Alternatives Oral Histories in the Caribbean (XIXe – XXIe centuries) – ALTER

The ALTER project brings together researchers from different disciplines of human sciences that share a common interest in working on the processes of social formations that emanated from the universe of slavery, diaspora and postcolonial settings, all based on the Caribbean experience. The ALTER project bears on the constitution and the transmission of alternative oral histories of characters, places and events on the margin of historiographies and authorised provisions, in Haiti, the French Caribbean and some other areas of these territories, from the XIXe to the XXIe centuries. Its main objective is to reconstruct the historical accounts of actors by the careful examination of oral histories testifying to the construction of reference characters and the perception of breaking points, past peculiarities of which now aliment the study of contemporary socio-political situations. From this objective, ALTER has the intention of pushing into the scientific field the analysis of knowledge and the practices that they engender, through their capacity to construct, transmit and mobilise memorial narratives. Through the dynamics of recomposition, the postulate of this project is to envisage this knowledge as productions in the forms of strategies, resources and competences, and spreading through the circulation of subjects, ideas and systems of values and meanings. The corpus of knowledge so produced and activated will be understood as a community of experiences and discourses formed by individuals acting within enduring competitive and coercive contexts. ALTER relies on a comparative approach between alternative oral histories emerging from these contexts that share a common colonial and imperial heritage.
The demonstration draws from various research fields: slavery and post-slavery, engagism, migratory situations, ideological circulations, political registers, plastic creations, professional competences. Their common denominator is this special interests in oral histories and in the heritage that they transmit and initiate. The transversal question, that of the temporality of memorial knowledge is an invitation to consider the relation to politics, through the echo of ancient experiences of colonial power, ultimately leading to the construction of narratives dedicated to characters, places and events. As such, the links of the past in the present will be treated in the first axe through the different forms of circulation, both imposed and chosen, individual and collective. The study will focus on how the various situations that were induced and created by and in mobility and immobility, can cause the emergence of personalities of reference or counter-narrations. This circulation of subjects, ideas and knowledge, is analysed in the second axe through the emergence and reappropriation of specific characters, constituted from and in the course of precise events and historical periods. The enquiry will then focus on the development of characters in situations that are marked by modes of both oppression and resistance. This development of models will be, in the third axe, embodied in professional trajectories: artisans, athletes, artists, doctors. Their activities, and the ethos that they embody, will be investigated based on the transmission of narratives and media, vectors of leadership, auto-heroisation and social recognition.
The partnership between three research units, specialised on societies that are the product of colonisation, migrations and interethnic relations, and the positioning of the coordinating unit of the Caribbean, optimise the conditions required for the effective implementation of ALTER. The strategy of valorising results will develop actions that are directed towards a large audience – experts, students, scholars, civil society associations – while contributing to debates triggered by the intensity of questions relating to history and memoir in these societies.