“Rebellious lives. “Intimate Stories of Rampant Black Girls, Troubled Women, and Queer Radicals” by Saidiya Hartman, translated from English (US Unis) by Souad Degachi and Maxime Shelledy, preface by Audrey Célestine, Seuil, “The Historical Universe”, 450 p., €25, digital €18.
It is a work of art made by Saidiya Hartman. Carving out destinations from what is missing in the archives. In Rebel livesIn an inspired essay that combines scientific rigor with the power of literature, the American researcher sheds light on the lives of African-American women who fled the segregationist South at the end of the 19th century.my century and early 20th centurymy hoping to find freedom and dignity in the North. These women, American society. “invaded” because of racism did everything possible to ensure their disappearance, sometimes without recording their names and often ending with “imprison (…) for having had children out of wedlock, for having spent the night outdoors, for having numerous lovers or intimate relationships that transgressed the racial barrier.”.
Columbia University (New York) professor analyzed thousands of pages of research reports “that, everyone, presents these black women as a problem”. Because they defied authority, they led their lives as they wanted and certainly could. But above all, simply because they are black. Saidiya Hartman analyzes about thirty of them, as well as some men they lived with, some white women involved in social work, as well as the African-American sociologist WEB Du Bois (1868-1963), author of Philadelphia blacks (1899; La Découverte, 2019).
But, beyond these individual cases, it is a “Serial biography of an entire generation.” that she composed, the second or third born after the official end of slavery in 1865. In the background, you can see the functioning of a young society where “Freedom was still in an experimental stage”the ghetto appears as “the plantation extended to the city”. In such a context, Saidiya Hartman maintains, not conforming to the good customs of the white petite bourgeoisie was not being depraved but a “visionary” and do the work of a “black radicalism” in “negative[a]“the thankless and servile existence written in advance” for yourself.
behind bars
Thus, Ida Wells, who in 1884 refused to “leave your place in the “ladies” compartment of the train” For “Go and settle in the segregated car.”and took the company to court. From Esther Brown, who “hated” their working conditions and “longed-for beauty”she who had decided “create a beautiful life”without husband, father or boss behind her. “But a woman who changed jobs and lovers as well as shirtswrites Saidiya Hartman, was considered immoral and risked becoming a threat to social order (…). This is more or less what the police inspector said when he arrested Esther and her friends. » Lacking proof of work, she was accused, in 1917, of “vagrancy” and locked up for twenty-five months.
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