Roots tourism, documentarism and representations of race

The paper discusses representations of race in the Danish documentary series,
Slavernes slægt (Slaves in the Family). The series aims at presenting a critical
perspective on the story of Danish colonial history as it is conventionally told by
following Scandinavian descendants of slaves from the former Danish colony of the
West Indies as they travel ‘back’ to the West Indies in order to search for their
‘roots’. In the paper I will focus on the participants’ representations of race in
relation to the series’ overall narrative framing. It turns out that the representation
of race that is generated through the overall narrative of the series is highly
ambivalent, and that the individual participants’ representations of race are on the
one hand saturated with historical meaning, and on the other hand negotiated in
relation to the very specific individual life projects.