Life and death according to the ‘episteme’ of the fort

Abstract

In Amy Powell’s essay social death’ offers a prism through which to analyse the said painting and specifically what it conceals – namely, the bodies of Black Africans sold into the transatlantic slave trade from storerooms located immediately beneath the sumptuous chamber depicted here. Wilre, portrayed as director of the WIC at the Dutch fort of Elmina on the ‘gold coast’ of West Africa, profited hugely from this trade even as he obfuscated the source of his wealth in images like this portrait. Powell’s analysis asks us to consider how those basement storerooms, and victims of the slave trade they contained, are ever present in De Wit’s painting, even as they are not figuratively represented. Her reading of two pictures within this picture draws attention to those who have suffered social death. The embedded pictures appear to reflect back to aspects of Wilre’s experience at Elmina as well as the impossibility of fully seeing the bodies marked, dismembered, and ultimately annihilated through the slave trade.