Christine Chivallon

RCMC Research Fellow

Christine Chivallon is both an anthropologist and a geographer affiliated to the “LC2S” Research Center (Laboratoire Caribéen de Sciences sociales), Université des Antilles (Martinique), from the 1st of March 2021). She was previously affiliated to “Les Afriques dans le Monde” (Africas in the World) at Sciences Po Bordeaux and to « Passages » at the Université Bordeaux Montaigne. She was elected as Director of Research at the CNRS (National Center of Scientific Research) in 2007 by the “Space and Society” academic committee and was promoted to First Class Director by this same committee in October 2014. She received her “Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches” in Anthropology in 2012 from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. In 2007, along with the late Prof Barry Chevannes, University of the West Indies, Prof Robert Lafore, Sciences Po Bordeaux, and Prof Justin Daniel, Université des Antilles, she founded the FIFCA (Filière Internationale France Caraïbe), a Joint Research and Teaching Programme in which she is still involved at Sciences Po Bordeaux. The “FIFCA” includes a teaching curriculum for co-diploma BSc/MSc in International Politics and Cooperation and gives access to doctoral studies. This programme receives financial support from the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research (Department of International Relations), the French Embassy in Jamaica and the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme of Paris (FMSH). She is also the founder of the Research Group “Mondes Caraïbes et transatlantiques en mouvement” which brings together several institutions, mainly the FMSH Paris.

The research conducted by Christine Chivallon focuses on materiality, space and identity, mainly in the Caribbean societies and through Caribbean migration in Europe, including research on the memory of slavery and cultural trauma. She also works on theories of cultures, production of knowledge and postcolonial and decolonial controversies. In 2000, she was awarded the Bronze Medal from the CNRS for her body of scientific work. She has been elected as Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College, University of Oxford since 2013.

Among her main works published since 2012 are the following :

Books

● 2012, L’esclavage. Du souvenir à la mémoire, Paris, Karthala.

●2022, L’humain-l’inhumain : l’impensé des nouveaux matérialismes, (Matérialité, ontologie, plantationocène), Préface d’Elsa Dorlin, Éditions Atlantiques déchaînés, Selles-sur-Cher.

Articles and Book Chapters

● 2017, « Colonial violence and civilising utopias in the French and British empires: the Morant Bay Rebellion (1865) and the Insurrection of the South (1870) », (Chivallon, C. & Howard D.), Slavery & Abolition, 38 (3), pp. 534-558 ;

● 2018, « Decoding the diaspora of Stuart Hall, Historicity, performativity and performance of a concept”, African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 11(3), pp. 279-292 (En ligne : https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17528631.2018.1451592).

● 2019, « Aux origines du ‘colour blindness’ républicain et du ‘racial thinking’ multiculturel. Approche comparée des Empires coloniaux français et britanniques et de deux révoltes anticoloniales en Jamaïque (Morant Bay, 1865) et en Martinique (Insurrection du Sud, 1870) », (Chivallon, C. & Howard D.), Outre-Mers. Revue d’histoire, t. 107, n° 402-403, pp. 151-178.

● 2019, « En dialogue avec les utopies Africana », Tumultes, 52, pp. 129-145.

● 2021, « Le plantationocène » (entretien avec Bérénice Gagne), in : Lussault M., Demoulle J. P. Néolithique Anthropocène. Dialogue autour des douze mille dernières années, Éditions deux-cent-cinq, collection “À partir de l’Anthropocène”, Lyon, pp. 73-83

● 2021, « Le ‘vrai-faux’ tournant matériel. Comment penser l’humain et le non-humain après le cultural turn ? » in : Hancock C., Géographies anglophones, Nouveaux défis, Presses de Paris Nanterre.

● 2023, « Archives et traces. Figures visibles et invisibles du passé », Revue Lumi, Revue d'études sur l'âge des Lumières et des Révolutions, numéro sur « La colonisation, fille illégitime des Lumières ? », 2, [En ligne] : https://m3c.universita.corsica/lumi/numero-2/

● 2024 (forthcoming) , « Décoloniser les arts ou décoloniser les institutions de l’art ? », Figures de l’Art, Revue d’études esthétiques, n° 42, « Art & décolonialité »

● 2024 (forthcoming) « The Palais at la Porte Dorée: From an Unlikely Trilogy to the Shadow of the French Nation » in : Faucquez Anne-Claire, Gosson Renée, Michael Androula (Eds), The Narrativization of Slavery in European Museums: Arts and Representations, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press.