INSTITUTE OF MODERN LANGUAGES RESEARCH

School of Advanced Study • University of London

 

Thursday 17th  January  2019, 6.00pm - 7.30pm

 

Session Four: IMLR Graduate Forum - Women’s Resistance

Chair: Kendsey Clements (UCL)

 

Room 243, Second Floor, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

https://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/event/17421

 

 

The Womanist Women of Fatou Diome: Feminine Oppression, Resistance and Fulfilment in Those who wait [Celles qui attendent]

Charlotte Grace Mackay (Melbourne/Sorbonne)

 

Immigration constitutes a key trope of contemporary Francophone Sub-Saharan fiction across the works of both male and female writers.^[1] In her fourth novel entitled Those who wait [Celles qui attendent], ^[2] the Franco-Senegalese author Fatou Diome breaks with this literary theme by portraying the story of African non-migration; that of four Senegalese women, the wives and mothers of clandestine male migrants. The novel depicts the women’s lives as they desperately await the return their sons and husbands while battling daily for their dignity and survival in a patriarchal setting characterised by polygamy and forced marriage. If Diome has never made a secret of her desire to speak in her texts on behalf of African women and denounce the “multiple injustices” that they face, ^[3] her adherence to the key theories of Western feminism that have thus far dominated questions of gender oppression is much less unambiguous. In order to disentangle Diome’s sophisticated antisexist stance, I propose to analyse this text through an Africana womanist perspective. Developed in the African diaspora by Clenora-Hudson Weems, this antisexist theory is particularly adequate for reading Diome’s literary depiction of postcolonial feminine oppression. Africana womanism is particularly useful for examining the complexities generated when gender, economic and cultural oppression collide. ^[4] Finally, a womanist theoretical approach enables parallels to be established between Diome’s contemporary novel and pioneering works by first generation female African authors (notably with Une si longue lettre [So long a letter] by Mariama Bâ). ^[5] In placing her non-migrant womanist protagonists at the centre of her novel, Diome, like Bâ before her, demonstrates that the notions of oppression, resistance and fulfilment are deeply nuanced and context-specific and that Sub-Saharan women have always been and remain at the forefront of the feminist fight.

 

^[1] Jacques Chevrier, Littératures francophones d’Afrique noire, Edisud, 2006.

^[1] Fatou Diome, Celles qui attendent, Flammarion, 2010.

^[1] Entretien avec Fatou Diome, « J’écris pour apprendre à vivre », Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien, 2008.

^[1] Clenora Hudson-Weems, Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves, Bedford Publishers, 1993.

^[1] Mariama Bâ, Une si longue lettre (Le serpent à plumes 1979).

 

Charlotte Grace Mackay is a third-year PhD candidate in French Literature at the University of Melbourne in Australia and at Sorbonne Université (Paris IV) where she is enrolled in a cotutelle. Her research focuses on contemporary Francophone literature written by women writers of Sub-Saharan African origin. Her thesis traces the development of an Afro-diasporic consciousness in the works of Franco-Cameroonian author Léonora Miano and Franco-Senegalese author Fatou Diome.

 

 

Black Brazilian Women of the Harlem Renaissance

Adjoa Osei (Liverpool)

 

My thesis considers Brazilian women performers, from 1920 to 1940, and their interactions with internationalist political and artistic movements, linking Paris, Rio de Janeiro and New York. My research focuses on Elsie Houston - the transnational Afro-Brazilian soprano, academic and Trotskyist.  I consider transatlantic and inter-American artistic, cultural and political relations.  I assess the ways in which, despite her own personal political affiliations with Trotskyism, Houston became an unofficial cultural ambassador in the US during the Good-Neighbour years.  Of particular interest is the ways in which Brazil, and in particular Black Brazilian womanhood, was represented and conceived in newspapers and film during this period.  Although largely erased from Harlem Renaissance discourse, Elsie Houston was very much a part of this modern, black intellectual and artistic movement.  I am examining new ways of understanding the Harlem Renaissance by incorporating the impact and influence of Brazilian art, culture, and politics, moving away from the movement’s Anglo-centric focus.  In addition, the Harlem Renaissance is traditionally seen as a male space and discourse; however, I am exploring how it can be reconceived to incorporate transnational black women who were redefining a new, modern black womanhood through their art.

 

Adjoa Osei is at the beginning of her second year as a Doctoral Reseacher of Brazilian Studies at the University of Liverpool, funded by the AHRC and Duncan Norman Scholarships. She completed an MPhil in Portuguese Studies at the University of Oxford, funded by the Ertegun Scholarship in the Humanities.  Prior to this, she completed a BA in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Kings College London, University of London.

 

 

(Re)making Meaning: Visible and Invisible Afterlives of Photography of Women Militants

Jess McIvor (Southampton/Bristol)

 

Photography has long been examined as a purely semiotic process. A material reading of photography, as proposed by Edwards (2001) and Pinney (1997), challenge this conception, and instead places attention on photography as an object with its own social biography which exists within a network of other photographs and representations. In considering the photograph as an object, it is possible to examine how its meaning is continually remade by tis spatial and social contexts. Furthermore, a material reading examines both how photography is seen and circulated, and perhaps more crucially, how it can be hidden.

 

This research focuses on photography of women militants taken during the Irish revolutionary period and the Spanish Civil War. This paper analyses both the national and international circulation of photos of these women, but also the ways in which they were rendered invisible. A wealth of visual and oral evidence demonstrates the work and participation of women militants in the years 1916 to 1939. However, their contributions have long been dismissed as auxiliary efforts, or indeed as distractions. Selective circulations of photography has been used to foster a deliberate amnesia towards the identities of and contributions of women during conflict, and it is only recently that women militants have begun to be recognised as key players within these conflicts.

 

In comparing photographic circulation of women in the Irish and Spanish conflicts, this paper will show the importance of materiality in photographic analysis, as a changing social context provokes a continual process of remaking meaning. Additionally, it will demonstrate the importance of photography both in the creation of cultural scripts surrounding conflict, and in the creation of counter culture narratives that combat against such amnesiac narratives.

 

Jess McIvor is a second year PhD student at the University of Southampton/ University of Bristol. Her research focuses on photography of Irish and Spanish women in conflict, and its international circulation.

 

Institute of Modern Languages Research

School of Advanced Study | University of London
Room 239 | Senate House | Malet Street | London WC1E 7HU | UK

Tel: +44 (0)20 7862 4884

http://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk

 

The School of Advanced Study at the University of London is the UK's national centre for the facilitation and promotion of research in the humanities and social sciences.