Douce Dibondo
I am an essayist, poet, and independent researcher.
My writing explores Blackness interwoven with queerness, feminism, ancestry, and decoloniality. Blending fiction, essays, poetry, and performance, I interrogate the margins, blind spots, and silences.
Long before all that, I was born in 1993, the year the Republic of Congo descended into inhumanity—a descent that would repeat in 1997. As a child, I fell into a silence whose cause I did not understand. Upon arriving in France, I discovered an entirely different world. I had to dissect the world to understand, critique, and rebuild it.
After earning my bachelor’s degree in sociology and a master’s in journalism, I decided to write on societal issues like racism, sexism and LGBTQIA+ discrimination. I then created the podcast Extimité to amplify the voices of a generation living at these intersections. I became actively involved in several anti-racists and LGBTQIA+ collectives such as AJL, Mwasi, Maré Mananga, and lately WXOOL Festival. My first essay–The Racial Burden, Vertigo of a Crushing Silence–is the consequence of all these experiences.
Since pursuing studies in anthropology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales as an independent student, I am now preparing for an application for a Ph.D. on decoloniality.