Colonial Returns?

After a long period of amnesia, the French state seemed, at the beginning of the 21st century, to enter a phase of coming to terms with its colonial history. Alluding to the "Algerian war" and the Sétif massacre was no longer a problem for the collective memory. But with the help of the vote for a certain recognition of French Army auxiliaries as war veterans, a bill that would oblige history teachers "to teach about French presence in its colonies and overseas in a positive manner" (the infamous 23 February 2005 law, subsequently repealed) and then a regressive speech by President Sarkozy in July 2007 at the University of Dakar ("Young people of Africa, I have not come here to talk to you of repentance. They were Africans who sold other Africans to the slave ships."), we can come to the conclusion that a relapse into the black years of colonial ideology is occurring.
An ambitious work, in the sense that it does not hesitate to linger on the most complex issues of colonialism and its consequences, Retours du Colonial? puts into perspective French state policy with regard to its territories and the populations coming from its former colonial territories, analyses and research dedicated to these questions and ideas circulating on this subject in public opinion. With the academic, Catherine Coquio, as editor, this demanding yet accessible work, conveys in a salutary manner ideas on all that has been constructed and perpetuated, from the colonial relationship to political, economic and cultural projects.

The work brings together seventeen French and foreign historians, writers, philosophers, and psychoanalysts, amongst whom figure Boubacar Boris Diop, Zahia Rahmani, Koulsy Lamko, Tiphaine Samoyault, Pascal Blanchard, Françoise Vergès, Marc Nichanian, Gabriel Périès, Bernard Mouralis, Nils Andersson, Alice Cherki.