SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

A recent history of West African Anti-Slavery Movements, 1970s to the present: Niger, Mauritania, Mali and Diaspora in Paris

Although domestic slavery in West Africa is often associated with a past long gone, several West African social movements emerged over the past decade to address the problematic nature of (legacies of) slavery. These movements are an implicit social critique on the concept of so-called “post” slavery societies in Mali, Niger and Mauritania.

The lecture will trace the different historical trajectories of each of these movements, while comparing both differences and commonalities that explain their emergence. The social critique that these movements engage in, throws light on the effects of both colonial and postcolonial politics of slave emancipation in the construction of race and other forms of ethnicity; on persistent forms of discrimination linked to attributed slave status; and the maintenance of specific social boundaries that shape so-called post slavery situations.

Some activists have ambitions to reinterpret the history of those social groups that continue to be attributed slave status today. This revising of their ethnic group’s history will be analysed through the activists’ interpretation of their personal life histories.

The data presented are work in progress, mainly based on interviews with movement activists in Mali, Niger and Mauritanian activists in the West African diaspora in Paris.