The Essay: New Generation Thinkers

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The Essay: New Generation Thinkers: Colonial Papers

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New Generation Thinkers

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Alexandra Reza's Essay considers the Gilets Noirs, Ousmane Sembène and Nathalie Quintane.

In September 1956, the journal Présence Africaine staged a conference at the Sorbonne attended by James Baldwin amongst others. Alex Reza's Essay looks at politics then and now.

The First Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris 1956 staged debates about colonial history which are still playing out in the protests of the Gilets Noirs. New Generation Thinker Alexandra Reza leafs through the pages of the journal Présence Africaine, and picks out a short story by Ousmane Sembène tracing the dreams of a young woman from Senegal. Her experiences are echoed in a new experimental patchwork of writing by Nathalie Quintane called Les enfants vont bien.  And what links all of these examples is the idea of papers, cahiers and identity documents. 

Producer: Emma Wallace 

Alexandra Reza researches post-colonial literature at the University of Oxford. You can hear her in a Free Thinking discussion about Aimé Césaire https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nmxf
She also appears alongside Tariq Ali and Kehindre Andrews in a discussion Frantz Fanon's Writing https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000tdtn 
And in last week's Free Thinking episode looking at the fiction of Maryse Condé   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000v86y 
She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Council to select academics to turn their research into radio.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Ten academics make and present radio programmes for Radio 3 based on their research.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Council to select ten academics each year to make radio programmes based on their research.

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