Relaxing hair among people of african descent : symptom of african ancestors deportation during the slave trade

Abstract

Our research tries to analyze relaxing hair among African Americans from a transgenerationnal perspective, showing how this contemporary practice takes its source in the trauma caused by the africans’ transatlantic trip during the slave trade. Using a movie and poems about this trip, we analize psychological issues of deportation upon captured Africans.  In the second part of our work, we propose an empirical investigation of relaxing hair, based upon a recording video of a mother combing her daughter, 10 projective interviews with west indian women of african descent and an ethnographical observation in a hairdressing salon. With these experiments we can see how relaxing hair is a try to heal the trauma, the biographical break, caused by deportation.