Caribbean, African, Afrodescendants: black women have thought and brought French citizenship. Their trajectories and their often hidden struggles show another story of the nation, shaped by colonialism, to the prism of race, class and gender.
Marianne is also black : With this shock title, taken from the introduction of the American version of the book published in 2018, Silyane Larcher and Félix Germain inscribe the book they co-directed in the political history of contemporary France. A resolutely imperial and postcolonial story that disrupts “ the current apprehension of national borders “(P. 20) and refuses” The narrow shadow of the nation state (P. 151). A story that puts black women at the center of historical narration and mobilizes the intersectional approach to explain what race, class and gender do to citizenship.
A scientific and editorial landscape in full renewal
This work first makes the multiplication of research in human and social sciences on women “ racialized as black “(P. 12) that it is a question of re -registering in” The great story of the emancipation of women in France and the world (P. 151). This research has long been carried out in the United States and in the English-speaking world, but also in the Antilles and, more recently, in France. The political scientist Silyane Larcher and the historian Félix Germain, both posted in the United States but which claim their “ Caribbean positionsFrench neses “(P. 14), come back first in their introduction to the heavy tendency of social sciences to relegate in the shadows” Black female experiences specific to French society “(P. 19), that they bind to thinking that” All French women were metropolitan and white (P. 16). They add that this trend persists but has reduced since the original publication of the work in English in 2018. A conference on “ Black feminisms in context (post) Imperial French “, Co-organized in Paris in 2020 by Silyane Larcher and certain authors of the book, several editorial reissue or translation initiatives, documentaries as well as Master Memories report on this dynamism. As for African studies, women’s mobilizations in sub -Saharan Africa have long been studied but recently connected to metropolitan history. Finally, Silyane Larcher and Félix Germain add that the history of feminisms mainstream opened up to the imperial dimension of the history of France while mentioning the resistances (p. 19-20). These different fields of productions rub shoulders in this abundant work, “ plural, polyphonic and multisituated (P. 20), assuming a certain eclecticism which makes it possible to re -situate the Black Feminism American, both chronologically and geographically within a vast “ Space of the cause of women »With multiple dimensions.
Open the voice/way. Plurality and heterogeneity of experiences
De Sarah (Saartjie) Baartman-South African black woman exhibited at the start of XIXe century in England then in France-to today’s Afrofemists, Senegalese citizens of the cities of Saint-Louis, Dakar, Rufisque and Gorée in Salie, an immigrant narrator in France in the novel by Fatou Diome, Atlantic’s bellythe book sweeps very wide with the aim of fighting against “ the erase of past emancipatory struggles ” And “ the silencement of contemporary anti -racist mobilizations (P. 12). In a way, Marianne is also black brings a historical dimension to the documentary by Amandine Gay who gave the floor to black women from European colonial history. The initial title of the book – Black French Women and the Struggle for Egality, 1848-2016 -Placed the protagonists in the center: women very different from each other, despite their skin color, from the Caribbean, Reunion, Mayotte, Cameroon, Senegal, but also of the United States, Afrodescenders or African, living overseas, in Africa or in metropolitan area, sometimes circulating from one space to another. Women who, XIXe century to the present day, have been political actresses by their writings, their individual or collective acts of resistance, by their commitments. The work intends to show that they occupied public space but also thought of resistance in the intimate sphere, disputed different forms of oppression, questioning their feeling of belonging to the French nation.
Rich in 19 texts, the work mixes trajectories of life and moments of mobilizations, analyzes of literary texts and collectives, essays of reflection on Francité, Colonization, Immigration. It recounts collective struggles: led by the Union of Women of Reunion (Myriam Paris), by citizens of the four communes of Senegal (Hilary Jones and Jennifer Boittin), by Cameroonian activists against colonial discrimination in the 1950s (Rose Nedengue), by Caribbean members of the female rally or the Union of Women of Martinique after the departmentalization (Félix Germain), by women of Mayotte called the “ Tickle “, In the 1970s (Idriss Mamaye), by militants of the coordination of black women created in Paris in 1976 (Pamela Ohene-Nyako), by Afrofeminist movements in France at the start of XXIe century (Syliane Larcher). Several contributions also reveal more individual fights: that of the Martinican Émilie Aliker, wife and road companion of André Aliker, murdered in 1934 (Monique Milia-Marie-Luce), of the Guadeloupe lawyer Gerty Archimède (Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel), of the former Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira (Stéphanie Guyon) Black Panthers Jean McNair (Tyler Stovall). Finally, there is a question of literary or theatrical works and their authors, at the forefront of which the nardal sisters whose founding role is many times underlined. This kaleidoscope confirms the diversity of experiences and feminisms but also to reflect on the gendered dimension of citizenship and black internationalism.
Rethink citizenship
The history of women and gender studies have long explained that citizenship was not limited to the exercise of political rights and that the French of metropolitan France, citizens without citizenship (that is to say without the right of suffrage and eligibility) of the French Revolution in 1944, were nonetheless political actresses. The history of colonial and imperial societies has also underlined the disjunction between nationality and citizenship in the French colonial empire for two decades. Studies on the gendered dimension of this citizenship in French colonial and postcolonial context are still rare. Several of the contributions take the subject with the body by first approaching the way in which the women studied thought their participation in public affairs, then the complexity of their positions in relation to the nation.
These are many suffragist struggles led by Senegalese citizens of the four communes in 1945 (Jennifer Boittin) as activists of the Union of Women of Reunion against electoral fraud in the years 1950-1970 (Myriam Paris). In Cameroon in the 1950s, activists of women’s associations also asked for equal political, social and economic rights. Rose Ndenue shows that the first Cameroonian teachers and midwives claim the right to education, the creation of health infrastructure, health housing, but also the right to vote and thus deploy their capacity to act in political space.
Most contributions are also interested in the way in which the feeling of belonging to the nation is expressed. Robin Mitchell proposes to articulate race, sexuality and nation from the appropriation by a French writer from the beginning of XIXe century of the life and voice of Sarah Baartman. This is indeed “ silent By Charles-Joseph Colnet, journalist, poet and satirical writer, who published in 1814 in The Journal of Paristwo false letters supposed to emanate from her. For Robin Mitchell, the figure of the black woman makes it possible to criticize Napoleon while re-registering Francité in a white and virile masculinity undermined by the independence of Santo Domingue (future Haiti). If the demonstration is sometimes a bit fast, it invites you to think of the kind of citizenship.
Race imperialism and black internationalism
Several contributions also emphasize the ambivalence and complexity of positions, in particular French -speaking black authors studied by Tina Harpin, Jacqueline Couti and Claire Oberon Garcia. These three researchers make it possible to take the measure of the importance of writing in the construction of a reflection on the condition of black women (if not of black feminism), from the flagship figure of Paulette Nardal to the writings of Maryse Condé, Gisèle Pineau and others, via Suzanne Césaire, Suzanne Lacascade or Roberte Horn. These authors, often privileged in terms of class, challenged imperialism, racism and patriarchy, thought of intersectionality before the letter but not necessarily advocated the break with the metropolis.
These intellectuals also, from the interwar period, participated in the emergence of black internationalism. This transnational dimension of the struggles is now well known for Paulette Nardal and her sisters. It is also at the heart of the sensitive portrait that Tyler Stovall offers on Jean McNair, “ Black Panther, Revolutionary, Air Pirate, refugee, teacher, wife, mother, poet “(P. 200) which went into exile from the United States in Algeria and then in France in the early 1970s. Commitment across the borders is also present at Gerty Archimède, lawyer and Guadeloupe deputy in the National Assembly, who defended the activists of the African Democratic Rally in Côte d’Ivoire in 1950 but also Angela Davis in 1969. Pamela Ohene-Nyako states the dimension Pan -African fights for the coordination of black women, which struggles between 1976 and 1982 against colonialism, against migration policy of the French state, against “ Ethnologization »African girls and women, from an anti-assimilationist perspective very different from that of the Nardal sisters or Suzanne Césaire for example.
Claim and confinement
The genre, class and race are therefore at the heart of this polyphonic work. Some of the protagonists in this story refuse to make black identity the foundation of their commitment. Thus of Christiane Taubira who, while affirming “ My color strikes the eye “, Says” universal values (P. 98). His positioning recalls that of Senegalese sociologist Fatou Sow, invited to give the inaugural speech of the conference on “ Black feminisms in context (post) Imperial French “In 2020. She claimed her refusal to be locked up in racialized identities, claiming to be a feminist” Without so or but “, True to the principles of the charter adopted by the African feminist forum in 2006. In March 2025, during the international symposium organized in its honor in Dakar by the foundation of innovation for democracy, it reaffirmed its attachment to what the concept of race is perpetually questioned in order to carry out common struggles against all forms of oppression. Its position is not necessarily shared, and it is one of the great riches of the work Marianne is also black than to show this plurality.