PHILOSOPHICAL & SOCIO-HISTORICAL

The triad résistance–résilience–réexistence orders the history of these arts. Resistance names the confrontation — the games maintained against prohibition, the circle re-formed after each dispersal. Resilience names the endurance — the practices surviving marginalisation, changing skin to remain alive. Réexistence names the third moment, the one the first two prepare: existing again as oneself — renaming the practices in their own languages, teaching them as heritage, writing their history from within, mapping them. The revival of the moringue on Réunion, the return of the engolo to scholarly attention, the very existence of an Atlas of the Black combat arts belong to this moment: not a memory preserved, but an existence resumed.

IN THE SYSTEM

→ Destructive Recognition — The recognition that destroys what it honours — praised into disappearance.

→ Tradition of Innovation — Traditions whose very content is innovation: the Black combat arts transmit, as heritage, the obligation to invent.

IN THE CORPUS

→ The Family That Crosses Three Oceans

HOW TO CITE THIS CONCEPT

MALO, Olivier. Réexistence. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Concepts [online]. 2026. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/concepts-en/reexistence [accessed date].