Bénédicte Boisseron: Black Ecology in a French Caribbean Context

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Hybrid event: Conducted live at La Maison Française

Online via Zoom

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**Please note: this event will take place in English**

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Black Ecology in a French Caribbean Context

Ninety-three percent of the population in Guadeloupe and ninety-five in Martinique have traces of the carcinogenic pesticide chlordecone (kepone) in their blood. This environmental crisis of epic proportions in the French Caribbean deemed the ‘new Chernobyl’ is largely unknown to the rest of the world. In these two French overseas departments, the soil, water, and food are contaminated by an indissoluble pesticide, a legacy of a slavery-based plantation system equally indissoluble. In this talk, Boisseron will address the question of Black ecology in the context of this environmental crisis, looking at it from both a personal and global level.

Co-sponsored by the NYU Department of French Literature, Thought and Culture

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Bénédicte Boisseron
boisseron

Bénédicte Boisseron is Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her interdisciplinary research brings into conversation Black Studies, Critical Animal Studies, and Environmental Humanities. She is the author of the award-winning Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora. Her latest book, Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question, draws on recent debates about black life and animal rights. She has been awarded a 2022 Guggenheim fellowship and is currently at work on a book entitled Black Freegan, on the poetics of repurposing, reclaiming, and reusing in a Black context.