The Colonial Fracture

During the last five years, we can follow in France the reemergence of the debate around the “colonial question”. This question was instigate by the apparition of an historical controversy: the role of France during Algeria war, and specifically the participation of French army in a “torture system”. Simultaneously, the theme of the “glorious national past” during the colonial period was use by some political discourses, since 1996 and an intervention of Jacques Chirac. In affair with different associations of repatriates, a part of UMP party built successively two projects of law, who recognized the “eminent role” of France for the modernization of the ancient colonies. In parallel, in the south and south-west of France, several projects of museums retracing the “colonial epopee” was elaborated. A state discourse begins to appear. But in the civil society, different associations representing the African descent claims the necessity to explore also the complexity of the colonial period, and particularly the oppression of the natives, because this exploration is susceptible to explain the actual discriminations in postcolonial France. These new situations characterize a crisis: in the politic field, in the civil society but also in the scientific field, where the positions on the interpretation of colonial history are now very contradictory. But this different conflict translates also probably the difficulty to admit the multicultural reality of the contemporary France, who increase the “universal French model”. ,