how cultural memory is constructed and received; and how do we begin to learn to listen to (voices within) silence? This chapter explores these questions by diagramming, between law and literature, connections, shared contours and creative co-incidences: in the estate of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park; in breathing the air of freedom (?) in Lord Mansfield's Somerset judgment; through a symbolic reading of Dido Belle's portrait (and a realistic account of the absence of her mother); to a moment of choice and the significance of aeriel sounds in The Tempest. Framed by the post-war production of narratives of English (and colonial) history, and the processes of a collective cultural amnesia which resulted, this paper is intended to contribute to the emergence of law/literature as a space (and a method) for opening and exploring progressive ways of listening and speaking within and against the constraints of 'our' post/colonial heritage.