Elodie Rogliardo

Roundtable Abstract

Elodie Rogliardo

The study of Afropean narratives written by women in France highlights several gaps in French literary theory, which reflects more generally on the impossibility to talk about race and racism in France. Over the past decade, social sciences and history scholars have opened the way for discussions about race under the influence of postcolonial theory, with the works of Pascal Blanchard, Nicolas Bancel, Christelle Taraud, Dominic Thomas and Gilles Boëtsch, to name a few. However, very little room has been granted to French Afropean scholars, and intersectionality as a concept and an analytical framework has not garnered much attention. A detour by the United States seems inevitable for French Afropean scholars in order to publish their work and combine academic scholarship and activism. This is particularly important considering that most of them started as activists, like Mama Fatou Niang or Fania Noël who co-founded the collective MWASI. The influence of the US over questions of race and feminism in France is thus very present but produces a theory that is incomplete and not fully adequate considering the historical and social differences between the two countries. The Afropean narratives that have been published over the past decade have received little academic attention and the tools for analyzing them have yet to be produced. In my intervention, I will address how I tackle these issues in my thesis.

 

Last updated on April 23rd, 2024

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