This volume examines the ways that writers from the Caribbean, Africa, and the U.S. theorize and employ postcolonial memory in ways that expose or challenge colonial narratives of the past, and shows how memory assumes particular forms and values in post/colonial contexts in twenty and twenty-first-century works. The problem of contested memory and colonial history continues to be an urgent and timely issue, as colonial history has served to crush, erase and manipulate collective and individual memories. Indeed, the most powerful mechanism of colonial discourse is that which alters and silences local histories and even individuals’ memories in service to colonial authority. Johnson and Brezault work to contextualize the politics of writing memory in the shadow of colonial history, creating a collection that pioneers a postcolonial turn in cultural memory studies suitable for scholars interested in cultural memory, postcolonial, Francophone and ethnic studies.
Includes a foreword by Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University, USA
Covers a wide variety of texts written in French and English by writers from the U.S., the Caribbean, the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa, and the South Pacific
Faithful to its comparative approach, the book fosters a critical reading of French and English language texts
Linked by a common set of theoretical concerns and by the practice of comparative study, these yet diverse essays contextualize the politics of writing memory in the shadow of colonial history
Includes a foreword by Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University, USA Covers a wide variety of texts written in French and English by writers from the U.S., the Caribbean, the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa, and the South Pacific Faithful to its comparative approach, the book fosters a critical reading of French and English language texts Linked by a common set of theoretical concerns and by the practice of comparative study, these yet diverse essays contextualize the politics of writing memory in the shadow of colonial history Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Erica L. Johnson
memory colonial colonialism postcolonial history collective memory individual memory Francophone ethnic studies
“This timely volume exemplifies the value of sustained and sensitive textual analysis for understanding the global circulation of postcolonial memories. Attentive to the many ways memories mutate across media, genres, temporal horizons, and geographical and linguistic borders, the volume testifies to the vitality of the encounter between memory studies and postcolonial studies.” (Pieter Vermeulen, University of Leuven, Belgium)