IEA

Fellowship from April to June 2010

Research Project:
"Identities chromatic in Africa: stories, legacies and events"

Our project is an attempt to write the history of recapturing the chromatic identity - and its mobilization in contemporary power games -by the African intelligentsia, who has reversed its perspective and conclusions, when it has served to legitimize the worst violence and domination of their societies. To do this, we study the intellectual genealogy of the main currents up this broad movement to account for their impact on the knowledge produced in Africa, especially on writing the history of the continent. It is about examining how the categories related to somatic, phenotype, differences, the latter often perceived and described as "racial", have affected memory constructions in Africa and writing of African societies in the social sciences. The basis for this reflection on the impact of chromatic identity in the writing of African history have already been setlled(Thioub 2004 and 2008 a & b).
I will carry out a critical reading of the most significant of texts of Pan-Africanists - Garvey, Firmin, Dubois - and Negritude to establish their intellectual influences on the works of theorists of the anti-colonial movement in Africa. This approach will identify similarities and differences in operating procedures and the various versions of the color factor in the construction of African identity among each other. It will also focus on the different politic, academic, "physical" (movements, places of learning and "intellectual" sociability, places of personal experiences, etc..) curricula. The work will also address political contexts and academic development of ideologies of independence and inheritance forming these contexts, paying attention to the differentiation that occurs between the imperial spaces (Francophone, Lusophone, Belgian and English). Finally, we will follow the trajectories of these theories: Impact, receipt, reload (which agents, in what contexts and for what purpose?). The implementation of these theories and their implications for Africa’s knowledge about itself - in social sciences in particular - will be fully explored.

Biographical elements:

Professor of History at the University Cheikh Anta Diop (Dakar, Senegal) since 1990, Ibrahima Thioub specializes in slavery. He looks critically on African readings of slavery and the slave trade. Besides the use of slaves in economic activities, he examines their role in social relations and their legal expression in the private and public spaces. His study is part of a historical perspective, giving particular importance to the changes recorded in the time of the city and its environment. In November 2007, he became head of the IVHEET, Institut Interdisciplinaire Virtuel des Hautes Etudes on slavery and drafts. Since January 2008, he directed the publication of the magazine Heritage and History in Africa: Research and Experience. In 2008-2009, he was resident in the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

Personal Web Page

Five Recent Publications:
• «History from Africa. Challenges and Prospects», in Jean-Pierre Chrétien et al. L’Afrique de Sarkozy. Un déni d’histoire, Paris, Karthala, 2008, pp. 155-180.
• «Slavery and trade in West Africa: between memory and histories», in Adam Bâ Konaré, A Little Refresher on African history in the use of President Sarkozy, Paris, La Découverte, 2008.
• (éd) Patrimoines et sources historiques en Afrique, Union académique internationale, UCAD, 2007, 179 p.
• « Prohibited Knowledge in colonial context: the cultural politics of France in Western Africa», Chanson-Jabeur, C. & Goerg, O. (éds), Mama Africa. Hommage à Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2005.
• «Movement of firearms and Diplomacy in West Africa during the colonial era», Cahiers Histoire et Civilisation, n° 2, 2005.