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In an era of commemoration, France's Colonial Legacies contributes to the debates taking place in France about the place of empire in the contemporary life of the nation, debates that have been underway since the 1990s and that now reach across public life and society with manifestations in the French parliament, media and universities. France's empire and the gradual process of its loss is one of the defining narratives of the contemporary nation, contributing to the construction of its image both on the international stage and at home. While certain intellectuals present the imperial period as an historical irrelevance that ended in the years following the Second World War, the contested l...
The contributors to Transnational French Studies situate this disciplinary subfield of Modern Languages in actively transnational frameworks. The key objective of the volume is to define the core set of skills and methodologies that constitute the study of French culture as a transnational, transcultural and translingual phenomenon. Written by leading scholars within the field, chapters demonstrate the type of inquiry that can be pursued into the transnational realities – both material and non-material – that are integral to what is referred to as French culture. The book considers the transnational dimensions of being human in the world by focussing on four key practices which constitut...
Who created the most famous Southeast Asian hero during the heyday of imperialism and colonialism? Who inaugurated with The Mysteries of the Black Jungle over a century long link uniting the Italian imaginary to the Indian one? Who envisioned the most celebrated interracial love stories of world literature, those between Sandokan, leader of the Tigers of Mompracem, and Marianna, the Pearl of Labuan, between Tremal-Naik, the Bengali snake catcher, and Ada, the Virgin of Kali’s temple at the time of the British Raj? Who defined the Caribbean as a symbolic trope of plunder and rebellion through the melancholic viewpoint of the Black Corsair and the forsaken love for his enemy’s daughter? Wh...
The Revolt of 1857 in India has so far largely been viewed as an event that was of interest to British and Indian scholars investigating the various consequences of British colonial rule in India. What has remained out of the focus of study during the last 150 years is the possible impact of the Revolt elsewhere, its so to say international dimension: what, in particular, was the reaction in Europe where elemental social and political transformations were underway. Whatever the varied nature of the reactions, the space given to the Revolt in many European newspapers and journals while it was in progress is certainly extensive. What is more, representations of and reflections on the Revolt appeared both during the event and for long after its suppression, above all in forms of popular fiction but also in historical accounts, letters, reminiscences and other forms of writing. The collection of essays in this volume ventures into this unexplored terrain and offers a first look at some of these European responses.
Performing the Pied-Noir Family: Constructing Narratives of Settler Memory and Identity in Literature and On-Screen sheds new light on the memory community of the pieds-noir from the Algerian War (1954-1962) as it continues to resonate in France, where the subject was initially repressed in the collective psyche. Aoife Connolly draws on theories of performativity to explore autobiographical and fictional narratives by the settlers in over thirty canonical and non-canonical works of literature and film produced from the colony’s imminent demise up to the present day. Connolly focuses on renewed attachment to the family in exile to facilitate a comprehensive analysis of settler masculinity, femininity, childhood, and adolescence and to uncover neglected representations, including homosexual and Jewish voices. Connolly argues that findings on the construction of a post-independence identity and collective memory have broader implications for communities affected by colonization and migration. Scholars of literature, film, Francophone studies, and film studies will find this book particularly useful.
Globalizing the Postcolony: Contesting Discourses of Gender and Development in Francophone Africa is a study of development in the former French colonies of West Africa. It takes as its starting point the international community's reporting on human and social development and gender in the developing areas, which began systematically in 1990 and which has provided a framework for policy-making in this field. This study analyzes current thinking on the challenges facing gender and development in Africa, before moving on to examine the historical factors marking the gender and development profile of the francophone West African region. Through an analysis of gender politics in the region from pre-colonial to postcolonial times, the book examines the gradual incursion of exogenous gender policies into the region throughout the 20th century.
Introduction: Archival dreams and Caribbean life writing -- 'Autobiography in a graveyard' : doors of no return and revolutionary failures -- Speculative autobiography : ghosts and feminist fugitivity -- Repicturing the picturesque : genealogical desire, archives, and descendant community autobiography -- Ashes to ashes, dust to dust : Indo-Caribbean archival impossibility -- "Put my mom in there" : Memorialization as Caribbean counter-archive -- Coda: Untelling history.
This book considers the activities and writings of early song collectors and proto-ethnomusicologists, memoirists, and other "musical travelers" in 19th-century France. Each of the book’s discrete but interrelated chapters is devoted to a different geographic and discursive site of empire, examining French representations of musical encounters in North America, the Middle East, as well as in contested areas within the borders of metropolitan France. Rosenberg highlights intersections between an emergent ethnographie musicale in France and narratives of musical encounter found in French travel literature, connecting both phenomena to France’s imperial aspirations and nationalist anxieties in the period from the Revolution to the late-nineteenth century. It is therefore an excellent research tool for scholars in the fields of ethnomusicology, musicology, cultural studies, literary history, and postcolonial studies.
Prize-winning historian Robert Gildea dissects the legacy of empire for the former colonial powers and their subjects.
Situating the 1857 Indian uprising within an imperial context, Jill C. Bender traces its ramifications across the four different colonial sites of Ireland, New Zealand, Jamaica, and southern Africa. Bender argues that the 1857 uprising shaped colonial Britons' perceptions of their own empire, revealing the possibilities of an integrated empire that could provide the resources to generate and 'justify' British power. In response to the uprising, Britons throughout the Empire debated colonial responsibility, methods of counter-insurrection, military recruiting practices, and colonial governance. Even after the rebellion had been suppressed, the violence of 1857 continued to have a lasting effect. The fears generated by the uprising transformed how the British understood their relationship with the 'colonized' and shaped their own expectations of themselves as 'colonizer'. Placing the 1857 Indian uprising within an imperial context reminds us that British power was neither natural nor inevitable, but had to be constructed.