Language Policy Dependency and Slavery Studies
With its mission to explore phenomena of asymmetrical dependency, the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS) and its book series Dependency and Slavery Studies work against forms of gatekeeping which may put obstacles in the way of scholarly work in English felt to be non-standard. The Center and its book series understand language to be intimately connected to power structures and strive to foster an awareness of epistemic dependencies resulting from linguistic dependencies. Given that language is multiply situated and constantly evolving, the editors of Dependency and Slavery Studies do not insist on conformity to the traditional binary standard Englishes (British and American). Authors are thus encouraged to write in their national or regional variety of English.

In the context of the global cultural heritage boom, community-based and national identity projects in the Caribbean intersect with the interest in cultural tourism to the region, including sites commemorating enslavement. In former plantation slavery societies, in which descendants of enslavers and descendants of enslaved Africans live together, power and property relations are still marked by the slavery past. Calls for reparations made on European states and local descendants of enslavers for the enslavement of African people are a source of political and social conflicts. This volume, appearing at the beginning of the Second International Decade for People of African Descent, refers to the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of enslavement and its long-term consequences in the Caribbean and Circum-Caribbean, such as Anti-Black racism and racialized social inequality. It treats sites of commemoration and of denial, the representation of enslavement and of African cultures in museums, and dominant discourses on national history as well as in counter-narratives of the descendants of the enslaved and Maroons. Chapters on Jamaica, Martinique, French Guiana/Suriname, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Colombia reflect the diversity of collective memories and public history approaches towards material and immaterial vestiges of slavery. The book is intended for scholars, students, teachers and the wider public.