Post-Colonial Cultures in France

Alec Hargreaves, Mark McKinney, Alec Hargreaves, Mark McKinney

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136183768
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Kunst
• Subtopic: Volkskultur in der Kunst

Ethnic minorities, principally from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the surviving remnants of France's overseas empire, are increasingly visible in contemporary France. Post-Colonial Cultures in France edited by Alec Hargreaves and Mark McKinney is the first wide-ranging survey in English of the vibrant cultural practices now being forged by France's post-colonial minorities.
The contributions in Post-Colonial Cultures in France cover both the ethnic diversity of minority groups and a variety of cultural forms ranging from literature and music to film and television. Using a diversity of critical and theoretical approaches from the disciplines of cultural studies, literary studies, migration studies, anthropology and history, Post-Colonial Cultures in France explores the globalization of cultures and international migration.

PART I

OVERVIEW

1

INTRODUCTION

The post-colonial problematic in contemporary France

Alec G. Hargreaves and Mark McKinney

INTRODUCTION

Post-colonial studies have recently become one of the most dynamic fields of scholarly inquiry and debate in the English-speaking world.¹ In France, the post-colonial problematic is seldom encountered in political or cultural discourse (Apter 1995). Yet the phenomena embraced by this term represent a crucial dimension of contemporary French society, which offers a rich field of inquiry for students of the post-colonial condition.

Within France, the most widespread (but by no means exact) conceptual equivalent of the post-colonial field is francophonie. Both terms are profoundly ambiguous, above all in relation to the interface between cultural and political phenomena. In its most literal sense, francophonie denotes a purely cultural trait: the ability to speak French. More commonly, it denotes the global community of French speakers and more specifically still, organized efforts, particularly at the state level, to strengthen that community. Thus beneath the surface of a seemingly cultural concept, political imperatives generate much of the momentum behind the idea of francophonie (cf. Ager 1996). This is true not only in the sense that francophonie derives much of its impetus from political elites, but also because the cultural spaces to which the term is applied are defined by geopolitical boundaries. So-called francophone countries are those outside the boundaries of French sovereignty in which French is spoken in some significant degree (though often by only a minority of the population). Most of those countries are former French colonies. Indeed, the term francophonie gained its current meaning in the immediate aftermath of decolonization, when it served to emphasize continuing cultural links between France and her former colonial possessions (cf. Miller 1990: 181–201). Many of those critical of the idea of francophonie view it as a form of neo-colonialism, through which France continues to assert cultural (and perhaps even political) hegemony over formerly colonized peoples.

If the notion of francophonie is distrusted as a conservative or reactionary project, the post-colonial is generally seen as a more politically correct concept, though it too contains many ambiguities. Unlike francophonie, the political dimensions of which are masked by a term which superficially appears to denote a purely cultural field of reference, the post-colonial highlights a political condition characterizing certain forms of cultural production, i.e. the legacy of colonial domination out of or against which cultural practices are seen to emerge. In its own way, the “post” in post-colonial often connotes a political assertion akin to, or rather in contradiction with, that underlying francophonie: to speak of a post-colonial condition is to affirm the right to political and cultural self-determination. Yet by defining cultural projects in terms of a common reference to an earlier period of colonial domination, there is a risk of ensnaring formerly colonized peoples within the very hegemony which theorists of the post-colonial are concerned to break (McClintock 1992). If cultural practitioners originating in former colonies are no longer constrained by the legacy of the past, what purpose is served by labeling their efforts as post-colonial? Fully realized, the post-colonial condition appears as a contradiction in terms.

These tensions are nowhere more acute than in relation to minorities originating in ex-colonies who have now settled in France. French-speaking to a very large extent, yet culturally distinct in other ways and still marked by exclusionary memories of the colonial period, these minorities defy the political logic of francophonie by being residents and in many cases citizens of France while appearing to many among the majority population to belong elsewhere. Cutting across the binary logic that opposes “insiders” to “outsiders,” they are creating what Homi Bhabha has described as a hybrid “third space” that allows for the emergence of new cultural forms, “new structures of authority, [and] new political initiatives” (Bhabha 1990: 211; cf. Bhabha 1994: 19–39).

Conditioned initially by the colonial intrusion overseas and more recently by migration into the former colonial metropolis, post-colonial cultures are also imbricated in wider processes of globalization (Featherstone 1990). Constraints on international communications, which formerly limited the extent to which individuals might participate physically and/or mentally in more than one society, are being constantly eroded (cf. Anderson 1994 on “long-distance nationalism”). Rapid and relatively cheap airline service makes international travel far easier than in the past (albeit subject to rigid controls on permanent migration), and electronic media such as television facilitate the international circulation of cultural products on an unprecedented scale, pervading the homes of mass audiences on a daily basis. Within this context, as Stuart Hall (1996: 247) has observed, the post-colonial perspective

re-reads “colonisation” as part of an essentially transnational and transcultural “global” process – and it produces a decentered, diasporic or “global” rewriting of earlier, nation-centred imperial grand narratives. Its theoretical value therefore lies precisely in its refusal of this “here” and “there,” “then” and “now,” “home” and “abroad” perspective.

It would nevertheless be illusory to suggest that diasporic cultures belong in equal measure to each of the spaces in which they participate. Despite growing cooperation among European Union member-states, immigration controls, including the crucial field of residence rights, remain in many ways a bastion of national sovereignty. Residence rights – or the lack of them – facilitate or limit access to important cultural processes. While no state holds a monopoly over the means of cultural reproduction, some key cultural institutions – most obviously, formal educational systems – remain constrained in many ways by national boundaries. To a lesser extent, this is also true of the mass media, despite a clear trend towards the erosion of national controls (cf. Hargreaves, below, Chapter 5). For these and other reasons, the formative experiences of artists brought up in (ex-)colonial territories are significantly different from those of second- or third-generation members of minorities within the former colonial metropolis, which differ in turn from those of the majority population. National parameters remain therefore salient features in the analysis of cultural practices. Post-colonial cultures are indeed implicitly defined, even if only antithetically, with reference to current or former relations between (ex-)imperial nations and their overseas dominions.

To date, most studies of cultural practices grounded in French colonization and its aftermath have focused primarily on the (ex-)colonial periphery.² To paraphrase the title of a seminal study of post-colonial writing in English (Ashcroft et al. 1989), the emphasis has been on the empire writing back. In the essays assembled in the present volume, the focus shifts to the empire riding in, traversing the center itself. Our contributors explore the significance of the post-colonial condition in a wide variety of cultural practices in France during the 1980s and 1990s. In the analysis of these practices, it is useful to distinguish three main groups of actors: those based in the former colonial periphery, whose works are mediated to the center in a variety of ways; minorities of Third World (i.e. ex-colonial) origin now settled in France; and the majority population, associated with “mainstream” French norms. In the next section of our introductory essay, we focus in more detail on the second of these groups, through which the (former) empire has established a significant physical presence within the (ex-)colonial metropolis and who are at the heart of this volume. We then go on to outline some key features involved in transnational and transcultural exchanges and consider recent critiques of post-colonial theory before concluding with a more detailed discussion of the relevance of the post-colonial paradigm to cultural practices in contemporary France. In this way, we seek to delineate the overall context within which subsequent chapters are to be read.

Drawing on a wide range of materials and methodologies, the various contributors seek to illuminate in ways pertinent to their specialist areas a range of shared concerns. How far are the cultural practices of Third World minorities marked by the legacy of the colonial period? What specific features of current cultural practices are derived from pre-migratory traditions, and how have these been modified through settlement in France? How do gender and class impact upon those practices? In what ways and to what extent may one speak of neocolonialism as a significant force in majority French culture and society, and how does this affect the creative processes of post-colonial minorities? How does the presence of those minorities impact on the majority population in France and the redefinition of its self-image after the end of empire? Do minority cultures function essentially as part of or apart from the “national” culture of France? How do established immigrant minorities relate to exiled or expatriate artists from former colonial territories? In what ways do external diasporic networks and/or inter-ethnic contacts between minorities affect processes of cultural production and consumption? What kinds of audience (majority, minority, crossover, local or global) are addressed by minority cultural practitioners? How far may one speak of a minority public sphere? What means of production and diffusion, and what sources of private or public support are available to minorities, and how have these affected their cultural output? These are the key questions which the contributors seek to explore.

THE POST-COLONIAL PRESENCE IN FRANCE

France has long been a place of temporary or permanent residence for people originating in (ex-)colonies, among whom five partially overlapping groups may be distinguished. Although the distinctions between these categories are useful for analytical purposes, it should be noted that the borderlines are sometimes blurred. Not uncommonly, particular individuals have a foot in more than one camp.

Small but influential elites originating among colonized peoples have often spent time in the (former) colonial metropolis. In many cases, they arrived as students and then extended their stay for varying periods. During the colonial epoch, they often enjoyed greater freedom on French soil than in the overseas empire. In addition, the centralized nature of the colonial system had the effect of concentrating within France educated elites from many different parts of the empire, helping to generate a collective awareness of their shared history of colonial oppression. Experiences of this kind played a major role in shaping the political and cultural elites who were to lead the struggle for independence. The négritude movement, for example, which developed in Paris during the 1930s, brought together black intellectuals from French colonies in Africa and the Caribbean as well as influential African-American mentors (Dewitte 1985). In parallel with artistic works, the political dimensions of the anti-colonial struggle were voiced in newspapers and magazines published in France by activists originating in almost every corner of the overseas empire (Génériques 1990; cf. El Yazami, below, Chapter 7).

While not without influence in France, most of those involved in these movements were primarily concerned with the political and cultural destinies of overseas territories. This was also true, initially at least, of a second, overlapping category of intellectual migrants, who may be broadly classified as post-colonial exiles. In many former colonies, the regimes that replaced French rule soon became corrupt and/or authoritarian, pushing dissenters to flee elsewhere, often to France. Other intellectuals have come to France because it offers better professional prospects, for example in the university and publishing sectors, than can be found in their home countries (cf. Potts 1990: 160–2 on the “brain drain”).

Despite the importance of career opportunities in leading many of them to France, expatriate intellectuals are seldom associated with a third type of post-colonial presence, that arising from economic migration. This is in part because the vast majority of economic migrants from (ex-)colonial territories are located much further down the socio-professional ladder. In France, the classic image of an immigrant is that of an illiterate manual worker of Third World (i.e. ex-colonial) origin executing menial tasks in industrial and other sectors which are unattractive to the majority population. Although there are, of course, exceptions, this stereotype is grounded in the sociological fact that most immigrants from (former) colonies are indeed from poorly educated, often rural backgrounds, and the jobs they have found in France have generally been unskilled and badly paid. Unlike the first two, this third category is composed mainly of people who lack the formal education and skills which are necessary to function effectively in elite cultural spheres. Their cultural practices, primarily oral in character, are badly documented and little studied.

Small numbers of economic migrants came to France during the colonial period. During the First World War, on top of almost 600,000 colonial troops France recruited more than 200,000 civilian workers, mainly in the Maghreb and Indochina, to assist in the war effort of metropolitan France. Most were repatriated when hostilities ended (Amar and Milza 1990: 155–7). Throughout the twentieth century, France was to draw heavily on migrant labor, but until after the Second World War most of this came from Europe. It was not until the 1950s and 1960s that mass migration from the colonial empire, then in dissolution, began to supplant European sources of labor, and not until the 1980s that non-Europeans (mainly from Third World countries) came to outnumber Europeans among the migrant population in France.

Former French colonies in the Maghreb – Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia³ – have been the single most important region of origin. More recently, former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa have also become significant sending countries. In addition, the last remnants of the overseas empire still administered by France, known as the DOM-TOM (Départements et Territoires d’Outre-Mer [Overseas Departments and Territories]), often look to France for employment opportunities. A quarter of the population born in two of the Overseas Departments, the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, now live in metropolitan France (Marie 1993).

Asylum-seekers and refugees fall into a fourth analytical category. Often thought of as the preserve of ideologically committed intellectual elites (of the kind referred to in category two), political exile is a condition experienced by people from diverse social strata, and the scale of their exodus sometimes amounts to a form of mass migration. Thus at the end of the Algerian war of independence in 1962, tens of thousands of Muslim auxiliary soldiers known as harkis, who had fought under French orders, fled to the former colonial metropolis in order to escape reprisals from triumphant Algerian nationalists. Most harkis were poorly educated and possessed few marketable skills with which to ascend the social ladder in France. In this respect they resembled those among their fellow-countrymen who came to France as economic migrants.

A new wave of asylum-seekers, originating in former French...