After 1946, the process of “decolonization by assimilation” ensured that the French Antilles remained part of France. The departmental framework, seen as the source of all the rights associated with citizenship, had a profound influence on Antillean politics and society.
The decolonial movement is diverse and often highly fragmented. Nevertheless, it remains a major theoretical force, one concerned with tracking down all forms of Eurocentrism and showing how knowledge is always necessarily situated.
Small jurisdictions of the Caribbeans are not only offshore facilities, but also political entities, products of colonial history and local societies. An edited volume explores the different ways in which non-sovereign territories of the archipelago have maintained ties with their former European colonisers.
The Age of Enlightenment was not the fruit of European inspiration alone, and should also be considered in the context of a much wider space. A collection of articles reveals all the intensity of the French tradition of the critique of Orientalism.
How can we produce a history of power and violence in the colonial context that is not confined to the discourse of the State, but takes full measure of the historicity of ethnographic and archival sources? Michel Naepels answers this question on the basis of extensive research in New Caledonia.
What are the challenges and limitations of postcolonial theory? The historian Jacques Pouchepadass reminds us that postcolonial studies do not constitute an academic discipline, but rather a critical school of thought, that calls on historians to stop celebrating the odyssey of Western modernity throughout the world.
Since the 18th century, India has been portrayed in contradictory ways. While scholarly knowledge is based on the philological study of texts, literary Orientalism expresses its fascination for a society well-known to preserve the values of order and hierarchy. For Roland Lardinois the anthropology of Louis Dumont illustrates the ambiguity of these discourses.
Partha Chatterjee looks at the political mobilization of the governed in former colonies, lacking access to the modes of traditional citizenship. He argues that these people are not powerless and that they engage in a kind of democratic politics that differs from the democracy of national sovereignty.
Although less well known than Gandhi and Nehru, Ambedkar occupies a unique position in India’s collective imagination. Father of the Constitution and virulent critic of the caste system, he remains today a key figure for the Dalits, who have a hard time finding their way into the official narratives of the struggle for independence.
