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Florian Bobin is a Dakar-based researcher in African history who studies liberation struggles and state violence in 1960s-1970s Senegal. He is the author of a forthcoming biography of revolutionary philosopher Omar Blondin Diop.
Detained for over six months, Malian singer Rokia Traoré has been locked in a legal battle with her ex-spouse over custody of their daughter since 2019. Between allegations of abuse and arrest warrants, the case appears to be nearing its conclusion.
Détenue en Italie puis en Belgique pendant prèsde sept mois, la chanteuse malienne est engagée depuis 2019 dans une bataille judiciaire avec son ex-conjoint belge pour la garde de leur fille. Entre accusations d’abus et mandats d’arrêt, le feuilleton semble approcher de sa conclusion.
Fermée depuis juin 2023, l’université de Dakar est devenue le symbole de l’effondrement de la démocratie sénégalaise.
Closed since June 2023, the University of Dakar has become a symbol of the collapse of Senegalese democracy.
In the 1970s, young left-wing activists fought clandestinely for Senegal’s democratization under Senghor’s brutal regime.
The reaction to Nahel Merzouk’s murder by the French state showcases its tactic of depoliticizing the suburban uprising and diverting attention away from state violence.
Street names are political weapons. They produce memories, attachment and intimacy—all while often sneakily distorting history.
The Senegalese state’s quest to crush the opposition has caused massive unrest throughout the country. A regime that blows on the embers fans the flames.
What explains this reluctance to discuss the permanence of symbols honoring slave traders and colonialists in the public spaces in both France and its former colonies?
France’s history of violence policing left a legacy of law and disorder, targeting dissidents, in its former colonies.
In 1973, Senegalese activist and artist Omar Blondin Diop died in a Senegalese prison. His life helps reveal what revolutionary politics look like in a neocolonial state.
Maisha ya mwanaharakati na msanii wa Senegal Omar Blondin Diop yatasaidia kutoa mtazamo wa jinsi siasa za kiukombozi zilivyo katika ukoloni mamboleo.
Once you’ve exhausted all the Negritude quotes, you have to confront the fact that Leopold Sedar Senghor ran Senegal as a repressive, one-party state.