The precarious agency of racialised recaptives

In the summer of 2020, Black Lives Matter protestors toppled the statue of slave trader Edward Colston into Bristol Harbour. Debates on monuments, in particular monuments to the men who sustained, supported, and benefited from racialising practices such as the slave trade, continue to divide. In Bristol, where there was agreement on removing the Colston statue from its prominent position, the debate soon moved to the question of who or what should replace the fallen statue.1 A recurring suggestion has been to replace Colston's statue with that of British abolitionist William Wilberforce.2 Wilberforce, along with Thomas Clarkson and George Fox, is among the names of those white British men credited with successfully influencing the necessary policies and laws to ban the slave trade, and later slavery itself. This narrative is very much in line with a redemptive story of slavery at the imperial centre. The abolition of the

Statue · White (mutation · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Sex work and related issues