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The article situates Mémoires d'outre-mer in current debates about lieux de mémoire, and in particular about the ways in which the concept elaborated by Pierre Nora is increasingly scrutinized in the light of its silences relating to colonial memory. Ferrier focuses on realms of memory such as the Mahajanga cemetery around which much of his text is constructed, but also engages directly with one of the subjects of Nora's collection, the school textbook Le Tour de la France par Deux Enfants, in order to open up a discussion of contemporary memory practices in contemporary France. He argues that French memory is often limited to national boundaries, and that any internal diversity is regulated, sanitized, hierarchized, with France's status as a transculturated, "travelling" culture denied in the process. The novel is a creative reaction to this mnemonic tendency, with the work situated at the intersection of the transnational and postcolonial, two concepts that are far from being synonymous but are nevertheless closely related throughout the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Pierre Nora's Lieux de me ´moire project, there are no obvious references to the bagne. The omission is surprising, for this institution has long played a significant role in the French imagination. It persists in the French language in several prominent expressions, and continues to be associated with key national symbols such as the bonnet phrygien. This silencing is associated with representations of the penal colony in popular culture and in heritage practices, both of which tend to associate the bagne with 'dangerous' white French bagnards, failing accordingly to recognize the wider impact of the institution on colonized spaces. The article draws on a corpus of postcolonial representations or discussions of the bagne to propose a new, more enabling way of exploring (and memorializing) this essentially nineteenth-century phenomenon. Analysis of texts by Le ´on-Gontran Damas, Kateb Yacine, Leı ¨la Sebbar, Anouar Benmalek, Mehdi Lallaoui, and Patrick Chamoiseau suggests that this 'postcolonialization' of the penal colony through new forms of creative engagement allows the recognition of transcolonial axes of penal trans- portation, exemplified by the banishment of Kabyle rebels to New Caledonia following their revolt against the impact of French occupation in spring 1871. The article concludes by drawing on recent postcolonial engagement with concepts such as 'legacies' and 'ruins' -- particularly in the work of Ann Laura Stoler and Chamoiseau -- to suggest that alternative narratives, and new critical and aesthetic approaches to the penal colony, have begun to emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including postcolonialism in France, decolonization between 1950s-1960s and difference between postcolonial and 19th century studies.

The article discusses a research concerning the effect of dark tourism and slavery in several thanatouristic destinations including Caribbean, West Africa, and France. It highlights the historical and contemporary enslavement as well as radical transformation in education, legislation and historiography to various destinations. It also emphasizes that practice of dark tourism involves trips to Victorian cemetery and churchyard and witness public executions.

The article explores the 'significant missed rendezvous' and posthumous critical dialogue between Victor Segalen (1878-1919) and Édouard Glissant (1928-2011). It studies the ways in which the Martinican novelist, poet and theorist identified Segalen as a catalytic presence in his thought and as one of his privileged, lifelong interlocutors. The study tracks the role of Segalen's work in the steady emergence and elaboration of Glissant's thought, but also analyses the place of Glissant's readings in the progressive reassessment of Segalen's own writings (and particularly in their recent recontextualization in a postcolonial frame). The article contributes to reflections on the formation of communities of thought in which intellectuals from different moments and different ideological niches - in this case colonial and postcolonial - are drawn into dialogue in ways that appear achronological. Segalen and Glissant are presented as part of a wider community of French-language writers, linked with 'relational' ties, whose engagements with questions of contact and cultural diversity overlap, intersect and ultimately interact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although discussions of the French intellectual often address engagement with anti-colonialism and the decolonisation process more generally, most notably in relation to the Algerian War of Independence, critical attention is rarely directed at the existence of a wider yet related intellectual culture that may connect the disparate parts of the French-speaking world. This article explores the rise of the postcolonial intellectual in this politico-cultural and linguistic space, and asks whether such a figure may be seen as part of a coherent tradition. Foregrounding the interdependency and regular overlap of 'French' and 'Francophone' intellectual cultures, the study creates connections between thinkers in metropolitan France and its former colonies, placed here in a dialectical, conjunctive rather than in a binary, disjunctive relationship. The article explores three case studies - those of Victor Segalen (central to the work of such key postcolonial thinkers as Edouard Glissant and Abdelkebir Khatibi), Leopold Sedar Senghor and Frantz Fanon - in order to underline the complex genealogies of the emergent tradition it identifies. It concludes with a consideration of the definitive role of the postcolonial intellectual in debates regarding the legacy of colonialism in contemporary France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores references to Haiti during the anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain. The article suggests there is a connection between increased mass media attention for Haiti and academic research interest in Haiti. Other topics include Haitian migrants, academic conferences, and postcolonial history.

Until recent years and with several notable exceptions, there appears to have been relatively little interest in Haiti among scholars in the field of francophone studies. The article takes this apparent absence as its starting point, and explores the possible ramifications of a renewed attention to Haitian history and culture for studies of francophone postcoloniality. Central to the discussion is a series of French and British representations of the Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture, dating from around the time of their subject's death in 1803, that have received only rare critical attention. The article suggests that any study of a ‘postcolonial’ Toussaint, evident in the work of authors such as Aimé Césaire, Bernard Dadié, René Depestre, Edouard Glissant and Jean Métellus, should take these earlier representations into account in order to elaborate a more complex account of francophone history and culture. The conclusion develops this reflection on the association of the colonial and postcolonial by suggesting the ways in which a renewed awareness of the implications of the Haitian Revolution might impact on postcolonial analyses of France itself. A quelques exceptions près, les chercheurs dans le domaine des études francophones se sont relativement peu intéressés jusqu'à une époque récente à Haïti. Adoptant cette absence d'attention en guise de point de départ, cet article met en relief les implications possibles pour l'étude du ‘fait postcolonial’ francophone d'un renouveau d'intérêt dans la littérature et la culture haïtiennes. L'étude est centrée sur une série de représentations françaises et britanniques du leader de la révolution à Saint-Domingue, Toussaint Louverture – représentations qui datent de l'époque de la mort de leur sujet en 1803, mais qui n'ont que rarement attiré une attention critique. Selon l'article, toute étude d'un Toussaint ‘postcolonial’ – chez des auteurs tels que Aimé Césaire, Bernard Dadié, René Depestre, Edouard Glissant et Jean Métellus – doit se rendre compte des représentations antérieures afin d'esquisser une version plus complexe des histoires et des cultures de l'espace francophone. Cette réflexion sur les rapports qui relient le colonial au post-colonial se développe dans la conclusion de l'article, où l'on démontre l'impact considérable de la révolution haïtienne sur une analyse postcoloniale de la France elle-même. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the revisions of postcolonial thought. Interpretation of exoticism on anglophone postcolonialism; Contrast with the positive senses of the term in francophone postcolonialism; Resistance to cultural globalization; Impossibility of clear separation 'bad' exoticism and 'good' diversity.