Books & ideas

The unknown slave

René de Nicolay — 2025-05-29T06:00:00Z

Few ancient authors had a discourse on slavery. Even so, many spoke about it, often indirectly or between the lines, either to criticize or justify it.

A Conversation Between Africa and the World

Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch — 2024-05-28T12:35:47Z

Religious dialogue, trade, slave mobility, knowledge circulation, pilgrimage and intellectual exchange, colonization, resistance, creolization: Africans have been connected to the rest of the world in every possible way.

Toward Equality

Quentin Deluermoz — 2023-09-26T11:15:09Z

Inequality has a history that is always complex and often contradictory. The story needs to be told, because it is this story, enriched by the contributions of all the social sciences, that can help to shape realistic proposals for greater social justice.

From Slavery to Police Torture

Jules Naudet — 2022-10-17T07:40:00Z

Laurence Ralph's ethnography explores the various systems of punishment that injure black and brown Americans' bodies and that contribute to maintain social hierarchies that rely on the vestiges of slavery. These injuries call for healing and overcoming trauma, and also for reparative justice.

The Making of Race

Editorial Team — 2020-07-27T07:00:00Z

Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer and will be offering weekly selections of reviews and essays published over the last year. This week's selection questions the social construction of racial identities, and the history of domination.

Was New Orleans Caribbean?

Andy Cabot — 2020-04-20T07:00:00Z

Until recently, the history of French colonial New Orleans was treated as an exception. Writing a total social history of 18^th Century New Orleans, Cécile Vidal offers to reframe it as a Caribbean outpost of the French Empire rather than as a North American frontier town.

Slave Ship Rebellions

Thomas Mareite — 2019-11-21T08:00:00Z

In 1841, the Creole, an American ship with 139 enslaved people onboard, was hijacked at sea by a group of determined rebels in their midst. Kerr-Ritchie's book sheds new light on this iconic episode of the Revolutionary Atlantic in the 19^th century, telling a tale of successful self-emancipation.

Kara Walker's Fons Americanus at Tate Modern

Vanina Géré — 2019-10-10T07:00:00Z

Visual artist Kara Walker's Fons Americanus is this year's commissioned work for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. While addressing the current debates regarding memorials, it goes beyond a mere rewriting or righting of history.

The Afro: More Than a Hairstyle

Ary Gordien — 2019-09-19T07:00:00Z

Recent contentious comments on social media in France show that the hair of Afro-descendants is still stigmatized. How is one to explain this persistence of the stigmatization of curly hair? What are the underlying political stakes of these seemingly purely aesthetic considerations?

Medicine of the Black Body

Élodie Edwards-Grossi — 2018-10-18T07:00:00Z

The flourishing history of the relationship between race and health has recently turned to the origins of medicine in the United States and the decisive role played by enslaved Africans, both dead and alive. A history of duress, from which their voices nevertheless emerge.