The Past
is Not Dead: Facts, Fictions, and Enduring
Racial Stereotypes
by Allan Pred
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,
MN, 2004
288 pp., illus. 9 b/w. Trade, $68.95;
Paper, $22.95
ISBN: 0-8166-4405-5; ISBN: 0-8166-4406-3.
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
Saginaw Valley State University, USA
mosher@svsu.edu
An attractive pastel portrait hangs in
the Sweden's National Portrait Gallery.
It is of Adolph Ludvig Gustav Albrecht
Couschi, better known as Badin, an Afro-Caribbean
man, who arrived in slavery at the Swedish
court in the mid-eighteenth century and
lived there until his death in 1822. One
of his functions was that of a jester,
and his name lives on in the term "badinage"
for teasing and jest. There were rumors
of his romantic dalliance with the Queen,
less a result of Badin's virility than
the supposed disinterest of King Gustave
III. Besides the dignified portrait that
inspires the author and appears on the
book's cover, there were exaggerated contemporary
caricatures of Badin published that showed
him dwarfish, ape-like, grotesque.
Allan Pred teaches Geography at the University
of California in Berkeley. A previous
book examined the racisms, racialized
spaces, and the popular geographical imagination
in Sweden, and this book continues to
study those topics. The Past is Not
Dead provides evidence of how Badin
negotiated his role in the court, often
with selections from his memoirs or the
writings of Badin's contemporaries like
Linnaeus, the classification-minded scientist.
The book shifts to unpleasant racial stereotypes
that persist in a modern European nation
that prides itself on its liberality while
maintaining segregated suburbs and boneheaded
ideas about people who simply don't fit
the Swedes' image of themselves.
The author's postmodernist technique jolts
the reader, but perhaps it is intended
to decenter. Professor Pred credits Walter
Benjamin for his inspiration to write
aphoristically and to switch and juxtapose
genres, as he feels necessary. Pred fashionably
accessories his narrative with parenthetical
insertions (sometimes fey puns) to subvert
the text and its singularity. He inserts
long poetical passages, free-verse meditations
on Badin and his world. Suddenly we find
the author writing a historical novel,
putting thoughts in Badin's head. We eventually
synchronize with the pace and direction
of this seasoned scholar who is clearly
enjoying his right to compose his case
in the manner(s) he sees fit. Pred makes
good use of his stylistic freedom, and
we are given a difficult subjectthe
persistence of racisminvestigated
memorably through the life of an interesting
historical personage and the society that
dimly remembers him today.