Let’s be quite clear. Contemporary Africa is the fruit of colonisation.
Let’s say it again. Colonisation made us aware of this geographic entity we call Africa when it carved up the continent in Berlin in 1885.
Let us add this. African nationalism was born out of the colonisers’ arrogant nationalism.
Finally, colonisation gave us the French language, our main weapon against its damaging effects in Africa.
We could write a long list of the things French colonisation gave Africa. However, as paradoxical as it might seem, one has to admit that these contributions came in spite of colonisation. So much so that one is tempted to say that colonisation as such never happened. France never had an African colonial policy. The colonies were run through forced labour and capitations.
The famous « civilising mission » was no more than a mirage. Once the colonies were conquered, the French State entrusted their exploitation to concessionary companies, especially in central Africa, inspiring André Gide (1927), Albert Londres (1929), and Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1932) to write anti-colonialism’s most virulent texts.
Regardless of liberty, regardless of equality, regardless of fraternity, regardless of the universal declaration of human rights, the colonised were never allowed to attain citizen status. Some only became citizens in 1946 after the war for reasons that had nothing to do with fraternity or equality
Similarly, the first African students, who later became our political fathers and favourite authors, only went to university just after the Second World War in what was more a desire to save the Empire than a real « civilising project ».
In short, the colonial project was never implemented. And a page has to be turned today, namely that of a sense of resentment and infantile victimisation.
This multidisciplinary dossier which, as is our habit, is open to all the different debates focuses on these issues. These few contributions try to understand the contradictions of the colonial legacy both in Africa and in the French collective imagination. We need in particular to « eek out » the insidious resurgence of colonial paternalism (the return of the « good Negro »). The theme is so vast and the need so great that we will come back to these questions. We also felt that it was our duty today to develop the reflection started in our other dossiers, Postcolonialism: Inventory and Issues (n°28, May 2000), Africa’s Colonial Conscripts (n°25, February 2000), and The Perception of Others (n°3, December 1997). The aim is to stir memory, our common and painful memory, to prepare the coming of History.
///Article N° : 5257
