Category Archives: Colonial Legacies

Colonial Legacies, Lilian Thuram

Lilian Thuram Vous Parle

http://www.respectmag.com/appel-pour-une-r%C3%A9publique-multiculturelle-et-postraciale

http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2010/01/20/thuram-et-quatre-personnalites-lancent-un-appel-a-une-republique-multiculturelle-et-postraciale_1294537_3224.html

Lilian Thuram, ex-footballeur et membre du Haut Conseil de l’integration en France, lance un appel a la societe francaise de creer “une Republique multiculturelle et post-raciale”  dans Respect Magazine le 20 janvier. Cet appel, et les difficultes actuelles qu’il identifie, pose une  question que la Declaration universelle des droits de l’homme n’a pas pose. Est-ce la liberte est seulement un concept politique–“pouvoir faire tout ce qui ne nuit pas a autrui”? Ou, est-ce qu’il y a une dimension culturelle ou sociale dans le concept de liberte? Est-ce que des individus peuvent etre libre de voter, de lire, de parler, etc.,  mais pas libre dans le sens qu’ils sont exclus de la societe?

Ce sont des questions qui entourent l’appel de Thuram. Au meme temps, le contexte plus immediat de l’appel est l’election d’Obama aux EU, et le debat en France au sujet de l’identite nationale.

Un autre theme interessant ici est que tout le  monde sait que Thuram va etre le prochain president de la Republique.

Colonial Legacies, Haiti

Aftershocks of History in Haiti

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Several days after the earthquake in Haiti, our understanding of the losses are steadily mounting. Among the tens of thousands dead are the writer George Anglade, and Mamadou Bah, a member of the U.N. team who had been doing work to improve libraries in Haiti, and the city of Port-au-Prince has been irreparably transformed. The aftershocks of this event will certainly be multiple and ongoing.

For insightful updates on what is going on the ground in Haiti, I highly recommend the Twitter feed of Richard Morse from Haiti, which gives a sense of how people have been coping with the events.

I did a short segment on the political history of Haiti on “All Things Considered,” which is available here.

Here, courtesy of Haitian historian Gusti Pourchet-Gaillard, are some photos of the earthquake hitting the downtown area of Port-au-Prince, the Champs de Mars, where the National Palace, Ministries, and many schools and cultural institutions are located. Other colleagues in Haiti share the horrifying news that the Ecole Normale Superieure, one of Haiti’s universities, collapsed with perhaps 1,000 students within it taking examinations.

I recommend this interview with Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat on Cnn.com, in which she recalls the way in which Haiti was born out of slave revolution. You can also see a remarkable interview of a now homeless President Preval, and images of the destroyed National Palace, at cnn.com.

For those of you who read French, the newspaper Liberation has an excellent report and chronology of the events here.

It’s also worth being aware, though, of some of the very curious ways in which Haitian history is narrated, as this now famous clip of Pat Robertson speaking about the earthquake yesterday shows.

Here is a nice response to Robertson’s statement from a specialist on Haitian music and culture, Elizabeth McAlister.

She also has published a good essay on responses to the earthquake among Vodou practitioners.

A Ph.D. candidate in History at Duke has also published this opinion piece about disaster aid to Haiti.

And here is a critical piece about the I.M.F. approach to the crisis, which argues that much of the world actually owes Haiti.

If you read interesting pieces about the events, or find photographs of videos you would like to share, you can do so in the comment section below this post.


Colonial Legacies, MC Solaar, Slave Trade

MC Solaar, “Les Colonies”

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On the first day of class, we’ll be discussing the song “Les Colonies” by MC Solaar. You download the song on i-tunes, and can also hear it in the video below, accompanied by images of the slave trading fort in Gorée island, near Dakar, Senegal. The song early on evokes the “paysage de Gorée,” and evokes its history: the island was a major departure point for French slavers departing for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the fort is famous for a doorway leading out to the water, known as the “door of no retun.” Click here for a virtual visit of the island prepared by UNESCO, which has declared it a World Heritage Site.

MC Solaar makes a connection in the song between the past of slavery and contemporary forms of exploitation and migration linking Europe and Africa.

You can get the full lyrics of the song in French here. And here are the lyrics of the first verse, with my translation of it into English below:

MC Solaar, “Les Colonies” (2002)

Lyrics to First Verse

On a connu les colonies, l’anthropophage économie

La félonie la traite d’esclaves, la dette, le F.M.I.

Bruno, Jean-Marie, si j’cours j’ai mes raisons

Les mêmes que les deux nègres maigres sous un avion

Avant c’était déjà grave de voir des fers qui entravent

Paysage de Gorée, Maisons des esclaves

Cave sans amour, sans retour ni recours

Sans cours de cassation, sans oreille pour entendre “au secours”

Où sont passés les baobabs et les hordes de gosses

Dans cette ère de négoce où ne vivent que le big boss

Rentablité – instabilité – imbécilité

N’ont fait qu’augmenter les taux de mortalité

Ce sont des larmes qui coulent dans nos artères

Psychose séculaire j’ai peur quand j’entends charter

Parfois je rêve de mettre un gun dans un paquet d’chips

De braquer la Banque Mondiale. Pour tout donner au townships.

C’est trop complexe. Où sont les droits de l’Homme?

Translation:

We’ve known colonies, cannibal economies

Felony, the slave trade, debt, the I.M.F.

Bruno, Jean-Marie, if I run I’ve got my reasons

The same as those two skinny kids under the airplane

Before it was already sad to see the chains that locked up

The landscape of Gorée, the Maison des Esclaves

Caves without love, without return or recourse

Without a court of justice, with no ears to hear “help”

Where have the baobabs and crowds of kids gone

In this era of business only the big boss lives

Profit – instability – stupidity

Have only increased mortality

There are tears running through our arteries

A secular psychosis, I’m scared when I hear “charter”

Sometimes I dream of putting a gun in a bag of chips

Holding up the World Bank to give everything to the townships

It’s too complex, where are the Rights of Man?