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Community Heritage Activism in the American South: Black Counter-reenactments as Mnemonic Restitution

Bond, Lucy, Hensby, Alexander (2025) Community Heritage Activism in the American South: Black Counter-reenactments as Mnemonic Restitution. Memory Studies, 18 (2). pp. 475-491. ISSN 1750-6980. (In press) (doi:10.1177/17506980251320777) (Access to this publication is currently restricted. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:108629)

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https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980251320777

Abstract

This article explores the use of counter-reenactment by Black community heritage organisations in the Deep South. By counter-reenactment, we refer to the creation and dissemination of a Black living history that challenges the white master-narrative of the regional past. In Sadiya Hartman’s (p. 85) terms, counter-reenactments ‘redress’ the suffering of historical Black bodies by ‘counterinvesting in the [contemporary] body as a site of possibility’. These performances are commonly staged at sites of historic violence where tangible Black heritage has been erased. Using Miss Lou Heritage Group & Tours from Natchez, Mississippi, as a case study, we suggest that counter-reenactments rematerialise African American history in a memorial landscape where Black experience is structurally invisibilised, enacting a form of ‘mnemonic restitution’ that resists the depleting effects of everyday racism, past and present.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1177/17506980251320777
Uncontrolled keywords: counter-reenactment, racism, civic estrangement, mnemonic restitution, right to a city, heritage activism, tangible heritage, intangible heritage
Subjects: F History United States, Canada, Latin America
F History United States, Canada, Latin America > F1 United States local history
H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
Divisions: Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research
Funders: University of Kent (https://ror.org/00xkeyj56)
Depositing User: Alexander Hensby
Date Deposited: 04 Feb 2025 13:06 UTC
Last Modified: 07 May 2025 02:43 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/108629 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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