This article examines the key role of the French colony in Algeria in the political culture of the Revolution of 1848. Eugène Cavaignac and other army officers with Algerian experience led the state's repression of radical unrest, and their colonial backgrounds became a central narrative trope in debates about political violence in France, especially after the June Days uprising. Following the closure of the National Workshops, legislators adopted a major scheme for working-class emigration to and settlement in Algeria to replace the workshops and resolve unrest. Throughout 1848, Algeria operated as a symbolic and practical field for the struggle between social and political revolution in France.
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(De)Colonizing Pictures?
German Television and Colonialism
Wolfgang Struck
Over the last decade, an increasing number of documentaries and fictional films broadcast on German television has established an image of German colonialism that claims to be informed by postcolonial criticism but, as I argue in this article, often resembles the image created by colonialism itself. Das Weltreich der Deutschen (The Global German Empire, 2010), a documentation produced by Guido Knopp, serves as an example for the close connection between practices of representation and colonial fantasies, and demonstrates how the combination of entertainment and education obscures the fact that colonialism has been not only a practice of political domination and economical exploitation, but also a practice of representation.
More than a Turn?
The “Colonial” in French Studies
Emmanuelle Saada
With the “colonial turn” in French studies now on the wane, this article attempts to assess its contributions. It suggests that one of the main thrusts of the “colonial turn” has been the reconsideration of the “Republic” as a framework for understanding modern French history: the colonies being the place where the Republic “contradicted itself” or, on the contrary, where its deepest tensions revealed themselves. While this perspective has been essential in underlining the importance of race in modern French history, it can be regarded as no more than an attempt to write a history of “France” enriched by the imperial perspective: indigenous worlds appear only secondarily in these analysis of the “imperial Republic.” This shortcoming echoes other criticisms that can be addressed to the “colonial turn” in French studies: the ahistorical use of the category of the “colonial” in the singular and the lack of satisfactory analysis of the “postcolonial.”
Aimé Césaire et les Antilles françaises
Une histoire inachevée?
Justin Daniel
The double commitment of Aimé Césaire on the political and literary fronts as well as the comparison between his achievements in these two fields of activity have drawn various interpretations, often impassioned. This contribution proposes to throw light on some apparent or real paradoxes that underlie his political thought and action. It also tries to evaluate his role through his literary commitment and his investment in the political field by taking into account the specific logics at work in each of these spheres, without neglecting their own temporality, as well as their possible contradictions or complementarities.
Policing the French Empire
Colonial Law Enforcement and the Search for Racial-Territorial Hegemony
Samuel Kalman
'imaginer toutes les combinaisons éventuelles pour anéantir le colon (the task of the colonizer is to make impossible even the dreams of liberty of the colonized. The task of the colonized is to conceive of every possible strategy to wipe out the colonizer).” 1 In
The Colonial State and Carnival
The Complexity and Ambiguity of Carnival in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa
Christoph Kohl
key roles, both as mediators of colonial trading interests and state administration and as activists in anti-colonial developments. In the literature, they are known for their ‘rebellious’ stance toward the colonizers, and they figure prominently in
Like a Tumbleweed in Eden
The Diasporic Lives of Concepts
Banu Subramaniam
conceptual worlds. It links the geographies of the colonial and colonized worlds, and scales of the global and local. Third, unlike terms like rhizomes or rhizomatic networks, which refer to networks of clonal plants that proliferate only through asexual
Tlingit Repatriation in Museums
Ceremonies of Sovereignty
Aldona Jonaitis
form of a ceremony that includes both Tlingit and museum staff, one group connects to the other, creating temporary alliances that erase differences, invent commonalties , and for a time celebrate a more egalitarian relationship of colonizer and
J. Eugene Clay and Anna Bara
Colonizing Russia's Promised Land: Orthodoxy and Community on the Siberian Steppe Aileen E. Friesen (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020), xiii + 224 pp., index, illustrations (black and white), map. $48.75 (cloth). ISBN: 978
Variants of Frontier Mimesis
Colonial Encounter and Intercultural Interaction in the Lao-Vietnamese Uplands
Oliver Tappe
opportunistic responses to specific power configurations (ibid.: 34–39). During colonial encounters in the Southeast Asian uplands, mimetic practices of both colonizer and colonized appear as tactics, I would argue, because these encounters imply uncertainty