CBESA supports first French Publication of Beatriz Nascimento
The publication of the first French translation of writings by Beatriz Nascimento marks an important moment in the circulation of Black Brazilian thought. A historian, thinker, poet, and activist, Nascimento developed a body of work that asks how Black people carry memory and create the conditions of freedom. This French edition invites new readers to encounter this work both in its historical depth and its continuing relevance.
At the center of Nascimento’s thinking is a commitment to recognizing Black people as makers of history. Her work challenges accounts that confine Black existence to enslavement or treat Black communities primarily as objects of study. She directs attention instead to the relationships, movements, knowledge, and forms of collective life through which people have sustained themselves and shaped the worlds around them.
The quilombo occupies a central place in this inquiry. In Nascimento’s work, it becomes a way to think about territory, resistance, continuity, and the pursuit of autonomy. Her reflections connect historical Black settlements with broader questions about belonging and the spaces where Black life becomes possible. She invites readers to consider freedom as something people build and practice together.
Her writing also brings the body into the work of history. Memory travels through movement and encounters, along with lived experience and written records. Across historical inquiry and poetic expression, Nascimento develops a language attentive to the connections between intimate experience and collective history. This gives her work particular resonance for conversations across scholarship, artistic practice, and Black feminist thought.
The French edition was presented during BLACK EUROPE 2026 in Brussels and subsequently in Guadeloupe, bringing Nascimento’s thought into conversations across different parts of the Black Atlantic. These encounters make translation a shared intellectual practice: an opportunity to read together, ask new questions, and recognize relationships between histories that are often studied separately.
This volume is published by Paris-based Éditions Anacaona, with an introduction by Mame-Fatou Niang and a preface by Brazilian theorist Alex Ratts. For CBESA, this publication inaugurates TransE, a broader translation project intended to deepen exchanges across languages and intellectual traditions. Making Nascimento’s writings available in French supports research and public discussion while inviting further engagement with Black Brazilian thinkers. It is an invitation to read her closely, return to the questions she posed, and consider what her work makes possible in our own locations.