the evolving context of postcolonial studies in france: new horizons or new limits?
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The evolving context of postcolonialstudies in France: New horizons or newlimits?Jean‐Marc Moura a
a University Charles‐de‐Gaulle‐Lille 3 , FrancePublished online: 19 Aug 2008.
To cite this article: Jean‐Marc Moura (2008) The evolving context of postcolonial studies inFrance: New horizons or new limits?, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 44:3, 263-274, DOI:10.1080/17449850802230319
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Journal of Postcolonial WritingVol. 44, No. 3, September 2008, 263–274
ISSN 1744-9855 print/ISSN 1744-9863 online© 2008 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/17449850802230319http://www.informaworld.com
The evolving context of postcolonial studies in France: New horizons or new limits?
Jean-Marc Moura*
University Charles-de-Gaulle-Lille 3, FranceTaylor and FrancisRJPW_A_323198.sgm10.1080/17449850802230319Journal of Postcolonial Writing1744-9855 (print)/1744-9863 (online)Original Article2008Taylor & Francis443000000September [email protected]
This article examines the different ways in which postcolonial debates are beingaddressed and reformulated in France today, both within and beyond the field ofintellectual discourse. It evokes the academic and social reactions to the promulgation ofa law in 2005, on the interpretation of French colonial history, and shows how theensuing debates led to the (limited and controversial) development of postcolonialperspectives in France. It concludes by distinguishing between two general types ofpostcolonialism that are emerging in French society and in French academic discourse,and that may lead to new studies as well as to renewed conceptions of social evolutionin France.
Keywords: francophone; postcolonial; French literature and culture; colonial andpostcolonial history; memory
This article proposes to examine the different ways in which postcolonial debates are beingaddressed and reformulated in France today, both within and beyond the field of intellectualdiscourse. In order to do this, I would like firstly to evoke the former status of postcolonialstudies, which was largely ignored by the French academy and by the wider field of “intel-lectuals” (as has been widely commented upon by critics). Secondly, I would like to highlightseveral changes that have recently taken place both within the French academy and withinFrench society more widely. And, finally, I would like to chart some of the consequencesof these changes on the evolution of postcolonial studies in France.
The relative absence of postcolonial studies from academic debates in France has beenidentified by Charles Forsdick and David Murphy in the introduction to their edited volumeFrancophone Postcolonial Studies: “French scholars sometimes think that postcolonialismis just a vague, liberal, ‘politically correct’ movement that is uncritically in favour ofmulticulturalism” (9). Indeed, I am tempted to specify that “with the exception of scholarswho work in English studies departments”, most French scholars do think that postcolonial-ism is just a vague, liberal, politically correct movement that is uncritically in favour ofmulticulturalism. It is also clear that until recently, francophone studies – the label used torefer to non-metropolitan French-language writing or indeed non-white metropolitanFrench-language writing in France – have remained a marginalized field of activity withinFrench literary departments.
In fact, the French academy has been almost completely uninterested in postcolonialtheories, which run counter to the dominant models of literary analysis that have developedover the past few decades. Forsdick and Murphy cite the work of Antoine Compagnon, whoin their terms has argued that “after the theoretical revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, many
*Email: [email protected]
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French literary critics (and more generally critics in the French-speaking world) havefocused on establishing standard, ‘universal’ practices of textual analysis” (Forsdick andMurphy 8). For instance, narratology as developed by Gérard Genette and his successors,or the structuralist critique developed by Roland Barthes, attempted to identify universaltextual patterns, building on notions of classical rhetoric (e.g. Pierre Fontanier) or the ideasof the Russian formalists (such as Vladimir Propp). In such a context, historical andcommitted readings of literary works were considered to be “radical, Anglo-Saxon”practices and thus regarded with suspicion.
These developments within French literary studies were in keeping with the fact thatFrench national identity is constructed on the abstract and universal notion of citizenship,which is supposed to transcend issues of race, gender and class, in order to create a societywhere all citizens are equal. French literary scholars tried to develop “universal” modes oftextual analysis within a Republic dominated by “universal” values. This dominantinterpretation of French history has been ironically summarized by Claude Liauzu:
The “sweet France”, whose harmonious form was lovingly crafted by a long succession ofkings – or so we are told – has always been inhabited by a very homogeneous population. Allthat remained to be done was to “make” French citizens of them. This task began in 1789. Thebirth of the citizen lasted until 1870 and the Paris Commune, after which, there was no morehunting of “Bedouins” (workers) on the banks of the Seine, whereas this practice continued inAlgeria. (28)
Liauzu goes on to argue that this inaccurate and even dangerous conception of a “homoge-neous” French nation is challenged by the fact that:
Since at least the middle of the nineteenth century, neither the economy nor the demographyof France can be understood without considering the contribution of millions of men fromEurope and Africa, and of their families who later joined them. It took many years beforearriving at the law voted on 26 June 1889, which allowed the immigrants’ descendants tobecome naturalized Frenchmen, a right accorded to them by dint of their place of birth[le droit du sol]. The main consequence of this situation is a serious contradiction between anevolving society engaged in a process of self-construction and a national identity, based on acenturies-old history, and rooted in the “land of the ancestors”. (28)
The conception of a national identity “based on a centuries-old history” seems to beprevailing today – as is demonstrated by the creation of a Ministry for Immigration,Integration, National Identity and Co-development by the new Sarkozy government in2007 – and it is clearly hostile to a consideration of the importance of immigration in theevolution of France and of the role of the colonial past in the construction of nationalidentity. In light of this, it is unsurprising that many French scholars continue to regardpostcolonialism, with its focus on colonialism, migrations and diasporas, as a limitedparadigm, and, even worse, as an American literary fashion that will soon disappear. Thisexplains why there is not even one Chair of Francophone Postcolonial Studies in Frenchuniversities.
However, is the situation now evolving? Has the French academy finally discovered andadopted postcolonialism? Not exactly, but some (limited) progress is being made. Unex-pectedly, this evolution was largely inspired by the actions of certain right-wing Frenchpoliticians, who attempted to enact legislation that would impose an official (and positive)interpretation of the French colonial past. A brief chronology in the Appendix to this articleillustrates that it all started with the promulgation on 23 February 2005 of a new law, thefourth article of which required public high schools to “teach the positive role of the French
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presence in the overseas territories, particularly in North Africa”. Unsurprisingly, this lawcreated an uproar in France and in Africa, not least in Algeria, where memories of Frenchcolonization are not exactly idyllic.
The law of 23 February 2005 must be situated within the context of a range of attemptsby the French parliament to pass legislation imposing official historical interpretations ofthe past. This legislation has focused on two main areas: firstly, events that are deemed tobe “crimes against humanity”, such as the Atlantic slave trade or the Armenian “genocide”;secondly, laws concerning the interpretation of French colonialism. Parliamentarians hadnot expected that these laws, considered to be rather remote from present-day politicalproblems, would generate heated debates; even the opposition parties did not react stronglywhen they were passed. So, it was a surprise to many when the 23 February 2005 law metwith vociferous opposition not only in Algeria, the North African country most deeplyscarred by French colonization, but also in France. (On the history of the promulgation ofthese laws, see Liauzu and Manceron.)
An article published towards the end of 2005 by Claude Askolovitch in the popular, left-leaning magazine Le Nouvel Observateur remarks upon the incongruity of this historicaldebate coming to occupy the centre of contemporary political debate:
So, what’s the latest news in France? The Algerian War! It’s 29 November 2005, and our MPsare arguing in parliament. [ … ] Elected representatives are in uproar, pouring abuse on eachother. The right-wing celebrates the civilizing achievements of settlers, military doctors,village teachers. The memory of Gaullist France in Brazzaville is invoked. There’s even aquotation from Karl Marx, who on a visit to Algiers had expressed admiration for “France’sachievements”. [ … ] What a strange country, obsessed with its past while its present slipsthrough its fingers. (8–14 December 2005, 12)
Much has already been written about this law, so I propose to discuss only briefly the mainthrust and consequences of the debates that have been instigated by this and the other recentattempts to legislate for certain official forms of historical memory. Firstly, from a diplomaticpoint of view, the law relating to the “Armenian genocide” is embarrassing as far as the rela-tions between Turkey and France are concerned, and the law on the “positive role of theFrench colonial presence” was never going to improve relations between Algiers and Paris.Other developments highlighted the ways in which history was increasingly becoming entan-gled with political and legal questions. For instance, in December 2005, on the basis of theFrench law that deemed the slave trade to have been a crime against humanity (cited above),the Collectif des Antillais-Guyanais-Réunionnais brought legal action against the historianOlivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, the author of a book on the slave trade, Traites négrières. In theirview, Pétré-Grenouilleau had “relativized” the nature of slavery in an interview. This legalaction was eventually abandoned in February 2006, but it created a sense of profound uneaseamongst historians, who felt that this was an attack on the freedom of academic researchers.
In the academic field, scholars, and historians in particular, reacted against the legislativeimposition of an official version of history upon teachers and university lecturers. Twopetitions were launched, one in March 2005, “Colonisation: non à l’enseignement d’unehistoire officielle” (Colonization: no to the teaching of an official history), and one inDecember 2005 “Liberté pour l’histoire” (Freedom for history). These petitions wereinfluential since freedom of research in the field of history seemed to be threatened. The essay-ist Pascal Bruckner has rightly, if somewhat excessively, described the problems raised by the23 February 2005 law: “This text [ … ] promulgates an official history written by the State,exactly like in the former USSR” (La Tyrannie 149). Eventually, early in 2006, the conten-tious article 4 of the law was repealed by presidential decree, but the debates generated by it
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had brought forgotten colonial themes to the forefront of public debate in France for the firsttime since the colonial period: although colonial problems were not ignored or suppressed inschool books and are part of the high school history curriculum, a general sense of “amnesia”had surrounded the whole subject of French colonialism within the realm of public discourse.However, following this law, (post)colonial themes and topics appeared everywhere in thenational media.1 Colonial history was even chosen as the theme of a national monthly debateby the nationwide bookshop FNAC. In November 2006, the FNAC shop in Lille suddenlyplaced a whole shelf of new books under the heading “Postcolonialisme”, even though FNACsalesmen had probably never used the word until that very day. Thus, the terms “postcolo-nial”, “postcolonialisme” and a vague notion (mainly chronological) of “postcolonialité” aregradually entering the vocabulary of French public debate.
The sea change in debate on France’s colonial past and its legacy, which took place inthe course of 2005, is illustrated by the case of the radical collective Les Indigènes de laRépublique (The Natives of the Republic). At the beginning of that year, they had launchedtheir manifesto, calling for greater awareness of the legacy of French colonialism in thetreatment of France’s ethnic minorities, but it was met with almost complete indifference.However, after the contentious debates on the 23 February law and, in particular, followingon from the riots in France’s ethnically diverse and socio-economically deprived suburbs,or banlieues,2 in November 2005, they were suddenly seized upon by the media as potentialinterlocutors who might explain the cause of recent events. Les Indigènes de la Républiqueconsider that the social problems of the immigrant communities from the Maghreb or sub-Saharan Africa are the direct consequence of lasting colonial conceptions and practices inFrench society, and their message has begun to find echoes amongst a certain strand ofyoung people in the banlieues. A new mythology concerning colonization is developing:
WE, the descendants of slaves and deported Africans, daughters and sons of colonized peopleand of immigrants, WE, French and non-French living in France, male and female militantsfighting the oppression and discrimination of the postcolonial Republic, call upon all those whowish to take part in this struggle, to join our anti-colonial movement … (Appel des Indigènesde la République, 20 January 2005)3
Young people from the banlieues have traditionally been uninterested in politics so thisrepresents a remarkable new development in French society and it played a (minor butsignificant) role in the 2007 presidential election. Although the Indigènes movement tendssometimes to develop a very wide (and therefore quite vague) postcolonial perspective, itmust be recognized that their actions and words have played a part in making the history ofcolonialism an issue in French politics. Largely in response to this “postcolonial” question-ing of French history, the new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has referred to the Frenchcolonial past in a range of speeches. For instance, at an election rally in Caen, on 9 March2007, he declared that:
France has never exterminated a people. It did not invent the Final Solution, it did not perpetratecrimes against humanity or genocide … I do not accept that that sons should be required tomake reparations for their fathers’ sins, especially when they have not committed any. (Citedin Liauzu 28)
Equally, the necessity to move beyond what he views as French remorse in relation tocolonialism was at the heart of Sarkozy’s important and highly controversial speech, whichhe delivered in Dakar, on his first trip to the continent after his election as president (26 July2007). Within the space available to me here, it is not possible to analyse Sarkozy’s views
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in any depth, but I would agree entirely with Liauzu who comments that: “History hasclearly become an instrument legitimizing power as well as its political and economicdecisions. During the presidential campaign, the future head of State insisted on therecognition of the positive role of colonization” (28)
What have been the consequences of these social and political debates on academic life?Firstly, they have created a new interest in the field of colonial studies. Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau remarked several years ago that “the academic field of French colonial studiesis largely in ruins” (“Les Identités traumatiques” 96), but this no longer appears to be the case,although many of the recent studies or pamphlets on colonialism are what I would term theproduct of a “hyper-critical” postcolonial thought (a notion to which I will return below).Many books and special issues of journals on colonialism and/or postcolonialism haverecently been published, and conferences and symposia on postcolonial studies have beenorganized in various universities or academic institutions in France. For instance, in May2006, an international conference, “Que faire des postcolonial studies?” (What Should beDone with Postcolonial Studies?), was organized at Sciences-Po, one of the most importantFrench institutions for political and historical studies.4 In the outline of the conference, themain organizer, Marie-Claude Smouts, confessed to being perplexed by the absence ofpostcolonial studies in France:
The aim of postcolonial studies is to analyse the interactions between European nations and theirex-colonized populations. [ … ] It has been taught and discussed for twenty years, not only inEngland, the USA and Australia, but also in South Asia, Latin America and several Europeancountries (Denmark, Italy in particular). Many universities offer a whole syllabus of postcolonialstudies, and sometimes host postcolonial departments or institutes. Several postcolonial journalshave been launched in the past ten years. Yet this intellectual movement has been neglected inFrance. It is now beginning to be considered by the social sciences, particularly history andanthropology. With a few exceptions, French political science remains unaware of it.
This might be viewed as just one more, relatively unimportant, indication of our provincialism,but it takes on a whole new meaning in the current period when there is a growing explorationof the “colonial fracture” in society, and when the conditions of collective life, and the notionsof State, common history, national bonds are constantly being questioned.5
Smouts’ ideas are typical of the new interest in postcolonialism within the French academy.Essentially, her argument is that in a changing social context, when the notions of theRepublic and of collective history are in question, it is time to consider a critical tool that isdeployed in many universities in the world and that may contribute to the clarification ofour national debates.
The recent publication of the edited volume Culture post-coloniale (2006) by PascalBlanchard and Nicolas Bancel – who had previously published (with Sandrine Lemaire) LaFracture coloniale (2005) – is an important stage in the development of a French postcolonialanalysis. Blanchard and Bancel categorize the period 1961–2006 as a “postcolonial era” inFrench culture. The book is a collective effort, which seeks: “to assess how (and in whatguise) the elements of our culture originating (at least partly) in a ‘colonial culture’, whichbegan in the seventeenth century, are perpetuated, reconfigured, reinforced or havedisappeared” (6–7). This perspective allows the authors not only to identify a “colonialculture” in France but also to chart its traces and its lasting consequences on the collectiveimagination (images and cinema), in various paradigms concerning the “Other”, and indebates relating to Republican identity.
Naturally, the introduction of postcolonial studies in France has generated resistance,and the historians and anthropologists in Blanchard and Bancel’s volume identify what we
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might call a colonial “backlash” in metropolitan France, which the official silence concern-ing colonial history has made possible (34). This resistance is voiced primarily (but notexclusively) by the authors that Mireille Rosello has called the “Republicanists” whoconsider that the Republic is threatened by “anglo-saxon communitarianism” (135); postco-lonial studies, considered as a new brand of multiculturalism focusing on colonial history,is accused of “endangering the Republic, of promoting fragmentation, ghettoization, ofaping the Americans” (136).
Alain-Gérard Slama, a journalist at Le Figaro and a professor at Sciences-Po, defendsRepublican tradition. According to Slama, a key Republican ambition (since the 18thcentury) has been to maintain universalist principles that are opposed to any ethnic, religiousor social determinism. In his book Le Siècle de Monsieur Pétain, Slama argues that theideology of community was at the centre of the Pétainist National Revolution. According tothe author, the resurgence of this ideology, under the guise of an American intervention intoFrench life, signals a crisis amongst French intellectuals, a crisis as serious and as threaten-ing as the crisis of the 1940s, which led some outstanding thinkers and writers to think thata compromise between the rational spirit of the Enlightenment and “communities of feeling”could be reached. Slama’s parallel between communitarianism and “Pétainisme” isemblematic of the extreme resistance to multiculturalist (and postcolonial) thought thatexists in certain quarters in France.
Gaston Kelman’s critique is less severe. In his two books – Je suis noir et je n’aime pasle manioc (2005) and Au-delà du noir et du blanc (2006) – he argues that French society isindeed multicultural but that it is primarily multiracial. According to Kelman, many Arab,Asian or black citizens are at home in the dominant French culture, that of the “modèlerépublicain”, and they have nearly or completely lost their African or Asian cultural rootsin order to become “merely” French. Unfortunately, their status as French citizens is far toooften denied to them, and because of their appearance, they are frequently exoticized andconsidered to be less French. The title of Kelman’s first book (which can be translated as “Iam black and I don’t like manioc”, manioc being a type of food taken from the roots of thetropical cassava tree) is revealing. He explains that most Frenchmen who meet him aretempted to think of him as an African, not as a Frenchman, and they consider that hisculinary habits – an important topic in France, related to a certain sense of French identity– are African, and to their mind he should thus eat manioc. This is, in fact, a typical way ofdenying black people the sense that they are full members of French society and culture, away of denying them assimilation, whereas Kelman wants to be assimilated (the title of oneof the chapters of Je suis noir et je n’aime pas le manioc is “Je suis noir et je suis assimilé”[I am Black and Assimilated]). I would argue that his books have met with success preciselybecause they insist on a point that is still denied by many French people, although it is anindisputable fact, namely that France is probably one of the most multiracial societies in theworld:
Yet, one cannot deny that the ethnic makeup of France today makes it – surely as much as andperhaps more than England – the most multiracial society in the world, after the United States.And it’s a never-ending process! After the blacks and the North Africans, there came the Asian“boat-people”. The latest wave of immigration is Turkish and Tamil. A true mosaic of peoples.(Je suis noir 16)
According to Kelman, the demands of making such a society work mean that it is moreimportant to concentrate on the assimilation of immigrants in France than to discuss thecolonial past, as postcolonial debates simply act as another way of isolating an alreadymarginalized segment of the population. As Kelman states provocatively:
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I am not proud of this brotherhood and of this superficial solidarity that Africans and blacks ingeneral display like war wounds, nor of those lyrical surges that speak of a shared misery andmisfortune of having been colonized or sold into slavery. Black people are immoderatelycultivating this insipid and fictitious sense of brotherhood. (Je suis noir 165)
Pascal Bruckner, possibly with Kelman’s books in mind, goes even further and states, intypically abrasive terms, that the Republic is right not to allow a grievance culture to emergewithin minority groups – “The fact that a number of black and North African citizens arelooking to redefine their contract with the French Republic because they feel that they arenot really liked or under-represented is a sign of Republican health.” Alluding to RalphEllison’s novel Invisible Man, he goes on to claim that: “In France, too many minorities feelthat they are plunged into a state of social death, feeling imperceptible because they are toovisible, concealed by their very ostentation, doomed to an eternal state of ‘pre-someone’”(Tyrannie 163–64). Rather than protecting ethnic minorities, communal identities areargued to have made their situation worse.
Bruckner also formulates another accusation against postcolonialism. In his recent bookLa Tyrannie de la pénitence, he argues that postcolonialism is symptomatic of a typicalEuropean tendency to feel unjustified remorse. According to Bruckner, contemporaryEurope is beset by the torments of historical memory. Reflecting on its long history, Europesees only continual episodes of slaughter and plunder culminating in two world wars. There-fore, the average European is highly sensitive to the world’s misfortunes and tends to claimresponsibility for them:
One has rarely seen the elites of an entire continent acknowledging their guilt so enthusiasti-cally, even taking responsibility for the mistakes of others, readily taking the blame for far-offcatastrophes, and crying out: I am full of remorse, I am full of remorse, has anyone got a crime?Guilt is convenient for us, it is the alibi for our resignation. (Tyrannie 245)
Thus, Europe is the continent of resignation and remorse: “The indictment of Europecontinues, with Europe itself leading the way. Proud of beating its breast so ostenta-tiously, Europe claims the universal and apostolic monopoly on barbarity” (Tyrannie 246).Bruckner’s book elaborates a distinction between repentance (“le repentir”) and remorse(“la repentance, le remords”). Repentance acknowledges the “sin” in order to movebeyond and to recover from it, while remorse dwells on the “sin” through an unhealthyand pathological desire for self-flagellation. Bruckner claims that Europe is beset byremorse. The problem is particularly acute in French society because of an alleged “malfrançais” (French disease), which consists of a unique combination of arrogance and self-hatred. The cause of this “disease” lies in the fact that “We [French] have simultaneouslydeveloped an unrivalled vanity, due to our memories of Louis XIV and of the Revolution,and a lack of confidence typical of nations in decline” (Tyrannie 202). In this collectivesense of despair, postcolonialism provides French society with yet another argument justi-fying European guilt:
Colonialism has thus become an empty word, which does not refer to a precise historicalprocess but to everything that is condemned: the Republican ideal, the French social model,secularism, multinational companies’ influence and who knows what else? (Tyrannie 156)
As an essayist, Bruckner has specialized in the denunciation of what he terms “cheap”self-culpabilization. In an earlier volume entitled Le Sanglot de l’homme blanc [TheWhite Man’s Lament] (1983), which is subtitled “Third World, Culpability and Self-Hatred”, he describes what he sees as the pro-Third World sentimentalism of a specific
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section of western left-wing opinion. In his eyes, postcolonialism constitutes a resurgenceof this process:
“Colonial fracture”: this expression, as vague as you could wish for, a truly meaningless termborrowed from Chirac’s vocabulary, allows one to explain nearly everything, and it draws itsappeal from its false simplicity. Do we mean by it that France remains marked by its recenthistory? That’s a statement of the obvious. Or that the immigrants from our former colonies areill-treated, relegated to subaltern positions? Or that the employers and authorities dream ofimporting them when they need them and of sending them back home when there’s no workavailable? This is true of nearly every country in Europe, even those with no imperial past.(Tyrannie 150)
Bruckner’s critique may partly explain the new French interest in postcolonialism, but hisargument is incomplete and cannot account for all aspects of the development of a body ofpostcolonial thought in France (or in Europe) today. It leads him to neglect the lastingconsequences of colonialism in French society and to caricature the aspirations of the youngpeople living in the “banlieues”:
In Western Europe, the suburbs are usually tied into two grand narratives: those of the work-ing class and of decolonization. Some would like to see in the suburbs the combination of theworkers’ revolution and anti-imperialist struggle. However, in November 2005, the rioters inthe estates, in France – poor though they may have been – were primarily the products of a TVand supermarket culture. What were their demands? As one of them said: “dough and chicks”.No demands for the proletarian revolution or the eradication of poverty, but the merereproduction of the consumer society ideal. (Tyrannie 188)
Moreover, the solutions that he offers at the end of his book, namely to change Europeans’view of their continent by restoring their bonds with the United States (from whose dyna-mism they should take as an example) and to regain pride in their history – in place of “theduty of remembering”, he stresses the “duty of praising our historical glories” (Tyrannie248–49) – seem vague and certainly insufficient to meet the current social problems facingFrance.
In fact, recent intellectual and social developments, such as the manifesto of LesIndigènes de la République, indicate the emergence of new forms of identity that questionthe French political, social and cultural system. This is hardly news but it is becomingcritical, as the riots in November 2005 have shown. When politicians pass laws on thenation’s past they try to overcome these social tensions through the elaboration of common“national narratives”, but this is giving a wrong answer to a real problem. Obviously, thiskind of narrative of “unity” cannot be produced through legislation. Turning towards the past(to consider oneself as a descendant of slaves, or of the colonized or exploited people, moregenerally) allows some groups, such as Les Indigènes, to build an imagined identity. Theycling to a communal identity based on past suffering in order to explain the complex reasonsfor their present problems. They claim the status of victims because it is perceived as reward-ing. However, as Pétré-Grenouilleau argues (following T. Shelby), here we must distinguishbetween two kinds of identity, a thin identity (based on a specific problem that has to besolved) and a thick identity (emanating from a shared culture) (“Les Identités traumatiques”96). With notions such as “descendant of slaves” or “descendant of the colonized”, a thinidentity is mistaken for a thick identity, for it is impossible to reduce the social problems ofthe banlieues to the fact that their inhabitants are descendants of colonized peoples.
Basically, the difficulty lies in our conception of history. When somebody claims thathe is the descendant of a colonized person and that he is still colonized, he asserts a direct
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link between past and present, which is the negation of evolution, the denial of change, andtherefore the negation of history as a human science. The mediation of time, which is thevery basis of history, is abolished. The past is reformulated according to an ideology thatserves the interests of a particular group. This is why I would propose to distinguishbetween two types of postcolonialism in France today. Firstly, there is a postcolonialisminspired by “la mémoire” (memory), which often claims a direct link between past andpresent, and which helps some groups to develop a thin identity. These groups understandtheir place and their difficult integration into French society solely in relation to the colonialpast. This hyper-critical postcolonialism is in fact a negation of the process of history and“reinforces these groups’ feelings of estrangement in their own country” (Blanchard andBancel, Culture post-coloniale 39). It gives a simple but incorrect interpretation of thesocial problems that characterize contemporary French society. The problems afflicting thebanlieues cannot be summarized by contemporary French society’s relation to its colonialpast. They are the consequences of the chronic youth unemployment that has marked Frenchsociety for more than two decades, and this explains:
The contempt and the racism that relegated [the November 2005 rioters] to the margins ofFrench society, their repression by a police that is perceived as the guardian of an unfair socialsystem and their exclusion from employment, which is the key to any hope of a successfulmodel of social integration. (Hargreaves 28)
The second type of postcolonialism has emerged within the field of academic historyand can be illustrated by Blanchard and Bancel’s edited volume Culture post-coloniale, aswell as by most of the papers from the Sciences-Po symposium. It is a critical tool that tran-scends the “mémoire” of various communities. It does not presuppose a direct link betweenpast and present, and avoids a moral (and therefore Manichean) approach to past events.This postcolonial perspective might help to elaborate a thick French identity based on ashared and multifaceted culture, which includes a serious reflection on the trauma of colo-nization and its lasting consequences. Under these conditions, the conservatism of certainFrench cultural milieus towards postcolonialism might give way to new ways of analysingFrench society, culture and literature. It would lead to a new “national narrative” thatwould no longer ignore the particular history, needs and diverse cultures of distinctivesegments of the population: “A national narrative that acknowledges the diversity of histor-ical processes and the cultural multipolarity of a France that might then be considered asthe gathering place of a flow of migrants from very different societies” (Culture post-coloniale 39). This collective elaboration of a renewed “national narrative” might bedeveloped within the new Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration, which opened inlate 2007, and which aims to elaborate “une histoire pour tous” (a history for all).6
However, this project has already been compromised as, before it had even opened, eighthistorians resigned from its advisory board, in order to protest against the creation of theMinistry for Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Co-development. For thehistorians in question, this ministry is symptomatic of a discourse denouncing immigration,which belongs to a nationalist tradition grounded in mistrust and hostility towardsforeigners, particularly in times of crisis. Obviously, the collective aspiration of the bookedited by Blanchard and Bancel, namely “to introduce colonial history into the post-colonial era” (41) has not yet been fulfilled.
As Alec Hargreaves has argued in relation to the situation in the banlieues, the refusalto take colonial history and its legacy seriously has had a detrimental effect on socialrelations:
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For many years, political elites considered that France could be preserved from the ghettoizationallegedly afflicting “Anglo-Saxon” societies by the simple incantation of Republican principles.According to this logic, the best way to ward off the danger of ghettoization was to deny anyrole to ethnicity in social relations. However, averting their gaze from the problem merelyallowed a major gulf to open up between these principles and the ill treatment faced on a dailybasis by young people of “postcolonial” descent, who are the main victims of the discriminationexperienced by the inhabitants of suburban housing estates. (Hargreaves 28)
With the arrival of postcolonial debates in France, are we facing new horizons or new limitsin the appreciation of the legacy of colonialism on French society? Postcolonial issues havewide-reaching effects in France both at a social and political level. In the field of academicresearch, they could help to develop francophone literary studies, although postcolonialdebates have not yet reached French literature departments in France. Interestingly, at animportant festival on francophone literatures and cultures, “Francofffonies” (written withthree “f”s!), which took place in France in 2006, the promotion of francophone writers wasnot matched by a similar interest in postcolonial studies. “La Francophonie” does not seemto be concerned by postcolonialism yet, and this is one of its severest limitations, forpostcolonialism might allow us develop our understanding of contemporary French cultureand of its future because, as Liauzu has remarked:
Migrations have accompanied all of human history. More lie ahead of us, due to desperatepoverty and the ecological disasters that are around the corner, due to political chaos, due alsoto the desperate need in Western countries for foreign workers, immigrants that will compen-sate for a declining demography. These migrations offer an alternative to the “clash of civili-zations”, which, according to some, is the future of humanity. (28)
In such a context, postcolonial studies appears not only as an insightful and relatively newcritical perspective on French society and culture, it seems also to be a necessary intellectualtool that will allow us to understand and possibly to influence the social and intellectualchanges that lie ahead.
Notes
1. For instance, when Alec Hargreaves gave a lecture at Lille University in the winter of 2006 hewas able to illustrate his presentation on postcolonial studies with an impressive number of issuesof Le Monde, Le Nouvel Observateur and other newspapers or magazines that were dealing withcolonization on their front pages.
2. In France, the word “banlieues” evokes images of poverty-stricken suburban zones that existbeyond the purview of Republican law and are dominated by gangs; it designates an undergroundworld of joblessness and despair.
3. See ⟨http://www.indigenes-republique.org/spip.php?article835⟩.4. Concerning the growing influence of Sciences-Po on French political and media circles, see
Garrigou. It is worth noting that Centre d’Etudes des Relations Internationales (CERI) (whichwas the organizer of the symposium), collaborating with the Centre National de la RechercheScientifique (CNRS), is situated at the margins of Sciences-Po.
5. The symposium was held at Sciences-Po, CERI, Paris, on 4–5 May 2006. The proceedings of theevent were later published (see Smouts).
6. See ⟨http//www.histoire-immigration.fr⟩.
Notes on contributor
Jean-Marc Moura is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University Charles-de-Gaulle-Lille3. He has recently published Exotisme et lettres francophones (Paris: PUF, 2003); Littératures
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francophones et théorie postcoloniale (Paris: PUF, “Quadrige”, 2007, new ed.); and with LievenD’Hulst: Caribbean Interfaces (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007).
Works cited
Blanchard, Pascal, Nicolas Bancel, and Sandrine Lemaire, eds. La Fracture coloniale: la sociétéfrançaise au prisme de l’héritage colonial. Paris: La Découverte, 2005.
Blanchard, Pascal, and Nicolas Bancel, eds. Culture post-coloniale, 1961–2006: traces et mémoirescoloniales en France. Paris: Autrement, 2006.
Bruckner, Pascal. Le Sanglot de l’homme blanc: tiers monde, culpabilité, haine de soi. Paris: Seuil,1983.
———. La Tyrannie de la penitence: essai sur le masochisme occidental. Paris: Grasset, 2006.Forsdick, Charles, and David Murphy, eds. Francophone Postcolonial Studies: A Critical Introduc-
tion. London: Arnold, 2003.Garrigou, Alain. “Sciences Po Inc.” Le Monde diplomatique 632, Nov. 2006: 28.Hargreaves, Alec G. “La Révolte des banlieues à travers les livres.” Le Monde diplomatique 632,
Nov. 2006: 28.Kelman, Gaston. Au-delà du noir et du blanc. Paris: Max Milo, 2006.———. Je suis noir et je n’aime pas le manioc. Paris: Max Milo, 2005.Liauzu, Claude: “Ministère de l’hostilité.” Le Monde diplomatique 640, July 2007: 28.Liauzu, Claude, and Gilles Manceron, eds. La Colonisation, la loi et l’histoire. Paris: Syllepse,
2006.Pétré-Grenouilleau, Olivier. “Les Identités traumatiques.” Le Débat 136, Sept.–Oct. 2005: 93–97.———. Traites négrières: essai d’histoire globale. Paris: Gallimard, 2004.Rosello, Mireille. “Tactical Universalism and New Multiculturalist Claims in Postcolonial France.”
Francophone Postcolonial Studies: A Critical Introduction. Ed. Charles Forsdick and DavidMurphy. London: Arnold, 2003. 135–44.
Slama, Alain-Gérard: Le Siècle de Monsieur Pétain: essai sur la passion identitaire. Paris: Perrin,2006.
Smouts, Marie-Claude, ed. La Situation postcoloniale. Paris: Les Presses Sciences Po, 2007.
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Appendix: chronology of recent debates on colonial memory in France
23 February 2005: promulgation of the law on the repatriated settlers from Algeria, which includedthe contentious article 4 requiring schools to “teach the positive role of the French presence in theoverseas territories, particularly in North Africa”.25 March 2005: the first petition against this law – “Colonisation: non à l’enseignement d’unehistoire officielle” – is launched by six historians.9 December 2005: the president of the French parliament, Jean-Louis Debré, is commissioned byJacques Chirac to evaluate the parliament’s role in the field of national memory and history.12 December 2005: a second petition – “Liberté pour l’histoire” – is launched by 19 historians (includ-ing Pierre Nora) against various laws: the 23 February 2005 law but also the laws concerning the Arme-nian genocide (29 January 2001) and the slave trade (21 May 2001).20 December 2005: 32 intellectuals and commentators (including many historians) denounce the“Liberté pour l’histoire” petition, as they consider the confusion between a highly questionable articleof law and three other very different laws to be pernicious.24 December 2005: the lawyer Arno Klarsfeld, commissioned by Minister for the Interior NicolasSarkozy, to consider the relationship between “la loi, l’histoire et le devoir de mémoire” [law, historyand the duty of memory], recommends the following wording: “That school curricula acknowledgethe negative as well as the positive aspects of colonization.”4 January 2006: according to Jacques Chirac, President of the Republic, “The text of the law on therepatriated settlers divides French people. It must be rewritten.”31 January 2006: The Conseil Constitutionnel considers that the article of the law of 23 February2005 concerning the positive role of colonization should be repealed. It is to be cancelled through astatutory order, but other controversial topics – concerning in particular university curricula – areallowed to remain in this law.(Based on a chronology of events published in Le Monde 2 18 Feb. 2006: 25.)
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