In 1993, Paul Gilroy published The Black Atlantic, marking a turning point in the study of cultures inherited from the slave trade and slavery. This book represented a first step in the study of the Atlantic as a diasporic space traversed by centerless flows and intense multidirectional circulations between Africa, Europe and the Americas. Since then, the "Black Atlantic" paradigm has become canonical, to the point of being widely used as the title for many publications on slavery, in the English-speaking world and later in the French-speaking world.

The 30th anniversary of the publication of The Black Atlantic is an opportunity to think again about what The Black Atlantic represents - both Paul Gilroy's work and the analytical concept it established for posterity - in the field of francophone studies in history, art history, anthropology and literature on the history of slavery, its memories and legacies.

Can it be used as a relevant epistemological framework for any type of research on Atlantic slavery? Should it be confined to the field of cultural studies in which it was originally conceived? In a word, what is the heuristic value of the concept today, whether from a disciplinary, thematic, chronological or geographical point of view? Can this framework be applied globally, or should its application be restricted to analyses at a micro level (centred on the notion of trajectory or biography)? Organised around several lines of study that the "Black Atlantic" framework has made it possible to renew in depth, the aim of this symposium is to discuss the contributions, legacies and mutations of the theoretical and spatial framework of the Black Atlantic in current social science research."