I’ve been out of school since I completed my MA at NYU’s Institute of French Studies in 2005. During my studies, I enjoyed looking at the complexity of French identity of marginalized populations in the metropole and DOM/TOMs because it was so different from the US experience, yet so familiar at the same time. Unfortunately, there was not a lot of work being done at the time on the modern version of this complex relationship of Frenchness and Otherness. I always found this problematic because it seemed like the idiosyncrasies that defined the post-colonial age had evolved in to something new.

Since being out of school things have changed. Quite a few book have been published on the issues of identity that modernity has created for populations that exist on the margins of French society. This means I have a ton of books to read this summer to catch up on my old interests. Lucky for me my old intrests seem to be falling in line with the work I hope to do during my PhD and beyond.

While reading Black France: Colonialism, Immigration, And Transnationalism by Dominic Thomas,
(I just started it, very good so far), I came across the following passage:

“[M]igritude” symbolizes a kind of “third space” that comes from a “questioning of certain prevalent discursive configurations” and “simultaneous disengagement from both the culture of origin and the receiving culture … within a new identitarian space” (Chevrier, “Afrique(s)-sur- Seine,” 99)

The new “identitarian space” where I am interested in exploring migritude is digital media. For me, almost everything that happens in digital media is taking place in a “third space”, one that is neither personal or social, but both at the same time. It is at once anonymous and personal, meaningful and meaningless, defined by both the producer and consumer. The space between these points, that is what fascinates me and that is where I want to explore identity. What is amazing to me is that these dichotomies never seem to actually cross paths. For me, that space is the digital media space.

So, right now, the questions I am thinking about as I read are:

Can we define blackness in digital media spaces? What are the characteristics of blackness that make it a specific identity in digital media? How does this compare to expressions of blackness using other media?

Anyway, back to the book… and I need to find a copy of Afrique(s)-sur- Seine and add it to the list.