Dire la blancheur chez les Businenge en Guyane. Pratiques de catégorisation et racialisation des rapports sociaux

Abstract

This article investigates ethnoracial categorizations designating the majority in a minority language and their uses and meanings in everyday interactions to grasp the dynamics of racialization from the perspective of minorized people. The investigation focuses on the varieties of the language called Businenge Tongo locally or Eastern Maroon Creoles spoken by Maroon populations resident in French Guiana and Surinam.We first examine the different terms used to refer to whiteness such as bakaa, weti and poyte from a historical perspective on the basis of historical documents, before examining their uses in contemporary conversational recordings. The analysis in the final part focuses on interactions at the hospital of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni. It combines two approaches: the sociology of social relations and social approaches to language rooted in ethnography. The distinction between bakaa and weti makes it possible to imagine race as a power relation, where the evidence of the biological marker of color disappears. Naming whiteness is also a way of providing a critical perspective of the social order.

Keywords

• French Guiana
• racialization
• service interactions
• Maroons
• whiteness