Please join us Sunday, October 19 at 5pm at the National Humanities Center for our next seminar meeting. Meghan O’Donoghue, Assistant Professor of French at NCSU and a new arrival in the Triangle area, will be discussing her article, “ ‘African brother, what will you tell your comrades?’ : Independence Through the Lens of Self in Togoun Servais Acogny’s 1959 Autobiographical Thesis.”
Meghan writes: “This article analyses the unpublished 1959 mémoire written by Dahomeyan student Togoun Servais Acogny as he prepared for work within France’s colonial administration, just before the collapse of the French Empire. Acogny was a student at the ENFOM, the institution responsible for training future administrators of the French colonial state. Like his classmates, Acogny had to complete a mémoire as part of his coursework. Instead of composing a typical research paper, however, Acogny wrote about his own life spent “under Western influence” and the inescapable conflicts engendered therein. This article asserts that by producing an autobiographical work for a colonial institution, Acogny was able to pen a nuanced critique of colonialism and its impact on individuals under colonial rule.” This article comes from a larger research project on the ENFOM archive.
The article is currently available on the password-protected Papers page of this website. Please contact a co-convener for this month’s password.
A remote attendance option is also offered for this meeting. Please contact a co-convener for the Zoom link.