"Genealogies of Black Islam - Racializing Religion" Conférence le 16 mai 2023
Genealogies of Black Islam
RACIALIZING RELIGION
16 mai 2023 | 16h15-18h
Global Studies Institute, salle 3H8
Robert Launay
Northwestern University (USA)
DISCUSSANT:
André Chappatte (GSI)
The colonial administration in early twentieth century French West Africa characterized Islam as “Islam noir”, Black Islam. The very concept itself was intended as an oxymoron. Blackness and Islam were, in fundamental ways, understood as antithetical. To understand the apparent paradox, we need to grasp the genesis and development European notions of “Islam” and “blackness” in terms of parallel, but hardly identical, genealogies of religion and race. These two domains first converged in the late eighteenth century, in De Brosses’ concept of “fetishism”, depicted as a paradigmatically irrational and textless African religion. In their preoccupation with distinguishing between “good” and “bad” Muslims, French colonial authorities constructed a reassuring but imaginary unorthodox “African Islam” that was essentially “fetishism: with a thin veneer. This supposed antithesis between Blackness and Islam even characterized positive French representation of Blackness, even in anthropology.
24 avr. 2023