Abstract:
This study examines members of the African-American African Diaspora's search for belonging and identity. The study's route into this world is via YouTube videos of tours of Elmina castle and the comments posted on these sites. The videos are of African American visitors to Elmina slave castle off the coast of Ghana. Elmina, built in 1462 by the Portuguese, functioned as a holding depot where slaves captured in the African interior by west coast African slaving empires were sold to European and American slave ship captains during the period of the Atlantic slave trade. The dungeons below the castles were the last places in Africa captives would inhabit before their journey into subjection in the Americas. Today Elmina is an UNESCO world heritage site, which every year hosts thousands of the descendants of these captives. Many members of the African Diaspora make the journey to this site in an attempt to reconstruct their fractured genealogies. Moreover, many come, driven by feelings of alienation from American society, to this site of trauma seeking a connection not only to long lost ancestors but to a place in the world, Africa, in which they hope to feel a sense of true belonging. Emotional geographies, racial identity construction, and a sense of the sacred all converge at this traumatic site.
