Clément Viktorovitch returns every week to the debates and political issues. Sunday November 5: the delicate question of colonial memory in France.
The government decided this week to begin archaeological excavations in the town of Rivesaltes, in the Pyrénées-Orientales, to try to locate a probable lost harki cemetery. At the same time, two historians have just proposed the creation of a colonization museum. This is an opportunity to examine the question of France’s colonial memory.
“The colonial past is the last taboo in the history of France in the 19th and 20th centuries”: this is the title of the article published in the newspaper The world (article reserved for subscribers) by historians Nicolas Bancel and Pascal Blanchard. They plead for the creation of a colonization museum, such as already exists in many European countries. And in fact, we have a museum of primitive arts in France, the Quai Branly. We have an immigration museum, the Palais de la Porte Dorée – where the 1931 colonial exhibition was held, and its infamous human zoo. But we do not have the slightest museum dedicated specifically to colonization, even though France was one of the main colonial powers in history.
Such a museum would finally, on the colonial question, create a bridge between history and memory. The history of the colonial fact is now well established. The period is studied by historians. It is taught in high school – insufficiently, perhaps, but more today than yesterday. The memory of colonizations, on the other hand: this is where the taboo lies. Memory is not the knowledge of history. Memory is what we choose, collectively, to do with our history. A colonization museum would be precisely the place to come to terms with this past which so permeates the present. To recognize it in what is both dramatic and complex. To allow a coexistence of all stories: the story of the descendants of the colonized from all immigrations, that of the conscripts, the overseas, but also the harkis and the pieds-noirs. And perhaps, finally, build a common memory.
On colonizations, our memory is a leaden screed
We have to see where we are starting from: President Sarkozy castigated the “repentance”and had passed a law to insist, in school curricula, on “positive role of colonization”. It is true that there has been some progress under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron, notably the recognition of the responsibility of the State in the death of Maurice Audin, tortured and murdered by the French army in Algiers, in 1957 But this remains timid to say the least. While in February 2017, during his first presidential campaign, Emmanuel Macron spoke of colonization as a crime against humanity. Whatever one thinks of this qualifier, it was, at least, a way of opening the debate. Candidate Macron had, at the time, reversed course. Since then, President Macron has never dared to reopen this issue head-on. Worse: he has just inaugurated, in Villers-Cotterêts, the International City of the French Language. On this occasion, he uttered the following sentence: “Were not all the major decolonization speeches thought, written and said in French?” Okay, but everyone else? Those who were thought, written and said in Arabic, Indonesian, Shikomori, English? This is the definition of a taboo, if not even a colonial denial!
This question is crucial. The colonial question surfaces today behind a large part of the tensions which divide our society. Nicolas Bancel and Pascal Blanchard, the two historians authors of the column, recall for example that the discrimination suffered by French people of immigrant background – discrimination supported by numerous studies, notably those of the Defender of Rights – results directly from representations constructed in and through colonization.
The question of colonization in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
We could even go further, by extending this reflection to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: what explains why the Palestinian question is, in France, so sensitive for men and women from colonization? That’s the question! The moment we are experiencing is marked by the Hamas terrorist attack, which left more than 1,400 Israelis dead, the majority of them civilians, including many children. It is also marked by the Israeli response, which is currently causing thousands of deaths in Gaza, again civilians, including many children.
All over the world, peace-loving men and women are calling for a ceasefire, and hoping for a return to normality. But what exactly is normal Israeli-Palestinian relations? Many researchers specializing in international relations have recalled this in recent weeks – notably Bertrand Badie or Beligh Nabli: normality is the colonization, by Israel, of Palestinian lands. Alain Dieckhoff, research director at the CNRS, recalls that today, more than 600,000 Israelis are settled in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in full violation of international law. The UN has passed 11 resolutions condemning Israel for illegal occupation and attacks on civilian populations.
It is undoubtedly time for the international community to open its eyes to the realities of colonization which is present in the present, and which is reflected in our national debate. No doubt, too, it would be time for France to finally dare to look its colonial past in the face.