Announcement

Conference “Pour saluer L.-G. Damas,” His Heirs and Legacy Revisited Thirty Years after his Death, International and Interdisciplinary Conference Organized by the Postcolonial Research Group, University of Antwerp http://www.ua.ac.be/postcolonial

4–6 December 2008.

Léon-Gontran Damas (1912–1978) was one of the pioneers of the Négritudemovement, who gave an international resonance to Afro-Antillean francophonie and postcolonial thought. At the same time, however, with Aimé Cesaire’s recent death it has once again proved that Damas has always been overshadowed by Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001) and Aimé Césaire (1913–2008). Through this international homage and forum, we would like to gather Damas’s friends, colleagues (Lilian Pestre de Almeida, Femi Ojo-Ade, Valentin Y. Mudimbe), and scholars appreciating both the man and his oeuvre at their own competencies. Although Damas’s poetry has been considered “less sophisticated” (Senghor) and “close to Prévert’s work” (Corzani), he essentially remains “the ultimate multicultural intellectual” (Ojo-Ade). After the heyday of Créolité, the “remarkable dissonance between the three pivotal voices of Négritude” (Glissant) invites us to reflect upon three generations of intellectuals and authors who have distinctively marked the Caribbean in particular and the Tout-Monde as a whole.

For further information, contact the organizing committee: Kathleen Gyssels:kathleen.gyssels@ua.ac.be (English); Angela Brüning:angela.bruning@ua.ac.be (French); Janeth O’Casas:olgayanet.casas@ua.ac.be (Spanish); Sarah De Mul: sarah.demul@ua.ac.be (Dutch).