"Translations of Africa" workshop

Le séminaire "Diversité des langues et poétique de l'histoire", collaboration entre les universités Paris 8 et Rennes, en association avec le

Center for International Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences

CNRS/NYU - http://www.cnrsnyu.com

tiendra une journée d'étude intitulée : "Translations of Africa"

le jeudi 24 mai, 13h30-18h, 19 University Place, New York

After two years of work on Francophone and Anglophone postcolonialisms, with a focus on comparing “comparative” disciplines in the light of their national and linguistic histories, this workshop will conclude the Paris 8-Rennes 2 seminar “Le ‘postcolonial’ comparé”[i]. In 2011, we examined the multilingual, polycolonial Caribbean as a critical site for postcolonialism: as offering exceptional insights into the way empowering concepts connect(ed) to languages and different colonial histories.

In “Translations of Africa” we seek to pursue this comparative and literary exploration of the Atlantic world as a site for theory, and study how the Anglophone – Francophone differentials came into play in the diasporic, transnational experiments of Black liberation and Pan-Africanist movements, as they meshed with the anticolonial movements of the decades leading to Decolonization. We bring together scholars currently working on different points of this continuum, and seek to examine the linguistic dimension of these connexions, circulations and alliances: to explore in particular the anticolonial valence found by these intellectuals, artists and activists in the colonial languages of the British and French empires, and to study the peculiar anticolonial force that was found during this period in the processes of translation.

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1.30 pm – 3.30 pm:

Emilienne Baneth & Claire Joubert: Introduction

Claire Joubert: Présence africaine between languages

Brent H. Edwards: on translating Michel Leiris’ L’Afrique fantôme

Michael Dash: Recomposer par Trace, Translating Africa in the New World

Coffee break

4 pm to 5.30 pm:

James Davis: Eric Walrond’s transnational writings 
Alice Goheneix: Which language to manifest independence? 
   African linguistic ambiguity and French political misconception: 1959 -1962

Emilienne Baneth: on the emergence of Black Studies

6 pm: Wine and cheese

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[i] « Le ‘postcolonial comparé: anglophonie, francophonie », 2009-2011 cycle of the « Séminaire Diversité des langues et poétique de l’histoire », organised by Emilienne Baneth-Nouailhetas (Université Rennes 2, CNRS/NYU) and Claire Joubert (Université Paris 8). A volume bringing together the studies presented during this two-year programme is forthcoming (Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2013).