Memory, Empire, And Postcolonialism ― Legacies of French Colonialism

Originally presented at a 2003 international conference on "Cultural Memory in France: Margins and Centers," the 14 papers collected here by Hargreaves (director, Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, Florida State U.) "show how the politics of memory in the colonial field are inflected by the cultural forms in which the past is represented and reworked." French memory of the colonial experience in North America and the Caribbean is discussed in papers looking at representations the French abolition of slavery in its overseas empire, the Haitian revolution overthrowing French rule, and the Acadian colonialists expelled from British Canada as victims of colonial history. Memory and the African and Indochinese colonial possessions of France are dealt with in papers on cinematic representations of Africa, memories of World War II as justification for the Algerian and French-Indochina wars, and other topics. The final set of papers examines the role of postcolonial migration in bringing the experiences of the colonized back to France. Annotation c2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Alec G. Hargreaves is Director of the Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, Florida State University.