From Colonial to Postcolonial: Reflections on the Colonial Debate in France

Abstract

Over the past two decades, postcolonial studies – or postcolonial theory – has firmly established itself within the Anglophone academy. In France, however, the perception of this critical body of thought labours under a certain number of misconceptions that have rendered the development of an equivalent ‘hexagonal’ movement deeply problematic, and have given rise instead to a determined opposition in the general ‘intellectual field’. By ‘intellectual field’ we mean the broad domain constituted by publications and debates in the social sciences, particularly sociology, history, political sciences and, more marginally, anthropology. This ‘intellectual field’ includes academic publications, but also essays by public intellectuals who are not part of the academic community. In this chapter, we will specify the term ‘academic field’ when the questions raised relate more specifically to debates between university scholars. Within these French academic contexts, reaction to postcolonial theory has been characterized by a conservatism underpinned by a relative lack of awareness of key critical works and thinkers, a problem that is compounded by the unavailability of translations. To be sure, various recent publications, such as the translations of work by Stuart Hall and Neil Lazarus, published by Les Editions Amsterdam, have provided readers with better knowledge of ‘des concepts cles, des methodes, des sources intellectuelles, des theories et des debats qui se sont developpes au sein des etudes postcoloniales’ [key concepts, methods, intellectual sources, theories and debates that have been developed within postcolonial studies] (Lazarus, 2006: 446).