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In light of new economic and political alignments, France has been compelled to rethink its longstanding relationship with the African continent. Nicolas Sarkozy has repeatedly called for a “break with the past” and expressed his desire to “turn a new leaf” when it comes to questionable neo-colonial arrangements (Francafrique), in order to usher in a new era of policy-making. Legal action taken by NGOs in 2008 seeking investigation into the “ill-gotten assets” of several African leaders and the call for greater accountability and transparency in Franco-African relations have complicated the relationship of the former European colonial power with its ex-colonies. However, closer scrutiny of the Franco-African interface since 2007 points to a President who is “reluctant” to “act against rulers still in power” and highlights instead the privileged attention the French authorities continue to assign to this region of the world in the hope of maintaining competitive and strategic advantage.

ResumeL’objectif que nous proposons consistera a interroger l’histoire longue et compliquee de la France avec l’Afrique, de maniere a mettre en relief les composantes et les contributions africaines aux etudes francophones, a souligner l’importance des modeles theoriques africains et a explorer et remettre en question la maniere dont les etudes francophones et postcoloniales ont partage, conteste, et meme joui d’un terrain discursif de proximite sous l’egide d’une vaste gamme d’alignements disciplinaires aux Etats-Unis. Ce cadre nous permettra de retracer les nouvelles coordonnees et trajectoires intellectuelles de ces domaines et d’evaluer leur utilite et leur pertinence dans le processus de deballage des divers phenomenes culturels.

The field of Francophone studies has allowed for the improved contextualization of the colonial and postcolonial era in France, while also broadening the reception of creative and critical works pr...

The Parisian landscape was repeatedly altered during the second half of the twentieth century by various presidential `grands projets' or `grands travaux', most notably the Grande Arche of La Défense, the Bastille Opera, and the Institut du Monde Arabe. In June 2006, during Jacques Chirac's final months in office, the latest of these projects (and the first of the twenty-first century) was inaugurated, namely the Musée Quai Branly. This museum, dedicated to the arts and civilisations of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, has triggered discussion in a broad interdisciplinary context. This essay endeavours to contextualise these debates and accordingly to provide a more nuanced understanding of contemporary France as it confronts its position, status and role according to the coordinates of an increasingly globalised world.

Discourse and research on immigration in France has tended to focus on the contemporary dimension of this question. While adding to this body of work, this essay endeavours to relocate the origins of immigration practices in the colonial era, and to think in a broader historical way about the transnational links that exist between Africa and France. Specific focus is provided through the juxtaposition of the Senegalese writer Ousmane Sembene's 1962 short story ‘La Noire de …’ (Black Girl) and Henriette Akofa's Une esclave moderne (Togo) 2000 docu‐testimonial text Une esclave moderne (A Modern Slave Woman). Ultimately, my objective will be to suggest ways in which the globalised process of slavery needs to be understood within a transnational and transhistorical framework, in which a plethora of processes responsible for the displacement of populations – slavery, colonialism, economic migration, globalisation – transform the nature of exchanges and the mediation between cultures.

Introduction: The Invention of Race: Scientific and Popular Representations of Race from Linnaeus to the Ethnic Shows Nicolas Bancel, Thomas David, and Dominic Thomas Part I: The Genealogy of Race in the 18th Century 1. Biologization of Race and Racialization of the Human: Bernier, Buffon, Linnaeus Thierry Hoquet 2. Cranial Varieties in the Human and Orang Utan Species Miriam Claude Meijer 3. The Creation of the "Negro" at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century: Petrus Camper, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and Julien-Joseph Virey Francesco Panese 4. Panel and Sequence: Classifications and Associations in Scientific Illustrations of the Human Races (1770-1830) Martial Guedron 5. Christoph Meiners's "New Science" (1747-1810) Britta Rupp-Eisenreich Part II: The Internationalization and Institutionalization of Racial Anthropology in the 19th Century 6. Construction and Circulation of the Notion of "Race" in the Nineteenth Century Carole Reynaud Paligot 7. "We Can't Help Laughing": Physical Anthropology in Belgium and Congo (1882-1914) Maarten Couttenier 8. Danish Perceptions of Race and Anthropological Science at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Rikke Andreassen 9. Discourses of Race in Imperial Russia (1830s-1914) Vera Tolz 10. The Reception of the Idea of Race in East Asia Gerard Siary 11. The Anthropological Society of Tokyo and the Ainu: Racial Classifications, Prehistory and National Identity (1880-1910) Arnaud Nanta 12. Warfare, Commerce and Science: Racial Biology in South Africa Patrick Harries Part III: The Transcription and Exhibition of Race 13. From Cabinets of Curiosity to the "Hottentot Venus": A Long History of Human Zoos Gilles Boetsch and Pascal Blanchard 14. Race, Showmen, Disability and the Freak Show Robert Bogdan 15. In Sight and Sound with the Other Senses All Around: Racial Hierarchies at America's World's Fairs Robert W. Rydell 16. Human Exhibitions at World's Fairs: Between Scientific Categorization and Exoticism?: The French Colonial Presence at Midway Plaisance, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893 Catherine Hodeir 17. Exhibiting Haiti: Questioning Race at the World's Columbian Exposition, 1893 Charles Forsdick 18. Races on Exhibit at the 1904 St. Louis Anthropology Days Fabrice Delsahut 19. Eskimos in the Museum, Pygmy in a Cage, Social Darwinism Everywhere Herman Lebovics 20. Emile Yung and the African Village at the Swiss National Exhibition in Geneva, 1896 Patrick Minder 21. Beyond Objectivity: Anthropometric Photography and Visual Culture Christian Joschke

The fundamental axis of Sony Labou Tansi' s work concerns the theme of power in the postcolony, and within this framework, the body presents a crucial site at which power is explored. Indeed, writing from postcolonial Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa has consistently denounced governmental attempts to render the body what Michel Foucault has described as both mentally and physically 'docile'.2 This essay explores the relationship between the body and nationalistic discourse, the associations between gender and nationalist identities, and attempts to locate the elaboration and articulation of protest and resistance in Sony Labou Tansi's writings with reference to these specific notions.

The concern with ‘[excavating] in contemporary intellectual practices the remnants of a very distant past living on in the present’ (183) and the ‘discursive history of Africanism … a dispersed bod...

“ I was a little boy playing around in my father’s hut. How old would I have been at the time? I cannot remember exactly. I must have been very young: five, maybe six years old. My mother was in the workshop with my father, and I could just hear their familiar voices above the noise of the anvil and conversation of the customers. ” / Camara Laye, The Dark Child (1954) / “ Here I was, in the home of Mr. Ibara – one of those high-and-mighty types who would drive past us in their luxury cars and sneer at us, ignoring the misery around them. One of those bigshots who embezzled state funds to build their villas and support their mistresses; who had no need to build hospitals or schools in this country, because as soon as they felt the first twinge of a headache they could hop on a plane to America or Europe and get medical care. Yeah, I was in the home of one of those bigshots. I’d parked my ass in the armchair of a bigshot. I’d drunk from the glass of a bigshot. In a minute, I was going to take a piss in the toilet of a bigshot. And then, as I gazed at Mr. Ibara’s wife sprawled on the floor, I had the urge to fuck the wife of a bigshot. ” / Emmanuel Dongala, Johnny Mad Dog (2001) / In determining what might come under the rubric “new” in such an immense field as African literature, one has invariably to confront a plethora of structural issues pertaining to questions of history and thematics. In other words, should the defining criteria for inclusion be provided by such factors as the year of publication or the author’s age, or rather should these classificatory modes be ignored in favor of broader concerns pertaining to the esthetic and historical subject matter of the works concerned?