Conversations at the Salon
Traces of colonial heritage in our cities
21 November 2024
Nichloas Lewis, Davide Rodogno
Podcast
This lecture took place on Thursday 21 November 2024 in the Salon of the exhibition ‘Mémoires. Genève dans le monde colonial’ (MEG).
It brought together the public and the authors of two books on the subject of colonial traces in our cities. In ‘Traces et tensions en terrain colonial: Bruxelles et la colonisation belge du Congo’, Nicholas Lewis guides us through the streets of Brussels to take an in-depth look at the relationship between Belgian society and its colonial history.
In his co-authored report ‘Temps, espaces et histoires monuments et héritage raciste et colonial dans l'espace public genevois : état des lieux historiques’, Davide Rodogno examines colonial traces in Geneva. The conference was organised by Maria Hugo
Let's discover the decolonial lexicon
31 October 2024
Célia Potiron, Rhoda Tchokokam
Podcast
This lecture by the Collectif Piment took place on Thursday 31 October in the Salon of the exhibition ‘Mémoires. Genève dans le monde colonial’ (MEG), organised by Maria Hugo.
With their book ‘Le dérangeur - Petit lexique en voie de décolonisation’, the Collectif Piment offers a survival guide for a so-called post-colonial society, and proposes its own definitions and reflections on words and expressions that are old or modern, necessary or superfluous, political or humorous.
Speakers: Célia Potiron, writer, speaker and archivist, and Rhoda Tchokokam, critic, artistic director and photographer.
Lecture by author Fatima Ouassak. From Pour une écologie pirate to Rue du Passage
19 September 2024
A collaboration with Alternatiba Léman (in French)
Podcast
During this discussion with Morgane Nusbaumer (co-president of Alternatiba Léman), the author, political scientist and activist Fatima Ouassak presented her latest book, Rue du Passage: Through the eyes of a child from the 1980s, we learn about a world that has remained on the margins of history and sociology: the immigrant working class. Rue du Passage celebrates the men and women who acted as smugglers, whose work enabled exiles to form a community, survive and pass on their knowledge and resistance. The book also offers a counter-imagining of the condition of ‘migrants’, where, without denying the difficulties experienced by these people, their daily lives are recounted with nuance and without pathos.
Fatima Ouassak is known for her commitment to the environment, feminism and anti-racism. In 2016, she co-founded Front de Mères, the first parents' union in working-class neighbourhoods. In 2020, she published her first essay, entitled La Puissance des mères, pour un nouveau sujet révolutionnaire. Following on from this project, she and Alternatiba are behind the opening of Verdragon, the first house dedicated to popular ecology, in 2021. The centre will host projects and initiatives relating to food, industrial risks, air pollution, parenthood, maternity, the fight against sexual violence, etc. In March 2023, Fatima Ouassak published Pour une écologie pirate : Et nous serons libres, in which she examines the need to broaden the social ecological front and invites us to rethink the role of working-class neighbourhood residents in these struggles. Rue du Passage, her latest novel, is a history of the immigrant working class, through portraits of immigrant workers seen through the eyes of a child.
The Conversations at the Salon: a four lecture-meeting series conceived and organized by Fabio Rosinelli
Colonization and independence, from Switzerland to the Congo via Geneva?
16 May 2024
Fabio Rossinelli, Lisa N’Pango Zanetti
Podcast
The history of Swiss-Congolese relations is based on Geneva's significant role. Through the Geographical Society, the Geneva bourgeoisie embraced the project to explore and colonise Central Africa promoted by Leopold II, King of the Belgians, and drew the support of the Swiss ruling classes. Relations with the independent state of the Congo (1885-1908) and the Belgian Congo (1908-1960) became official, laying the foundations for the bilateral relations established when the Congo gained its independence. The federal government in Berne then became an accomplice to Mobutu's dictatorship in Kinshasa.
What consequences did these events have in Switzerland? How do they help us to understand the country's role in the politics of global domination in the colonial and post-colonial eras?
Geneva's colonial shows and their legacy
30 May 2024
Shyaka Kagame, Thierry Maurice
Podcast
For the 1896 Swiss National Exhibition in Geneva, a Black Village was set up in what was to become the Jonction district. It was a kind of living exhibition in which people of African origin staged their daily lives in a supposedly ad hoc reconstructed habitat. In this way, the public can observe at close quarters what they perceive as a primitive culture born of racial inferiority. This type of show, which also included traveling shows, was very popular in Europe at the time. In Geneva, for example, they were staged at the Parc des Eaux-Vives until 1912.
How did these representations of colonial otherness contribute to forging and disseminating the racial stereotypes we still find today? What are their legacies today, and what can be done to ensure that this page of Geneva's past is not forgotten, but can be used to build a more equitable future?
Chocolate, colonialism... and Switzerland?
13 june 2024
Letizia Gaja Pinoja, Samy Manga
Podcast
Beginning in 2024, rising cocoa prices are hurting chocolate producers around the world. This is also a cause for concern in Switzerland, the land of chocolate par excellence. The Chocosuisse federation, which includes Nestlé and Lindt, has been lobbying Swiss politicians for decades to facilitate the manufacture and marketing of this product, which is the pride of the country. Yet the global history of chocolate goes back a long way. Since the days of slavery and right up to the present day, cocoa production has been linked to the dynamics of economic, social and ecological exploitation on a global scale, with a North-South axis of domination.
What does this mean today for the former colonies that supplied the brown gold? And to what extent is there awareness, in Switzerland, of the global violence through which the country's chocolate is produced?
Medical missions and humanitarian aid: another facet of colonisation
27 june 2024
Marie-Luce Desgrandchamps, Guillaume Linte, Eric Burnier
Podcast
Colonial history is not only characterised by the material conquests achieved in economic, political and military terms. It also includes a philanthropic aspect, or at least publicly formulated as such: that of health and moral assistance to the colonised peoples. Colonisation also brought with it a tremendous development in European medicine, while organisations with charitable claims, such as the Christian missions, sprang up in the 19th century, including in Switzerland, to bring health and salvation to the overseas natives. Geneva played a very important role in this context. The International Committee of the Red Cross, for example, was also a major player in Africa, especially in the 20th century.
What are the links between the humanitarian cause and colonial domination, decolonisation and independence? What is at stake in such an undertaking, past and present?
The discussion took place around a portable pharmacy that belonged to a missionary in Mozambique, Léon Berthoud, Eric Burnier's grandfather.