Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how memories of empire and race shape how people relate to each other in ethno-racially diverse urban spaces of postcolonial Europe. Building on fieldwork in Brixton (London), it scrutinises what happens when White denizens are increasingly affected by Black imperial memories.

Paper long abstract:

As a critical point of settlement for post-war/postcolonial immigration, the South London district of Brixton is known for its Black population as well as for its history of Black anti-racist activism. For a long time, violent local-cum-global histories of empire and (anti-)racism have only circulated within these Black communities. Black memories and historical perspectives have remained overshadowed by dominant White British ones. However, through recent Black counter-memory work particularly present in Brixton, these dominant perspectives have been increasingly and publicly challenged. Thus, White Brixtonians increasingly encounter and engage with Black memories/histories, too. I explore how these ‘histories’-and-‘memories’ shape their ‘historical consciousness’ and, as such, re-articulate their relations to their Black neighbours.

I argue that these changing historical consciousnesses reproduce 'race' (including Whiteness) in close dialogue with Brixton's spatial configurations. Discussing ongoing local Black (counter-)memory work, I expose the entangled role of history, space, and 'race' in the articulation of its everyday relations. First, I demonstrate how Brixton’s 'Black Histories' have become spatially materialised and have taken an increasingly central place in Brixtonians' imagination of the district. Zooming in on two sets of spaces and local historical narratives, I then show how White Brixtonians’ spatially embedded historical consciousness manifests itself in various ways but consistently reproduces 'race' as a structuring element of Brixton’s everyday life. Sometimes, it generates cross-racial solidarity. Yet, in a context of growing gentrification, it also gets co-opted, aestheticised, and commercialised, resulting in the very re-institutionalisation of Whiteness and withholding the district from a ‘decolonial future.’