Metahistory as diaspora practice: mobilising the Dutch black radical tradition

Challenging dominant historical narratives that gloss over the history of colonialism and slavery, black collectives in the Netherlands are increasingly turning to the history of history writing (metahistory) by black radical thinkers. Counter histories in which transatlantic slavery features central, serve to situate ongoing practices of institutional racism and to articulate claims to citizenship and national memory. Placing different mobilizations of these histories in an international context, we identify two repertoires through which activists invoke them: iconicity and articulation. While both emphasise the importance of tradition, iconicity highlights the canonisation of persons and events and suggests that they can be drawn upon for inspiration in all times, and places. Traditions formed through articulation are brought into existence as part of the cultural-political work of mobilisation, when the mobilisation ends they may be reinterpreted and rearticulated to a new political context. These repertoires are not mutually exclusive and may even be mutually constitutive. However, this article shows different uses of alternative histories in the Netherlands and highlights the tensions between the two registers to understand ongoing formations of antiracist and anticolonial political subjectivities.