The Slave House as Symbolic Artifact

Abstract

The Slave House on Gorée Island is a sacred, spiritual mecca representing the transformational passage of descendants whose ancestors were displaced from continental Africa through the Trans-Atlanta slave trade. This visual essay presents an autoethnographic exploration—including first person narrative voice—to discuss spaces, places, and architectural structures central both to the Slave House as an architectural structure and to the context of Black identity. The structure, we argue, speaks of architectural beatification by Black ancestral spirits at a critical cultural moment of cultural diasporic creation and displacement of spirit and identity. It acts as a witness to the trauma of ancestral separation, the cultural memory transmitted through every taken step, and the common experience of displacement and identity that emotionally connects the present with the past.