Michał Obszyński

Focusing on the major intellectual debates surrounding the Black and African Renaissance, the interview with Sarah Frioux-Salgas, head of archives and collections’ resources at the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac media library, covers topics such as the role of Black writers’ and artists’ congresses and art festivals in the cultural reaffirmation of Black people during the decolonization era of the 1950s-60s, the place of literature in the shaping of Black pan-African and transcontinental solidarity, the figure of the Black intellectual, particularly that of Léopold Sédar Senghor, and the networks of ideological affinities and antagonisms formed by Black writers, artists and activists. The interview aims to highlight the complexity of the socio-political and aesthetic issues at stake, all too often summed up in simplified definitions of projects such as negritude or Pan-Africanism.

Beyond the resistance – French West Indian’s literature facing the colonial past and globalization Our aim in this paper is to analyze the different stances taken by four eminent authors from the French Antilles – Aimé Césaire, René Ménil, Édouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau – with regards to the socio-cultural situation of the region. Their literary projects work out the term “resistance” by means of different concepts and artistic gestures. The anti-colonial revolt of Césaire is challenged by Glissant's archipelagic thinking and Chamoiseau's metaphorical figure of the “warrior of the imaginary”, and there is still the “cannibal poetry” of Ménil. Taking into account the variation of ideological context accompanying the emergence of these concepts, we will see how the idea of resistance inspires the reflection on the writing and the role of the literature in the ever changing Antillean society.

The following interview aims at examining the role of an independent Parisian publishing house on the French book market. Economic and institutional circumstances surrounding smaller French publishing houses are illustrated by the example of Caractères publishing house, which specializes in poetry. At the same time, the interview raises the issue of francophone writing in the publishing strategy of Caractères in the light of a debate on the diversity of francophone literatures and littérature monde concept.