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The field of Francophone studies has allowed for the improved contextualization of the colonial and postcolonial era in France, while also broadening the reception of creative and critical works pr...

The National Centre of the History of Immigration (CNHI) opened in Paris in 2007 in a building initially constructed for the 1931 International Colonial Exhibition. The planning period and inauguration were informed by public controversy, the museum's unwillingness to actively engage with France's colonial history denounced, and finally tensions were exacerbated by the creation earlier that year by newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy of a Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Co-development. This measure was deemed contrary to the primary objective of the CNHI which was to foster a new approach to immigration history based on its constitutive relationship to French history. Closer scrutiny of the CNHI project provides helpful insights into the political landscape of twentieth-century France, the symbiotic relationship between government ministries and cultural practices, the tenuous connections between national politics and globalization, while also suggesting the...

Government ministries have historically played a central role in sponsoring imperial ambitions overseas, in supporting the establishment of museums in which to display the acquired spoils and glorious symbols of geopolitical power, and in mobilizing public support for these expansionist ventures. In turn, decolonization has entailed an interrogation of relationality between former colonial powers and colonized subjects alongside claims and demands that have been made by ethnic minorities and immigrants insisting upon improved representation in the genealogies of European nation-states. Museological practices have been subjected to greater scrutiny in light of these political and social transformations, and a comparative transhistorical and transcolonial analysis of European museums stands to improve the contextualization of these experiences and legacies. In addition to the refurbishment and restructuring of colonial era museums, new spaces have also been inaugurated thereby further highlighting ...

Improved contextualization of the cultural, political, and social dynamics of late twentieth/early twenty-first century postcolonial societies can be achieved through a consideration of imperial discourse and the emergence of decolonizing imperatives. These factors allow for the examination of propagandist mechanisms and the accompanying representations of both Africa and Europe at the service of constructs pertaining to Occidentalist superiority. These formulations were widely disseminated in film and the French colonial authorities endeavored to restrict African access to this mode of expression. Gradually, African filmmakers succeeded in bypassing these limitations and in developing an autonomous corpus of works. From the 1950s onward, the Parisian metropolis provided a privileged topographic space for African film production, and over the years filmmakers have focused on various dimensions of the African presence in this metropolis.

The Parisian landscape was repeatedly altered during the second half of the twentieth century by various presidential `grands projets' or `grands travaux', most notably the Grande Arche of La Défense, the Bastille Opera, and the Institut du Monde Arabe. In June 2006, during Jacques Chirac's final months in office, the latest of these projects (and the first of the twenty-first century) was inaugurated, namely the Musée Quai Branly. This museum, dedicated to the arts and civilisations of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, has triggered discussion in a broad interdisciplinary context. This essay endeavours to contextualise these debates and accordingly to provide a more nuanced understanding of contemporary France as it confronts its position, status and role according to the coordinates of an increasingly globalised world.

Colonialism and the accompanying violence of Western language literacy that was indissociable from the pedagogic mechanisms of the French imperial ambition left indelible marks on francophone literary production. The objective of this essay is provided by a consideration of Ousmane Sembene's 1956 novel, Le docker noir (Black Docker), and Richard Wright's 1940 novel, Native Son (Un enfant du pays), within a transcolonial and transnational framework that also explores connections with a range of other texts generated by African, African American, Caribbean, and European authors. This case study of Sembene's novel serves to highlight a different facet of the question of textual ownership by investigating how an African and African American critical apparatus can take the debate in a new direction by demonstrating how the mediation between Sembene and Wright needs to be more aggressively pursued in order to complicate terms such as intertextuality, plagiarism, and recycling.