Gregory Mann, “Colonialisme now : Contemporary anticolonialism and the “fracture coloniale”” in Politique africaine Volume 105, Issue 1, January 2007, pages 181 to 200

“Colonialism Now” examines current political discourse on colonialism in Africa and the historiography that enables it. Two closely linked metaphors are central to the analysis: the debt, often characterized as a “blood debt”; and the bill (or facture), which is contrasted with the diagnosis of a postcolonial social division (or fracture). Beginning in an area of deceptive clarity – the controversy over the blood debt and pensions paid to African veterans of the French colonial military – the essay looks into the role accorded to colonial history in current political discourse in Côte d’Ivoire and France. It then returns to the practice of history writing, drawing on examples from contemporary Mali. The paper argues that evocations of the colonial past – ranging from reconciliation to “recolonization,” and from the fracture to the facture – have become increasingly effective in the postcolonial present because they resonate with profound anxieties around politics, community, and sovereignty.

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