Includes a foreword by Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University, USA
Covers a wide variety of texts written in French and English by writers from the U.S., the Caribbean, the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa, and the South Pacific
Faithful to its comparative approach, the book fosters a critical reading of French and English language texts
Linked by a common set of theoretical concerns and by the practice of comparative study, these yet diverse essays contextualize the politics of writing memory in the shadow of colonial history This volume examines the ways that writers from the Caribbean, Africa, and the U.S. theorize and employ postcolonial memory in ways that expose or challenge colonial narratives of the past, and shows how memory assumes particular forms and values in post/colonial contexts in twenty and twenty-first-century works. The problem of contested memory and colonial history continues to be an urgent and timely issue, as colonial history has served to crush, erase and manipulate collective and individual memories. Indeed, the most powerful mechanism of colonial discourse is that which alters and silences local histories and even individuals' memories in service to colonial authority. Johnson and Brezault work to contextualize the politics of writing memory in the shadow of colonial history, creating a collection that pioneers a postcolonial turn in cultural memory studies suitable for scholars interested in cultural memory, postcolonial, Francophone and ethnic studies.