Jacques Roumain, Léon-Gontran Damas, et les filiations de l’anthropologie haïtienne des années 1930-1940 : vers la constitution d’espaces intellectuels transcoloniaux ?

This paper builds on the crossed paths of the Haitian Jacques Roumain and the French Guyanese Léon-Gontran Damas, and tries to shed light on the intellectual networks that inspired the practice of anthropology in the French-speaking Black Americas in the 1930-1940’s. The Institut d’Ethnologie de Paris, where Roumain and Damas studied, had a big influence on their own idea of anthropology. But Damas and Roumain where also actives members of black intellectuals networks on both sides of the Atlantic. These networks where connected with antifascist and antiracist groups of intellectuals but also with the surrealism groups. Within these linkage, Haiti plaid a special role. Damas and Roumain were seeing anthropology as a tool for their project of improving the status of the black cultures, popular cultures, and they took part, from their viewpoints of intellectuals from colonized countries and their refusal of assimilation, to a deep reinterpretation of the discipline.