Postcolonial Realms of Memory: Sites and Symbols in the Modern Francosphere
About the Event
Invited speakers:
Étienne Achille (Villanova University)
Charles Forsdick (University of Liverpool)
Lydie Moudileno (University of Southern California)
Debarati Sanyal (University of California, Berkeley)
Robert Young (New York University)
Recognized as one of the most influential studies of memory in the late 20th century, Pierre Nora’s monumental project "Les Lieux de mémoire" has been celebrated for its elaboration of a ground-breaking paradigm for rethinking the relationship between the nation, territory, history and memory. It has also, however, been criticized for implying a narrow perception of national memory from which the legacy of colonialism was excluded.
Driven by an increasingly critical postcolonial discourse on French historiography and fueled by the will to acknowledge the relevance of the colonial in the making of modern and contemporary France, the volume "Postcolonial Realms of Memory: Sites and Symbols in Modern France" (Liverpool, 2020) addresses in a collective and sustained manner this critical gap by postcolonializing the French Republic’s lieux de mémoire. The various chapters discern and explore an initial repertoire of realms and sites in France and the so-called Outremer that crystalize traces of colonial memory, while highlighting its inherent dialectical relationship with firmly instituted national memory.
This conference seeks to consolidate and diversify further the volume’s work in making visible the thread that links the colonial to various manifestations of French heritage. The objective is to bring into sharp focus the ways in which the colonial aspect is inextricably intertwined with collective memory, and in particular to consider lieux de mémoire that are not covered in the volume, but which are also important parts of the network of sites and memories that have often been silenced by French national memory.
Etienne Achille is assistant professor of French and Francophone Studies at Villanova University (Pennsylvania, USA). He is the co-author of "Mythologies Postcoloniales: Pour une décolonisation du quotidien" (Honoré Champion, 2018) and the co-editor of Postcolonial Realms of Memory: Sites and Symbols in Modern France (Liverpool University Press, 2020). His recent articles on the novels of Christine Angot, Thierry Beinstingel, Marie Darrieussecq, Édouard Louis and Richard Millet are part of a book project focusing on the figure of the 'white writer' in contemporary fiction.
Lydie Moudileno is the Marion Frances Chevalier Professor of French at the University of Southern California. She is the editor and co-editor of several volumes and special issues on literary representations of blackness in Francophone fiction, and on individual women writers such as Maryse Condé (2003) and Marie NDiaye (2013). She is also the editor of a critical edition of 19th century Louisiana author Victor Séjour (2014). Her recent publications include "Mythologies Postcoloniales" (Champion, 2018, with E. Achille) and "Postcolonial Realms of Memory: Signs and Symbols in Modern France" (Liverpool University Press, 2020), a collected volume investigating traces of the colonial past in contemporary France.
Debarati Sanyal is writing a book on migrant resistance, biopolitics, race and aesthetics in Europe's current refugee "crisis." She is the author of "Memory and Complicity: Migrations of Holocaust Remembrance" (Fordham University Press, 2015), translated into French as "Mémoire et Complicité: au prisme de la Shoah" (PUV, 2019) with a preface by Éric Fassin, and "The Violence of Modernity: Baudelaire, Irony and the Politics of Form" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006). She edited Time and Politics in Contemporary Critique: Entanglements and Aftermaths (Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory, 2:3, 2019). She co-edited with Michael Rothberg and Max Silverman a 2-volume issue of Yale French Studies in 2010, "Noeuds de mémoire: Multidirectional Memory in French and Francophone Culture." She is currently working on a book titled "Arts of the Border: Voices of Migration at the Edges of Europe."
9:45 to 10:00 a.m.
Welcoming Remarks by Conference Organizers
10 to 11 a.m.
Panel 1: Cities / Urban realms of memory
Chair: Aimée Boutin
- Caroline Laurent (Harvard University / King's College London), (Mi)Lieu de mémoire: South East Asian Identities in Paris’s Chinatown
- Stève Puig (St John's University), La « Place du pont » à Lyon : un lieu de mémoire postcolonial
- Fatoumata Seck (Stanford University), Dakar
Panel 2 : Gardens / Le Jardin d’agronomie tropicale/ Jardin d’Essai as lieu de mémoire
Chair: Jeannine Murray-Roman
- Gemma King (Australian National University), Le Jardin d’Agronomie tropicale as lieu de mémoire: between ruin and repair.
- Kelly Presutti (Cornell University), 'This Park Belongs to Everyone’: Re-viewing the Jardin d’Essai, Algiers
- Meghan Tinsley (University of Manchester), Postcolonial Ruination and Restoring the Nation: The Jardin d'agronomie tropicale
11:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
Panel 3: BD / Graphic realms of memory
Chair: Michelle Bumatay
- Michelle Bumatay (Florida State University), Petite histoire des colonies françaises: Little Comics Speak Volumes
- Honorine Rouiller (Florida State University), Collective Memory versus Official Memory: the discerning usage of the comics books
- Shanaaz Mohammed (Davidson College), The Aapravasi Ghat: A postcolonial site of (dis)unity
Break 12:15 to 12:30 p.m.
12:30 to 1:30 p.m.
Panel 4: 17 October 1961/the Seine as realm of memory
Chair Beya Behi
- Seth Graebner (Washington University in St. Louis), Remembering 17 October 1961: The Function of a Postcolonial lieu de mémoire
- Chadia Chambers-Samadi (Hawai'i Pacific University), De l'évenement au monument: Comment le massacre du 17 Octobre 1961 est devenu un Lieu de Memoire Collective?
- Blair Watson (Santa Clara University), Inextricable Traces: The Seine as a “non-lieu de mémoire”
Panel 5: Caribbean
Chair: Carine Schermann
- Rachel Douglas (University of Glasgow), Post/colonial Caribbean Sites and Symbols of Memory: Aimé Césaire, CLR James and John La Rose
- Christopher Bonner (Texas A&M University), Poetic Alignments in Postcolonial Studies : The Césaire-Depestre Debate as lieu de mémoire and lieu d’oubli
1:45 to 2:45 p.m.
Panel 6: Film, Theater, Literature
Chair: Timothy Lomeli
- Chelsea Elzinga (Stanford University), La Trace-mémoires in Three 21st-century Postcolonial Novels
- Xinyi Wang (University of Cambridge), Rethinking Space and Memory in Hiroshima mon amour
- Clare Finburgh Dellijani (Goldsmiths, University of London), The Colonial Making of Contemporary French Theatre
Break 12:15 to 12:30 p.m.
3 to 4 p.m.
Plenary I:
Chair: Charles Forsdick
Roundtable: Etienne Achille, Charles Forsdick, Lydie Moudileno, Debarati Sanyal, Robert Young
Friday, October 8
10 to 11 a.m.
Panel 7: Shantytowns/bidonvilles
Chair: Honorine Rouiller
- Patrick Lyons (University of California, Berkeley), Staging Disappearance: retrieving memory of the Nanterre bidonvilles
- Vanessa Brutsche (University of Utah), The bidonville as lieu de mémoire: from Site to Symbol in Postwar France
- Eric Prieto (University of California, Santa Barbara), The informal settlement as Lieu de mémoire in Rouch and Mambéty
Panel 8: Realms of memory in Central and West Africa
Chair: Alexis Finet
- Rosa De Jorio (University of North Florida), Remembering and Reconfiguring the Institution of Marriage in Postcolonial French West Africa
- Alioune Sow (University of Florida), Memoirs and memory in contemporary Mali
- Mureille Sandra Tiako Djomatchoua (Miami University), De l’Apologie Littéraire à la Censure Politique dans Remember Ruben (1974) de Mongo Beti
- Joseph Hellweg (Florida State University), One Wedding and a Riot: Queer Marriage as a Site of Memory on the Edge of the Ivoirian Francosphere
11:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
Panel 9: Realms of shared memory
Chair: Vincent Joos
- Catherine Gilbert (Newcastle University), Towards a shared heritage? Rwandan remembrance in Belgium and France
- Michaela Hulstyn ( Florida State University), Memories or Reveries? Cixous’s Algeria and the Problem of Sharing the Past
- Herman Lebovics (Stony Brook University), Seeing Africa’s Future: The Restitution of Africa’s Patrimoine in French Possession
Panel 10: Patrimony/Exhibitions
Chair: Marie Bae Mbong
- Elizabeth Benjamin (Coventry University), Mapping Marginalisation in the Digital Memoryscape
- Maria Gindhart (Georgia State University), Beasts of Burden: Animals at the 1931 Exposition Coloniale Internationale
- Caroline Ferraris-Besso (Gettysburg College), Dé-localiser Gauguin: Le Cas du Tiki Village à Moorea
Break 12:15 to 12:30 p.m.
12:30 to 1:30 p.m.
Panel 11: Lieux d’oubli?
Chair: Elizabeth Fowler Beegle
- Cara DeSimone (Independent Researcher), Contested Waters & Forgotten Friendships: Subsistence, Sustainability, and Colonialism in Modern Acadia
- Bill Marshall (University of Stirling), The Forgotten Continent of French Memory?
- Florian Wagner (University of Erfurt), Ni Lieu, ni Mémoire? French Colonial Internationalism and its Forgotten Legacy
Panel 12: Crime and punishment in the Caribbean
Chair: Mehdi Chalmers
- Charles Forsdick (University of Liverpool), Le bagne
- Ryan Augustyiak (Florida State University), Fort Dimanche
- Martin Munro (Florida State University), The Ear/Code Noir
1:45 to 2:25 p.m.
Plenary II: Queer Realms of Memory Roundtable
Chair: Siham Bouamer
Siham Bouamer (Sam Houston State University), Luke L. Eilderts (Southern Connecticut State University). Noe Gross (Universite Libre de Bruxelles), Maxime Foerster (Southern Methodist University), Denis Provencher (University of Arizona), Ryan Schroth (Wake Forest University).