Infra-Liberating Experiences in Dakar: Steps Towards an Anthropology of the Alternative. Conversation with Thomas Fouquet
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Thomas Fouquet is the author of a long-term ethnographic study of subaltern youth in Dakar. In particular, he investigated the life trajectories and experiences of Dakar’s “night adventuress”: the young girls who frequent the city’s nightclubs and bars in search of fortune, in order to free themselves from the conditions of dependence imposed by the reproductive roles to which they would normally be destined by the family: that of wife, mother or, in general, that of a subject dependent on the community. Seeking to escape this social destiny, which would require them to give up their plans for life and personal success, these adventures find in the time-space of the night the opportunity to engage in “infra-liberal experiences,” as Fouquet calls them in this interview. Experiences of liberation that are, of course, only temporary and confined to the space of the nighttime. However, as expressions of resistance and reaction to the subjugation suffered in ordinary daytime life, these experiences represent the milestones of a subjective instance of liberation that remains in a potential relationship with the “passage to the political.” Interviewed by the coordinators of this issue, Thomas Fouquet offers a reflection on the imaginaries of freedom and the practices of emancipation contained in his ethnographic archive, leading to the project of a future “anthropology of the alternative.”
Réseaux sociaux