Tag Archives: website[s]

L Autre Dumas

March 3 10

So they made a film in France about Alexandre Dumas, père, called L Autre Dumas, starring Gerard Depardieu.  Look at the photo of Dumas and think about how Gerard Depardieu looks, and hopefully you will see the issue.

The thing that is very interesting is that Le CRAN has attacked the film for this in a post on their website that makes me quite happy (really, I am so glad these types of organizations exist now in France), is that Dumas himself, in ” Mes Mémoires (French Edition)“ discusses the issues he has because of his blackness, the fears his mother had before he was born etc.

My favorite part, because it is so true, is the following quote:

Trop peu de nos compatriotes savent qu’Alexandre Dumas, l’un des plus grands auteurs français, était un métis, qu’il était considéré à son époque comme Noir et qu’il se décrivait lui-même comme un « nègre » aux « cheveux crépus » - Le Cran

Too few of our countrymen know that Alexandre Dumas, one of the greatest French writers, was mixed, he was consider black  in his time he described himself as a “negro” with ” frizzy hair” — translation, Jade

So why is this important?  For me personally, learning that Alexandre Dumas was black like my family (in that most American black people are “métisse”),  was life changing.  I was familiar with his work, specifically the Three Musketeers (below) and the Count of Monte Cristo from a very young age, even if i was not familiar with him, the man.

The day I learned about his ethnic/racial heritage was life changing for me. I took it the same way I took Obama. Here is this name, this person who changed the face of the world, this person who is seen as one of the best and a (French) cultural icon, whose work has turned in to so many plays and films etc. and he looks like my cousin. He looks like my future children. He looks like me. That experience showed me that, despite the message I received from those around me, the only true limits of my ability to achieve and to reach would be from me. It meant so much more than people telling me to reach for the stars, because here was someone who had already done it, despite all the odds and circumstances that were not in his favor… and he did it without denying who he was or where he came from.

So, the film bothers me. People do not know about the heritage of Alexandre Dumas, and films like this mis-educate people (and that isn””t even with acknowledging the assistant issue that apparently exists in the film, making Dumas in the film a figurative “Nègre littéraire” the idiomatic French term for ghost writer, rather than the literal “Nègre littéraire” that he was).

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New Pan-Africanism and the Myth of African Unity

June 12 09

I came across the following video about the myth of African unity on YouTube from Polity. The speaker is Dr. Paul-Simon Handy of the Institute for Security Studies. I found it very interesting and thought it raised a lot of good points people don’t often like to discuss or consider. The main ones that stood out to me are that Africa is a very diverse continent that is not all black and does not have a common power to rise against any longer. Basically, we are in a post-post-Colonial world at this point, and it is up to governments, people and academics to determine that that is going to look like. I have been doing a lot of thinking on the idea of a new Pan-Africanism, wondering what it would look like and what the goals would be.

From the YouTube video description:

The idea of Pan-Africanism should be revisited, with the aim of reorienting it towards service delivery, performance and efficient governance.

The French text on the backdrop says “Knowledge emancipates Africa”.

Knowledge and access to that knowledge has been shown time and time again to have a positive impact on society. That is one of the reasons I feel so passionately about making sure that young people are able to use the internet, provided they have access to it, to look up meaningful information and connect with each other. I believe that with more and more dialogues happening, there is no limit on the ideas and solutions people are capable of coming up with. Knowledge does emancipate, and it also opens up new worlds.

When I think of the original Pan-Africanism, it had strong links to slavery. This meant that it reflected the entire diaspora. Where do black people from outside of Africa fit in to this new Pan-Africanism? If the global coverage of Obama showed anything, it is that even if we are not necessarily unified, we do look at major success stories and see our own potential, regardless of our background or country of origin. We see it and think that we can and will do better and know that we are the writers of our future. Our common histories link our successes, failures and futures.

I hope that in the future I am in a position where I can help create a future filled with knowledge and access.

By Jade Posted in thought post Also tagged , , , , Comments(0)

Digitizing the Academy in an Open Source World

March 9 09

I spent most of the time at the workshop I went to thinking about how marvelous the collaboration that was happening was. The research people are doing is amazing, as are the interdisciplinary collaborations that are happening. All it takes is one quick conversation of phrase for people to realize that they can collaborate and make the research projects they are working on richer. Despite this desire for collaboration, it seems the thought of moving some of this collaboration to the digital realm is a no no. The overall feeling was that, even as things are being compiled, categorized and archived, they need to stay institutionalized. In fact, talk of making things open, even if they were to stay primarily in the institution fell on deaf ears. It was almost like I heard crickets. This humored me because, many people also discussed consulting digital databases in their research.

There is so much more to digitizing the academy than distance learning courses online. I am actually somewhat against those. I feel that the experience of being in a seminar of people, where there is face to face communication and group interaction is an essential experience, especially when learning. It helps people gain public speaking skills, learn to collaborate, and think quickly and on their feet and then voice their thoughts. Being in an environment with minimal distractions where the goal is simply to absorb knowledge and think critically is not something that can successfully be duplicated through a computer screen. However, distance learning can be a great supplement to face to face classes. I have heard so much talk about how students have become harder and harder to teach and seem to have difficulty learning difficult concepts compared to students of the past. I think a large part of this might be because they don’t have access to things that would help them gain their critical thinking skills. Having more advance discourses available online could be a tool to help spark the curiosity of some of those students. After all, you never know where a Google search might lead you.

An example of this, one of the talks that I really enjoyed was on slavery in the French Antilles. While I was able to speak with the speaker etc, I found myself desiring to learn more as this was something that I never went over in depth in my education. A simple google books search brings up over 90 results for slavery in French, all written in the 1800s. This is a great resource, however, I would love to be able to find more recent writing and possibly older archives on the same subject just as easily. Right now the only things available are from the archives of some US Universities it seems. From a general Google search I find the Digital Archaeological Archive on Comparative Slavery . Another site I am familiar with on this subject is Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. However, that was not in my first page of results when I searched for ‘digital slavery’.  Further, it would be great to be able to easily find the names of those academics and institutes that are working on this across disciplines.

An Aside: I would like to quickly be able to find who is working on this and if they are open to being contacted and collaborating with other working on the same subject. It would make sense to have a white pages online of academics by subject and/or topic of interest that is searchable so people can find and contact those with similar interests across disciplines. I don’t think something like this needs to be as robust as facebook . I also don’t think it necessarily needs to be completely open to the public. However, having at least the information about who is doing what would be helpful for people who want to go to school for specific topics.

So, what do I think departments in the Humanities and Social Sciences should be doing? George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media is an exception rather than a rule in the humanities and social sciences. However, their goals are what all departments should be striving for in the new Open Source and searchable world we live in: On teaching & learning:

Providing free access to primary sources, building high-quality online teaching modules, and offering instruction on critical thinking skills.

On research & tools:

Developing publications and applications to define digital humanities for a new generation of scholars, librarians and museum professionals.

On collecting and exhibiting:

Bringing history to audiences worldwide by collecting digital records, archiving documents of the past, and presenting historical exhibits.

This is what I want to see more departments moving towards. Students coming in are used to being able to find what they are looking for easily and quickly. I love the library. I love researching. But, to not move towards a model like CHNM is doing is like trying to do advanced math without a calculator. Things are now more open and accessible, and while it is a great experience to travel to a library and search and discover in a basement for rare documents etc, that should no longer be necessary to find information, nor should people need to be face to face to collaborate (though again, I think this is amazingly important).

While it is the nature of the academy and those involved to be elitist and specialized, it seems that their reluctance to move in to the digital realm is more of a hindrance than they realize. Academics and researches tend to be extremely passionate about the work they are doing. However if the way they are doing the work does not evolve to accommodate new modes of communication and learning, their work will lose its relevance much sooner than they realize.  For the academy, the source of information is extremely important, and for modernity, it is important that that source be open.  I hope that over the next few years we will see more and more departments moving towards and interdisciplinary, digital and open approach.

By Jade Posted in thought post Also tagged , , , Comments(1)

5.5%

January 14 09

I was listening to the second part of yesterday’s Médias d’Afrique podcast this morning and they did a little segment on the blogosphere in Africa. It started by saying that only 5.5% of the population in Africa have access to the internet. I knew the number was low, but I was surprised to hear that it was that low. I am trying to find another source to verify the number right now, but so far no luck. They also touched on the use of cyber cafes, but not too much.

They mentioned that for some reason blogging hasn’t taken off as much in the Anglophone African countries and that most of the regular bloggers are freelance journalists. Interesting, interesting.

Anyway, thanks to the podcast, I added two new links to my blogroll. I feel all bloggy as a result, only not really because I really only keep this thing to write notes to myself about stuff I’m seeing/thinking/doing.

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Le Cran and Obama

January 12 09

So much has changed since I have been out of school.  In November 2006, Le Conseil Représentatif des Associations Noires (CRAN) was formally created.  It is more than 120 organizations of all sizes throughout France to fight anti-black discrimination and racism (this is all according to their website).

They succinctly pinpointed the problem of being black in France, in their opinion, with the following from their question section:

4. Nous disons que “Les Noirs de France sont invisibles ” : que cela signifie-t-il ?

Avoir la peau noire en France hexagonale, n’est pas, a priori, la meilleure manière de passer inaperçu ! Le paradoxe est que les Noirs de France sont individuellement visibles mais ils sont invisibles en tant que groupe social. D’abord en tant que groupe social, ils sont censés ne pas exister, puisque la République française ne reconnaît pas officiellement les minorités, et ne les compte pas non plus. On pourrait se réjouir de l’invisibilité des populations noires, ou en tout cas considérer que cela ne pose pas problème en soi si certaines difficultés sociales spécifiques qui les affectent étaient mesurées, connues, reconnues. Or ce n’est pas le cas. Aussi l’invisibilité, plutôt que d’être la conséquence paisible d’une absence de problèmes particuliers, devient un tort.

Their Translation (yay less work for me):

4. When one says that ” in France Black people are invisible”, what does it mean?

In principle to have a dark skin in metropolitan France is not the best way to go unnoticed. The paradox is that as individuals, Black people in France are visible and yet as a social group remain invisible.

As a social group it seems as if they were not supposed to exist: the French Republic doesn’t officially recognize minorities, and doesn’t record them as such. One could be satisfied with invisible populations, or at least see no problem with it, as long as social and specific difficulties concerning them be recorded, identified, recognized. However it is not the case. And instead of remaining a quiet and normal status, invisibility is wrong.

Anywho, they are starting a new campaign that features a Barack Obama look alike (video above), to raise awareness of “racial profiling”.  Basically, visible minorities in France are stopped by the police more than people who look… white.  They have chosen Barack Obama because, well, he is a global inspiration for black people and he has admitted to being the victim of this type of racial profiling.  It is very interesting to me.  I can’t wait to see more of the videos (I’m assuming there will be more).  I am also mad this organization wasn’t around when I was getting my Master’s (even though there website is pretty bad).

By Jade Posted in news Also tagged , , , , , Comments(1)