Lieux de L'identite: Quelques Reflexions Sur Le Devoir de Porter Temoignage Face a L'imperatif de Construire Au Present Le Lien Social: Hommage a Aime Cesaire (Aime Cesarie and Memory and Voice in Postcolonial Africa) (Critical Essay‪)‬

* Deja en 1939, Aime Cesaire s'est presente comme bouche parlant au nom et a la place de ceux qui etaient reduits au silence par l'oppression coloniale ou raciale. Face au long passe de la reduction au silence des esclaves et de leurs descendants, le monde contemporain doit ouvrir l'espace public non seulement a l'histoire, mais egalement a la memoire de l'esclavage et de la traite. Les afrodescendants ne racontent pas seulement, ils performent egalement leurs memoires afin de rendre presents leurs ascendants reduits a l'esclavage. Ecouter ces memoires permet de reconstruire le lien social afin qu'ils se sentent citoyens du monde multiculturel, cosmopolite et seculier, avait recemment ecrit Henry Louis Gates. * As early as 1939, Aime Cesaire took on the role of spokesperson for those who had been reduced to silence as a result of colonial or facial oppression. Faced with the long tradition of voicelessness of slaves and their descendants, the contemporary world must open up public space not only to the history but also to the memory of slavery and of the slave trade. People of African descent not only narrate their memories but also perform them in order to recall their enslaved ancestors. Listening to their memories means reconstructing social ties in order that they may feel that they are, as Henry Louis Gates puts it, truly "citizens of a multicultural, cosmopolitan, secular world."