Synopsis

The artistic expressions of the peripheries are an important part of the cultural scene in the big European capitals, hip-hop being one of the fundamental movements that have emerged from them. Poetry slam is part of this scene and offers artists the possibility to «take the stage» and express themselves. In this book, I study slam poetry that addresses the transmission of the memory of colonisation through poetry, enabling the understanding and definition of a multiple and fluid identity of subjects heirs of a French, Belgian and Portuguese colonial past. The analysis of the chosen poems allows us to understand that there are no colonial exceptionalisms and that the traumas and wounds that exist to this day have a common cause, the condition of being colonised, which is perpetuated to this day in post-colonial societal relations. Each poem is an expression of the urgency to decolonise in order to better live our differences in an increasingly cosmopolitan world.

 
About the Author

Fernanda Vilar is a consultant for UNESCO. She was a researcher in the project «MEMOIRS - Children of Empires and European Postmemories» (ERC), focusing on the impacts of post-coloniality on European societies and artistic expressions of the peripheries. In 2015 she won the United Nations Academic Impact Award and defended her PhD in African literatures at the University of Paris Nanterre. She taught at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, where she also concluded her MA.

_{Cover image: Dominique Barbot, Traços no calçadão, 2022 (courtesy of the artist)}