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  JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH 
 

 

 

SYMPOSIUM: USING WORLD-HISTORY TO INFORM WORK 
FOR REPARATIONS 
 

Reparations, Restitution, Transitional Justice 
The International Network of Scholars and Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR) 
 
Joyce Hope Scott 

Boston University 
hopescot@bu.edu  

 

 

One of the guiding questions of this symposium is “Can world historical research provide a tool 

to help today’s communities provide just restoration [reparations, restitution, and atonement] for 

historically oppressed communities [and allow for a restructuring of] institutions that were founded 

upon slavery and genocide?” The answer might be to consider what is meant by history. If history 

does, indeed, function as an archive of human experience, then testimonies from communities that 

have been, and continue to be, negatively impacted by structures of systemic racism, inequality, 

and colonization become crucial for informing discourses around the oppression and dispossession 

of African-descended people and their claim for reparative justice. As this essay will explore, the 

importance of voice and testimony has been at the heart of the work of the International Network 

of Scholars and Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR) since its inception in 2017. 

Toni Morrison discussed the centrality of history in her address to the 2004 graduating class 

of Wellesley College. She reminded us of the crucial nature of historical narrative, but at the same 

time of history’s ability to construct lapses of memory that create a comfortable forgetting of those 

events that horrify us:   

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The past is already in debt to the mismanaged present. And besides, contrary to 
what you may have heard or learned, the past is not done and it is not over, it’s still 
in process…The past is already changing as it is being reexamined, as it is being 
listened to for deeper resonances. Actually, it can be more liberating than any 
imagined future if you are willing to identify its evasions, its distortions, its lies, 
and are willing to unleash its secrets (2004). 
 

Pierre Nora’s famous work, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire” (1989), 

offers a fitting complement to Morrison’s observation on history and its power as an omnipresent 

feature of our present lives when he notes that memory is always in evolution and susceptible to 

the dialectic while history is a reconstruction of the past and thus lacking in the fact of its existence 

as a representation of the past. He goes on to say: “History’s goal and ambition is not to exalt but 

to annihilate what has in reality taken place” (1989:9). Here, Nora seems to think of memory as 

suspect and appears to construct it in opposition to the empirical basis of history. In contrast, 

Morrison (2004) suggests that history is unstable and questions whether it can serve as an empirical 

referent since it is “already changing as it is being examined.” Thus, the implication is that 

memory, though an unofficial factor in discourses of the past, must be engaged for its power to 

create a counter-narrative to official history by destabilizing its monologue.   

In essence, then, history as a “usable past” can be viewed as a reservoir of sites of memory 

and, therefore of vital information when considering calls for reparation and transitional justice for 

the transatlantic trafficking in captive Africans and their subsequent enslavement as chattel 

property. We can hear the voices and memories of that struggle if we chart the historical trajectory 

of reparations activism. It becomes evident that the struggle for restitution and restorative justice 

for slavery, colonization, and Jim Crow segregation has a long and varied history, one that is 

interwoven into the legacy of African resistance to enslavement (and colonization). One of the 

earliest examples can be traced back to 1783, when Belinda Sutton, an African-born woman 

enslaved by the Royall family, petitioned the Massachusetts General Court to claim a pension/ 

reparations for herself and her daughter from the estate of Isaac Royall (Winbush 2009). Four years 

later in the United Kingdom, the formerly enslaved African abolitionist, Attobah Kwodjo Enu 

(Ottobah Cugoano), became the first published African author in English to denounce the so-called 

“trade” and “to claim the African human right to resistance against enslavement and to advocate 

in writing the demand for reparations including restitution” ([1787] 1999). Viewed from a 

historical perspective, these former captives sought reparative justice and restitution for the 

damages suffered by a brutal system that was eventually abolished. However, some contemporary 

scholars and activists read the carceral nature of Black lives as an ongoing manifestation of the 

same forces; thus, the term the “Maangamizi,” a Swahili word for the ongoing, intentional 

orchestration of the African Holocaust that chattel slavery, colonialism, neo- colonialism, and the 

“New Jim Crow” represent (Stop the Maangamizi 2016).  

The International Network of Scholars and Activists for African Reparations (INOSAAR), 

created in 2017, offers a forum for exploring history as a useful tool for considering repair and 

restorative justice for the crimes against humanity that chattel slavery represents. INOSAAR is a 

trans-Atlantic project coordinated by two scholars: Dr. Nicola Frith of the University of Edinburgh 



 

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and Professor Joyce Hope Scott of the former Wheelock College (now Wheelock College of 

Education and Human Development at Boston University, United States). Their mutual 

commitment & interest in reparative histories is what first brought them together around the issue 

of reparations at a conference at Brighton University.  

 In collaboration with activists based in Europe, West Africa and the Americas, the two 

scholars spearheaded the creation of the INOSAAR, which was established with funding provided 

by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) through their Research Networking 

Grant related to the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (IDPAD, 

2015-24). Since its inauguration, INOSAAR’s central purpose has been to create an international 

network of scholars and activists dedicated to advancing the academic and activist legacy of 

redress for reparations and other forms of transitional justice for the enslavement, colonization and 

genocide of peoples of African descent. The crucial concern was the importance of listening to 

testimonies and memories of the marginalized and oppressed. This is particularly crucial in the 

United Kingdom, where the work of activists and their approaches to world-historical research in 

relation to reparations has historically marginalized the insights of those from grassroots and 

activist communities. 

Specifically, the official establishment of the organization was the outgrowth of a historic 

international conference, entitled “Repairing the Past, Imagining the Future: Reparations and 

Beyond” (2015). Coordinated by Hope Scott and Frith, this conference marked the two hundred 

year anniversary of the first international agreement to abolish slavery during the Congress of 

Vienna of 1815, and the 150th anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery in the 

United States.
 
They identified the two anniversaries as a timely occasion in which to discuss the 

subject of reparations from a range of disciplinary backgrounds. Despite their open intentions, 

however, it was pointed out that the format, beause it was “fee-paying,” risked marginalizing the 

grassroots stakeholders in the matter of Reparatory Justice and excluding “the majority of voices 

which ought to be an indispensable part of this…cross-fertilizing dialogue” (PARCOE letter 

2015).  

PARCOE’s appeal and the positive response provided by the organizers was the catalyst for 

creating the INOSAAR as it aimed to eliminate the chasm between academics and activists on an 

international scale around the subject of reparations and restorative justice for African slavery and 

colonization. The strategy for achieving this goal was a series of open workshops and seminars, 

which concluded with a major international conference held in the Republic of Bénin, during 

which time INOSAAR explored the challenges of building solidarity around reparations in 

multiple ways. The key outcome of that conference was the adoption and signing of the Porto-

Novo Declaration (2018) by his majesty Kpoto Zounmè Hakpon III, King of Porto-Novo (now 

deceased) on behalf of the Bénin Conseil des Rois (Council of Kings). This Declaration is a 

historical landmark in that it is the first of its kind in history. The Declaration is an invitation for 

“African states and their diplomatic leadership to join with civil society to formulate policies and 

establish operational committees in order to institutionalize and advocate the claim for reparatory 

justice” (Porto-Novo Declaration 2018).  



 

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The first focus through these events was on expanding our collective understandings of the 

possible meanings of reparation. This involved, first of all, addressing some important gaps in 

current research on reparations by expanding the orthodox focus on legal and economic arguments 

for repair through the incorporation of cultural, spiritual, environmental and psychological 

approaches. Second was the focus on encouraging cross-community collaborations by working 

alongside grassroots activist groups and state and non-state actors from Europe, America, Africa, 

and the Caribbean who are engaged in the movement for reparatory justice. The participation and 

contributions of these diverse groups have been central to shaping INOSAAR’s agenda of 

promoting academic and community engagement that is rooted in the praxis of decolonization, 

pluriversality, and cognitive justice; i.e., the equity of all knowledges.  

Thus, by definition, INOSAAR subscribes to a variety of alternative approaches like those 

proposed by activists and others from the arts and humanities that have emerged from historical 

discourse out of the gaping breach in justice and the failure to address reparations for crimes 

against humanity. This is supported by recent scholarship on reparations that has underscored the 

need to expand the definition of reparations for African enslavement to take into account the 

agential nature of some of the historical activities by Black people and their communities in their 

quest for restitution. These include the founding of all-Black towns and settlements in the United 

States, slave rebellions, in particular the Haitian war of liberation, and formation of maroon 

communities like the quilombolas, Black freedom communities of Brazil (Farfan-Santos 2016) 

and the Seminole wars of Florida where escaped African captives and Indigenous Americans 

fought the U.S. army to preserve their free communities (Missall and Missall 2016; Dixon 2014; 

Field 2009). 

Those approaching reparations from the perspective that the humanities have had a powerful 

impact in history on societal events also characterize some activist or grassroots actions as 

reparatory. To begin with, the Black Arts Movement can be reassessed by defining it, as Larry 

Neal suggests, “as the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept…that proposes a 

radical reordering of the western cultural aesthetic and entails the creation of a separate symbolism, 

mythology, critique, and iconology” (1968:29). Neal’s platform connects to a major liberatory 

concern of reparation scholars and activists today relating to the health of the African mind and 

spirit. That is his affirmation that his “primary duty [was to speak]…to the spiritual and cultural 

needs of Black people” (Neale 1968:29). Several years later, Ibekwe Chinweizu echoed this 

concern for repair of spiritual grounding of African people on the continent and in its diasporas in 

his address on the idea of reparations, saying: “Reparation is mostly about making repairs, self-

made repairs, on ourselves: mental repairs, psychological repairs, cultural repairs…repairs of 

every type that we need in order to recreate and sustain black societies” (Chinweizu 1993).  

What emerges from this very brief historical overview is the need for a multidirectional and 

multidimensional definition of reparations that is open to a rich variety of approaches, while 

remaining focused on the need to repair the damage caused as result of slavery as a crime against 

humanity. The two current areas of focus of the INOSAAR grow out of this area of need. The first 

relates to “rematriation,” meaning the process by which the descendants of those who were forcibly 



 

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displaced from Africa as a result of European-led enslavement return culturally and spiritually to 

African knowledge banks. This notion acknowledges that slavery was not only theft of the body 

and its creations but also, and equally important was the impact of enslavement on severing of the 

African captive from the metaphysical knowledge and connection that informs the very foundation 

of human identity; in this case, of the Black self. African cultural knowledge legacy is clearly an 

important issue in considerations of historical repair and transitional justice. The enslavement and 

colonization experiment caused incalculable psychological and spiritual damage to the sensibilities 

of African-descended people. Ray Winbush argues that “The psychological damage of the 

transatlantic Slave Trade is traceable throughout the African World” (2005:vii). He continues by 

noting the inadequacy of language to capture the depths of that loss: 

 
Words such as “Black Holocaust” are inadequate in their attempt to describe what 
happened (is happening) to Africans whose ancestors were victims of enslavement, 
colonialism, cultural theft and exploitation. In an attempt to describe this horrific 
experience, Marimba Ani, author of Let the Circle Be Unbroken offers the 
Kiswahili term Maafa to emphasize the continuing impact of enslavement on 
African people’s thought patterns and behavior. Joyce DeGruy Leary coined the 
phrase “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome” which also describes this impact….In 
this sense, the struggle for reparations is not only economic but psychological as 
well. (2005:vii) 
 

Winbush affirms that “this internal repair is a vital step and should be recognized as such” 

(2005:vii). Further, according to him, it is a need that transcends the “classroom and the therapy 

session and…[becomes] overtly political since white supremacist systems continue the legacy of 

damaging African people” (2005:vii). Sowandé M. Mustakeem (2016) also writes of this psyche 

violation that captive Africans suffered in her text Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex and Sickness in the 

Middle Passage: “Psychologically scarred from their forcible exile…[the African captives] found 

themselves insulated within yet another violent world of disorienting trauma – this time off ship” 

(2016:173). 

 Following rematriation, INOSAAR’s second focus relates to “planet repairs;” that is to say, 

the ways in which the struggle for reparative justice is linked to concerns with environmentalism, 

ecocide and sustainable development. In this initiative, INOSAAR seeks to develop some of the 

most creative and original ideas that emerged as priorities during the events organized as part of 

the AHRC-funding [AH/P007074/1]. INOSAAR envisions moving forward with its goal of 

embracing the disparate voices of this movement, their histories embellished by their memories. 

A future goal is to facilitate a series of community-based and culturally innovative projects around 

reparations; the nature and format of these will be determined in collaboration with the identified 

beneficiaries – African and African descended communities. 

Ultimately, what the legacy of the Transatlantic Slave Trade is for the African continent is 

still in debate. Historiographers agree that many millions of its population were forced into the 

barbary of enslavement followed by lingering racial injustices, and current realities reveal 

continuation of historical, neocolonial economic systems which find many African countries still 

entrapped in structurally-dependent ties to Europe. The INOSAAR’s ongoing commitment is to 



 

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facilitating exchanges about what repair and transitional justice would entail for the wrongs of a  

“past [which] is not done and…is not over,’ [but is] still in process” (Morrison, 2004).  

 

 

 

About the Author: Dr. Joyce Hope Scott is Professor of African American Studies at Boston 

University where she teaches courses in African American literature, and history and black popular 

culture. She is Co-Founder/Co-Director of the International Network of Scholars and Activists for 

Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR) and co-founder of Hope for Africa (HFA) an international NGO 

with current projects on education in the Republics of Bénin, Ghana, and Guinea-Bissau.   

 

Disclosure Statement: Any conflicts of interest are reported in the acknowledgments section of 

the article’s text. Otherwise, authors have indicated that they have no conflict of interests upon 

submission of the article to the journal. 

 

 

 

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