The Return of the Native: Postcolonial Smoke Screen and the French Postcolonial Politics of Identity

Bertaux, Sandrine

doi:10.1215/08992363-2010-023

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Yet, violence by the police, or state–sponsored violence, 9 against Black and Arab individuals is not a new issue in France, particularly when considering its colonial history. On October 17, 1961, during the Algerian War of Independence, the French national police, under Maurice Papon, repressed a demonstration of Algerians, and drowned dozens—some reports say hundreds—in the Seine river which traverses Paris (Bertaux 2011; Body–Gendrot 2010). This incident and other examples of torture and brutality by the French state are rarely discussed.…”

Section: State–sponsored Violence Amid Covid–19mentioning

confidence: 99%

Underlying Conditions: Global Anti–Blackness amid COVID–19

Beaman

2020

City & Community

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Recent events have revealed two global crises-one, the COVID-19 pandemic and related quarantine measures, and two, police violence against Black individuals and subsequent protests. Both reveal how anti-blackness is global, and how populations racialized as Black are forever suspect and marginalized. As a Black woman who has researched race and racism in France for over a decade, I see how these two crises present themselves in France as indictive of how anti-blackness manifests globally. On April 18, 2020, in Villeneuve-la-Garenne, a banlieue 1 in the Hauts-de-Seine département north of Paris, Mouldi, a 30-year-old man, left his apartment and went on a brief ride on his moped to get some air that evening. He later admitted he did not have the proper attestation, or signed certificate needed in order to travel more than five kilometers from one's home during France's COVID-19-related quarantine period. He quickly collided with a police car. Accounts vary, but some residents felt the officers purposely opened the police car door as Mouldi approached, causing him multiple injuries including a broken leg. In the immediate days afterwards, some residents burned cars and buildings and shot fireworks and police fired teargas at protestors in both Villeneuve-la-Garenne and nearby banlieues. As one French analysis put it, this is revolt against "the police who control them all year round, who 'tutoyer' them, 2 who insult them, who violate them" (Ramdani 2020; Le Parisien 2020). From his hospital bed, Mouldi appealed for calm (Le Parisien 2020; McAuley 2020a; Ramdani 2020). This incident reflects both the confinement of marginalized populations, even before COVID-19 as I discuss below, as well as the tenuous relations between racial and ethnic minorities-or visible minorities in French parlance-and the police. COVID-19 has illustrated various racial and ethnic inequalities, or the general marginalization of Black individuals, and the global attention to the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, has illustrated the persistence of anti-Black violence around the world. RACE, PLACE, AND MARGINALITY In an interview in March with Mediapart (a French online journal), Youcef Brakini, an activist working with Comité Vérité et Justice pour Adama, stated "all year round, the quartiers populaires [working-class neighborhoods] are confined" (Polloni 2020). Between March 17th and May 11th, France was under lockdown, or l'état d'urgence sanitaire

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Section: State–sponsored Violence Amid Covid–19mentioning

confidence: 99%

Underlying Conditions: Global Anti–Blackness amid COVID–19

Beaman

2020

City & Community

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“… 1. ‘The new challenges of diversity’ are very often traced to immigration; however, making such a direct connection not only ignores a political sphere which articulates immigration in terms of a new challenge of diversity, but also sidesteps particular details such as the making of the demographic category ‘immigrant’ (Bertaux, 2011; 2016). For the links between the secularism–diversity debate and the liberalism–multiculturalism debate see Akan (2003). …”

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Diversité: Challenging or constituting laïcité?

Akan

2017

French Cultural Studies

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The debates on laïcité in France have been capped by a claim that French cultural imaginary laïcité has reasserted itself against the ‘new challenge of diversity’, this new challenge explicitly being contrasted to the old challenge of the Catholic Church. There have been plenty of references to the French Third Republic during these debates, yet these references fail to recognise that in fact the concept of diversité was part of the discussions on laïcité during the Third Republic. This is a historical fact that questions the distinction between old and new challenges. This article locates the concept of diversité in the parliamentary deliberations during the making of the ‘Loi du 28 Mars 1882 sur l’enseignement primaire obligatoire’ and the ‘Loi du 9 Décembre 1905 concernant la séparation des églises et de l’État’ and then compares the relations of diversité and laïcité at that time with their relations in contemporary France. The article lays out the move of diversité from a constitutive premise of laïc institutions in the Third Republic to challenging laïcité, and it explores the politics behind this move. I argue that laïcité has not been reasserted but rather has regressed in France.

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(Re)writing Empire? The Reception of Post-Colonial Studies in France

Bennington

2016

Hist. J.

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This article explores the fierce resistance and controversy that have marked the reception of post-colonial studies in France. In contrast to the anglophone academy, where post-colonialism emerged and was gradually institutionalized throughout the 1980s and 1990s, in France these approaches did not make a mark until much later. The context of social and political crisis over France's post-colonial populations, in which the debate surrounding post-colonial studies emerged, is fundamental to understanding the high stakes and thus the vehemence and polemical nature of their reception. Institutional factors and the particularities of the French intellectual climate, France's strong Republican ideology, and its problematic relationship with its own colonial history, are all explored as reasons for this troubled relationship. The anglocentrism of post-colonial studies is also considered, as are the mutually beneficial outcomes of a dialogue between post-colonial studies and the French debates and context. I outline a specifically ‘French’ post-colonialism that has emerged from these debates, and suggest that whilst positive moves have been made towards a truly inclusive post-colonial studies that would take account of numerous languages, former empires, and former colonies, there remains work to be done in this direction.

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The Return of the Native: Postcolonial Smoke Screen and the French Postcolonial Politics of Identity

Abstract: Art icle navigat ion  Volume 23, Issue 1 Wint er 2011 Issue Edit ors  P re vio u s Art icle Ne xt Art icle  Art icle Cont ent s The return of the native: postcolonial smoke screen and the French postcolonial politics of identity.

Cited by 4 publications

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Underlying Conditions: Global Anti–Blackness amid COVID–19

Underlying Conditions: Global Anti–Blackness amid COVID–19

Diversité: Challenging or constituting laïcité?

(Re)writing Empire? The Reception of Post-Colonial Studies in France

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