2006 Congress

Richard Wright, Paris, c. 1956,
Michel Fabre Collection

"The Cold War may be dead, but new blocs have replaced the old - most notably, the religious, often inseparable from the cultural. For those who are constantly placed on the peripheries of these alien blocs, occasions of historic significance should be seized to take stock, examine how far we have journeyed on the road to self-retrieval."

- Wole Soyinka, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, 2006 Congress Speaker

50th Anniversary of the 1st International Congress of Black Writers and Artists
September 19-22, 2006

Co-Sponsored by: UNESCO; W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University; and Présence Africaine

Location: The Sorbonne and UNESCO

The 50th Anniversary of the 1st Congrès International des Ecrivains et Artistes Noirs will examine the salient features and legacies of the 1956 Congress, encouraging comparative approaches to the cultural and political expressions of contemporary Black writers and artists in the diaspora, at the dawn of the twenty-first century. It will investigate Black cultural creativity as it is practiced, displayed, and considered, and it will address the question of the relevance of culture in the context of globalization and the development of racialized conflicts. Central questions that will be addressed include: What does it mean to be a Black writer and artist in 2006?; Can aesthetic, human, and cultural achievements exist by themselves?; How can we frame and acknowledge the variety of relationships and connections across cultural boundaries that emphasize differences as much as hybridity?; What possibilities exist for culture to be recognized as the expression of local, national, and diasporic forms of identification, while, at the same time, considering transcultural and universal experiences?

The 2006 Congress is under the patronage of: Koïchiro Matsuura, General Director, UNESCO; Nelson Mandela, former President of the Republic of South Africa; Aime Cesaire, Writer and Honorary Mayor of Fort-de-France; Abdou Diouf, Secretary-General of the International Organization of Francophonie; Wole Soyinka, Writer, Nobel laureate, President of the African Community of Culture; Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Director, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.