Physical Address
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In the Esprit Panaf space, Frantz-Fanon, from 28e at the Algiers International Book Fair (SILA), researchers and readers plunged, on Sunday, into the heart of the theme: “Liberating representations of the past to rethink the future”, about slavery in literature. Led by academics Benaouda Lebdai and the American professor at the University of Alabama and Louisiana, Maxime Vignon, the meeting questioned the way in which authors express themselves through their texts, to remember a historical tragedy, repair humanity and convey the dignity of the victims. Between history, language and symbolic justice.
From the outset, Professor Benaouda Lebdai highlighted the density and complexity of the subject: “Slavery is a human tragedy whose historical and symbolic consequences remain profound.” Recalling the beginnings of the transatlantic slave trade in the 15th century and the organization of triangular trade by European powers, he underlined “the extent of this racial violence” which deported millions of men, women and children, “uprooted from their roots to be reduced to a state of object”.
According to him, many novelists write to “calm pain and denounce the inhuman.” He first mentioned two texts from the 19th century – the autobiographical stories of Frederic Douglass and Harriet Jacobs – which were among the first voices of the enslaved to testify from the inside, in his words. In the same spirit, Professor Benaouda Lebdai, among others, recalled two figures from the literature testimonial to slavery: Olaudah Equiano, 18th century freedman author of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, and Solomon Northup, whose testimony Twelve Years a Slave was adapted for the cinema in 2013 by Steve McQueen.
It should be noted that the researcher specified that the term “savage” was used by both camps: “Europeans and Africans mutually attributed this designation to each other.” The researcher also drew attention to the evolution of vocabulary: “The term slave carries an essentialist dimension. We prefer, today, enslaved, which refers to an imposed condition, not to an essence.”
Finally, he indicated that “European thinkers like Voltaire and Rousseau had condemned this practice”, and that contemporary writers continue this critical work “in a duty of memory necessary for the construction of a better future”.
Freeing stories from the Western prism
For Maxime Vignon, the memory of slavery constitutes “a wound that time has not healed” and “an ordeal of racially based dehumanization”, but literary creation allows us to overcome the trauma: “Through the force of language, writers recreate a symbolic space where dignity is rebuilt. Memory is not a prison, it is a laboratory of memory reconfiguration.”
According to his declarations, it is also about “liberating stories from the Western prism”, “making visible the victims that official history has erased” and showing that literary transmission does not only concern the past: “To write is to refuse forgetting”.
Asked about narrative strategies, the researcher highlighted the diversity of postures: “Some authors engage in denunciation, others in a liberation movement, drawing from memory a force for reconstruction. There is no one way.” In the United States, he emphasizes, the subject remains extremely sensitive: “Between enslaved people, the discussion remains open. But in global society, certain terms continue to offend. The logic of domination persists, in other forms. Nothing is really resolved.” Notwithstanding, he observes an important evolution: “It is no longer a question of letting oneself be locked in a painful memory, but of confronting it so that it becomes a source of strength and emancipation.” Before hammering home: “The question today concerns all of humanity: how can we build a better world, without erasing the past, but by nourishing ourselves from it? “.
Echoing Frantz Fanon’s reflections on “the alienation inherited from colonialism and slavery”, Maxime Vignon also said that, “under slavery, certain enslaved people benefited from privileges and sought to conform to the expectations of Whites. Even after their departure, this desire to please persists, like an internalized reflex.”
A specialist in language and memory, Maxime Vignon is currently conducting research on the Clotilda, the last slave ship to reach the American coast, the remains of which remain submerged. His work aims to “question and correct certain fallacious historical representations surrounding this boat,” he said.
“As a linguist, I am interested in everything that escapes the gaze, that is to say the invisible dimension of language, memory and emotions. This is where the relevance of scientific work lies, in my opinion,” he insisted on explaining his approach. And to conclude: “If slavery is history, its memory engages the future.”