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La racialisation des Africains : récits commerciaux, religieux, philosophiques et littéraires, 1480-1880
| Title: | La racialisation des Africains : récits commerciaux, religieux, philosophiques et littéraires, 1480-1880 |
| Author: | Médevielle, Nicolas P.A. |
| Description: | This project examines the progressive racialisation of Africans by French authors during the four centuries of contact between Sub-Saharan Africa and France that eventually produced one of the two largest colonial empires in Africa. Racialisation refers to the historical process by which it became possible for French people to think of Africans not as human beings, but as creatures so far removed from themselves that they could be construed as substandard beings, akin to animals and monsters.The first chapter, which focuses on Les voyages aventureux de Jean Alfonse (1559), Sainctongeois; and a series of maps of Africa from the Vallard Atlas (H.M.29,shows that the figure of race, and hence the process of racialisation, is not yet pertinent in French descriptions of Africans.The second chapter proceeds in a very different fashion. Instead of focusing on a few key texts, we show how the context of colonial slavery dating back to the beginning of the Enlightenment period led to a style of thought about Africans that is distinctly pre-racial. To this end, we examine the evolution of the word “race” from its earliest appearance in the late fifteenth century until its modern meaning emerges throughout the first part of the eighteenth century. Finally, we look at the work of three important representatives of the French Enlightenment - Montesquieu, Buffon and Voltaire - to show how this style of thought influenced their views of Africans The third chapter, devoted to the years 1860-1890, is narrower in scope: it focuses on one novel by Jules Verne and a series of short stories by Maupassant, read in light of nineteenth-century raciology. It is first argued that the nascent anthropology progressively established “race” at its core during the first part of the century. However, for these authors, the African Race has little to do with the pseudo-scientific constructions of the time. The figure of the African in their texts is largely mythological, oscillating between the image of the cannibal and that of the savage, even though, on some occasions, their works have recourse to scientific images to heighten their rhetorical impact. |
| Permanent Link: |
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1155760915
http://hdl.handle.net/2374.OX/7360 |
| Date: | 2006 |
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