SHADOWS OF SLAVERY in AFRICA and BEYOND An agenda for

SHADOWS OF SLAVERY in AFRICA and BEYOND
An agenda for research and comparison
ERC-GRANT 313737 in collaboration with PRIN 2010-2011 ( Stato, pluralità e cambiamento
in Africa) and MEBAO (Missione Etnologica in Bénin e Africa Occidentale, Ministero Affari
Esteri)
An international workshop, Department of Human Sciences for Education “Riccardo Massa”, The
University of Milan-Bicocca
5-6 May 2014
Aula Rodolfi, U6, IV Piano, Rettorato
Program and abstracts
5 May 2014
First - Setting the stage
Chair: Pierluigi Valsecchi (Università di Pavia); discussant: Sandra Greene (Cornell University)
9.30 - 9.45 Cristina Messa (Rector of the University of Milano-Bicocca) and Silvia Kanizsa
(Director of Department of Human Sciences for Education “Riccardo Massa”): Welcome
address on behalf of the University of Milan-Bicocca.
9.45 - 10.15 Alice Bellagamba, University of Milano-Bicocca: Welcome address on behalf of
the SWAB Project and Introduction.
10.15 - 10.45 Joel Quirk, University of the Witwatersrand: Slavery and ‘Lesser’ Servitudes:
Separate and Stratified or Blended Together?
10.45 - 11.15 Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, Central European University: Contemporary
Emancipation and the Slaveholder's Dilemma
11.15 - 11.30 Coffee Break
11.30 - 12.30 Discussion
12.30 - 14.00 Lunch
Second – Post-slavery Africa, Part I (14.00 - 18.30)
Chair: Antonio De Lauri (University of Milano-Bicocca)
Felicitas Becker, University of Cambridge: The rise and fall of female seclusion in the
aftermath of slavery on the southern Swahili coast: transformations of slavery in
unexpected places.
(Discussant: Benedetta Rossi)
Alexander Meckelburg, University of Hamburg: The Inheritance of Inequality: The
place of slavery in “social memory” - Findings from western Ethiopia.
(Discussant: Marie Rodet)
Lotte Pelckmans, University of Leiden: Stereotypes of Past Slavery and ‘Stereostyles’ in
Post-Slavery:
A pluridimentional, interactionist perspective on contemporary
hierarchies
(Discussant: Baz Lecocq)
Marco Gardini, University of Milano-Bicocca: Working as a ‘boy’: Free and unfree
labour in post-slavery Togo
(Discussant: Alexander Meckelburg)
Marie Rodet, SOAS: Property and Land Rights in Post-abolition Kayes, Mali (19051935)
(Discussant: Marco Gardini)
Documentary screening: The Diambourou: Slavery and Emancipation in Kayes, Mali
(Marie Rodet, 2014)
(This session includes coffee-break)
6 May 2014
Third: Post-slavery Africa, Part II (9.30 – 13.00)
Chair: Martin Klein (University of Toronto).
Benedetta Rossi, University of Birmingham: African Post-slavery in Seven Questions
(Discussant: Eric Hahonou)
Christine Whyte, Bayreuth University: ‘A white-man’s slavery’: Community
development, forced labour, and post-slavery in Sierra Leone, 1928-1956
(Discussant: Lotte Pelckmans)
Baz Lecocq, Ghent University: Slave Trade and the dynamics of post-slavery in a midtwentieth century global world
(Discussant: Alice Bellagamba)
Eric Hahonou, Roskilde University: Property, citizenship and the legacies of slavery in
Northern Benin
(Discussant: Felicitas Becker)
Documentary screening: Yesterday's Slaves. Democracy and Ethnicity in Benin
(Camilla Strandbjerg and Eric Hahonou, 2011)
(This session includes coffee-break)
13.00 - 14.30 Lunch
Fourth: The past and the present
Chair: Alessandro Monsutti (Graduate Institute, Geneva); discussant: Martin Klein (University of
Toronto)
14.30 – 15.00 Abderrahmane N’Gaidé, UCAD/IEA Nantes: Économie biographique et
construction d’une nouvelle généalogie politique chez les anciens Maccube du Fuuta Tooro
(Sénégal)
15.00 - 15.30 Giulio Cipollone, Pontificia Università Gregoriana: L'esclavage à Madagascar:
Hier, aujourd'hui et demain
15.30 – 16.00 Ann McDougall, University of Alberta: Hidden in Plain Sight: hratin in the
corners of Nouakchott
16.00 – 16.15 Coffee Break
16.15 – 17.00 Discussion and wrap-up (Sandra Greene, Cornell University)
Organising Committee: Alice Bellagamba, Antonio De Lauri, Marco Gardini, Gloria Carlini, Valerio Colosio, Marta
Scaglioni
SHADOWS OF SLAVERY in AFRICA and BEYOND
An agenda for research and comparison
ERC-GRANT 313737 in collaboration with PRIN 2010-2011 ( Stato, pluralità e cambiamento
in Africa) and MEBAO (Missione Etnologica in Bénin e Africa Occidentale, Ministero Affari
Esteri)
An international workshop, Department of Human Sciences for Education, The University of
Milan-Bicocca
5-6 May 2014
Aula Rodolfi, U6, IV Piano, Rettorato
Program and abstracts
5 May 2014
First - Setting the stage
Chair: Pierluigi Valsecchi (Università di Pavia); discussant: Sandra Greene (Cornell University)
9.30 - 9.45 Cristina Messa (Rector of the University of Milano-Bicocca) and Silvia Kanizsa
(Director of Department of Human Sciences for Education “Riccardo Massa”): Welcome
address on behalf of the University of Milan-Bicocca
9.45 - 10.15 Alice Bellagamba, University of Milano-Bicocca: Welcome address on behalf of
the SWAB Project and Introduction
10.15 – 10.45 Joel Quirk, University of the Witwatersrand: Slavery and ‘Lesser’ Servitudes:
Separate and Stratified or Blended Together?
Every country in the world has now legally abolished slavery, yet millions of people continue to be
trapped in forms of human bondage which are widely regarded as similar and/or equivalent to
abusive conditions under historical slave systems. On what grounds can these comparisons between
past and present be justified? On what basis can contemporary experiences be credibly classified as
‘slavery’? Drawing upon a combination of legal analysis and historical reflection, this paper
develops a new approach to this question by specifically focusing upon areas of intersection and/or
overlap between slavery and other forms of bondage, such as forced labor, debt-bondage, and
human trafficking. Historians of slavery and abolition have generally approached these points of
intersection in one of two main ways. One approach treats slavery as a separate and stratified
category, whilst a second argues that slavery has tended to regularly overlap with other forms of
bondage, thereby complicating Western notions of clear-cut boundaries between categories. While
insights from both historical approaches have contemporary applications, this paper aims to
demonstrate that the second ‘blended together’ framework should be preferred on a number of
grounds.
10.45 - 11.15 Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, Central European University: Contemporary
Emancipation and the Slaveholder's Dilemma
Scholarship on contemporary slavery has advanced an increasingly nuanced understanding of the
problem. Once conceptualized rather narrowly as new sex trafficking, a growing body of literature
challenges each of these concepts. The issue is not new, rather having older roots (Quirk 2011;
Bales 2012). The issue is not just sex, but rather sex and labor exploitation as experienced by both
men and women. The issue is not just trafficking involving movement but also slavery and forced
labor occurring within fixed locales and involving no movement (Kara 2012). This essay suggests
an additional intervention is necessary in two additional areas. Firstly, the literature on
contemporary slavery sketches perpetrators in crude terms, often attempting to understand their
motivations and efforts exclusively through a criminal justice lens. Yet this lens focuses and distorts
in equal measure, since many contemporary slaveholders consider their activities to be acceptable
economic or cultural practices. More sensitive instruments are needed if we want to understand the
other half of this exploitative relationship. This essay advances a second intervention related to
emancipation. While early efforts to "do anything" to "rescue" victims of trafficking and slavery are
laudable, it is now time to better contextualize intervention and emancipation strategies in terms of
their net impact on the human rights and dignity of survivors. To this end I introduce a novel
emancipation typology and advance an argument about the medium-term impact of various
intervention types. This attempt to focus both emancipation and post-emancipation relations
between erstwhile slaves and their slaveholders directly addresses the workshop theme of PostSlavery and invites comparative examination by colleagues working on different forms of
exploitation and/or slavery in different era.
11.15 - 11.30 Coffee Break
11.30 - 12.30 Discussion
12.30 - 14.00 Lunch
Second –Post-slavery Africa, Part I (14.00 - 18.30)
Chair: Antonio De Lauri (University of Milano-Bicocca)
Felicitas Becker, University of Cambridge: The rise and fall of female seclusion in the
aftermath of slavery on the southern Swahili coast: transformations of slavery in
unexpected places.
(Discussant: Benedetta Rossi)
Few people in contemporary Tanzania would accept a description of their society as 'postslavery'. Once it was officially abolished, the groups whose voices entered the archive had
incentives to avoid use of the category 'slave'. Nevertheless, status hierarchies derived from
slavery remained active on the Swahili coast throughout colonialism. If they were explicated,
this was done in terms of levels of civilisation, noble (Sharifian) descent and religious
learning. Sidelined during the early decades of independence, these ideas currently
experience a recrudescence in debates on the separate and Islamic identity of the coast,
especially, and increasingly violently, in Zanzibar. Yet if slavery is mentioned in these
contexts, it is either done as a way to de-legitimise an opponent through association with it,
or else to offer an a-historical, trivialising view of 'Islamic' slavery. The subtler overtones of
nostalgia for or execration of the slave-owning past are harder to trace, and do not map
clearly on ex-slave or ex-owner antecedents among their proponents. This paper seeks to
recover some of the ambivalence and subtlety with which affected groups thought through
and lived down slave antecedents by focusing on the practice of girls' seclusion at menarche
in the first half of the twentieth century. Ethnographic literature from the mid-twentieth
century discusses this practice as an 'ethnographic fact' without much history, and its
attenuation as a sign of 'modernisation'. I will argue that girls' seclusion constituted the
appropriation of a practice once reserved to high-status women by ex-slave townswomen. It
thus formed part of the struggle to overcome post-slavery hierarchies. Concomitantly, the
fading of seclusion after 1960 reflects the marginalisation of slave-owners' descendants and
confidence in the egalitarian rhetoric of the post-colonial regime. Ex-slaves' struggle for
respectability thus could succeed while, or through, avoiding reference to slavery, and
involve endorsement of norms once used to denounce them.
Alexander Meckelburg, University of Hamburg: The Inheritance of Inequality: The
place of slavery in “social memory” - Findings from western Ethiopia.
(Discussant: Marie Rodet)
The Ethiopian-Sudanese borderlands have been an area for slave raiding, leading to
migration and flight and the uprooting of ethnic communities, until the late 1930s. In
Ethiopia today, descendants of the former victims of slavery have received recognition and
visibility in the political framework of “ethnic federalism” and undergo a process of
reconfiguration of their identity. While slaves are often treated as people without history, in
this paper I content that the history of slavery shaped the regional “social memory”. Thus, the
trajectories of slavery become underlying patterns framing the social interaction of people
today. The paper is based on ongoing research in the modern administrative region of BeniShangul-Gumuz. Looking at the four main indigenous groups, the Berta, Gumuz, Mao and
Komo, who had varying experiences with slavery throughout history, the paper focuses on
the formation of citizenship among the descendants of slaves and serfs as well as the ruling
elites, i.e. the slave-owning communities, all of which do now live together and,
theoretically, share equal powers and political responsibilities in the modern administrative
polity. As a historical analysis of regional integration the paper looks at the correlation of
memory and politics: How do commemoration, stigmatization, denial, and the harnessing of
history frame modern inter-ethnic relations, and political bargaining? How does former
inequality reflect in questions of equal citizenship and political participation?
Lotte Pelckmans, University of Leiden: Stereotypes of Past Slavery and ‘Stereostyles’ in
Post-Slavery:
A pluridimentional, interactionist perspective on contemporary
hierarchies
(Discussant: Baz Lecocq)
There is no such thing as a linear process of emancipation from slavery to post-slavery
societies. With the steady increase of studies on different forms of past slavery, there seems
to be a tendency to overinterpret post slavery hierarchies as direct legacies of the pastslavery. If we presuppose slavery is everywhere, our research will only confirm this point of
departure, without questioning its pertinence and without considering other elements in the
analysis. Even if slavery is without a doubt fundamental in explaining contemporary
inequalities between groups categorised on the basis of a shared slave past, it does not
explain why non-slave groups share exactly the same predicaments of inequality with exslaves, does it?
The challenge is therefore to make analytical room for past-slavery’s interactions with other
mechanisms of domination in post-slavery societies. In other words, how do processes such
as racialisation, decentralisation politics, neo-liberal economies, governance of migration and
religious spheres of influence interact with contemporary (perceptions of) legacies of
slavery? I propose to consider how ‘multiple fields’ co-exist in a certain ‘culture’, in order to
go against post-slavery approaches that draw a unidimensional, linear line leading back into
past slavery. The proposed “cultural field of post-slavery hierarchy” recognises structural
inequalities as having root causes linked not only to slavery but co-existing with other fields
of hierarchies in contemporary societies.
Apart from this recognition of plural fields (regimes of value) co-existing and overlapping
each other, a second argument is made. In order to obtain an analysis of post slavery relations
that includes plural positions on what it means today to categorise or be categorised
anachronistically as of freeborn versus slave status, a radically interactional approach to how
hierarchy is embodied and enacted by different status groups is needed. To that end, the
notion of ‘stereostyles’ (based on the ‘style’ concept as developed by Ferguson, 1999) is
proposed. It allows for addressing the way in which contemporary relations of hierarchical
interdependence are dynamic, situated and adjustable according to differently situated
individuals and status groups on various moments in time. Stereostyles are proposed as an
analytical notion to analyse post-slavery agency with emphasis on relational interactions,
positionality and temporality.
The argument is that by combining these notions (fields and styles), a balanced approach to
where to situate structures of past-slavery in post-slavery agency of West African citizens
can be envisaged.
Marco Gardini, University of Milano-Bicocca: Working as a ‘boy’: Free and unfree
labour in post-slavery Togo
(Discussant: Alexander Meckelburg)
This paper explores changes and continuities in the forms of domestic exploitation after the
abolition of slavery in south Togo. Often considered as a ‘more humane’ form of slavery,
domestic slavery has been one of the main forms of exploitation in south-western Togo
before, during and after its formal abolition. Its legacy silently encompassed colonialism and
independence, intermingled with other forms of exploitation of young people and nowadays
it structures many relations of production. But contrary to old forms of slavery, which were
often characterized by a certain degree of inclusion in the kinship structures (at least for slave
descendants in the Ewe context), the conditions of domestics are now more temporary and
open to uncertainty. The issue will be addressed presenting the family histories of two men
from different ethnic origins and born respectively in the 1950s and in the 1970s, who
worked for many years as unpaid domestics (‘boys’) for rich Togolese families in the 1970s,
1980s and 1990s. The first is an Ewe from a royal lineage of Mount Agou whose father
worked in Gold Coast's cocoa plantations before coming back to Togo. The second is a
Kabye, whose grandparents were settled in the central region of Togo by colonial authorities
in the 1930s as forced labourers for the maintenance of routes. Despite their different
backgrounds and the fact that their biographical trajectories ended in very different ways,
their shared experience of servitude sheds light on the changes and the continuities between
old and new forms of exploitation in a ‘post-slavery’ context.
Marie Rodet, SOAS: Property and Land Rights in Post-abolition Kayes, Mali (19051935)
(Discussant: Marco Gardini)
Slavery abolition was promulgated in French West Africa in 1905, but the conditions of
social and economical emancipation were not yet fully established. Based on archival
materials and oral interviews collected in Mali from 2008 to 2010, this article provides
insight into labor and land rights conflicts in the aftermaths of the end of slavery in the Kayes
region. The reorganization of property and land rights in post-abolition Mali tends to be very
little documented, though Richard Roberts (2005) demonstrates how former slaves, men and
women, in Central Mali, were able to accumulate wealth by investing primarily in livestock.
My paper further demonstrates the growing importance of investments in real estate for some
men and women of slave origins, who had successfully accumulated some wealth. Court
records also provide precious insights into the social and gender conflicts that accompanied
the reorganization of property in post-abolition Kayes.
Documentary screening: The Diambourou: Slavery and Emancipation in Kayes, Mali
(Marie Rodet, 2014)
African slavery was officially abolished in French Sudan (present day Mali) by the colonial
administration in 1905, but effective emancipation of former slaves was in fact a lengthy
process, the repercussions of which were still felt long after Mali’s independence in 1960.
This documentary tells the story of those who resisted slavery by escaping their masters and
founding new independent and free communities in the district of Kayes in the first half of
the twentieth century. The film presents a unique audiovisual archive of slave emancipation
in Mali.
(This session includes coffee-break)
6 May 2014
Aula Rodolfi, U6, IV Piano, Rettorato
Third: Post-slavery Africa, Part II (9.30 – 13.00)
Chair: Martin Klein (University of Toronto).
Benedetta Rossi, University of Birmingham: African Post-slavery in Seven Questions
(Discussant: Eric Hahonou)
How useful is the notion of post-slavery to the study of African emancipation? Post-slavery
is generally thought to refer to a specific set of historical and social circumstances
identifiable in regions where slavery was a fundamental social institution and its legal
abolition was followed by resilient legacies of past hierarchy and abuse. However, the
abolitionist bias of most contemporary research in this field risks building a teleological
argument that sees post-slavery as a stage that follows legal status abolition and leads to the
inevitable, if sometimes slow, death of the ‘peculiar institution’. Yet, this way of framing our
analysis potentially hinders our understanding of pluralist societies characterized by the
simultaneous and tense co-existence of abolitionist ideologies, on the one hand, and
worldviews in which slavery is seen as integral to the constitution of society, on the other.
Here, we should try to explain the co-presence of slavery and post-slavery, and not the
transition from the former to the latter. This paper addresses these issues by asking seven
questions: (1) What if slavery was neither dead nor dying? (2) What marks the beginning and
the end of ‘post-slavery’? (3) Is the status of ‘slave descendant’ a legacy of the past or the
outcome of present-day opportunity? (4) Are former slaves developing a class
consciousness? (5) Do our sources reveal memories of status or the status of memories? (6)
Does public heritage commemorate the past, or is it politics masked as history? And (7) what
questions should researchers (not) be asking?
Christine Whyte, Bayreuth University: ‘A white-man’s slavery’: Community
development, forced labour, and post-slavery in Sierra Leone, 1928-1956
(Discussant: Lotte Pelckmans)
From 1955-1956 a series of strikes and riots swept across Sierra Leone, originating in the
unionised workforce of Freetown and culminating in attempts to destroy the railway into the
southern regions. Colonial investigators concluded that the unrest was the direct result of the
failure to re-shape economic and social relations after the legal abolition of slavery in 1928.
This paper traces three strands of history in Sierra Leone between the abolition of slavery and
these riots: the implementation of forced labour systems following the legal abolition of
slavery; the failure of the community development programme; and the continuing legacies
of the 18th and 19th century slave trade in the region.
The abolition of so-called ‘domestic slavery’ in 1928 in the Protectorate was couched in a
series of caveats allowing the colonial government to continue to coerce unpaid labour for
infrastructure projects. This ‘communal labour’ came under increasing criticism through the
1930s, with a series of strikes and protest movements, which challenged the imperial notion
that the African labouring classes needed to be forced to work. In the post-war period,
‘communal labour’ was gradually replaced by ‘community development’. Secretary of State
for the Colonies, Arthur Creech-Jones, believed that community development would
radically reshape African societies and transform their economies in the path to
decolonisation after the Second World War. The paternalistic logic of abolition, that the exslave classes were in need of ‘human development’ to become functioning workers, was
carried over into these development schemes.
Through both of these periods, it is possible to trace the ongoing legacy of the slave trade.
The prejudices of Europeans, forged in the pro-slavery rhetoric of the 18th century, are
evident in colonial racist assumptions and superstitions. The connection between imperial
labour policy and the earlier depredations of slave traders was raised frequently. And
resistance to these labour policies was framed as a transnational resistance of Africans and
the African Diaspora against exploitation. By analysing the entanglements between forced
labour, community development and the legacy of the slave trade in Sierra Leone, it is
possible to reassess the significance of the riots and strikes of 1955 and 1956.
Baz Lecocq, Ghent University: Slave Trade and the dynamics of post-slavery in a midtwentieth century global world
(Discussant: Alice Bellagamba)
This paper presents the so-called "Awad el Djouh Affair": a global microhistory, set in
various places on earth and casting a host of local and international players. The story
evolves around Awad el Djouh: a man from French Sudan (present-day Mali), who claimed
to have been sold into slavery in Mecca to a Saudi prince by another man from French
Sudan. His 'escape' and return to French Sudan led to a court case instigated by the former
slave with the help of the White Fathers and the trade union, in which accusations of slave
trade and illegal labour exploitation became intermingled. The case drew wide international
media attention to the existence of slavery and slave trade on and to the Arabian Peninsula,
which in turn led to the political exploitation of this media attention by a wide ranging group
of quite often opposing international organisations and political parties. The case affected
labour policies, both in French West Africa and internationally, as well as the policies of
decolonisation in French West Africa. At the same time, the international media scandal the
"Awad el Djouh Affair" generated was instrumental in two opposing discourses that both
drew on the colonial registers of abolitionism and the mission civilisatrice. In West Africa, it
served to demonstrate the fallacy of that mission civilisatrice and the impostures of
colonialism. In 'The West', it gave discursive shape to unease with the realities of the
postcolonial world, where the growing "Arab Petrol Power" in the world’s economy and
geopolitics, and the new Arab postcolonial self-consciousness, upset the European vision of
"World Order". Both these moral discourses were constructed on an underlying one: that
slavery ought to have been abolished and ought to no longer exist. By looking into the
concrete case and its tangible political effects, as well as its underlying coherent political
moralising discourses, the paper tries to answer the question what 'post slavery' could mean.
Eric Hahonou, Roskilde University: Property, citizenship and the legacies of slavery in
Northern Benin
(Discussant: Felicitas Becker)
This contribution explores the relationship between property and citizenship among slaves
descendants of northern Benin. Following an emic approach of both concepts the author
examines how the slave is represented as a property, and a lesser citizen. A series of
discriminations against people of slave status have resulted from these representations
inherited from precolonial slavery societies. Despite the formal abolition of slavery, the
processes of independance, the revolutionary regime and even democratisation, little has
changed regarding the popular representation of people of slave descent who are
experiencing a stratified citizenship. Yet, in various municipalities of Northern Benin, groups
of slave descendants have recently been challenging such representations by claiming a
moral recognition from governmental authorities and from various ethnic groups to which
they are related. Importantly, Gando leaders and followers claim their right to honor, a
quality of which they are usually denied in popular discourses. This entails recognition of
Gando people as persons rather than objects or sub-humans and recognition of the ethnic
character of their group. The quest for recognition should be understood as a quest for
citizenship. The right of honor is seen as a primary right that opens the access to a series of
other rights including the right to marry in other groups and the right to run for political
office. These social and cultural dynamics are intimately linked to a radical change in the
economic and political structures of the ‘post-slavery’ society of former Borgu kingdom.
Documentary screening: Yesterday's Slaves. Democracy and Ethnicity in Benin
(Camilla Strandbjerg and Eric Hahonou, 2011)
The film Yesterday’s slaves. Democracy and ethnicity in Benin / Les esclaves d'hier.
Démocratie et ethnicité au Bénin explores the social construction of collective identities, the
effects of democratisation and decentralisation reforms, and citizenship issues. It deals with
the Gando of Northern Benin. The Gando are a Fulfulde-speaking group of slave descendants
that emerged politically in the context of democratic decentralisation reform. Today, Gando,
who were once seen as a sub-group of Fulani or Baatombu/Boo people, claim they should be
recognized as a new ethnic group and their rights to access to political representation. This
challenging claim should be understood as a quest for a full-fledged citizenship.
(This session includes coffee-break)
13.00 - 14.30 Lunch
Fourth: The past and the present
Chair: Alessandro Monsutti (Graduate Institute, Geneva); discussant: Martin Klein (University of
Toronto)
14.30 – 15.00 Abderrahmane N’Gaidé, UCAD/IEA Nantes: Économie biographique et
construction d’une nouvelle généalogie politique chez les anciens Maccube du Fuuta Tooro
(Sénégal)
Toutes les mutations internes dans les sociétés humaines suivent des logiques qui leurs sont propres
et produisent de nouvelles visibilités (ou lisibilités collectives comme individuelles ?). L’écriture de
l’histoire d’une société se fait de manière quotidienne. La société Haalpulaar n’échappe pas à toutes
ces vérités admises (ou pas d'ailleurs!) que les changements sont inhérents à toute formation sociale
malgré la solidité des imaginaires et l’ancrage dans des discours (dé) classificateurs qui rejettent les
individus au bas de l’échelle sociale avec tous les mécanismes d’avilissement qui les accompagnent.
C’est dans cet ordre d’idée qu’il faut appréhender que l’individu en émergence est devenu l’élément
central des termes du débat autour de la réécriture de la trajectoire sociale, politique, religieuse
voire de la construction d'un nouveau Soi dans la société. Ce débat ne peut faire abstraction de la
naissance de fortes personnalités au sein de la communauté (hiinde en pulaar) ici celle Maccube,
porteuses de ces changements non seulement dans le langage, mais aussi dans les nouvelles
biographies sociales, politiques, religieuses (intellectuelles) en écriture.
L’un des objectifs poursuivis dans cette démarche est de saisir comment les ressources de
cette nouvelle économie biographique agit sur un ensemble, lui donne toute cette force vitale pour
continuer à soutenir l’avènement d’un individu (la construction d'une généalogie politique
individuelle) plus responsable et maître effectif de son destin dans une société qui fait face à des
défis de plus en plus complexes. La société est rattrapée, au XXIe siècle, par une longue histoire non
encore vidée de son vrai débat : la persistance des « discriminations » liées à la naissance, au sang et
à la position à laquelle elles assignent encore, à vie, les descendants des Maccube.
Quatre figures serviront s’exemples pur mieux rendre compte de cette réalité qui se joue au
sein du hiinde des Maccube et dans l'ensemble des segments de la société Haalpulaar : Ousmane
Mangane de Ndouloumadji Dembe (Self made-man, ancien ouvrier en France, ancien président
de Endam Bilaali, « fer de lance ») Ceerno Sidi Modi Sy de Horkodiéré (caution morale et leader
religieux de Endam Bilaali), Hamat Samba Thiam de Mboumba (Instituteur à la retraite devenu
imam) et maître Sadel Ndiaye (avocat et maire de Mboumba ancienne capitale des Wanwanbe, dont
les membres furent plusieurs fois almamys du Fuuta Tooro). La particularité de deux des figures
(Ceerno Sidi Mody et Ousmane Mangane) est d’appartenir à l’association Fedde Endam Bilaali qui
rassemble plus de 20.000 membres (dont plus de 75% sont des femmes) dispersés à travers tous les
villages de la vallée du fleuve Sénégal jusqu’au-delà, en Mauritanie.
Cette communication souhaite revenir, de manière partielle -données de terrain en cours
d’exploitation-, et surtout suivre une partie de l’itinéraire biographique de ces figures pour mieux
comprendre la philosophie du mouvement, les « réinvestissements » de ces nouveaux capitaux et le
discours de changement dont ils sont porteurs. Tout cela s’appliquera à saisir la diversité des
options tactiques pour quitter une position et acquérir une nouvelle posture.
15.00 - 15.30 Giulio Cipollone, Pontificia Università Gregoriana: L'esclavage à Madagascar:
Hier, aujourd'hui et demain
Le poids de l’esclavage, traditionnel et moderne, pèse sur la société malgache. Cette contribution
cherche à briser le silence pour aider les descendants d’anciens maîtres comme ceux d’anciens
esclaves, à assumer les réalités de l’histoire. Dans la même logique, il incite les responsables des
servitudes actuelles et leurs victimes, à s’affranchir du non-dit et à améliorer les conditions de vie
de tous.
La première partie évoque l’histoire de l’esclavage à Madagascar pendant le XIXe siècle, et les
effets de la traite. Elle rappelle le rôle du christianisme et celui de l’Église catholique dans la
Grande Île qui, sous l’impulsion du premier évêque d’Antananarivo avait choisi de racheter les
esclaves pour les libérer.
Depuis lors, « l’esclavage moderne » a pris la relève. Les servitudes plus récentes font l’objet de la
deuxième partie.
Reste à trouver « les chemins de la libération », ce que on propose de faire dans la troisième partie.
Pour surmonter son passé douloureux, la société malgache dans toutes ses composantes devra sortir
de son silence, se juger avec lucidité et agir sans crainte. Ainsi la libération physique et juridique
pourra-t-elle s’épanouir en libération intégrale de l’être humain, qui est à la fois personne et société.
15.30 – 16.00 Ann McDougall, University of Alberta: Hidden in Plain Sight: hratin in the
corners of Nouakchott
I recently completed research on: “The Sahara's Invisible People: hratin, history and social identity
in Mauritania and Morocco”. I want to look at one aspect of the project, the most ‘invisible’ of the
invisible -- the thousands of hratin who have migrated to the Mauritanian capital city of Nouakchott
and live in non-legal spaces between buildings, often literally ‘in corners’. These hratin, who
generally regard themselves as being of slave descent, often establish relations with bidan (‘white’
noble neighbours) to obtain water, electricity, work and sometimes even food, occasionally offering
small services in return. They have eked out autonomous ‘niches’ in urban employment that
nevertheless, often mirror former dependent relations. In spite of their numbers, they are all but
‘invisible’ to those going about their daily life in Nouakchott, as they squeeze themselves and their
meager belongings into partially-walled-in spaces between villas in well-to-do neighbourhoods like
Teghrava Zeina. Life histories collected among a number of these residents (mostly women) are
revealing of the evolving nature of being hratin in Nouakchott. Urban challenges include
negotiating relations with former masters’ families, as well as with current neighbours, finding and
keeping paying work, retaining permission to stay in any given space and providing education for
their children.
16.00 – 16.15 Coffee Break
16.15 – 17.30 Discussion and wrap-up (Sandra Greene, Cornell University)