Our Colonial Inheritance

Our Colonial Inheritance explores the complex ways in which slavery and colonialism continue to shape the present, and examines the many entanglements of colonial knowledge systems and infrastructures with our everyday lives. This publication comes at a time when important conversations are happening about the role that the colonial past has played in shaping our society, and how we can engage with this past in the present. The use of the term "inheritance" in the title is a conscious choice, used to provoke what in our view is a different kind of relationship to the past. Throughout the publication, the authors interrogate what it means to inherit the (infra)structures of the colonial past, its categories, its relations and even its objects, and how we can deal with such bequests.

Wayne Modest is Director of Content of the National Museum of World Culture and the Wereldmuseum Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. He is also Professor (by special appointment) of Material Culture and Critical Heritage Studies at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. His most recent publications include the co-edited publications, Matters of Belonging: Ethnographic Museums in A Changing Europe (Sidestone Publications, 2019, together with Nick Thomas, et al), and Victorian Jamaica (Duke University press: 2018, together with Tim Barringer).