Inter-axis 3 and 5 conference «The other is me: "Colonial drag", identity and cosmopolitanism in colonial and post-colonial North Africa and France».»
Details
Friday 25 October | 14h-16h | MMSH (Salle Paul Albert Février)
With Ellen Amster, McMaster University, Departments of Family Medicine and Religious Studies.
«It seems paradoxical that race and gender transvestism should have been an important reality in the French Empire and colonial North Africa, for the French and British empires were founded on the separation between coloniser and colonised. French explorers, soldiers and missionaries disguised themselves as natives; French audiences delighted in entering into theatrical, literary, travel and commercial fantasies by making themselves «Orientals»; Arabs, Jews, French women and others crossed racial and gender barriers to create new personas and live new lives in metropolitan France and colonial North Africa. In the post-colonial era, it is North African artists who are playing with multiple genres and languages.
Literary critic Marjorie Garber has argued that transvestites are «the site of the crisis of categories» - so colonial society must produce a challenge to its own premises. But it is the individual who acts. What becomes possible for a transvestite? What truths can I say as Me and Not-Me, or «Me the stratified me»? In this project, we attempt to define the idea of the French «colonial drag», and to determine whether it is a stage on the road to the construction of an identity that embraces contradiction, a cosmopolitan self. Drawing on French military archives, colonial archives, anthropology, exhibitions, art, theatre, opera, circus, film, popular culture, private papers, photography and museums, this project explores the history of this idea, «L'autre c'est moi». This history could offer an analytical third way, between the polarised identities and exclusive nationalisms of our time.»
This event can also be accessed remotely (link below).
For more information, please contact Théo Borel, doctoral student at MESOPOLHIS and co-organiser of the event: theo.borel@sciencespo-aix.fr
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