Exile and anti-colonial solidarity

As part of the "Intellectuals in exile: a humanism without borders" series, and as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution that put an end to the dictatorship of the colonial empire, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (FMSH) invite you to a fourth conference on the anti-colonial exile of Mário Pinto de Andrade and all the exiles who fought for the freedom of the African peoples.

"As an eternal dissident, it was natural that he should become an eternal exile". With these words, the Guinean economist Carlos Lopes describes the existential and intellectual journey of the Angolan nationalist Mário Pinto De Andrade, one of the founding members of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and its first president from 1960 to 1962.

Along with other figures from the former Portuguese colonies, such as Viriato da Cruz and Marcelino dos Santos, Mário Pinto de Andrade chose to go into exile in Paris in the 1950s, at a time when the French capital was a crossroads for many people who, like him, saw anti-colonialism as a cultural and political practice. This explains his work as editor-in-chief of the magazine Présence Africaine and his role in organising the First Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris in 1956.

Tracing Mário Pinto de Andrade's long series of exiles, during which he was often accompanied by his companion in life and struggle, the film-maker Sarah Maldoror, enables us to reconstruct a geography of the many forms of resistance that opened up a period between the 1950s and 1960s that was strongly marked by intense exchanges between activists from different colonial experiences, capable of placing the anti-colonial fact at the centre, independently of the specific contexts of origin.

• Annouchka de Andrade, together with her sister Henda Ducados, is developing projects to promote, preserve and safeguard the work of Sarah Maldoror and Mario de Andrade.
• Lívia Apa, Centre for African Studies, University of Naples "L'Orientale".
• Egídia Souto, Sorbonne Nouvelle University, Paris 3

Moderated by Álvaro de Vasconcelos

A series of 5 lectures

Exile has never spared intellectuals. In the twentieth century and right up to the present day, it has even been one of the usual conditions for the life of the mind. But while it forces thought and creation to take a break, it also sometimes leads them to flourish elsewhere, or even to be nourished by this situation of loss and constraint.

The series of lectures entitled "Intellectuals in exile: a humanism without borders" seeks to highlight the complexity of these intellectual trajectories and their importance for the renewal of thought and democracy.

Each conference is organised around one or more exiled intellectuals, most often hosted at the FMSH or the EHESS. Together with the specialists invited to present them, these intellectuals represent a wide range of backgrounds, in terms of their country of origin, their preferred discipline, and the period and conditions of their exile.