Résumés
Abstract
SLĀV is a musical stage play directed by Robert Lepage, and based on recordings by singer Béatrice “Betty” Bonifassi. The recordings are Bonifassi’s reinterpretations of music composed by enslaved and incarcerated African Americans—that is Black people labouring under, and resisting, the conditions of slavery and its afterlife. Though Lepage and Bonifassi promoted the show as an homage to Black people, SLĀV opened at the 2018 Montreal International Jazz Festival to protests by the SLĀV Resistance Collective, accusing it of cultural appropriation. SLĀV was eventually cancelled as Black artists began pulling out of the festival. Unsurprisingly, Lepage, Bonifassi and much of the Quebec public accused the protestors of censorship, and of misunderstanding Quebec’s unique context.
Situating its analysis within the field of Black Canadian Studies, in this article Howard examines the discourse around SLĀV as manifested through the words of Bonifassi, Lepage, journalists, and commenters. Howard argues that SLĀV instantiates the broader context of antiblackness in Quebec, and pays particular attention to gestures of inclusion and proximity consistent with modes of slavery and its afterlife in New France/Quebec. These gestures attempt to contain Blackness within national, linguistic, and other boundaries, disciplining the ways it is allowed to assert itself. Black resistance must therefore defy these boundaries and claim solidarity between and across variously located Black people.
Résumé
SLĀV, un spectacle musical réalisé par Robert Lepage, met de l’avant des compositions par la chanteuse Béatrice “Betty” Bonifassi réalisées à partir d’enregistrements captés par cette dernière de chants d’esclaves et d’afro-américains incarcérés—tant de personnes de race noire qui ont dû subir les conditions de l’esclavage et ses séquelles et y résister. Lepage et Bonifassi ont dit du spectacle qu’il s’agissait d’un hommage aux personnes de race noire, et pourtant, la première de SLĀVau Festival international de jazz de Montréal en 2018 a été marquée par des manifestations organisées par le collectif SLĀV-Résistance, lequel qualifiait le spectacle d’appropriation culturelle. SLĀV a finalement été annulé quand plusieurs artistes noirs se sont retirés du festival. Comme on pouvait s’y attendre, Lepage, Bonifassi et bon nombre de gens au Québec ont accusé les manifestants de vouloir censurer le spectacle et de méconnaître le contexte singulier de cette province.
Dans une analyse qu’il inscrit dans le domaine des études sur les Noirs du Canada, Philip S. S. Howard se penche sur les discours sur SLĀV tel qu’ils se sont manifestés à travers les propos tenus par Bonifassi, Lepage, les journalistes et les commentateurs. Howard fait valoir que SLĀV illustre bien le contexte plus large du racisme anti-noir au Québec et s’attarde aux gestes d’inclusion et de proximité conformes aux modes d’esclavage et à leurs prolongements en Nouvelle-France/au Québec. Selon lui, ces gestes tentent de contenir la négritude à l’intérieur des frontières nationales, linguistiques et autres en contrôlant ses manifestations. Pour cette raison, la résistance noire doit contester ces frontières et revendiquer la solidarité entre Noirs peu importe leur emplacement.
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Biographical note
Philip S. S. Howard is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University. He works in the areas of critical race studies, anti-colonial studies, and Black Canadian Studies/antiblackness in education. His broad interests are in the social relations, pedagogical processes, and epistemological frames that mediate the ways we come to know ourselves, create community, and exercise agency in/against formal, non-formal, and informal educational spaces. His current research projects investigate contemporary Canadian blackface as a postracialist phenomenon, and Black people’s agency in educational contexts in Toronto, Halifax, and Montreal. He is co-editor of the collection African Canadian Leadership: Continuity, Transition, and Transformation published by the University of Toronto Press.
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