The symposium proposes an exploration of contemporary "black literatures"
However, as indicated by the use of the plural and quotation marks, such a project necessarily requires us to examine the relevance and current position of this category in the field of contemporary literature.
Emerging after the First World War in the crucible of intense exchanges between authors and intellectuals in Africa, America, the West Indies and Europe, this literature was linked to the development of a transatlantic black diaspora. Consequently, in France, black literature crystallised around the 1930s authors of “negritude” and publishers like Présence Africaine (founded in 1947).
This historic moment, which continued right up to the 1960s, a period marked by countries gaining independence in Africa and by the civil rights movement in America, really formed the matrix of black literatures. So where are we now? Although heirs to Aimé Césaire, James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe, black writers today no longer live in the same literary, intellectual and political world as their illustrious predecessors. Can we then still speak of a black literature or even of black literatures in the plural?
Scientific Committee
Romuald Fonkoua, professor of Francophone literature, Université Marc Bloch, Strasbourg, editor-in-chief of the magazine Présence Africaine; Xavier Garnier, professor of Comparative Literature, Université Paris 1; Jean-Marie Compte, Director of the Literature and Arts Department, Bibliothèque nationale de France; Anthony Mangeon, lectuer in Francophone Literary Studies, Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier; Sarah Frioux-Salgas and Julien Bonhomme, musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac
- Place: Théâtre Claude Lévi-Strauss
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TimeSlots:
The Friday 29 January 2010 to 01:00 -
Accessibility:
- Handicap moteur
- Public: Researcher, student
- Categorie : Symposia
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Free entry (subject to available places)
