How to retrace the history of people of African descendants ? The research of Olivette Otele show how the multiple individual trajectories, as well as their perception and their representations, are intimately linked to the history of the European continent and to the challenges of the present.
Invited by the Collège de France as part of the Europe cycle (devoted in 2024-2026 to the theme “ Africa-Europe ), Olivette Otele offers a series of four conferences under the title “ Stories and memoirs of European Africans from antiquity to the present day », From November 6 to 14, 2024.
Olivette Otele teaches the history and the memoirs of slavery at the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas), from the University of London. His research focuses on colonial and postcolonial history and the memory of slavery.
Holder of a doctorate by Sorbonne University, she is a member of the Royal Historical Society of which she was the Vice-President, and the Learned Society of Wales, in Wales. She was a member of the Jury of the prestigious International Literary Prize Man Booker Prize. It regularly contributes to the public debate for the Guardianthere BbcTHE Timeor the New Yorker. She contributed to the Cotton Capital project of Guardian As a consultant on the issue of repairs associated with transatlantic trafficking.
She is the author of: History of British slavery (Houdiard, 2008) and A history of blacks from Europe from antiquity to the present day (Albin Michel, 2022). She also co-directed the volume Post-conflict memorialization With Luisa Gandolfo and Yoav Galai (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
Shooting & editing: Ariel Suhamy.
The life of ideas : How should the history of European Africans protect itself from the trap of “ exceptionalism »Against which you have a warning ?
Olivette Otele: The question of exceptionalism is interesting because very often people of African descent, which became famous in Europe, are perceived as extraordinary. That is to say that we did not expect what they arrive at this degree of celebrity. At the same time, the problem that arises is that, as they are extraordinary, they leave the framework of perception that we have of their community. In other words, they do not represent the community to which they belong. Or: these communities should not produce this type of individual. So what passes for a personal compliment returns these communities to the bottom of the scale. There is therefore also an invisibilization of these communities, explaining that their history has been neglected or marginalized from the “ large »European history as it is understood today.
The life of ideas : What do the perceptions and representations of European Africans say by European societies at the end of the Middle Ages and in the first modernity ?
Olivette Otele: I wanted to make the desire to explore several stories by speaking of certain individuals, and while following a chronology at the same time as certain themes: invisibilization, celebrity, or even the gaze carried by the artists on these people. This gaze is often different from local speeches that tend to perceive them as enslaved or simply uninteresting. The painters, the great masters in particular, on the contrary gave them a fairly noble and beautiful place in the arts.
The figure of Juan Latino is a rather particular example, an extraordinarily intelligent man, he produced a poetry which remains considered as a cannon, but at the same time his African ancestry makes it considered as not having its place in political circles and in Spanish history. During his lifetime, Juan Latino tried to rally several factions, the Catholics, perhaps the Moors, and he constantly negotiates his place in this intellectual environment and strives to reassure, to show that he does not question the power in place. He reflects this double -edged representation.
The life of ideas : How do you conceive a story “ inclusive Slavery from individual destinies, also integrating cultural practices, oral sources or artifacts or ritual objects ?
Olivette otele: what I mean by history “ inclusive This is a way to look at different sources. The archive, in the broad sense, includes both memories, oral stories, objects, or even the source of archives itself, the book, or the imaginary. This is what allows us to find voices that we did not hear until then. This also makes it possible to add myths, religions, and therefore to understand that history as it is conceived with the written archive is not all – we already know, and it must be granted that history and memories can go together.
We ultimately have very few votes of Afrodester. The gaze is constantly the one, outside, of the books that told us about them. I try to use certain objects to tell their stories, give them a voice. Take the example of the knight of Saint-George: we have no writing of the knight, we just have his music. We also have his reception, what we wrote about his music and the people who were there, which the newspapers in Great Britain say of the meeting with the Eon sigland for example. We do not have the own voice of Saint-George, but we can guess because of his courage and his will to fight that he tried to impose his thought and to show that he had the right as much as anyone to be there.
The life of ideas : How does citizenship, from contemporary era, constitute a double-edged recognition, as you remind you by referring to the writings of the Nardal sisters, or to the representations of the figures of athletes today ?
Olivette Otele: The question of citizenship can be double -edged in that it is a tool for national cohesion, of course, but also reveals certain silences, some shortcomings. It allows Nardal sisters to assert their identity that is both Caribbean and French, but it also allows them to show that citizenship in France works on two levels, with second category citizens. We find the same thing, for example, with the artistic skater Surya Bonaly, when she is constantly obliged to prove not only that she is very French, but also to prove in a certain way that she deserves the recognition of France as a person as an African assets. This is another illustration of exceptionalism: it must deserve this citizenship.
At the same time, we can return the question, and say that this citizenship and its pitfalls allow us to reveal the French silences, to re -examine the question of French universalism. Which belongs to this “ universal world »Franco-French ? In this, citizenship can be a working tool, to talk about French identity.
The life of ideas : Having worked on the port of Bristol, and having taught at the University of Bristol (2020-2022) at a time when the city was the theater of the stripping of the statue of slavery Edward Coleton, how do you conceive the role of the historian in this context, and the contribution of history to the most current debates on the trauma of slavery and on repairs ?
Olivette Otele: I actually did my thesis on Bristol and I have been working on this port for a very long time, and having a position in Bristol allowed me to see things closely, noting in particular that the university recruited me so that I examine its slave past, since it was founded by descendants of plantation owners. And in this period when I examined certain university archives hitherto private, I could see on television some of my students among the demonstrators who pulled this statue to drag it and throw it into the river …
I then realized that we were in a dead end. This statue had been the subject of discussions for decades, and the new generation has had enough – students, but also residents, people far from university circles, members of the most disadvantaged communities. This statue disturbed everyone-Edward Colston (1636-1721) having been a slavery known in particular for having transported many children to the Plantations of the Caribbean. The outlet therefore aimed to put an end to a discussion which had lasted for a very long time.
A consultation followed a local, involving the whole city, organized by the mayor, for months, on the future of this statue. In 2014, I suggested putting it in a museum, and I had then been looked at with big eyes telling me that it had to be left in place, contextualize it with explanations. Once tumbled, we finally decided to put it in a museum in the center of Bristol, but symbolically lying, in a corner, and keeping the graffiti which it was covered to signify that it is part of the story – lying down from its pedestal, and in a corner so as not to give it more importance than it had.
The historian’s work is to put things in context at a time when politics and history are intertwined – the Minister of the Interior threatened at the time to send troops on the spot, as in a context of war. The historian that I am recalled that the statue had been erected well after the death of Colston, more than a century later, in 1895, as a manifestation of recognition of the planters and patrons of the city who thus gave more importance to this man than the city gave it until then. The historian puts things in context. But she can also explain that a memory work must be done, that is to say that we must give the voice to others, who also carried the story of Bristol.
Another work relating to memory policy is also also put in place: what to do with this space now free ? Should we put someone in your center ? There is therefore a work of memory, urban history, architecture, to completely rethink. For this, the mayor of Bristol Marvin Rees, who is the first black mayor in Great Britain, asked me to work on the question of the inheritance of the past, and I am part of the LEGACY Foundation, who is interested in these questions not only in terms of memorialization but also of repair. I participate as a historian, and I work there, as a active member, with the black communities in Bristol.