Soumahoro Featured in Le Monde
Maboula Soumahoro was highlighted by Le Monde among ten women of African or Afro-descent who have "dedicated their lives to deciphering the colonial past, the slave trade, and the place of women in this painful memory to bring about a world where black women have their place."
Soumahoro, an activist and scholar who is president of France's Black History Month organization and an appointed member of the National Committee for the Memory and History of Slavery, addressed the "mental burden" carried by Afropéennes and Africans living in France, and champions the "radical charge" one may assume in response.
"The notion of radical charge," wrote Soumahoro in an article for Libération, "sheds light on the system that forces the racially dominated group to manage and reassure the dominant group. That is to say, it is up to the dominated not to report their subalternity so as not to disturb the dominant. And even when discussing this inequality, the dominant group must be able to maintain its comfort, its privilege, its centrality."
Maboula Soumahoro, a French scholar whose work focuses on US and African-American studies, the African diaspora, and Atlantic black nationalisms, was a visiting faculty member at Bennington for the 2016-2017 academic year.