(Re)Reading Contacts of civilizations in Martinique and Guadeloupe, by Michel Leiris. Text excerpts presented by Jean-Luc Bonniol and Ary Gord
Résumé
In 1955 Michel Leiris published Contacts of Civilizations in Martinique and Guadeloupe under the aegis of UNESCO. Remarkable text, for the fitness and acuity of its analysis faced with societies historically structured by the racial criterion, and for its theoretical intuitions, well ahead of its time, at least for French research, in the field of race relations. Faithful to a Marxist theoretical orientation, Michel Leiris strives, throughout his account of a complex socio-racial structure, to point out the problematic correspondences between "races" and classes. But it goes much further, revealing all the dimensions and effects of the racial classification criterion: phenotypic evaluation of individuals, genealogical control and governance of alliances... Highlighting a racial prejudice, matrix of an inevitable racialization of social conflicts, he situates it in relation with racism stricto sensu, even tackling, from a both measured and critical way, the problem of a possible “anti-white” racism. The relations between metropolitan and native people allow him to revisit this latter case and ultimately recall the problem of the recent departmentalization and the future of these ultra-marine territories in the mid-1950s, as it could at this time sense it. These text excerpts are finally put into perspective in relation to contemporary advances in the study of racial phenomena.
Domaines
Anthropologie sociale et ethnologieOrigine | Fichiers éditeurs autorisés sur une archive ouverte |
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