THINKING BLACK FEMINISMS TRHOUGH FICTION, THEATRE AND POETRY FROM FRANCOPHONE, LUSOPHONE, SPANISHOPHONE AND ANGLOPHONE FEMALE AUTHORS IN THE AMERICAS
Wednesday, June 14 from 9h00 à 11h00
Bâtiment ATHENA, salle 046
Organization: Tina Harpin (Université de Guyane), Ahmed Mulla (Université de Guyane) and Giulia Manera (Université de Guyane)
Proposition
In Petit manuel antiraciste et féministe, translated into French in 2019 (Anacaona), Brazilian academic activist Djamila Ribeiro invites her readers to read "black authors" as a remedy to the annihilation and invisibilization of black knowledge and as a feminist act. Ribeiro takes up an idea commonly shared in feminist struggles about the role of writing and literature in raising awareness of injustices and in the struggle. She reminds us of African American literature scholar Barbara Christian's early warning (The Race for Theory, 1988) against forgetting a black women's literature seen as another expression of a living, non-hegemonic form of thought that is also theory. As scholars of American literature, we wish to deepen this reflection on literature as a possible expression of black feminist theoretical thoughts, instead of perpetuating the simplistic representation of a dichotomy between "feminist theory" and literary practices.
The workshop is conceived as an extension of the work that has brought Black feminism from the United States to France (Dorlin 2008) and as a continuation of recent research on the place of literature in Black feminist thoughts (Harpin and Raynaud 2021, Mulla 2021, Manera 2021). The objective of the workshop is the discussion of the place of literary studies in the development and evolution of Black feminisms in the Americas considered in their geographical and linguistic diversity. The exchange will be based on specific studies of women authors whose literary works are complex and whose black feminist positioning may seem unmistakable or be debated. Feminist and/or Black feminist fiction and poetry represent a terrain for the elaboration, deconstruction, or revision of powerful new figurations that de-entrench the imagination and actions. The prism of the literary contributes to restore the richness and diversity of black feminism, and invites to underline the literary circulation of ideas, forms of commitments and theories on the transnational and transatlantic level. In this perspective, considering women authors from the North, Center and South of America allows us to observe the diverse positionings towards black feminist struggles, and to problematize the persistence of the colonial and racist heritage in the continent. The choice of this field of analysis, which goes beyond linguistic and national barriers, will also allow us to value and revalue the specificities and the eclecticism of these literatures that think, criticize, and reinvent what has been called "black feminisms" since the 20th century.
Speakers
• Jules Falquet (LLCP - Université Paris 8 Vincennes - Saint-Denis) - Melissa Cardoza, 13 couleurs de l’engagement au Honduras
• Laure Demougin (RIRRA21 - Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) - Paulette Nardal et Jane Léro : deux facettes d’un féminisme noir ?
• Claudine Raynaud (EMMA - Université Paul-Valéry Montepellier 3) - Lewis’ Sable Venus and Rankine’s Citizen: African American Poetry as Black Feminist Theory?
• Vinicius Gonçalves Carneiro (ERSO - Université de Lille) - À la recherche d’une destinataire subalterne : relire Françoise Ega à travers Carolina Maria de Jesus, relire Carolina Maria de Jesus à travers Françoise Ega
• Kathleen Gyssels (Antwerp University) - Queering Wekker with Wynter and Taubira, or Sycorax’ Sisters in the Struggle against white, male, heteronormative prejudice
