Memory as reparation? The politics of remembering slavery in France from abolition to the Loi Taubira (2001).

Source: (2008) International Journal of Francophone Studies. 11(3):365-386.

This article charts the parallel evolution of the memory of slavery and the political
status of French people from the vieilles colonies in relation to the problem
of justice and reparation in a post-slavery society. By examining legal texts and
political discourse produced at three critical junctures in the history of France’s
overseas departments: the 1848 abolition, the 1946 law of departmentalization
and the 1998 national commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the
abolition of slavery in French territories, the author situates the current will to
remember in the context of a history in which slavery has been, in the words of
one prominent Caribbean writer, a ‘crime without process’. The aim is to
demonstrate the ways in which both the official recollection and the forgetting
of slavery have been instrumental to attempts on the part of the French state
and of the framers of departmentalization to resolve or to displace the question
of France’s possible obligations – legal, ethical, material and symbolic –
towards those it once enslaved, as the political status of these groups has
changed over time. The French case is considered with respect to current theoretical
debates around questions of memory, law and reparation of gross human
rights violations. (author’s abstract)