Contemporary slavery has recently and unexpectedly emerged as a source of both popular fascination and a spur to political mobilization. This volume brings together a cast of leading experts to carefully explore how the history and iconography of slavery has been invoked to support a series of government interventions, activist projects, legal instruments, and rhetorical and visual performances. However well-intentioned these interventions might be, they nonetheless remain subject to a host of limitations and complications. Recent efforts to combat contemporary slavery are too often sensationalist, self-serving, and superficial; and therefore end up failing the crucial test of speaking truth to power.

The widely held notion that anti-slavery is one of those rare issues that “transcends” politics or ideology is only sustainable because the underlying issues at stake have been constructed and demarcated in a way that minimizes direct challenges to dominant political and economic interests. This must change.