About this Event
Economics historians would describe ‘absentee enslavers’ as people who managed enslaved Africans and the land they toiled on while geographically and psychologically removed from the terror of the plantation. Further, as half of the £20m compensation paid to the enslavers in 1834 went to the 2900 absentees in Britain (Hall et al, 2014: 1; UCL, n.p).
Agreeing with Edward Said’s discussion of Jane Austen’s countryside built off enslavement (Said, 1993: 109-110; Said and Barsamian, 1994: 71), this lecture places Bridgerton into contexts of absentee enslavement. It challenges the popular framing of rich ‘nice white liberals’ (Sullivan, 2014; Daniels, 2021; DiAngelo, 2022), reframing them as ‘terrorists’ (hooks, 1993; Yancy, 2016). Here, profits of enslaved labour uphold regency culture lauded by fans.
Following the opening series where the Black lead Simon was sexually assaulted forced to impregnate his white wife, this is a world where white supremacy and its associated systems exist. It is time viewers start reading Bridgerton and regency romance more widely, including Austen, through the violence of empire that built and sustained the regency, and set the conditions for the forming of Victorian Britain.
Bio
Tré Ventour-Griffiths is a disabled independent, multidisciplined scholar-creative, writer, journalist, theorist, and speaker who speaks/writes on subjects broadly contained within Black history, pop culture and global inequalities. His PhD research uses arts-based methods to discuss the Black presence in provincial England. Tré’s work in screen studies, literature, heritage, and media has also helped bring conversations about whiteness into regency romance, including Bridgerton and Jane Austen. His work on disability and race is central to his current projects, hybridising ideas found in pop culture (notably superheroes and Star Trek) with ‘trad academia’ to make conversations about inequalities more accessible beyond the university.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Eton Avenue, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00