Conference Archive

France Noire – Black France
The History, Poetics, and Politics of Blackness

Dates: June 6–7, 2008

Location: Columbia University Institute for Scholars, Reid Hall, Paris
Address: 4 rue de Chevreuse, 75006 Paris

Conveners: Tyler Stovall, Trica Danielle Keaton, Marcus Bruce, Fred Constant

Conference Description

France Noire – Black France: The History, Poetics, and Politics of Blackness was conceived in response to an extraordinary flowering of Black political, cultural, and intellectual consciousness in France during the early twenty-first century. Amid renewed public debates over the memory of slavery, the legacies of colonialism, race and anti-Black racism, and the meaning of Black identity within a republican framework that traditionally disavows race, the conference sought to examine what it means to conceive of a “Black France.”

Bringing together scholars, writers, artists, and public intellectuals from France, the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean, the conference positioned Paris as a historic and contemporary crossroads of Black diasporic life, from the intellectual movements of Négritude to emergent forms of cultural and political expression. It aligned itself with a growing body of scholarship on Black Europe and diaspora studies, emphasizing the historical depth, cultural richness, and political urgency of Black presence in France.

The conference was also conceived as a moment of commemoration and reflection, held in memoriam of Aimé Césaire, Michel Fabre, and Ousmane Sembène, whose intellectual, literary, and cinematic contributions profoundly shaped the study and expression of Blackness in French and Francophone contexts.

Keynote Address

The keynote address was delivered by Christiane Taubira, Députée de Guyane (Member of the French National Assembly), on Friday, June 6, 2008, from 17:00 to 18:00. The session opened with remarks by Tyler Stovall and an introduction by Fred Constant, and concluded with a tribute to Aimé Césaire by Abiola Irele.

Conference Participants

Participants in the conference included Rémy Bazenguissa-Ganga, Allison Blakely, Jennifer Boittin, Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi, Marcus Bruce, Barbara Chase-Riboud, James Cohen, Fred Constant, Denis-Constant Martin, Mamadou Diouf, Brent Edwards, Geneviève Fabre, Eric Fassin, Arlette Frund, Michel Giraud, Véronique Helenon, Abiola Irele, Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Jake Lamar, Patrick Lozès, Alain Mabanckou, Daniel Maximin, Simon Njami, Jean-Paul Rocchi, Tracy Sharpley-Whiting, Hortense Spillers, Tyler Stovall, Christiane Taubira, Dominic Thomas, Fatimata Wane-Sagna, Gary Wilder, and Michelle Wright.

Publication Legacy

The conference provided the intellectual foundation for the edited volume Black France / France Noire, which brought together revised and expanded versions of papers first presented at the June 2008 meeting. The volume extended the conference’s central concerns into a sustained scholarly intervention, helping to establish “Black France” as a critical field within French studies, diaspora studies, and Black European studies.