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Part of
A Comparative Literary History of Modern Slavery: The Atlantic world and beyond
Edited by Karen-Margrethe Simonsen, Madeleine Dobie and Mads Anders Baggesgaard
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXVII] 2025
► pp. 330–348

Chapter 18
Self-expression by black Antillean women

Disempowering self-censorship and remembering history

This chapter presents a reflexive analysis of two oeuvres: Mes Quatre Femmes by Gisèle Pineau and Mes Météores, Combats Politiques au Long Cours by Christiane Taubira. The analysis comes from the findings of my previous research in social sciences. The data revealed the extreme sensitivity of black Antillean women in expressing their thoughts and ideas freely. Their positions in an entre-deux (sitting on the fence) signal a form of hesitance and self-censorship. This chapter examines how Pineau and Taubira substantiate the silenced voices of the data that emerges from my quantitative research. The narratives and life experiences of these authors reveal how written words and self-expression are an act of resistance to the phenomenon of self-censorship.
Keywords: women of African descent, self-expression, self-censorship, slavery reparations, reflexivity, liberation, French politics, silencing, history of intergenerational psychological trauma
Article outline
  • Introduction: Literary hermeneutic of research in social sciences
  • Self-expression and self-censorship
  • Self-expression: A testimony of self-dissidence
  • Historical legacy and decolonial her-stories
  • Using her-stories to frame collective memory
  • Using self-expression to amend duty of memory
  • Conclusion: Opening the self to a form of liberatory ‘femihumanism’
  • Author queries
  • Notes
  • References
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References (35)
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