Éditions
What does a people, made up of more than 1.2 billion souls living on a continent of more than 30 million square kilometres, have to say about itself? Africa is the repository of a collective memory, the receptacle of civilisations with moving boundaries whose gestures have crossed the centuries. What binds the populations of the African continent is the consciousness of living on the same territory, of belonging to the same history, and of facing the same challenges on the African soil: access to education and health; the respect of fundamental human rights; the right to free movement, self-determination and economic emancipation. Over time, this African consciousness has created a sense of belonging – sometimes tenuous – to the same land, the same people and the same destiny. Pan-Africanism, this collective ideal of political, social, economic and cultural emancipation, is the foundation of an unprecedented project.
Sommaire
Narratives of Womanhood
- Introduction: Is Writing the History of Women’s Art in Africa, Writing the Art that is Coming? Being African, Woman and an Artist Nadine Hounkpatin
- Conflicting Archives: Reimagining and Visualising Sociopolitical Narratives of Women Freedom Fighters in Zambia Gladys Kalichini
- An Aesthetic and Socio-Anthropological Analysis of Three Generations of Cameroonian Woman Artists Ruth Colette Afane Belinga
- Algerian Women Artists: Between History, Appropriation and Deconstruction of an Image Nadira Laggoune
- An Art of Proximity Rachida Triki
Institutional Narratives
- Introduction: Escaping the Vicious Circle Sonia Recasens
- Breaking Boundaries and Borders: Undoing Stereotypes with the Stereotypes (The Case of Contemporary Art from Africa) 3POINTS . . . (Dorothy Akpene Amenuke, Alice Korror Ebeheakey, Bernard Akoi-Jackson
- Modern Women: Archiving African Modernism Perrin Lathrop with Ndidi Dike
- Clara Etso Ugbodaga-Ngu and Miranda Burney-Nicol: Fragments of Trajectories of African Visual Artists Between Paris and London at the Time of Decolonisation Through the Lens of the Magazine Le Musée vivant. Amandine Nana
- One Museum under the Lens: The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and the Representation of Women Making Art Karen E. Milbourne
Introduction to the third section
AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions
1
In this chapter, Maha Tazi explores the alternative music scene in Morocco through the work of slam poet Noussayba Lahlou and rapper Snowflakebxtch. Through an analysis of their work, Tazi posits that these women appropriate the media of music, particularly of hip-hop, as a means of resistance during and after the post-Arab Spring male-dominated counterculture movements and within the larger Moroccan society.
Hip-hop, including rap and slam poetry, was born in the South Bronx at a time when Black and Latinx communities were in crisis, as a means of resistance against the pervasive poverty, racism, and violence they faced. Hip-hop quickly spread as a form of contestation revolt among communities of colour throughout the United States and in other Western countries, as well as the Global South. From the beginning, women have played an integral part in the formation of hip-hop, providing new and unique perspectives. Yet their contributions have been and continue to be devalued and, in some cases, forgotten.1 This phenomenon, as Tazi highlights, is reflected in Morocco’s counterculture where women continue to be ignored despite the active role they played in the Revolution of 2011, leading her to ask: “Why did the alternative music scene fail to integrate women as part of its wider social justice agenda?” Furthermore, what does the devaluation of women hip-hop artists in Morocco tell us about the place given to women in the country’s society post-Revolution?
Many scholars, specifically hip-hop feminists,2 have noted that like so many other mediums, including painting, sculpture and film, hip-hop is male dominated. Thus, media itself is gendered. If, as Marshall McLuhan wrote, the “medium is the message,” how can we then understand the use of a male-dominated medium–in this case, hip-hop–by women as a form of political and social contestation? How can rap and slam poetry be understood as a tool toward building a feminist society? Tazi draws from Marwan Kraidy and Margot Bardan’s concepts of “creative disobedience” and “creative insurgency” as a “basic revolutionary tool to continue denouncing systemic oppression.” Lahlou and Snowflakebxtch use rap and slam poetry to foreground women’s experiences as a call to action, a reminder that the Revolution is not over and must be continued, that it is necessary for Moroccans to “talk back.”
1
Treva B. Lindsey, “Let Me Blow Your Mind: Hip-Hop Feminist Futures in Theory and Praxis,” Urban Education 50, no. 1 (2015): pp. 52–77.
2
Joan Morgan coined this term in her book, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: a Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999).
Treva B. Lindsey, “Let Me Blow Your Mind: Hip-Hop Feminist Futures in Theory and Praxis,” Urban Education 50, no. 1 (2015): pp. 52–77.
2
Joan Morgan coined this term in her book, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: a Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999).
