Abstract
Tensions between French national memory and afterlives of empire are evident in the work of Pierre Nora. This chapter identifies colonial blind spots in Les Lieux de mémoire and suggests that a focus on ruination provides an alternative means of rethinking the dynamics of postcolonial memory. The Jardin d’agronomie tropicale in Paris is a telling illustration of such an approach, emblematic of the fragile dynamics of forgetting and remembering empire. The chapter concludes with a second illustration of these phenomena, the ruins of the penal colonies of French Guiana and New Caledonia. Highlighting the entangled histories and transcolonial mobilities that underpin these sites, the chapter identifies the emergence of alternative narratives associated with new critical and poetic approaches to the traumas of the colonial past.
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Notes
- 1.
For a critique of the issue, see ‘Vive la nostalgie coloniale!’ (2018).
- 2.
The term was popularised by Lefeuvre (2006), and also explored in other prominent essays including Bruckner (2006). Sarkozy’s presidency (2007–2012) was characterised by growing hostility to populations of migrant origin, exemplified by his attempt to establish a Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity, and Co-Development; such legislative and institutional measures were accompanied by a reassertion of historical rhetoric that saw colonial expansion as a form of ‘civilizing mission’, with the result that those critical of the imperial past and its contemporary manifestations were increasingly accused of being unnecessarily ‘repentant’.
- 3.
See Nora (1984–1992). The harkis were indigenous Muslim Algerians who served as auxiliaries in the French Army during the Algerian War of Independence from 1954 to 1962; pieds noirs were settlers of European origin who lived in Algeria under French rule, many of whom who returned to Europe after Algeria gained independence.
- 4.
Anne Donadey evoked, for instance, the ‘Algeria syndrome’ (Donadey 1996).
- 5.
- 6.
Les Lieux de mémoire has appeared in numerous translations, including a selection of essays published in English, Realms of memory: The construction of the French past edited by Pierre Nora and Lawrence Kritzman and translated by Arthur Goldhammer for Columbia University Press, and Rethinking France: Les Lieux de mémoire edited again by Nora himself with the translation overseen by David P. Jordan for Chicago University Press.
- 7.
A similar argument is made by Shepard (2006).
- 8.
On forgetting Indochina, see Edwards and Jennings (2019).
- 9.
For details of Thu-Van Tran’s work, see https://thuvantran.fr/.
- 10.
On the history of the French penal colonies, see Toth (2006).
- 11.
For an exemplary illustration of such an approach, see Patterson (2018).
- 12.
- 13.
On the closure of the penal colony in New Caledonia and its afterlives, see Petit-Quencez (2016).
- 14.
On the role of cemeteries at penal heritage sites, see Forsdick (2008).
- 15.
On penal heritage in New Caledonia, see Petit-Quencez (2016).
- 16.
The concluding section of the chapter draws in part on my article on the representation of the bagne in Francophone postcolonial literature (Forsdick 2018) and in particular on its discussion of the work of Patrick Chamoiseau and Rodolphe Hammadi.
- 17.
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Forsdick, C. (2020). Sites of Memory, Sites of Ruination in Postcolonial France and the Francosphere. In: Hubbell, A.L., Akagawa, N., Rojas-Lizana, S., Pohlman, A. (eds) Places of Traumatic Memory. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52056-4_7
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