Long repressed following the collapse of empire, memories of the French colonial experience have recently gained unprecedented visibility. In popular culture, scholarly research, personal memoirs, public commemorations, and new ethnicities associated with the settlement of postcolonial immigrant minorities, the legacy of colonialism is now more apparent in France than at any time in the past. How is this upsurge of interest in the colonial past to be explained? Does the commemoration of empire necessarily imply glorification or condemnation? To what extent have previously marginalized voices succeeded in making themselves heard in new narratives of empire? While veils of secrecy have been lifted, what taboos still remain and why? These are among the questions addressed by an international team of leading researchers in this interdisciplinary volume, which will interest scholars in a wide range of disciplines including French studies, history, literature, cultural studies, and anthropology.
Alec G. Hargreaves is Director of the Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, Florida State University.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction Part 2 North America and the Caribbean Chapter 3 Slavery and Commemoration: Remembering the French Abolitionary Decree 150 Years Later Chapter 4 A Singular Revolution Chapter 5 The Past is passé: Time and Memory in Maryse Condé's La Belle Créole Chapter 6 France and the French in Collective Memory of the Acadians Part 7 Africa and Asia Chapter 8 Film and Colonial Memory: La Croisière Noire 1924-2004 Chapter 9 Trespass of Memory: The French-Indochina War as World War II Chapter 10 Memory and Continuity: The Resistance, the Algerian War, and the Jeanson Network Chapter 11 Intimate Acts and Unspeakable Relations: Remembering Torture and the War for Algerian Independence Chapter 12 Revisiting Ghosts: Louisette Ighilahriz and the Remembering of Torture Chapter 13 The Poetics of Memory in Assia Djebar'sLa Femme sans sépulture: A Study in Paradoxes Chapter 14 A Literature without a Name: René-Nicolas Ehni's Algérie roman Part 15 Postcolonial Migration Chapter 16 Decolonizing the Past: Re-visions of History and Memory and the Evolution of a (Post)Colonial Heritage Chapter 17 The Algerian War Revisited Chapter 18 France and Algeria: Performing the "Impossible Memory" of a Shared Past
