Episode description

The Untold City with Dr. Dominique Somda

Slave trade researcher Dr. Dominique Somda says monuments which honor colonisers should not be removed from our cities. They should be spectacularly subverted.

In this episode of The Future City Podcast we speak with anthropologist and author Dr. Dominique Somda about why keeping slave histories a secret suppresses the evolution of our cities and their inhabitants.

Somda outlines how people in cities interact based on what they know and ignore about each other and secrecy and hidden memories make city dwellers uncomfortable to engage in their shared history.

Somda says digital humanity and subversion of monuments which are partially removed or marked with new interpretations can transform the glory of the coloniser to one which is more grotesque and shameful. This is how we initiate a new dialogue in the public space about our secret past. Without this, she claims, secrecy is the enemy of liberation.