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Home > Female slam poets of francophone Africa: spirited words for social change

Female slam poets of francophone Africa: spirited words for social change

Mirjam de Bruijn and Loes Oudenhuijsen

(Français voir ci-dessous)
Slam poets in Africa are part of an emerging social movement. In this article, the focus is on women in this upcoming slam movement in francophone Africa. For these women, slam has meant a change in their lives as they have found words to describe difficult experiences that were previously shrouded in silence. Their words, performances and engaged actions are developing into a body of popular knowledge that questions the status quo and relates to the ‘emerging consciousness’ in many African urban societies of unequal, often gendered, power relations. The women who engage in slam have thus become a voice for the emancipation of women in general.

This article has appeared open acces in Africa. Read the article.

Résumé

En Afrique, les poètes de slam font partie d'un mouvement social émergent. Cet article s'intéresse aux femmes de ce mouvement slam en plein essor en Afrique francophone. Le slam a signifié un changement dans la vie de ces femmes qui ont trouvé, avec lui, des mots pour décrire des expériences difficiles jusqu'alors enveloppées dans le silence. Les mots, les représentations et les actions engagées de ces femmes se constituent en un corpus de connaissances populaires qui remet en cause le statu quo et se rapporte à la « conscience émergente » dans de nombreuses sociétés urbaines africaines aux relations de pouvoir inégales et souvent genrées. Les femmes qui s'adonnent au slam sont ainsi devenues une voix de l’émancipation des femmes en général.

 

 

Publisher website: 
Cambridge University Press
About the author(s): 

Mirjam de Bruijn is Professor of Contemporary History and Anthropology of Africa at Leiden University.

Loes Oudenhuijsen is a PhD candidate at the ASCL working on the project ‘’Islam, everyday ethics, and its gendered contestations: ‘’wicked’’ women in Senegal from 1950 to the present’.

Has video content - Youtube, Vimeo, trailers, research video's, etc. Not needed for seminar video's: 
Seminar videolink NOT WORKING - paste it here so we can solve that later: 
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Posted on 26 November 2021, last modified on 26 November 2021
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Source URL: https://www.ascleiden.nl/news/female-slam-poets-francophone-africa-spirited-words-social-change