"Ethicalizing Caribbean Thought: An African Contribution" - Hanétha Vété-Congolo, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures –

Caribbean thought is established on and carries a strong inflection for ethics and aesthetics. Yet, given its recent historical paradigm based on the intrusion of European forces into the area, the quasi-genocide of the peoples they found there, and the deportation and enslavement of Africans, any emblematic process of thinking was at risk of generating a system of thought incorporating this unethical and loathsome historical paradigm. How then did the Caribbean system of thought rise to its ethical and aesthetical particularity? What is the contribution of enslaved Africans to the ethics-based texturization of Caribbean thought? Drawing from plantation situations in the French colonies, Professor Vété-Congolo will in this talk offer answers to these questions.

Hanétha Vété-Congolo is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures. Her research is anchored in African and Caribbean orality, women’s studies, and African, Caribbean, and French thought, literatures, and cultures. Her academic and creative publications include L’interoralité caribéenne: le mot conté de l‘identité (Vers un traité d’esthétique caribéenne), Léon-Gontran Damas : Une Négritude entière, Le conte d’hier, aujourd’hui, The Caribbean Oral Tradition, Avoir et Être, ce que j’Ai ce que je Suis and Mon parler de Guinée.  

The Longfellow Professorship was established by the College’s governing boards in 1876.

Please note: seating at this event is first come, first served.

To view a live-stream of this talk, please visit the Bowdoin Talks website.

For more information, please contact Jenn Berube at jberube@bowdoin.edu or 207-725-3928.

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