The Memory of Colonialism in Britain and France: The Sins of Silence

ISBN-13: 9783030637217 / Angielski / Miękka / 2022 / 440 str.

Itay Lotem

Opis

This book explores national attitudes to remembering colonialism in Britain and France. By comparing these two former colonial powers, the author tells two distinct stories about coming to terms with the legacies of colonialism, the role of silence and the breaking thereof. Examining memory through the stories of people who incited public conversation on colonialism: activists; politicians; journalists; and professional historians, this book argues that these actors mobilised the colonial past to make sense of national identity, race and belonging in the present. In focusing on memory as an ongoing, politicised public debate, the book examines the afterlife of colonial history as an element of political and social discourse that depends on actors’ goals and priorities. A thought-provoking and powerful read that explores the divisive legacies of colonialism through oral history, this book will appeal to those researching imperialism, collective memory and cultural identity. 

Recenzje

"The book is engagingly written, and is notable in its ambition, scope, and breadth of research undertaken.  ... The Memory of Colonialism makes several important and timely interventions in the study of historical remembrance and postcolonial identity. ... His book will surely become a cornerstone of the growing scholarship on colonial memory, and deserves to be widely read." (M. Kathryn Edwards, Social History, April 7, 2022)

Spis treści

Introduction

Section I France

Chapter 1 The Case for Silence

Chapter 2 A Silence that Never Was? Appropriating the Algerian War

Chapter 3 Devoir de mémoire on the Road to 2005: The Emergence of Memory Activism 

Chapter 4 Memory as Republican Critique: Race and Anti-racism after 2005

Chapter 5 Memory as the Marker of Political Affiliation

Section II Britain

Chapter 6 Postcolonial Silence through Britain’s Long Decolonisation

Chapter 7 The Tale of the Imperial Balance Sheet

Chapter 8 Breaking the Chains? The Memory of Slavery in Britain’s Public Spaces

Chapter 9 Piercing through Nostalgia

Conclusion

O autorze

Itay Lotem is a Lecturer in French Studies at the University of Westminster, UK. He has published in academic journals like Modern and Contemporary France, French Politics, Culture and Society and French History in addition to appearances in the media.