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20-21 Nov 2025 Paris / Aubervilliers (France)
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Workshop > 3 Memory activism and relations with the majority
Thursday 20, 15:50 - 17:40
Centenaire de Victoria Santa Cruz et vitalité mémorielle afro-péruvienne Cette communication s’appuie sur un travail exploratoire consacré à la commémoration du centenaire de Victoria Santa Cruz (1922-2014), figure emblématique de la culture afro-péruvienne. À partir d’un premier recueil de données, elle analyse la construction et la circulation de l’héritage de l’artiste à travers l’articulation entre mémoire familiale, activisme afro-féminin et reconnaissance institutionnelle. Le centenaire apparaît alors comme le révélateur d’une « vitalité mémorielle », où se déploient des dynamiques plurielles tout en inscrivant la mémoire afro-péruvienne dans le récit national. Cette étude interroge la manière dont les revendications identitaires et de genre, les circulations transnationales et les logiques de patrimonialisation redéfinissent aujourd’hui les formes de reconnaissance de l’afro-descendance au Pérou. En observant les interactions entre acteurs familiaux, institutions culturelles et militantes afro-péruviennes, elle dévoile un espace mémoriel où se définissent les modes de légitimation du passé, se renégocient les rapports de pouvoir et se tissent des liens entre les différents acteurs en présence.
Des usages du passé à contre-courant de l’instrumentalisation libérale du massacre des bananeraies (Ciénaga, Colombie, 1928) : repérer les voix de secteurs minoritaires (1928-1938) Dans la nuit du 5 au 6 décembre 1928, l’armée colombienne fit feu sur des travailleurs en grève qui s’étaient rassemblés dans la ville caribéenne de Ciénaga. L’événement de répression étatique, d’emblée minoré par le gouvernement conservateur en place, donna à lieu à des lectures discordantes et le passé traumatique fit rapidement l’objet d’instrumentalisation, notamment à l’initiative du Parti libéral colombien. Quelle place occupe l’expérience des secteurs minoritaires dans les usages politiques du passé mis en œuvre durant la décennie postérieure au massacre ? La réflexion s’appuiera notamment sur les discours dissonants retranscrits dans la presse locale de deux entrepreneur∙euses de mémoire : Santander Alemán, cheminot afro-descendant et témoin du massacre, et María Eufemia, autochtone de la Sierra Nevada, dont le contre-récit révèle les failles du prétendu « monopole sur le passé légitime » des libéraux
Performing Whiteness in Gray: Free Men of Color, the Confederate Military, and Race in the South Carolina Lowcountry
My paper examines a group of free men of color from the South Carolina lowcountry who served in the Confederate army during the American Civil War, using military service to claim whiteness and citizenship for themselves and their families. These men came from a small, liminal community of free people of color who were rarely identified as white or as “black,” but most often as “mulatto,” a now-dated term denoting mixed-race ancestry. Their ambiguous racial status left their citizenship fragile, yet it also offered opportunities to navigate the margins of racial identity and to access rights otherwise denied them. These men leveraged their ambiguous statuses and used their ability to occasionally “pass” as white to enter Confederate military service—not to uphold the white supremacist regime, but instead for what historian Ariela Gross has called the performance of “white civic manhood.” Their service and the Confederate uniform helped solidify more lasting claims to whiteness. While scholars have explored similar strategies among free men of color in earlier conflicts like the American Revolution, little attention has been paid to those who employed this strategy within the Confederate ranks. The chance to perform whiteness in the Confederacy was a gamble that put their safety and their families at risk, but it came at a time when these free people of color had little choice. Their circumstances were already difficult, and they were described as little more than “slaves without masters.” But their situations grew more dire as the Civil War approached. The enslaver regime further constricted their rights, debated enslaving or expelling them, and held an increasing number of race trials for people living in the margins between white and black. In these trials, courts determined their race and, therefore, the citizenship it conferred or denied. In this climate, Confederate military service presented a risky but potentially rewarding path to asserting whiteness and securing future rights for themselves and their descendants. After the war, many of these men and their families successfully identified as white, they claimed pensions designated for white veterans, and their descendants pointed to their sacrifices to help claim their place among whites in public schools and on juries well into the 20th Century. My research traces their strategies for meaningful citizenship before, during, and after the war and it highlights the need to distinguish between “free blacks” and “free persons of color” in our historiography. Finally, it also critiques the ways these individuals have been remembered—often inaccurately—as “black Confederates” instead of “free non-white” soldiers from the margins between black and white. Thus, adding important nuance to recent efforts to debunk the “black Confederates” mythology promoted by Confederate “heritage” groups. (Cancelled: Shu Wan,University of Buffalo, Aside from Pan-Ethnicity: Justice of Citizens Alliance and the Use of the Past in Asian American Activism) |
