IEA

Room 262 

Period of residence: April to June 2010

Research Project:

"Chromatic Identities in Africa: Histories, Legacies and News"

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 examinig 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 operatinf precedures 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, place of personnal experiences, etc...) curricula. The work will also adress political contexts and academic development of ideologies of independence and inheritance forming these contexts, paying attention to the diffentiation that occurs between the imperial spaces (Francophonie, 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 details:

Prefessor 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 slaves 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 studu 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.   

Five recent publications:

• « L’histoire vue d’Afrique. Enjeux et perspectives », in Jean-Pierre Chrétien et al. L’Afrique de Sarkozy. Un déni d’histoire, Paris, Karthala, 2008, pp. 155-180.
• « L’esclavage et les traites en Afrique occidentale : entre mémoires et histoires », in Adam Bâ Konaré, Petit précis de remise à niveau sur l’histoire africaine à l’usage du président Sarkozy, Paris, La Découverte, 2008.
• (éd) Patrimoines et sources historiques en Afrique, Union académique internationale, UCAD, 2007, 179 p.
• « Savoirs interdits en contexte colonial : la politique culturelle de la France en Afrique de l’Ouest », Chanson-Jabeur, C. & Goerg, O. (éds), Mama Africa. Hommage à Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2005.
• « Circulation des armes à feu et diplomatie en Afrique de l’ouest à l’époque coloniale », Cahiers Histoire et Civilisation, n° 2, 2005.