The absent presence of Paul Robeson in Wales: Appropriation and philosophical disconnects in the memorial landscape

Abstract

Memorialisation of specific individuals necessitates processes of remembering and forgetting, memory work, and obfuscation. The African American Paul Robeson is considered an "honorary Welshman" and a "Welsh achiever." How could Robeson, erased from the history books in his own country, be appropriated by popular vote as a Welsh national hero? This paper questions how Robeson's philosophies, evident in his arts and actions, were memorialised into those of a Welsh hero through the theoretical lens of absent presence and geographies of biography. I explore this relationship between Wales and Robeson further to understand his influence and commemorative presence in Wales via the material memorial landscape of Robeson and how he is represented within broader Welsh memorialisation and nationalism. Through the discourse of the memorial landscapes of Wales, elements of his philosophy may be over-or under-represented.For example, he connected with the strong socialist history in Wales, but the complexity of Robeson's philosophical framework remains absent. Why were only some of his philosophical beliefs transmitted into Welsh society and the memorial landscape? This paper reveals both the presence and absence of Paul Robeson's complex biography in the material memorial landscape in Wales. As a case study on the inclusion of (auto)biographical knowledge in the context of complex geographies and landscapes, this work frames biographical inclusion and exclusion as vital geographic concerns, particularly in the precarious Black geographies of Paul Robeson in Wales. In so doing, it further reifies the indelible connections between geography, biography, and the socio-political contexts from which memorial landscapes emerge.

More-than-human heritage: The political ecologies of the Paul Robeson tomato

“…In historical and cultural geographies of memory, the memorial entrepreneur is often a significant participant in memory work (Alderman & Inwood, 2013;Muzaini, 2013;Rhodes, 2021). This entrepreneurial spirit has a financial stake, greater than a social or political motive.…”

“…Together, we write this after several years of research on the memorialization of the famous Black activist and artist Paul Robeson (Rhodes, 2016(Rhodes, , 2021). Robeson's memory, while mentioned only occasionally, particularly in the United States, resides within college campuses, theatrical and musical productions, a few more traditional plaques and works of public art, and through his own work.…”

Geographies of race and ethnicity 1: Black geographies

“…In making this heuristic move, I am beginning with a somewhat reductive version of what Black Geographies is. In contrast to Hawthorne (2019), who is rightly keen to emphasise its antecedents and connections, rather than beginning by tracing its routes and futures into its myriad transnational ties with an anti-colonial Black politics that echoes through from Black Freedom Fighters, fugitives and intellectuals in Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and Europe (see for example James 1998; Mudimbe, 1988; Rhodes 2021), in this section I am confining Black Geographies to ‘Black Geographies’ so named. In asserting that Black Geographies is definitively African-American in origin, I am locating its starting point in the considerable labours of Black geographers in the US, particularly women like LaToya Eaves, who pushed successfully for an institutional recognition that takes its most visible form in the Black Geographies Specialty Group, formed in 2016, at the American Association of Geographers (Hawthorne, 2019).…”

Global Perspectives on the Absent Presence of Marginalised Children and Young People in the Public Realm

“…The idea of an absent presence has permeated different fields of geographical scholarship over many years, including population geography (McKendrick 2001), emotional geographies of heritage spaces (Micieli‐Voutsinas 2017; Rhodes 2021), gender geographies (Willis et al . 2015), social and cultural geography (Hetheringon 2004), urban geography (Callon & Law 2004; Gulson 2007) and children's geographies (Valentine 2010; Blazek & Esson 2019).…”