Abstract

SILVA, Maria Cardeira da. Sustainable emotions: the front and backstages of slavery in Gorée Island. Etnográfica [online]. 2021, vol.25, n.2, pp.437-464.  Epub Nov 25, 2021. ISSN 0873-6561.  https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.10388.

More than merely symbolic, destinations of roots tourism such as Gorée Island (Senegal) are places where emotion about slavery is supposed to be experienced and displayed. UNESCO statements, political testimonies by distinguished visitors, performances of well-known African American artists and comments of tourists seem to testify this. I modestly argue that, by evoking feelings, presumably shared, about slavery in a setting that exacerbates emotions through touristic performances, the idea of international community is here re-enacted and sustained, under the principle of the universality of human rights. I believe that the global heritage regime promoted by UNESCO and other similar international platforms could be considered the strongest apparatuses to induce common belonging crosscutting national borders while spreading cosmopolitan liberal ethics and forms of cosmopolitan memory that are no longer primarily framed by the nation state. The question here, is that the very idea of international community is built with the same imagination, devices and displays and based on the same nationalist assumption of pan-cultural emotions that Anderson described for the rise of nations, but one that, paradoxically, is inter-national, made of nations: a metanation.

Keywords : international community; slavery; roots tourism; Gorée Island; cosmopolitan emotions.

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