Law and Black Agency in Memories of Abolition: Human Rights and Slavery Films

Abolitionism holds a privileged place in human rights historiography. In scholarship and the wider social world, the abolition of slavery has frequently been celebrated as a foundational human rights moment. This celebratory discourse has also impinged on the medium of cinema: slavery films frequently propagate the view that abolition was a "gift" codified in law. In this reductionist discourse, law is configured as the guarantor of freedom and Black resistance to slavery is marginalised. By this strategy, the history of slavery is transfigured into a platform for the celebration of white moral indignation via attention to a canonised set of white patriarchs conceived of as philanthropic, moral crusaders, who are recognisably the forerunners of today's white saviour "human rights heroes". However, as we know, Black agency was also a decisive force in bringing Atlantic slavery to an end - most spectacularly in Haiti. Gillo Pontecorvo's undervalued 1969 film Burn! offers an ideological critique of abolitionism and holds untapped potential for the radicalisation of human rights discourse today. Refusing the debilitating narrative that abolition was a legally encoded humanitarian gift, Burn! insists upon Black agency as a central historical force in the story of an as yet incomplete struggle for liberation.