The Maghreb Generation: Militant Artists & Pan-African Postcolonial Future | Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik

We explore the interconnected artistic and political lives of figures from the Maghreb and the Black diaspora who collaborated in North Africa from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s, forming what our guest calls the Maghreb Generation, and cover the iconic 1969 Pan-African Festival of Algiers, where cultural figures like Nina Simone and political groups like the Black Panthers were present. Assistant Professor of History at Cornell University and author of "Maghreb Noir: The Militant Artist of North Africa and the Struggle for a Pan-African Postcolonial Future," Dr. Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik discusses her work which re-centers artists and intellectuals from Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia as key political actors in the mid-20th-century anti-colonial and pan-African movements. Dr. Tolan-Szkilnik explains how these militant artists (deeply influenced by thinkers like Frantz Fanon) championed a philosophy of continued, revolutionary decolonization beyond flag independence. The episode details the political and personal risks these activists faced, including imprisonment for figures like Moroccan poet Abdellatif Laâbi and the assassination of Algerian poet Jean Sénac. Finally, the conversation explores film as a revolutionary form of culture for the highly illiterate populace and the enduring legacy of this generation’s radical vision for South-South solidarity.

 

0:53 Introduction

1:37 The Path to Pan-Africanism and the Maghreb

5:51 The Pan-African Festival of Algiers (1969)

7:23 The Substance of Revolution: Beyond the Speeches

10:00 The African Union, Liberation Movements, and Algiers

12:47 Questions of Race and Algerian Reactions to Blackness

14:19 North Africa as One Entity and French Colonial Borders

16:40 Central Figures of the Maghreb Generation

23:34 Defining the "Militant Artist"

25:15 The Philosophical DNA: Continued Decolonization

26:38 Frantz Fanon as Intellectual Forefather

27:44 The Autocratic Grind: Exile, Jail, and Death

34:54 The Moroccan Poet Abdellatif Laâbi and Souffles

40:09 Film as Revolutionary Culture

45:48 Turning Away from the West

49:00 The Striking Life of Jean Sénac

53:11 Poetry of Enthusiasm and Disillusionment

 

Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik is a historian of 20th century Africa and the Middle East. She specializes in questions of race, gender, and sex in the post-colonial Maghreb. She has published in Jadaliyya, the Arab Studies Journal, World Art, Monde(s), The Markaz Review, and the International Journal of Middle East Studies, amongst others. Her first book "Maghreb Noir: The Militant-Artists of North Africa and the Struggle for a Pan-African, Post-colonial Future" (Stanford, 2023) tells the story of a group of militant-artists, some Maghrebi, others Angolan, Haitian, or American, who led Pan-African cultural and political projects out of the recently decolonized cities of Rabat, Algiers, and Tunis.

 

Connect with Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik 👉 https://www.linkedin.com/in/paraska-tolan-163846201

 

Hosted by: 
Mikey Muhanna 👉 https://www.instagram.com/mikey_mu/?hl=en-gb

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