Decolonisation and Memory Politics. School Textbooks in the Context of Social Conflicts in France (1962-2009)

There are a number of social conflicts currently taking place in various configurations in France which may be described as postcolonial conflicts in an immigration society. Essential to these conflicts are disputes about the way in which varying versions of history and histories of different people are remembered, conveyed and handed down via different media which support national self-definition, including such media as school textbooks. In this respect, memory politics also play a role in these conflicts, where textbooks are both the object and medium of memory politics.
The disputes about the ‘lois mémorielles’ (memory laws) concerning the positive representation of colonialism and the movement of the ‘Indigènes de la République’, which strategically identified themselves as heirs to the former colonised peoples, exemplify the conflicts inherent in postcolonial memory politics in France. Central to these memory politics are postcolonial conflicts over interpretation and identification which are directly connected to the history of colonialism, decolonisation and to past and present postcolonial immigration into France. However, this aspect of postcolonial memory politics, which differs from and competes with the dominant memory culture surrounding the history of the Second World War, has only recently (in the context of the above-mentioned social conflicts in France) become an object of research in the human and social sciences in general, and in textbook research in particular. This project therefore builds on this new field of research.
The project aims to deduce the connection between postcolonial memory politics and present-day social conflicts (about national identity, cultural difference and immigration, for example) in France. To this end, representations of colonialism, decolonisation and postcolonial immigration in history textbooks and éducation civique (social studies) textbooks designed for use in the sixth form of secondary schools from 1962 to 2009 will be analysed alongside the historical and present-day debates about these representations. In this way, we aim to determine the status and role of textbooks in the divisive ‘condition postcoloniale’ and, above all, to find an answer to the question regarding the degree to which postcolonial crises over representation (of the nation) find expression (above all, though not exclusively) in textbooks. The project should thereby contribute towards the ongoing quest to define the status of textbooks in discourse about postcolonial memory politics, in particular insofar as they are both a medium and an object of such memory politics.  


Duration

01.8.10-31.7.12


Funding

The Project is financed by the German Research Foundation (DFG)

Publications

Marcus Otto, talk: ‘La condition postcoloniale? Das Unvernehmen postkolonialer Erinnerungspolitik in Frankreich’ - XXVI. Annual Conference of the Franco-German Institute (Ludwigsburg), ‘France’s Present-day History – National Dimension, Universal Claim’, 24-26.6.2010 in Ludwigsburg

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