Entre positionnements victimaires et attitudes identitaires : hétéro- et auto-désignations des Afrodescendants

Abstract

This article examines a brief discursive moment when, in 2017, “differentialist” anti-racist activists fought to change the name of a theater, “The Bal Nègre” (in memory of the name that made it famous in the 1930s), arguing that, regardless of the linguistic context, “Nègre” (Negro) is an insult. I will analyze some aspects of the discourse of those who see themselves as victims of neocolonial racism, as well as of those who feel unjustly accused and who describe themselves as victims of a new inverted racism. Adopting a discursive point of view emphasizing that language is used to construct social images of the self and the other, I seek to identify some characteristics of the current anti-racist discourse: the enunciation of the victims articulates intimate experience and generalization, emotion and argumentation; the role of scandal: the event, however small, reinforces the feeling of belonging to a collective force; battles around corporate names; the construction of a binary demarcation between black and white( highlighting similarities and eliminating differences); the role of emotions shared on social networks that consolidate the feeling of belonging to a group of victims.

Keywords

• Bal Nègre
• conflictual nomination
• discourse analysis
• Nègre/Black
• victim