Memory as Colonial Capital

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.Includes a foreword by Marianne Hirsch.

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.

1. Introduction.- 2. “The Value of Memory in Testimonies on African Civil Wars: Kidder’s and Beah’s Problematic Journey to the West,” by Éloïse Brezault.- 3. “The Intimate Archive of Patrick Chamoiseau,” by Erica L. Johnson.- 4. “Imagined Encounters: Assia Djebar’s Vaste est la prison,” by Natalie Edwards.- 5.“The Bagne as Memory Site: From Colonial Reportage to Postcolonial Traces-mémoires,” by Charles Forsdick.- 6. “Memory, Orality, and Nation-Building in Patrice Nganang’s La saison des prunes,” by Nathalie Carré.- 7. “History, Testimony and Postmemory: The Algerias of Pauline Roland and Assia Djebar,” Judith DeGroat. - 8. “On Exactitude in Poetry: The Cartographic Histories of Garrett Hongo’s Coral Road,” Roy Osamu Kamada.- 9.“Remapping the Memory of Slavery: Leonora Miano’s Theatrical Dream, Red in blue trilogie,” by Judith G. Miller.- 10.“‘Still in the Difficulty’: The Afterlives of Archives,” by Wendy Walters.