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Editorial

Myriam Cottias, Céline Flory et Ary Gordien
Traduction de Eunice Sanya Pelini
Cet article est une traduction de :
Éditorial [fr]

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  • 1 Audre Lorde, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, London, Penguin Books, 201 (...)

1The resurgence of increasingly explicit references to the superiority of Western civilisation is a symptom of the current political crisis affecting many Western democracies. However, even before these chaotic periods, Pan-Africanist ideas and movements have been at the forefront of the fight against Eurocentrism since the early 20th century. Since then, alongside their radical condemnation of the material and symbolic domination exercised by the West – whose colonial and slave-based origins underpin their critique – they have advocated and implemented policies for building a political and economic African identity. At the same time, the promotion of the cultures and civilisations of the African continent and its diaspora has been encouraged to counteract the systematic belittling of these cultures by colonial propaganda. As this historical belittlement was an integral part of racist ideology, the concept of rehabilitation through Pan-Africanism also became explicitly racialised, a fact that was rarely questioned. As Sakiko Nakao, editor of this special issue, points out: “Yet the relationship between Pan-Africanism and the process of racial categorisation has been the subject of very little analysis to date.” This issue specifically examines this underexplored topic and its significance. The historian emphasises that, “viewed as an anti-slavery and anti-racist resistance movement, Pan-Africanism reverses the stigma and is instead underpinned by bonds of racial solidarity.” This raises several questions. Should race be considered one of the “master’s tools”, as Audre Lorde1 would have it, that can never be used by the oppressed to “destroy the master’s house”? Or should we accept that subversive appropriation of this category is inevitable in response to postcolonial situations and the associated anti-Blackness experienced by Africans and people of African descent? These are crucial questions that ultimately transcend the history of Pan-Africanism and its local variations. We must examine the interests and limitations of the interpretative frameworks and political strategies employed to challenge all forms of racial domination. The discussion is far from over.

2The articles in the subsequent sections of the journal are grounded in the symbolic realm of Pan-Africanism, where memories of slavery, experiences of Blackness, and issues of power imbalances are explored. Postcolonial theory synthesises these different dimensions. In the “Archives and Fieldwork” section, Christelle Lozère revisits the issue of the toppling of statues in 2020, demonstrating how the radical rejection of the narrative of the abolition of slavery manifested itself in the destruction of statues depicting Victor Schoelcher, the architect of the second abolition of slavery. However, the author reveals that this destruction targeted statues that had been designed and created by people of African descent, who had already been rendered invisible by art history. In the section “Research through Image and Sound”, Vanessa Alayrac-Fielding examines the life of Ignatius Sancho through literary and visual works, including pieces by Thomas Gainsborough, Paterson Joseph, and Joy Labinjo. She describes how artistic creations combining history and memory developed at the intersection of these narratives and representations. In an interview in the “Creations’ section”, the Trinidadian-Danish artist Jeannette Ehlers explores the idea of the connectivity of Afro-descendant bodies through the collective memory of slavery. She uses the installation of the statue of Queen Mary in Copenhagen as an example of interconnected resistance memory. Queen Mary was one of the women who led an anti-colonial revolt in 1878 on the island of Saint Croix, a former Danish colony.

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Notes

1 Audre Lorde, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, London, Penguin Books, 2018.

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Référence électronique

Myriam Cottias, Céline Flory et Ary Gordien, « Editorial »Esclavages & Post-esclavages [En ligne], 12 | 2025, mis en ligne le 17 décembre 2025, consulté le 16 février 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/slaveries/14207 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15euh

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Auteurs

Myriam Cottias

National Center for Scientific Research, UMR 8053 CIRESC-PHEEAC (France)

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Céline Flory

National Center for Scientific Research, UMR 8168 Mondes Américains and affiliate researcher at UMR 8053 CIRESC-PHEEAC (France)

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Ary Gordien

National Center for Scientific Research, URMIS and affiliate researcher at UMR 8053 CIRESC-PHEEAC (France)

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